The liberation of civil society: neo‐liberal ideology and political theory

Abstract

The state versus civil society debate is an arena where competing class projects confront each other, each seeking to ensure a social basis for its own control over the state. The state plays a central role in the construction of civil society. The neo‐liberal project seeks to de‐legitimise the state as a locus of nationalist aspirations and resistance, drawing on theories of ‘rent‐seeking’, ‘patrimonialism’ and ‘state autonomy’. The neo‐liberal project conceals its own massive use of state power, transnational and local, for the construction of a civil society in its own image while suppressing actually existing civil society which it defines as ‘vested interests’.