Broadly defined, civil society is the “private sphere of material, cultural and political activities resisting the incursions of the state” (Fatton 1992, 4-5). While such a broad definition is incomplete and in-deed simplistic, and will acquire more specificity as the analysis proceeds, it will suffice for our immediate purposes. In this general and provisional configuration, civil society represents a counterweight to state power and can thus serve as a critical agent of democratization. Civil society is thus a constant thorn in the monopolizing political claims of the state. This is not to imply that there is an unbridgeable chasm and an unmitigated opposition between state and civil society. In fact, there is a dialectical interaction between state and civil society. The state is transformed by a changing civil society; civil society is transformed by a changing state. Thus, state and civil society form a fabric of tightly interwoven threads, even if they have their own in-dependent patterns.
The state penetrates civil society through its multiple economic interventions, its disciplinary regulations of private behavior and its ideological “interpellations.” The state aspires to become totalitarian because ruling classes are predators bent on maximizing their supremacy; they seek therefore a complete appropriation of civil society. Civil society, in turn, penetrates the state through the erection of protective trenches against coercive abuse, material extraction and political compliance. Civil society aspires to negate the state, and subaltern classes, who are the state's principal victims, are determined to minimize their losses by abolishing it.
The contradiction between state and civil society is, however, not that simple.