Rediscovery Of Society: On Gramsci’s Civil Scociety Theory

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) is an important thinker of Italy in20th centuryand the founder of Italian Communist Party.After he joined Italian Socialist Party in1913, Gramsci start a weekly magazine named New Order, then lead the labourmovements,struggle with the bourgeois government and Mussolini’s Fascist regime.Gramsci was put to prison in1928,in there, Gramsci still keeping the attention andconsideration of international and Italian revolutionary movements.His PrisonNotebooks represent Gramsci’s observations and reflections in prison.For a long time, people have been exploring a reasonable relationship betweensociety and nation, namely the question of whether "civil society" and "politicalnation" are mutual containing or exclusive. Since the ancient Greece and Rome period,western thinkers have constantly explored this topic.There is no "civil society"seperate from "political society" in the purest sense in the history of civil society inthe classical time until Adam Smith demonstrates the "civil society" is a independentmarket system of ite own and outside the political society, since then the work ofseparation of civil society and political society have been accomplished.Exchange and division of labour bring forth the market and make the marketmechanism able to run independently from beginning to end. The market insteads of"god" and "king", therefore the civil society proves that it can existence withoutreligious and political circumstances.However,soonly the deficiencies of civil society which is seperated from religionand politics have been exposed.Some thinkers are rethinking the rule of "nation"outside the market mechanism especially when the appearing of the deficiencies offree market mechanism such as the disorder of society,the polarization of socialstratum,economic crisises and moral crisises. Tt even appears two extremely thoughtsnamely the "statist utopia" and the "liberal utopia",which led world’s people todisasters.Gramsci’s civil society theory inherits European civil society thoughts since theancient Greece and Rome, summarizes European modern social structure and Italyrevolutionary situation at the same time.In his view,civil society is not only the"economic base" but becoming one part of the "superstructure",which means the state is political society+civil society.Once the civil society was occupied by the rulingclass, it will be their instrument to control the lower class and to defuse the crisises ofgovernance. However,if the lower class occupied the civil society,it will quicken thestep of the "withering away of the state".This idea eliminates the traditional “nation-society” social structure dichotomyand forms “political society—civil society—economic base(market system)trichotomy.At the same time,it converts the economic activity field’ civil society tocultural criticist field’ civil society,no longer regard it as a purely "private sphere ",but rather as the living space to reconstruct public reason and public ethics.This new civil society theory brought by Gramsci criticizes and surmounts thestatist utopia and liberal utopia,deeply influences the later scholars such as Louis P.Althusser、Herbert Marcuse、Jürgen Habermas、Hannah Arendt、Cohen&Arato、John Keane,etc.Moreover,it causes a “paradigm shift” in the sense of history ofwestern civil society,and provides a new way of thinking to reconstruct the“nation—society” relationship and a new angle of rediscovering human’s society.Gramsci brings the new concept of civil society from the theory of critique andbeyond nationalism and liberalism utopia, to the later scholars such as althusser,marcuse, habermas, arendt, KeHeng with rato, John keane had a profound impact, andled to a history of the western idea of civil society in the sense of paradigm shift (lotshift), finally provides people with a refactoring "state-society" of the relationshipbetween the new thinking and rediscovering the new Angle of human society.