Dave's Definitions (Civil Society & Public/Private Sectors)

Civil society is comprised of the social units and networks (family, church, volunteer associations, labor unions, etc.) that function to address problems and demands held by individuals and groups vis-à-vis the state. The state, for Marx, works to manage the multidimensional relationships between those who run the means of production and the masses. Marx’s critique is that historically the state has managed these relationships via capitalist systems that ultimately serve the owners of the means of production over and against the working classes. Following Marx’s logic, the difference between the public sector and private sector is little and often shifting. In theory the public sector is charged with ensuring the maintenance of the means that promote the common good (access to public education, drinking water, public health care, social safety nets, and public policy that promotes such goods). The private sector, in contrast, is the sphere in which individuals’ particular interests and the means of production (for profit enterprises) are managed without direct intervention from the public sector. Given the state’s influence on (and buttressing of) the private sector through the public sector (e.g, selling an interpretation of history that promotes capitalism), one cannot very cleanly differentiate between the public and private sector. Civil society can serve as an advocate for groups of individuals and / or as a counterbalance of sorts to the state; civil society provides individuals leverage to influence the state.