Between the two great domains of power in the modern world, that of government and that of corporations, lies a domain that has been neglected, overlooked, and often maliciously deprived by its bigger more powerful brothers. That domain is civil society.

What is "civil society"? Give Barber an A+ for answering this question clearly in the introduction to A Place for Us.  For anyone who has ever searched Hegel, Marx, or Gramsci for the roots of the term, Barber's definition is a welcome dose of clarity. It is a definition that makes a great deal of sense and Barber, wisely, defines the concept within a context of social and political action. In Barber's words, civil society "suggests an independent domain of free social life where neither governments nor private markets are sovereign; a realm we create for ourselves through associated common action in families, clans, churches, and communities; a "third sector" (the other two are the state and the market) that mediates between our specific individuality as economic producers and consumers and our abstract collectivity as members of a sovereign people." To this he adds Michael Walzer's comment that civil society is "the space of uncoerced human association." (p. 4)

A Place for US has three objectives:
1) to clarify what is meant by civil society and related concepts; 2) develop an interpretation of civil society that is persuasively progressive and democratic, especially useful "to those who are partisans of democratic struggle and social justice;" and 3) "... offer a series of concrete proposals and strategies aimed at reestablishing institutions and practices at the heart of a strong democratic civil society." (p. 10)

Three Kinds of Civil Society
Barber outlines three distinct views of civil society. He labels these: 1) libertarian, 2) communitarian, and 3) strong democratic models. But before proceeding to explain these separate viewpoints Barber clarifies some other conceptual tools. He discusses three domains (best thought of as domains of power or realms of social action): the state, civil society and markets (or politics, society and economy). Accompanying these concepts is the important distinction between the public and private venues in which we act out our lives and participate in discourse.

The Libertarian Perspective
Barber explains that the libertarian and communitarian versions of civil society "tend to mirror the simple dichotomy of public and private, or power and liberty." (p. 16) The libertarian perspective, for example, sees civil society as essentially synonymous with the private sector. This viewpoint generally sees state power as coercive and restrictive, a constraint or infringement upon liberty. Conversely, libertarians see the market as freedom, "defined by voluntary contract and free association, and as such is the condition of privacy and individuality." Barber notes that the insistence of such a bipolar interpretation is rooted in the libertarian's "illusory conviction that to be truly free we have to make a radical choice between government and markets." (p. 17) In other words, libertarians see civil society as synonymous with "the private market sector, a domain of free individuals who associate voluntarily in various economic and social groupings that are contractual in nature, including the family..." The classic libertarian model sees people as being at odds with their government. It makes government the nemesis of liberty and therefore "leaves no other venue for civil society but the private sector." (p. 17).

Among those who Barber considers libertarians are former Secretary of Education William Bennett who headed the National Commission on Civic Renewal. The libertarian perspective is  very popular among many people concerned with building a democratic Eastern Europe. One of its key shortcomings is that the libertarian perspective conflates free market capitalism with democracy. As Barber points out, shopping and voting are seen as interchangeable activities. Countries, he astutely notes, where shopping flourishes get mislabeled as democracies (p. 21).

The Communitarian Perspective
The communitarian ideal of society has grown out of the common yearning for community and solidarity. Communitarians begin with the premise that most human associations are primarily ascriptive rather than voluntary.  To their credit, communitarians do not believe that the private domain is simply one of solitary consumers or entrepreneurs. Communitarians "envisage civil society as a complex welter of ineluctably social relations that tie people together, first of all into families and kinship associations like clans, and then into clubs, neighborhoods, communities, congregations, and more extended social hierarchies." (p. 23)

But communitarian movements are not inherently democratic. Barber states: The paradox of community is that its solidarity is attenuated by the very pluralism and independence that make it possible. Democratic community is certainly no oxymoron, but community has ideal attributes that resist democracy, while democracy makes demands that can undermine community." (p. 25) Families, clans, religions, even cults, are in many ways communitarian ideals, but they are often hierarchical, restrictive, even authoritarian. "The connections between communitarians and authority (as well as hierarchy) are not fixed or determinative, but they are well established in practice. This to some degree puts the onus on communitarians to show us how they will deflect the natural tendency of solidarity and fraternalism to evolve into authoritarianism and hierarchy. (p. 31) In large part nationalist movements can be considered communitarian, as are religious cults. Such groups tend not only to be hierarchical and restrictive, but they are often intensely ethnocentric as well. The key question for Barber is how to achieve the positive aspects of solidarity without the oppressive constraints and reactionary provincialism that usually accompany it. The answer is in the construction of a strong democratic civil society.

The Strong Democratic Perspective
The strong democratic perspective sees civil society as the domain between government and markets, a domain that has severely withered but the rehabilitation of which is vital for a healthy society.  It rejects the diametric opposition of public and private sectors and posits civil society as a mediating third sector. This third sector is defined by its civic communities — membership associations that are open and egalitarian enough to permit voluntary participation.

Barber claims that the U.S. had a vibrant civil society but in the early part of the 20th century civil society was "squeezed between [the] warring monopoly sectors of state and corporation, civil society lost it s preeminent place in American life." (p. 40)

Barber makes an interesting observation regarding the current wave of privatization sweeping many societies. He points out that one of the problems with privatization is that certain traditional liberal activities concerned with the public environment, public-safety rules, full employment, and other social goods lose their public-interest status and reappear as private-sector "special-interest groups," and they behave and are treated in much the same way as for-profit corporation and private-interest associations with much narrower goals. (p. 52)

So building a strong civil society requires a clear idea of what civil society is and a clear notion of the pitfalls that must be avoided. "To imagine how a vigorous, civic republican, civil society looks, we may want to think about the actual places Americans occupy as they go about their daily lives, when they are engaged neither in politics (voting, jury service, paying taxes) nor in commerce (working for pay, producing, shopping, consuming). Such activities include going to church or synagogue or mosque, doing volunteer work, participating in a civic association, supporting a philanthropy, joining a  fraternal organization, contributing to a charity, working in a parent-teacher group or neighborhood watch or hospital fund-raising society, or joining with neighbors to clean up a local park and, of course, engaging in family affairs." (p. 48)

Building civil society has a great potential for uniting people who have many differences and one of the goals of a strong civil society is to force government to be more responsible, more accountable. Strengthening civil society, however, is a difficult and delicate matter. For instance, families are the building blocks of every extended form of human association and  religion is a social glue stronger than any other, seemingly indispensable to civil society. But... "strong democrats nevertheless remain skeptics here ... though they may wish to incorporate the powerful binding forces of family and church into their conception of civil society, they dare not do so without qualifying both, just as they qualify every other form of civic association. The groups in a strong democratic civil society must be open and inclusive (and thus include the right of exit as well as free entry) and must enforce some degree of equality among their members."  (p, 53)

Building civil society is not just a campaign to increase voluntarism. Barber notes that voluntarism shares the limits of localism. "We live in a world of multinational corporations, global environmental and communication ecosystems, and transnational economic and cultural forces. We cannot solve, one by one and locally, the big infrastructural social problems created over a half century by national and transnational powers. One of the paradoxes of democratic engagement is that while participation is by definition local, power is by definition central.... The doors that open to civic engagement are in the neighborhoods, but the rooms where power is exercised are in the commercial capitals and global metropolises. How do we build a civic house that incorporates them both?" (p. 61)

In a time when society seems to be divided between two great powers, the government and the corporations, the rebirth of a strong civil society is will be a long a difficult labor. But a lively civil society is necessary not just to fill in the voids that government and corporations have neglected. A strong civil society is necessary to empower citizens and make government and corporations more beholden to the will of the people. In this regard, Barber makes a couple of important observations. He states that "civic voluntarism is a start, as long as it is not regarded as a terminus." And "vibrant forms of local engagement can catalyze participation in politics at the national level..." Local participation can have a very positive effect on existing forms of power.

The Libertarians, and many well-meaning people on the street are too willing to whittle down big government and hand over to the pieces to the corporate sector. Some advocate privatization because they are scheming up new ways to make a buck, others because they don't know a third way. The choice for many people is between privatization and big government. Communitarians reject this dichotomy but add another undesirable choice. Barber describes the choices:  "critics of big government think the only way to shrink it is to cede power and privilege to the private sector, but this abdication of power and public responsibility means either privatization, with heroic individuals and responsible corporation taking on the entire burden of the public weal, or a surrender to hegemonic communitarian parochialism, with communities inflicting their values and social relations on everything. By the same token, critics of the market sector believe that the only way to regulate and contain its corruptions is to expand government, but while this will certainly help to regulate monopolies and to domesticate private power (worthy causes!), it can encroach on civic turf if too zealous." (p. 63)

Making Civil Society Real: Practical Strategies
Ceding power to the private sector is not the answer to the problems of inefficiency, waste, unaccountability, etc., for more reasons than Barber mentions but he does make valuable points about the market sector.  He states: "the true enemy of civil society is, in fact, neither government nor corporations per se, but bureaucracy, dogmatism, unresponsiveness, totalism, bloat, unaccountability, absolutism, and inertia wherever they are found. While laissez-faire obsessives are loath to admit it, these defects are unfortunately found as much in private commerce as in the government, among firms and fraternities no less than in welfare bureaucracies." (p. 70) Barber declares that "the myth of the market is our most insidious myth... Markets are simply not designed [nor intended] to do the things democratic polities or free civil societies do. Markets give us private, not public, modes of discourse... Markets advance individualistic, not social, goals and they encourage us to speak the language of "I want," not the language of "we need..." Markets ... offer durable goods and fleeting dreams but not a common identity or a collective membership." (p. 72 and 73).

Barber proposes numerous arenas for legislative action to energize civil society. Some of these ideas have to do with recreating public space: "Enlarging and reinforcing public spaces: specifically, retrofitting commercial malls as multi-use and thus genuinely public spaces." Others have to do with using modern technology to promoting communication (and "preventing commercialization from destroying their civic potential"). He also discusses the development of national and community service programs and  service learning programs. (p. 75).

Barber also outlines a "Corporate Civic Compact for Private Sector Citizens" that would attempt to bind corporate managers and citizens to a set of principles that include respect for the noncommercial character of civil society, support for the civic diversification of public space, encouragement of  worker participation and share-holding, establishment of standards of compensation that would limit the ratio of executive salaries compared to worker's wages, etc. (pp. 96-100).

Time, Work, and Leisure in a Civil Society
In many ways the key factor in the struggle against unchecked corporate and government power is the nature of work in the contemporary United States. In this regard Barber points out that "One-third of the working force work more than forty-five hours a week, up from one-quarter just a few years ago." (p. 127) People are working more hours (and more people are working) thus cutting into the amount of time they have available to participate in civil society, to take an active role in shaping the political and social contours of their environment. As Barber succinctly notes "work, leisure, and civil society compete for a single scarce resource: time."  (p. 124) People are working increasingly without benefits. (p. 125) They may lack health coverage and/or, pensions. Real wages for much of the workforce are stagnant or even declining and more people are going deeper into dept to make up the difference. Why, in a society where productivity has tripled in the past fifty years, are we working so much? Why don't we have the time to spend with our children, to talk to our neighbors, to build social and political networks that work for us?

The nature of time and work is a key issue which Barber has put off to the final chapter and, unfortunately, I don't think he gives it a full enough examination. Barber, instead, rushes to make a point: that we need to make a break from the traditional relationship between labor and income. With increasingly efficient production there is less of a need for human labor. At this point in the history of human development there is the first real possibility of liberation from work. He sees a chance for a "post-modern hyper-efficient economy" being transformed into "the promise of a civil society, a leisure society in which civic culture is finally cut loose from commerce and made the focus of citizens liberated from work."

Barber, however is not overly optimistic about such a vision being realized. He states: "The decoupling of consumption and production through increased labor productivity and the intervention or efficient machines, if it comes to pass as historical actuality, is likely to be disruptive rather than utopian, a prelude to global unemployment and the spread of poverty rather than to global freedom and the spread of a civic culture in which human beings loosen the bonds of nature and truly become its lords." (p. 129)

That is the future as long as the world is ruled by corporations and their global umbrella organizations like the World Trade Organization, and by governments that do not have their peoples' interests at heart. The point (and it is a hard one to argue with) is that "our society is moving toward conditions that could nourish the resuscitation of civil society." But to make it so requires "acts of bold political-imagination and moral transformation."