ABOUT 20 years ago, ‘civil society’ was touted as the final frontier of democratisation. Even before it came to Pakistan, ‘civil society’ had birthed a purportedly independent workers movement in Poland called Solidarity which triggered the end of the Cold War. The defining feature of ‘civil society’ was that it was not the state — more specifically, it was in the realm of ‘civil society’ that individual liberties could best be defended from bureaucratic state apparatuses.

It wasn’t necessarily discussed openly at the time, but the alter ego of civil society was the ‘free market’. If civil society was the realm of political freedom, then the ‘free market’ was its economic counterpart. It is no surprise, therefore, that with the decline in fortunes of the ‘free market’ globalisation brigade, the ‘civil society’ star has also faded.

Just as it has become clear that the ‘free market’ does not guarantee all human beings economic progress, it is plainly evident that a conflict-free ‘civil society’ does not exist. In fact, the very binary of civil society versus the state has proven to be greatly misleading. Approaching the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the state is as powerful as ever before, hand-in-glove with the most influential segments in ‘civil society’, both doing their best to ensure that the ‘free market’ flourishes without impediment.

A conflict-free ‘civil society’ does not exist.

Notwithstanding the simplistic notion of ‘civil society’ propagated throughout the 1990s, Western social theorists from Hegel to Marx to Gramsci had developed complex philosophical treatises on the subject over the previous century and a half. Despite their differences, all of these critical theorists noted the great internal differentiation in ‘civil society’, with Marx and his followers consistently asserting how class and other divisions expressed in state institutions actually had their roots in ‘civil society’.

Many of these classical social theories have been reformulated to explain contemporary realities, particularly by scholars seeking to explain non-Western contexts that Marx, Hegel and other Western philosophers largely neglected (or misunderstood). Unfortunately, the vibrancy of debates in intellectual circles stands in complete contrast to our static popular discourses.

In Pakistan, ‘civil society’ reached its zenith during the so-called lawyers movement. Originally an anti-dictatorship mobilisation in which the legal fraternity assumed the vanguard role, the movement took on a much more parochial, right-wing face following Gen Musharraf’s deposal in August 2008.

During its initial phase, the movement featured progressive students, political workers and ordinary citizens from all walks of life. Even then, however, the blanket term ‘civil society’, which was widely used by the emergent TV media to describe the protesters, was conveniently vague. As noted, ‘civil society’ is a realm of competing interests, and to actively deny these competing interests and instead depict ‘civil society’ as an apolitical mishmash of well-meaning people is anything but an innocent oversight.

Following Iftikhar Chaudhry’s final restoration to office in 2009, the legal fraternity has reverted to type, bitterly divided along a host of lines. The most recent images of lawyers taking on the Lahore police on Mall Road precipitated widely divergent responses, both from within the legal fraternity, and within the rest of ‘civil society’ at large. Either way, the evidence confirms that the fraternity comes together only in fits and starts, and, more often than not, lawyers wear their competing political affiliations on their proverbial sleeves.

What is important to recognise is that the ‘lawyers movement’ greatly popularised the ‘civil society’ concept. Until the early 2000s, the (largely apolitical) terminology of ‘civil society’ was monopolised by those of an urbane, secular persuasion associated with the donor-funded NGO. They too tended to see ‘civil society’ in opposition to the ‘state’, and were either unwilling or unable to connect the dots between the politics of aid and the manner in which their ‘developmental’ interventions were paving the way for hegemonic neoliberal ideologies.

Of course, this liberal segment’s political leanings came to the fore following the onset of the so-called war on terror; it was all of a sudden ready to empower the state, cheering on military operations against ‘terrorists’ in faraway places, and even expressed gratitude that Washington had invaded Afghanistan and promised to do away with the Taliban. Sixteen years later, we all know how successful that particular method of ‘civilising’ society has proved.

Indeed, if there is any evidence of just how divided ‘civil society’ is, then we look no further than the recent call made by Sami-ul-Haq — who by all means represents another set of political, economic and ideological interests in ‘civil society’ — for the state to reassert its commitment to jihad across the board. And what if we actually started debating how America, China, Saudi Arabia and other external powers cultivate their own interests in ‘civil society’?

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2017