The Revolutionary Origins of Democracy and Civil Society

ABSTRACT Civil society and democratic rights resulted from a revolutionary compromise between the popular masses and rising capitalist class. This class alliance, which overthrew the aristocratic state in France and the colonial state in North America, produced a dialectic between property rights and human rights, constantly in contradiction and tension, but resulting in the political flexibility of capitalism. Such flexibility has been a major element in maintaining capitalist class hegemony when faced by social movements of race, class and gender. The bourgeoisie have always held private ownership of property as the supreme expression of democracy, while the working class has viewed social and political rights as primary. This contradiction can only be resolved by a socialist society, which places working class democracy and participation at the center of its historic project.