The idea that civil society operates separately from the state is something we often take for granted today. But this wasn’t always obvious. For most of human history, political authority and social life were deeply intertwined. The distinction between the two emerged gradually during the transition from feudal to commercial societies, thanks to the work of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers who wrestled with fundamental questions about how people should organize themselves and govern their affairs.
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When civil society became distinct from the state
The breakdown of feudalism created new questions about social organization. Early thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke began examining the relationship between political authority and social life in fresh ways. Locke made an important break from older thinking by arguing that political communities were not simply extended families ruled by a patriarch. Instead, he proposed that people formed political societies through consent and contract.
This shift in thinking reflected real changes happening in European societies. As feudal bonds weakened and commercial relationships grew stronger, people needed new frameworks to understand their social world. The concept of civil society as a realm distinct from state power began to take shape.
Commerce as a civilizing force
Montesquieu, the French political philosopher, offered a particularly optimistic view of commerce’s role in society. He famously argued that commerce cured destructive prejudices and made people’s manners more agreeable. Through trade and exchange, people from different backgrounds came into contact with one another, comparing customs and learning to recognize shared human needs beyond narrow sectarian identities.
Montesquieu believed commerce fostered what he called a sense of humanity. When people engaged in trade, they had to look past superficial differences and focus on mutual benefit. This practical cooperation across cultural lines helped reduce the kind of blind hatred that fueled conflict. Commerce created incentives for peaceful interaction rather than conquest.
Interest versus contract
David Hume, Ferguson’s friend and fellow member of the Edinburgh Select Society, took a different approach. Rather than focusing on formal contracts as the basis of society, Hume emphasized interest as the real cement binding people together. People cooperated not primarily because of explicit agreements but because it served their interests to do so. This was a more realistic, less idealistic view of social bonds.
Adam Smith added another crucial dimension with his emphasis on sympathy and rational character. Smith recognized that while self-interest drove much economic activity, people also possessed an innate capacity to understand and share the feelings of others. This sympathy, combined with rational judgment, shaped moral behavior and social norms. Commerce alone wasn’t enough to create a good society. It needed to be tempered by moral sentiments and institutions that cultivated virtue.
Ferguson’s distinctive analysis
Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society, published in 1767, offered a more complex and ambivalent view of modern commercial society. Unlike Montesquieu’s optimism or Smith’s measured approval, Ferguson saw civil society and the state as essentially identical-both were part of a broader political order that shaped people’s character and capacities.
For Ferguson, civil society wasn’t separate from government. Instead, it was the entire framework of political institutions, laws, customs, and associations that polished the arts and cultivated public spirit. Government, law, and even military organization all contributed to this civilizing process. The state wasn’t an oppressive force to be minimized but a necessary institution for developing human potential.
The dark side of progress
But Ferguson saw serious dangers in modern commercial society. The increasing division of labor, while materially productive, threatened to narrow people’s minds and weaken their connection to broader social concerns. Ferguson warned that extreme specialization could suppress sentiment and reason, making people mere cogs in an economic machine.
He was particularly concerned about the professionalization of military forces. In traditional societies, citizens themselves bore arms and defended their communities. This civic duty cultivated courage, solidarity, and attachment to the common good. But as states developed professional standing armies, ordinary citizens lost this formative experience. They became passive subjects rather than active participants in their own defense.
Ferguson feared this combination of economic specialization and military professionalization would corrode public spirit. When people focused narrowly on their private economic interests and delegated defense to professional soldiers, they lost the civic virtue necessary to resist despotism. A population of narrow specialists concerned only with profit was vulnerable to tyrannical power.
Strengthening the sinews of civil society
Ferguson’s solution echoed Aristotle’s classical republicanism. To counter the centralizing tendencies of the modern state and the atomizing effects of commercial society, he advocated strengthening intermediate associations and citizen participation. People needed opportunities for active involvement in public affairs, not just private economic activity.
He emphasized institutions like juries, where ordinary citizens participated directly in administering justice. Juries weren’t just mechanisms for deciding legal cases. They were schools of citizenship where people learned to deliberate together, weigh evidence, and make consequential decisions affecting their community.
The militia ideal
Ferguson was especially passionate about citizen militias as a counterweight to professional armies. When citizens bore arms themselves, they maintained a direct stake in their society’s defense. This wasn’t just about military effectiveness. It was about preserving the psychological and moral qualities necessary for self-government. Ferguson worried that as wars became less frequent, qualities like courage and cultural identification would weaken.
His broader point was that civil society needed robust, participatory institutions at every level. Professional politicians and bureaucrats couldn’t maintain freedom by themselves. Liberty required active citizens engaged in the life of their communities through various associations and institutions.
A complementary relationship
Unlike later thinkers who would sharply oppose civil society to the state, Ferguson saw them as complementary. He presumed that a public-spirited constitutional monarchy provided the best framework. The state created the legal and institutional structure within which civil associations could flourish. In turn, these associations cultivated the civic virtue and public spirit necessary for good government.
This wasn’t a naive faith in state power. Ferguson was acutely aware of despotism’s dangers. But he believed the solution wasn’t to minimize the state. Rather, it was to ensure broad citizen participation in public life through multiple channels-legal, military, and civic. A healthy political order required both effective government and an engaged citizenry.
Ferguson’s lasting influence
Ferguson’s ideas proved remarkably influential. Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Essay, and James Madison considered it essential reading alongside Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. The American founders’ emphasis on citizen participation, local institutions, and civic virtue owed much to Ferguson’s vision.
His critique of commercial society’s tendency toward narrow specialization and political passivity also anticipated later socialist thinkers. Karl Marx explicitly acknowledged Ferguson as a source for his analysis of the division of labor and its dehumanizing effects. Ferguson’s work demonstrated how commercial progress could undermine the very social bonds and civic capacities that made freedom possible.
Today, as we grapple with questions about the relationship between state power, market forces, and civic engagement, Ferguson’s analysis remains relevant. His insistence that civil society requires active participation rather than passive consumption speaks to contemporary concerns about political apathy and social fragmentation. His warning that economic specialization can narrow our horizons and weaken our civic bonds resonates in an age of increasing polarization and declining trust in institutions.
What do you think? Can modern commercial societies maintain the kind of public spirit and civic engagement that Ferguson believed essential for freedom? What role should citizen participation play in contemporary politics, and how might we strengthen the associations and institutions that cultivate civic virtue?
References
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montesquieu/
- https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/montesquieu-thought-that-commerce-improves-manners-and-cures-the-most-destructive-prejudices-1748
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Ferguson
- https://www.nls.uk/exhibitions/scottish-enlightenment/social-science-and-academia/civil-society-essay/
- https://www.independent.org/article/1968/08/01/adam-smith-adam-ferguson-and-the-division-of-labour/
- https://fee.org/articles/adam-ferguson-and-the-spontaneous-order-of-society/
- https://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/ferguson-adam/essay-on-the-history-of-civil-society/126201.aspx
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