 |
|
|
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
Civil Society and the Economy:
Civility among Merchants
by Robert A. Black
Houghton College
Introduction
Following the lead of political scientists, economists are beginning to take interest in what is called ‘civil society’. Some see civil society as a missing link in discussions of what constitutes an adequate political economy. The debate over whether economic decisions should be made in a free market or by coercive government has been too narrow. Institutional analysis of society shows that ‘civil-society organizations’ (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provide important social, economic, and political services.
Civil society can be defined as those voluntary organizations among individuals who go beyond their individual interests and attend to the civil or collective interest. What is the relation to civil society of the profit-making firm and the market system of free enterprise and free exchange? As Robert O. Bothwell (1998: 251) notes, "Many [analysts] exclude commercial, for-profit activities and business interest associations from civil society because for-profit motivations supersede ‘public good’ impulses."1 The very title of the book in which Bothwell’s article appears, Beyond Prince and Merchant makes quite clear that the editors and various authors subscribe to the idea that civil society stands outside free economy and coercive government. To them, civil-society organizations (CSOs) are quite distinct from the business sector.
This paper claims that civil society can be found in the for-profit market place. While individual for-profit firms are not CSOs, some of their associations have been business civil-society organizations (BCSOs). We find civil society among merchants.2
Defining and Debating Civil Society
The student of civil society quickly sees how its definition has become yet another battleground in the debate over capitalism and socialism or private enterprise and government. For some analysts, civil society is a code for all those nonprofit organizations that are outperforming governments at various humanitarian and sociopolitical tasks; they are better in part because civil society relies on voluntary cooperation rather than coercion. For others, civil society is a code for those nonprofit organizations that are more humane and more environmentally sensitive than greedy for-profit business organizations. These divergent definitions turn the dialog about the role of civil society into the reductionist debate about the efficacy and morality of government versus a free market in coordinating economic activity.3 Alternatively the debate may be about individual autonomy versus commitment to community. Adam Seligman (1995: 203), for example, notes that, in the U.S., ‘civil society’ is used to combat individualism and establish communal imperatives while, in Eastern Europe, ‘civil society’ establishes the rights of individual autonomy against central government imperatives.
Reducing civil society to a debate about free enterprise versus government promotes an imprecise understanding of both civil society and the historical development of capitalism. As the ‘new institutional economists’ have taught us, capitalism arose in the context of specific institutions including government and other voluntary associations. As Michael Novak (1982) reminded us, "democratic capitalism" is a balance among the forces of government, free economy, and pluralistic culture. A third sphere of human activity has developed alongside free economic enterprise and coercive government: a collection of civic, cultural, and not-for-profit enterprises. Novak’s conception of the third sector of human society as pluralistic culture, rather than civil society, seems preferable because civil organizations permeate free economy, government, and pluralistic culture. That is the theme of this paper: civil society can be found everywhere in a society with freedom of association.
Let’s first define civil society and related terms more closely and then analyze the voluntary and civil nature of historical associations among for-profit organizations.
Civil Society vs. the Good Society. Civil society is not an ideal. It is a practical network of actual organizations that may have faults. A tendency of casual analysts is to confuse civil society with the ideal society. To clarify what civil society entails, let us define what the ideal, a ‘good society’, is and how civil society moves us toward the good society.
A good society is one, let’s say, that is not only productive but also just, merciful, and, in its claims about itself, humble. Civil society includes that web of voluntary associations among society’s members that promote the public good by supplying justice and mercy unavailable from government or from individual private enterprises. Civil society may also, however, include organizations that compete against one another, that don’t pursue justice or mercy, or that have quite different ideas of what is a good society.
Therefore, civil society embraces the ability to voluntarily organize to pursue visions of the good society but does not embrace one particular view of the good society. Pluralism is inherent in civil society. Because visions of the good may differ, though, a certain equivocation in uses of the term civil society still exists.
Civil Ambiguity. Words have a range of meanings, making defining by dictionary less precise than we would like. ‘Civil society’ seems suited to dictionary analysis, though, because a careful dictionary analysis explains current ambiguous uses of the phrase.
‘Civil’ can refer to citizenship, to civilian affairs other than the military and other paid government service (and can refer to non-religious affairs in some uses). On the other hand, ‘civil’ can refer to civility, implying politeness in public.
‘Society’ can refer to a "voluntary organization formed for common ends", as in late 18th and early 19th century formation of "friendly societies" in England, as mutual savings societies for the working poor. More broadly, society means "organized patterns of relationships through interaction", or a group of people with "common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests". (Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary, Meriam Webster)
The tug of war over the meaning of ‘civil society’ stems from the ranges of meanings that the component words can take. On the one hand, civil society refers to those organizations that take up the duties of citizenship while doing so primarily outside the official, coercive reach of government.4 On the other hand, some have interpreted the phrase to refer to those conditions, institutions, and collective activities that build a well-behaved or good society and that diminish corruption.
These two meanings are closely related but decidedly different: the first has to do with meeting shortages of services not provided by government or the for-profit business sector, while the second refers to the way people behave in conducting collective businesses. The first meaning of civil society implies no moral judgment and only specifies requirements of the organization: voluntary associations of citizens that attend to collective matters. Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) perform a valued function in general by meeting a need that government and business do not--bringing parents and teachers together to strengthen youth education. The "Harper Valley PTA", with its gossips and their slander, may not fit the ideal of a good society but it is nonetheless part of civil society in the first sense.
The second meaning of civil society, pursuit of the good society without coercion or a profit motive, carries with it a moral conclusion about the superiority of civil society. The Harper Valley PTA is not part of this group of socially civil organizations. This group does more than fill gaps left by government and business. They change wrongs into rights. They are not merely pursuing the ideal; for some commentators, they are the ideal.
Combining this second meaning with an anticapitalist bias would prohibit finding civil society in the for-profit sector. If production and distribution of goods and services for a profit is morally evil or at least tainted, then the free, for-profit economy cannot be civil. Here is where the two meanings of civil society, carefully derived from the ranges of meanings of the component words, have come to clash. At times, princes and, for this paper especially, merchants have organized themselves for purposes larger than their own individual self interests.
In the spirit of doing positive economics before normative, this paper begins with the first meaning of civil society, the meaning that examines first the form of organization rather than whether it overtly reflects a moral ideal or particular bias of political economy. Moral judgments are by no means entirely avoided but at least the limiting bias against for-profit capitalist enterprise and the contrary bias against government are avoided.5 Civil society, then, is all those voluntary groups of individuals organized for collective rather than individual purposes, whether or not the individuals are in the for-profit or government sectors.6
Defining Business Civil Society: How can any association of businesses and for-profit corporations theoretically be considered part of civil society? In law, the corporation has standing in the courts as a legal entity apart from the individuals who guide and work in it. Therefore, it should theoretically be possible for a corporation to join a civil-society organization just as an individual human might do, whether or not the human is employed by, manages, or owns a for-profit business.
The concept from business-ethics literature of being a "good corporate citizen" shows that the corporation also has similar standing in civil matters: it is expected to do its civic duty along with individual humans. What is true of the civic-minded corporation is no less true of the civic-minded proprietorship or partnership. A business can theoretically commit some of its resources to civic ventures that transcend its narrow business interests, just as a human can.
Citizenship can be defined as the willingness and ability to discharge civil responsibilities. We can evaluate corporate citizenship and the health of corporate civil society in much the same way as Bothwell (1998: 251-256) advocates measuring the health of a nation’s civil society: the number of corporate civil-society organizations (CSOs), the degree of corporate participation in them, annual corporate expenditures on them, independence of the organizations from government, degree of cooperation with government, ability to oppose government and hold it accountable, and so on.7
To what extent in commercial history have we witnessed expressions of such civic duty among merchants? The next section sketches a picture of the existence civil society in business history. The implication is that many organizations can properly be called business civil-society organizations (BCSOs).
A help in finding and evaluating civil society in the business sector is a list of characteristics that would identify an organization as a BCSO. Such an organization would be a voluntary association of businesses or business people that acts outside the bounds of coercive government and puts aside individual business interests to pursue collective or civil interests such as:
promoting the rule of law;
reconciling public and private interests and using private wealth to protect group interests;
holding business individuals, groups, and governments accountable;
increasing ‘transparency’ in the for-profit sector;
providing the principles and means of self governance among businesses in order to promote broader social interests (whether or not it advances business interests); and
promoting charity and development in ways that have few direct monetary benefits to the businesses or business leaders involved.
Such BCSOs will be voluntary associations among those who otherwise might act as competitors (at least for the consumer’s dollars) but who cooperate to discharge civil responsibilities. BCSOs will generally create spillover benefits of association or will cure spillover costs of individual behavior, with benefits accruing to consumers and society.
Civility in Business History
Adam Smith may be partly responsible for widespread cynicism about business associations. In his Wealth of Nations, he warned: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." (Bk I, Ch X: 145) Business associations often do lack civility and often promote private interests that are not also public interests.8 Nevertheless, business associations throughout history have sometimes advanced the public interest by promoting a more productive, more just, and more merciful society. Here is a partial list of historical and current commercial organizations that fit the characteristics of BCSOs.
The ‘Hanse’: The history of northern European commerce at the end of the feudal period is marked by the rise of cities of the Hanseatic League. This league of commercial cities "never became a political federation but always remained as a loose alliance of German towns for the defense of common economic interests and exclusive privileges." (M. M Postan, E. E. Rich, and Edward Miller 1963: 111) It had "no formal constitution and no central government." (Norman Davies 1996: 340) The league began as a mere association of Germanic merchants with common interests:
From an early date, the name ‘hanse’ was given to associations of traveling merchants frequenting a foreign country. Thus the Flemish ‘hanse’ of London was an association of merchants hailing from different Flemish towns and making regular trips to England. Members paid dues which were also called hansa. The purpose of such associations was, of course, to provide collective protection in foreign lands, to secure trade privileges, if possible, and to watch over the strict observance of those already in effect. (Postan, Rich, and Miller 1963: 111)
[T]he league aimed to consolidate the legal rights of anchorage, storage [of merchandise], residence and local immunity, which its members required to conduct their business. It was also concerned to stabilize currency and to facilitate the means of payment. (Davies 1996: 340)
Were the cooperative efforts of these hanse in any way civil or were they related only to increasing joint profits by, say, monopolizing trade? The evidence suggests an extensive civil component to activities of the hanse, including enforcing the rule of law where it was weak, and standing up to the local governments in order to insure compliance with trade agreements.
After 1388, the German colony [or hanse] in Bergen [Norway] was ruled by [its own] alderman assisted by a council. They had jurisdiction in civil matters, not only over the merchants but also over the German resident craftsmen. ... In London, the Hansards had their headquarters in the Steelyard, a compound bordering on the Thames. ... As elsewhere, the German colony was subject to the jurisdiction of the aldermen in civil and commercial matters. According to tradition, the guard of Bishopgate, giving access to London Bridge, was entrusted to the merchants of the Steelyard; it was at the same time a burden and a privilege...
The Hanseatic colony in Bruges [Belgium] was administered by a board of six aldermen or elders... The task of the aldermen was threefold: (1) to watch over the preservation of all important trade privileges, (2) to enforce the staple rules and (3) to judge any suits brought by one Hanseatic merchant against another." (Postan, et al. 1963: 112-13)
These Germanic hanse and the later League of German and other cities stand in contrast to the English merchants, who largely confined their associations to smaller partnerships and borrowing-lending arrangements. It fell to the English government to forcibly establish trade privileges for its merchants. (Postan, et al. 1963: 116-18)
The hanseatic associations did fulfill functions of a civil society organization. The hanse were voluntary associations that augmented coercive government in establishing the rule of law, petitioned government on behalf of individuals and the group, guarded the interests of the group against the opportunism of the individual or government, and thereby promoted the general interest. The last conclusion is based on the theoretical and practical benefits of establishing freer trade where restrictions existed. Clearly the hanse brought freer trade and its benefits to various regions of Europe, including England, Scandinavia, and Western Russia. "In European history, [the League] shines as a beacon for all who seek a future based on sturdy local autonomy, international co-operation, and mutual prosperity." (Davies 1996: 341)
Public Accounting and FASB: The rise of ‘financial capitalism’ in the United States in the late 1800s shifted the profit-making emphasis from controlling productive capacity to controlling financial assets. Financial capitalism led to financial manipulation in which accountants participated in what would now be considered fraudulent bookkeeping. Such financial abuses as ‘stock watering’ and writing fraudulent ‘goodwill value’ onto the books of large enterprises (see Gary Previts and Barbara Merino 1979, and Robert Black 1992) led to scrutiny by the United States Industrial Commission of 1900 and to public demands for financial accountability. "Many ... who testified before the Industrial Commission, including most of the businessmen, felt that corporate publicity was the best alternative available for reducing various corporate abuses." (Previts and Merino 1979:133-34) Even before 1900, New York Stock Exchange President Henry Clews and economist John Bates Clark, for example, favored publicizing financial information. (Previts and Merino 1979: 129-30)
The Industrial Commission recommended government rules requiring financial accountability and transparency. The U.S. government eventually refused to set accounting rules. (Paul Miller and Rodney Redding 1986: 19) While the Securities and Exchange Commission of 1933 (SEC) was given the right to do so, it left such regulation to the accounting profession itself. Business favored such a system over government regulation: "Although they may have preferred corporate secrecy, the real threat of direct government intervention rendered the alternative--independent audits by established professional accountants--more attractive." (Previts and Merino 1979: 135)
State societies of public accountants in New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois arose around the turn of the century to address this need for certifiable financial information. In 1902, the Federation of Societies of Public Accountants in the United States formed "with the announced intention of promoting uniform CPA laws. ... The New York state society ... perceived that goal as considerably less important than the development and enforcement of professional standards." (Previts and Merino 1979: 142-43) This emphasis on reflexively established professional standards for accounting education, practice, and ethics demonstrates how business creates civil society.
Voluntary self-regulation of accounting practice for the public good developed through the 1900s, especially under guidance of the American Association of Public Accountants, later known as the American Institute of Accountants (AIA) and then the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). After creation of the SEC in 1933, the AIA created a Committee on Accounting Procedure to set rules, and in 1959 an Accounting Principles Board superseded the Committee. (Miller and Redding 1986: 19)
Voluntary self-regulation of the profession advanced in 1973 when the AICPA formed the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to create "a formal standards-setting process" to insure "uniformity" and "comparability" in financial accounting. (Miller and Redding 1986: 9, 15) The FASB was created "because giving authority to a committee composed primarily of independent auditors did not appear to provide equal opportunity for all interest groups to participate in (and to affect the outcome of) the standards-setting process." (Miller and Redding 1986: 19-20) As such, FASB became even more of a business civil-society organization than the committees it had replaced.
The development of a profession of certified public accountants, and there associations, then, was the simultaneous advance of civil society in business. The FASB and its predecessors helped to secure the rule of law, increase accountability and financial transparency in the for-profit and interestingly the not-for-profit sectors, and establish the orderly basis for self government and petitioning of the rule-setting authorities. Along the lines suggested by Bothwell regarding CSO interaction with government (1998: 254-55), the FASB not only works with government (the SEC) but also works to keep government from excessive interference in the private economy by meeting the social needs described here.
The Better Business Bureau: The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a voluntary association of merchants in the U.S. and operates as a non-profit organization. While FASB deals more narrowly with the accounting profession and certified public accountants and their association with private investors, the Better Business Bureau is a BCSO that interacts with a broader set of retail businesses regarding their dealings with retail consumers. Nonetheless, like the FASB, the BBB meets the requirements for civil-society activities.
The BBB sets standards of advertising and selling, arbitrates disputes between customers and businesses, and gathers and distributes information about member businesses. BBB’s "Uniform Standards of Membership for Local Bureaus" require that participating businesses cooperate in all these areas, as well as in resolving conflicts and any unfair or questionable practices that generate them. Members are required to abide by arbitration decisions to which they voluntarily submit.
This is civil society among merchants. The "Uniform Standards..." explicitly state that a BBB goal is "to promote voluntary self-regulation within the business's industry." ("Better Business Bureau..." 1998: rule number 8) Members are required to abide by the rule of law regarding licensing and any state or federal commercial codes; failure to do so requires expulsion. Members agree to be accountable and transparent as to their advertising and selling practices. The BBB is designed to promote the interests of the public as well as the general reputation of merchants in a region.
The BBB also corrects for spillover effects of bad ethical practices of individual businesses, since bad behavior causes consumers to look unfavorably on all retailers, especially those of the same trade. While association with the BBB will limit the profitability of an individual business that would otherwise exploit consumer ignorance, such association will therefore have spillover benefits among all businesses.
In its own words: "Our Mission is to promote and foster the highest ethical relationship between businesses and the public through voluntary self-regulation, consumer and business education, and service excellence. Our vision is to be the preeminent source of information relating to the ethical business and advertising practices and to be a major provider of marketplace dispute resolution services." ("Council of Better Business Bureaus: 1997 Annual Report," title page)
Other Cases for Further Study: Detailed study of other business associations will also show that they have the characteristics of BCSOs. Among them would be non-profit associations among bankers for check clearing and transfer of outstanding debit and credit balances at the end of the day. These include the National Clearinghouse Association, "a non-profit, private-sector initiative to cut the cost of check collection" (National Clearinghouse Association web page) and the National Automated Clearing House Association (see NACHA web page). Both set and enforce rules for fair and efficient banking practice as well as providing not-for-profit services to the banking community. CHIPS, the Clearing House for International Payments Settlements would also merit attention.
Not all historical business associations are completely formal, and some informal arrangements may promote civil society. David Ricardo, in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821), mentions a convention or unwritten agreement among physicians that each would take on a certain proportion of charity cases without pay. Ricardo’s point is that the convention must be widespread to work: if only one or a few doctors take on charity cases, the poor would flock to them, making their practices or their charity untenable. Such a convention has important characteristics of civil society among professionals, including putting aside individual interests, not for professional group interests, but for broader social interests of extending better health and welfare to the poor.
So far we have demonstrated that civil society extends into the business sector. Some consideration should also be given to cases where business participates in the commonly cited, undisputed organizations of civil society. To what extent do small businesses, large corporations, and their workers and managers participate and support civic and charitable organizations such as United Way and its associate organizations? Answers to such questions are important to determining the extent to which civil society depends on voluntary sharing of the profits and productivity of business.
Moreover, the case can be made that civil-society interventions are more necessary where the private, for-profit business sector is not free to operate. To what extent do commercial organizations in a well-established and governed market economy make unnecessary some CSOs? Much attention is now focused on ‘micro lending’ as an activity of CSOs in developing nations.9 Furthermore, current micro-lending agencies have been successful mainly because private banking is squelched in many developing nations. In the U.S., where capital markets have been much more efficient and democratic, Opportunity International has had difficulty using the same micro lending strategies that are so successful in developing countries like Russia, where capital markets are less efficient and oligopolistic. In the U.S., capital is less scarce while capital-starved entrepreneurs are more scarce than in developing economies. Additionally, corporations and business people have been quite instrumental in funding and directing some of these micro- lending projects, including Opportunity International.
Civility among Princes
So far, the theme has been that civil society can be found among merchants. More work needs to be done to find civil society among princes as well. Let me briefly suggest a few places to look.
The ‘Concert of Europe’ seems to be an example of voluntary government associations promoting the collective good. The Concert among the "Great Powers", with effects extending to the "smaller Powers", preserved international order without formal world government (see Rene Albrecht-Carrie 1968, especially the description on p. 8). Consider for example, the Concert’s agreements to continue to allow commercial ships to travel among belligerent nations during the Crimean War. Such considerations of the importance of commerce show a willingness to restrain individual military power for the general good.
The Latin American Free Trade Association of 1960, the Alliance for Progress of 1961, and other political and economic associations that stopped short of governmental coercion are suggestive of civil society. They relied on voluntary adherence to principles and goals but were, however, largely ineffective, a result also worth examining. (Stephen Gardner 1998: 149-56)
Elements of civil society, voluntary cooperation towards establishing transparency and individual economic freedoms may also be found in the somewhat controversial voluntary associations of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. While unpopular in many developing nations, their programs of restructuring have had goals that are identical to those of civil society as described here: promoting the rule of law, increasing financial accountability and transparency among governments and oligopolistic businesses, increasing economic freedom, and adopting commercial codes and accounting practices of developed nations.
Conclusions
This paper, in part, responds to an apparently anticapitalist bias among some commentators on civil society. It also, however, responds to a misunderstanding about the potential of business leaders to perceive and perform civic duties. Such misunderstanding flows from theoretical conceptions of for-profit economic activity that are taught by advocates for, and analysts of, free enterprise. Critics of the business sector, including commentators on civil society such as Bothwell (1998), are reacting more to the sterile, narrow, theoretical concepts of business management than to reality. In this narrow view, the business leader as company owner or manager is ‘economic man’, the rational, calculating profit-maximizer of neoclassical economic theory.
Does homo economicus ever lay down her mantle and become homo civicus? Yes, say Boswell and Peters (1997) in their discussion of stereotypes about business leaders in Britain since 1960:
Three ... stereotypes ... over shadow this field [of investigating the social views of a business elite]. All of them draw strong support from mainstream economic theories of markets, competition and the ‘firm’; also from interest-group theory and classical liberal or pluralist ideas of politics. ... It is a striking feature that the stereotypes should be shared by people of widely varying ideological persuasion: by free-market enthusiasts zealous to portray business in their own image as well as by ‘anti-modern’ disdainers of business, or by left-wing, ‘green’ or ‘post-capitalist’ critics.
First comes the common misconception that business leaders are allergic to public policy thinking, uninterested in social ideas, or at least so absorbed in running the firm that they have little opportunity for anything else. Secondly, it is widely thought that business people’s views on public affairs are likely to be mere reflections of corporate or commercial self interest, or in some versions, ‘profit maximising’, ‘special interest lobbying’, ‘class interest’ or ‘pursuit of power’. ... Third comes the related view that any pattern of business ideas is likely to be homogeneous, perhaps even a single ‘business ideology’, and predictable in content.
Our inclination was to question all three stereotypes. ... Our view was that while corporate, class or managerial interests would often conflict with those of other groups or with public interests, such conflicts were not inevitable. This is not to see business leaders or their representative bodies as necessarily idealistic or altruistic. Rather, it was a question of trying to do justice to the complexity of human motives..." (Boswell and Peters 1998: 4-5)
Boswell and Peters’ book documents clear historical points at which modern British business leaders have taken up the mantle of public-policy concerns. As such, the book is just one collection of evidence that business leaders have the capability and willingness to perform civic duties in a setting of democratic capitalism.
The histories and case studies discussed above in this paper constitute more direct evidence that the set of business civil-society organizations is not null. We need not necessarily go ‘beyond the merchant’ to find civil society. We find it in the hanse, in the AICPA and FASB, in the Better Business Bureau, and elsewhere.
Notes
1 The same theme could, by the way, be taken up with regard to associations among governments. The general theme is that we find civil society among princes and merchants.
2 This quote raises troubling issues about how well those to whom Bothwell refers understand profit and its role under competitive conditions in promoting the public interest. Bothwell’s criticism could just as well be leveled at any civic group, the focus of his corresponding praise. A civic group that reaps a net benefit for its members from its efforts to associate could be considered to have earned a joint ‘profit’. See Julius Cherney, Arlene Gordon, and Richard Herson, Accounting--A Social Institution: A Unified Theory for the Measurement of the Profit and Nonprofit Sector (1992), for a statement of this philosophy that there is little necessary conceptual difference between the net benefits that flow from for-profit and non-profit firms.
3 NOTE: On the one side, an anticapitalist bias removes the private economy from consideration as being civil or participating in increasing civility. On the other side, pretending that government is not needed, that voluntary NGOs and civil relations can supply all required social services, ignores legitimate reasons for coercive government. While an all-volunteer army may meet military-personnel quotas, running the army itself as a group of voluntary NGOs--"Who votes to take this hill?" says the company commander--will not work.
4 Citizen’s band radio illustrates very clearly a sharp boundary between government and civil society. The ‘citizen’s band’ (CB) is that part of the radio spectrum legally set aside for citizen, not governmental, use in the U.S. A government employee cannot be paid to operate on amateur band. Yet, while the band is reserved for private communications, it has regularly been turned to the public’s account through civil cooperation. REACT, for instance, is the name for one local group of volunteer CB radio operators in the U.S. that assists government authorities in times of civil crisis or other emergency. On the amateur-radio bands, for long-distance communication, RACES (the Radio Amateur Corporation for Emergency Services) and ARMS (Amateur Radio Mission Service), are similar organizations of volunteers who assist in communications that go beyond their narrow self interests.
The idea of a ‘citizen’s arrest’ also makes the distinction quite well: a private individual with no formal government position or power makes a public act toward preserving law and order. The power to do so as a citizen is bound up with the responsibility to do so.
5 See, for example, Adam Seligman’s (1995: esp. pp. 10 & 31) discussion of the moral basis of the modern idea of civil society.
6 Seligman (1995: 32) goes so far as to say that Adam Smith’s invisible hand, the system of voluntary exchange among free individuals directed by freely adjusting prices, is an expression of civil society. Nelson Kasfir (1994: 103-124) finds civil society in collective actions of Ugandan farmers to merely form dairy cooperatives.
7 On the other hand, the theme of this paper conflicts with Bothwell’s (1998: 256-57) sharp break between civil-society organizations and the for-profit sector. I would instead evaluate all organizations that might qualify as CSOs as to whether they pursue the narrow goals of individuals or the broader goals of the group or society. Association with or standing in the for-profit sector is not at issue. I would, for instance, exclude the ‘virtual corporations’ such as the alliance among Motorola, Apple Computer, and IBM to create a PC chip; such an organization transcends the mere interests of the individual firms but the organization does not go far enough to address civil issues. On the other hand, I do include the Better Business Bureau and other associations in the listing of corporate civil society below. Bothwell’s break is too sharp.
8 An organized crime family, for instance, is most uncivil in offering ‘protection’ for local businesses, since the business is paying largely for protection from the mob’s own violence against it. OPEC, the oil cartel is more civil but no less interested in redistributing wealth from oil users to oil producers, through a joint monopoly on oil production. Restricting oil output in order to charge a monopoly price is not in the public interest when the public is globally defined. Economists sometimes claim that the American Medical Association is formed to protect its members from the public and from competition, rather than to protect the public through its certification process from malpractice by its members.
9 Micro lending is not new; a historical counterpart can be found in the growth at the end of the 1700s of England’s ‘friendly societies’, or mutual-savings societies for poor working class families. Encouraged by Wesleyan ministers, they were legalized by Parliament in the 1790s. (See definition of ‘society’ above.)
References
Bernhard, Michael H. The Origins of Democratization in Poland. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
"Better Business Bureau Membership Information," The Better Business Bureau web site, 1998, http://www.bbb.org/members/joinInfo.html.
Black, Robert A. "Henry Sidgwick and the Institutionalists on Goodwill of the Firm," History of Political Economy. Vol. 24, No. 1 (Spring 1992).
Boswell, Jonathan; and Peters, James. Capitalism in Contention: Business Leaders and Political Economy in Modern Britain. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Bothwell, Robert O. "Indicators of a Healthy Civil Society," Beyond Prince and Merchant. Ed. by John Burbidge. New York: Pact Publications, 1998, pp. 249-262.
Cherny, Julius; Gordon, Arlene R.; and Herson, Richard J. L. Accounting--A Social Institution: A Unified Theory for the Measurement of the Profit and Nonprofit Sectors. New York: Quorom Books (1992).
Civil Society and the State in Africa. Edited by John W. Harberson, Donald Rothchild, and Naomi Chazan. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1994.
"Council of Better Business Bureaus: 1997 Annual Report," Better Business Bureau web page, http://www.bbb.org/alerts/index2.html.
Davies, Norman. Europe: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Gardner, Stephen H. Comparative Economic Systems. Second edition. Fort Worth: Dryden, 1998.
Miller, Paul B. W., and Redding, Rodney. The FASB: The People, the Process, and the Politics. Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1986.
National Automated Clearing House Association web page, http://www.nacha.org/.
National Automated Clearing House Association web page, http://www.ncha.com/.
Novak, Michael. The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.
Previts, John Gary; and Merino, Barbara Dubis. A History of Accounting in America: An Historical Interpretation of the Cultural Significance of Accounting. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979.
Postan, M. M.; Rich, E. E.; and Miller, Edward, editors. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: Volume III, Economic Organization and Policies in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: University Press, 1963.
Ricardo, David. The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Third edition (1821). Reprinted in London: J. M. Dent & Sons LTD, 1933.
Seligman, Adam B. The Idea of Civil Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776. Reprinted by Liberty Fund, 1981.
Smith, Constance; and Freedman, Anne. Voluntary Associations: Perspectives on the Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
