Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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Civil societies are simply informal, voluntary, self-organized communities of people. They consist of the spontaneous, unofficial, social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental activities and relationships of people who interact informally alongside the formal, involuntary, hierarchically organized state—yet remain private individuals and public citizens whose lives are largely independent of it.

The state is in essence a formality, a structure, a system, an intricately woven illusion, an abstract, impersonal legal entity with no concrete physical existence, other than through acts of governance, domination, and control.

But civil society is a real, informal, multi-systemic, loosely structured, sometimes chaotic set of self-regulated, networked social relationships and experiences, engendered by people interacting informally, individually, and in concert— for the most part collaboratively and democratically, and sometimes competitively and autocratically.