Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in the Age of Capital

by John Restakis

In its narrowest modern sense, civil society refers to social organizations involved in the political process, for example, political parties. But in its broadest and most accepted sense, civil society is the social impulse to engage in free and democratic association, to create community and to engage in the operations of social life, which include politics.

When reciprocity finds economic expression in the exchange of goods and services to people and communities it is the social economy that results.