Civil society itself exercises hegemony and thus is the State proper

Evidence

In the (anyway superficial) polemic over the functions of the State (which here means the State as a politico-juridical organisation in the narrow sense), the expression “the State as veilleur de nuit ” corresponds to the Italian expression “the State as policeman” 327 and means a State whose functions are limited to the safeguarding of public order and of respect for the laws. The fact is glossed over that in this form of regime (which anyway has never existed except on paper, as a limiting hypothesis) hegemony over its historical development belongs to private forces, to civil society— which is “State” too, indeed is the State itself. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 972

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the night-watchman State and introduces the key Gramscian inversion that civil society is itself the State.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing toolkit on hegemony and civil society vs. political society — this is the theoretical core later Islamophobia readings assume for state power analysis.