Today, we see movements for social and economic rights, democracy movements, grass-roots movements, springing up all over the world, from Indonesia and the Philippines to Honduras, from Bolivia to Greece, from Canada to Germany.

If we want to understand why such movements should be regarded as positive democratic phenomena, we must also understand in what respect they are very different from certain “movements” witnessed in the 20th century. And not only different but, in fact, often their opposites.

In the 20th century, a number of “social movements” that could be witnessed were anti-democratic. There was the fascist prototype. Such a “movement” was seen by its leaders and adherents as something very much like a military formation.
And in fact, it was organized in that way.
It was oriented towards “charismatic leaders”; caudillos. 

It is enough to think of people  like Mussolini or Franco. 
Even Hitler, perhaps, who lacked the Mediterranean or Latino quality of a caudillo, being “wooden,” and also somewhat Prussian, both hysteric and bureaucratic. 

In Germany, the Nazis spoke of the entirety of their organizations, both before and subsequent to the establishment of the Fascist dictatorship, as “the movement” (die Bewegung).

It is clear what was intended. On the one hand, they wanted to usurp a concept that belonged to the Left, the concept of “working class movement” (Arbeiter-bewegung). On the other hand, they wanted to distance themselves from
the concept of “party” (Partei). Although the Hitlerites had formed a party they misleadingly named a workers’ party (the National Socialist Workers’ Party), they
accentuated the movement, not the party. And this in contrast to the Communist Party which, already very much under the influence of the extremely “centralist” Russian model, accentuated the party. 

The Fascists in Germany railed against parties and the parliament.
They talked of the unity of the people, the latter a concept which they defined in ethnic, racist and not in social and socio-cultural terms.

The unity they conjured up was a fictional. The classes and class antagonism did not evaporate. Of course, those 45 per cent who voted Hitler and his party into powe were ideologically “united” by their adherence to and belief in the “Fuehrer”; the rest of the population was only part of that  “unity” described by Nazi ideologies as a “volksgemeinschaft” (a united people), to the extent that this unity was the external “unity” (or submission) forced upon  prison-inmates by the whip of their guards. 
The Nazi leadership was on very friendly terms with the bosses of big industry, with  Mr. Hugenberg (the Murdoch or Springer of that time, in Germany), with the Imperial family and above all the eldest son of the former emperor, William II –  a “Crown Prince” who dreamed perhaps that Marshall Hindenburg, another champion of the rise of Hitler, would re-establish the monarchy.

Obviously, the German fascist “movement” was a mass of atomized individuals, true subjects (Untertanen), incapable of emancipated, autonomous activity. They were disenchanted by the Weimar Republic, driven to despair by the Global Economic Crisis of 1928 and the Great Depression that followed, and full of resentment, after the lost war of 1914-18. Some dreamed of the “good old days” of the industrial expansion that had occurred during the rule of the three Hohenzollern emperors. Others, with pseudo-religious naivité, longed for a savior, a “strongman” who would cope with the crisis, do away with the sharpening social cleavage, the polarization between left and right, and give back “dignity” and “national pride” to what they saw as a “humiliated nation.”

These were largely petit-bourgeois concerns.
The bourgeoisie had no place for such vague sentimentalities; it had real, concrete interests in mind, for instance extra-profits due to a new arms race, disempowerment of trade unions, checking of the danger of a victory of the radical left, and, in case of a war, recouping of lost iron ore mines as well as lost coal mines (in Lorraine, ceded to France, and in Upper Silesia, ceded to Poland). Later on, or perhaps very early on, its imperialistic designs went further than that: they were focused on German hegemony in what they defined as Central Europe – and that included (re-)conquest of South East European markets.

If want to understand social movements today, it doesn’t help to look back the Fascist “bewegung.” They are entirely different. They are also different fom the neo-fascist MSI, the movimento sociale italiano, that sprang up in Italy after WWII and that turned into a “respective” chameleon under il signore Fini, the erstwhile ally of Berlusconi, later on.

And still it is okay to look back for precursors of today’s social movements, in order to understand the continuity and the new that they embody. Looking back, it is necessary to look for movements that embraced liberty as an ideal, rather than authoritarian and retrogressive longings for “good old days” when “authority” was unquestioned. 

If we look for “movements” in Europe that were filled with a longing for freedom, we have to go further back than to the inter-war years, the 1920s and 30s. We have to go back to the social movements of the early and mid-19th century that expressed, in some cases, a thirst for social, in others, for national emancipation. If we think of the latter, it is enough to think of the Italian movement associated with the name of Garibaldi.

In France and Britain, social movements took shape, too. In Britain most notably the Chartrist movement.

Some of this spilled over to Belgium, to Germany etc. where goals associated with social justice mingled with a thirst for national emancipation. 

Belgium became sovereign thanks to the revolution of 1830. The democratic revolution of 1848-49 in Germany was defeated, in part because the propertied classes in Germany feared that a republican project might lead to a “red republic:” thus, their aim took the form of a compromise. They thought that the revolution they wanted should lead to no more than a constitutinal monarchy that would disenfranchise the paupers. 

The resulting split of the social forces opposing reactionary absolutism in Germany lead to the victory of the reaction. The unitary German state that the revolutionaries hoped for, either as a republic or constitional monarchy, was not etablished. It was only achieved in 1871 by Prussian militarism, in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war. 

Today’s social movements in Europe have nothing in common with the falangist o fascist movements. In some way, they are heirs of the democratic movements of the first half of the 19th century. 

To the extent that they embrace aims associated with the concept of social justice, they are heirs of the 19th century working-class movement which was far from being in the least degree similar to a military formation, disciplined, and answering the calls of a party leadership. In the 19th century, quite a few “tendencies” or interpretations of the goals of the struggle that the movement found itself engaged in, can be noted. Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, Lamartine mattered in France and also, to some extent, in Belgium, Switzerland, Germany. The British case was a different one; the influence of thinkers from the continent was not overwhelming before the defeat of the Chartrists. In the second half of the 19th century, the theoretical contribution of Marx was recognized slowly as relevant, and the influence of Marx and Engels, as well as activists and writers endebted to them, grew in Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Russia etc.

Though Marx, whose analysis of Capitalism was sharp, clear and to the point, was only partially understood by many socialist, and this includes both political leaders and those who were grass-roots activists, the concept of socialism as a classless society, the concept of class-struggle, and the notion that organization and discipline were necessary elements of the fight for working-class emancipation became generally accepted within the Left. Perhaps only the anarchists, a minority within the Left, resented the “marxist” strategy that aimed, like they did, at a revolution but saw a proletarian republic that would use repression against its foes (the counter-revolution, the bourgeois and aistocratic reaction) as an inescapable intermediate stage.

Of course, the anarchist concern was not unfounded, as we know today. But the “marxist” recipe (only partially attributable to Marx, perhaps; at least if we think how repression was practiced later on in “real socialist” countries) was conceived for good reason. The degeneration and final defeat of the French revolution that had erupted in 1789 was largely a consequence of internal and external counter-revolution. The revolutionary attempts in France between 1830 and 1848 had shown that peaceful and democratic self-organization led nowhere, if the social adversaries of the oppressed and exploited majority resorted to bloody repression of every attempt to attain an active, autonomous improvements of one’s situation and full democratic and social rights. So repression was to be countered with repression, violence with violence, it was thought. It was a history lesson learned the hard way.

We all know that in the context of revolutions, between 1905 and, say, 1949 (when the revolution in China was victorious), and undoubtedly in the context of hard times, woking class movements the world over embraced discipline.

It is true that existence of a revolutuonary government in Russia after 1918 helped to bring about the increased influence of Russian leaders among working class movements on a global scale. It is disputable whether all working class movements outside the Soviet Union were “stalinist” if by that we understand that discipline was enforced by repression. In fact, it was almost impossible to use repression against revolutionary activists in Capitalist countries. The activists were dedicated to a cause; if they had wanted to desert it in capitalist France or in the U.S. or in Indonesia, it would have been easy. It was the police and the FBI and the courts that constituted a dangerous threat for them, not their own leaders, their union o their party. So discipline was freely and voluntarily practised but mental discipline was another matter: enforced, they thought, by circumstances that were all but enviable, they submitted to it very often with results unwholesome for them, for their movement, and for their cause. The less free the thought was that they permitted themselves, the less tolerance was shown towards other tendencies and groups within the Left. The whole dynamics of this lead to sterility, dogmatism, and so on, a process furthered by uncritical solidarity with the “motherland of workers,” as the Soviet Union, that poor, beleaguered country was called, where the revolution, like the French one of 1789, suffered terrible deformations the moe it was under attack, encircled, and saw its leaders grasped by fear of failure, mutual distrust, and in the end, since about 1930, obvious paranoia.
 

Today, the social movements in Europe and North America by and large reject the idea of becoming monolithic, disciplined formations. Open internal discussion matters very much. Networking takes precedence over rigid, centralized oganizational stuctures. Hierarchies and leaders are suspect, as such. Still, ideals that informed earlier liberation movements, democracy movements, and the wokin-class movements are not entirely foreign to them. Once again, the quest for democracy that drove Marx to play an active role in the revolution of 1848, the quest for the freedom of dissidents that Rosa Luxemburg defended, the quest for real democracy that echoes in “State and Revolution,” today, in modern, contemporary forms, emerges once again in civil rights efforts and ecological campaigns and peace initiatives. It expresses  the always, or again and again, resurfacing longing of human beings that is already expressed in the Psalms, the New Testament, and the American Declaration of Independence.

The people active in social movements today seem to have comprehended  that the need for exactly such strategies as seemed plausible to working-class militants in the 19th and 20th century are not undisputably necessary, any more. The rapport de forces has changed. In the 19th century, the working-class, though growing in numbers, was an emerging class. The block that opposed them was strong in many ways, also numerically. But who, which social stratum, constitutes the mighty reaction today? Does it still offer the same frightful obstacle to our emancipation, when we exist under conditions where many democratic rights have been attained and where the class antagonism takes a new form? And this insofar as the wage and salary earning population (those who have to “sell” their physical and intellectual or, in some cases, mainly their intellectual labor force, in order to earn a living) is the overwhelming majority? 

In fact, if we include in this “class in itself” (Klasse an sich) those who are pseudo-independent self-employed workers who own, de facto, no or hardly any share of the (relevant) means of production, we can assume that the broadly defined (blue and white collar working class, plus “professionals”, “experts”, “engineers”, “scientists”, “intellectuals”) comprises more than 90 per cent of the population in Western Europe and North America. All of them – regardless of their insignificant share-ownership (where this may apply) are confronted by Capital, by the significant (or “large”) private owners of the means of production, the financial institutions, etc.

It is true, those referred to here as a “class in itself”  are confronted and conned and disempowered today by Capital.  And that means, by perhaps 1 per cent of the population. 

But seeing the social reality of this “class in itself”, we also know they are no “class for itself” (Klasse für sich); they are still split, divided by the divide and rule logic of the social system and by what are supposed to be functional “necessities.” Sociologists in defense of the status quo fetishize the concept of “difference” and speak of “Ausdifferenzierung”: a term signifying class fragmentation or, in other words, the ideological as well as status-expressed reflection of different practical functions filled by individuals (i.e, members of society) in what is called “the” modern society. 

Though more than 90 per cent share the experience of working dependently, in “the” modern society that is supposed to be “the only one that is possible” (“for there is no alternative”) and, at the same time, “the best of all possible worlds,”  they are not, in their entirety, and determinedly, asking for empowerment.  And they are not, in their entirety, putting in doubt a social set-up that enshrines their dependence. 

They are, all of them, keeping a social “machinery” of production´(including science and production-related research) and distribution running, a machinery that affects their very lives in every possible way, without demanding that they, all of them, should share in the debate and decision making processes relevant for the operation and control of this “machinery.” 
They are still split – it is true. 

And all these  more than 90 per cent of the population which form the populace, the people today, suffer the fact that 1 per cent or less of the population monopolize the exercise of control over the social production and distribution “machinery.” Yes,  and that this tiny minority reaps the profit. 

But that is not the worst of it. The worst is that this minority is at the core of resistance to change: it is in their interest and on their behalf that the irrationalities of this social “machinery” are defended, irrationalities  of production and consumption and the oganization of society that produce disastrous effects.This “modern society” is not the only modern society that is possible. It is not true that there is “no alternative.”

It is not rational that millions of children in supposedly rich societies go hungy or are denied a decent education that would respect their abilities and interests. It is both unjust and irrational that in this way, potential abilities are stifled and the imagination as well as intellectual curiosity is not nurtured but repressed and ignored.

It is not rational that millions of working people are put to work to a degree and with an intensity and unscrupulous rigor that is motivated by a quest for maximum profit and that often leads to severe physical illness, psychic breakdown, premature death, while millions of others are made “redundant,” with similar obnoxious consequences.

It is not rational that unequal terms of trade and the effects of past colonialism and present neo-colonialism are preserved. What is referred to  today as “globalization” is globalizing the sway of big capitalist corporations and the capitalist market logic. It keeps so-called Third World countries poor by arresting or more often, deforming their development – something that, amongst other effects, perpetuates global hunger, lack of access to infrastructure that is vital for public health, lack of decent housing, etc.

It is not rational that a profit-driven social “machinery” of production and distribution pollutes and poisons and heats up the planet, destroys the protective ozone layer,eradicates bio-diversity, exhausts soils, and destroys the last remaining rain forests that are so vital for the preservation of our chance to combat climate change. And thus vital for the survival of all species, including the human species.

When we contrast the objective interests of the disempowered to finally tackle clear and present dangers, irrationalities and aspects of injustice, with the uninformed and apathetic attitudes of many among them, and the preparedness of others among them to sell themselves to the highest bidder as defenders of an irrational and unjust status quo, we begin to understand that is above all the awake and informed, but also many among the compassionate, the tender and warm-hearted, and the ethically sensitive, who today are the salt of the earth, the yeast in the sour dough. 

They try to learn from the mistakes of the past, intuitively or consciously. They still have to learn a lot. Also about organization. Also about how to avoid, in the long run, all except the mildest and most diffused, decentralized hierarchies. 
Power seduces and corrupts, as do riches. Influence should belong to the many not the precious few. All should have a voice, all should be listened to. 
Spokespersons are needed rather than leaders. If offices are established, those who hold them for a limited time must remain tied to the imperative mandate of the grass-roots. The right of immediate recall must be enshrined, not only with regard to the spokespersons of social movements. It is essential everywhere, within the political process.

If social movements aren’t depended on and inspired by “leaders,” it is possible to say, however, that there usually is something like a “leading” idea or goal and orientation. Perhaps even a number of leading ideas and ideals can be identified:
- The common good,
- respect for the needs of people, and satisfaction of real needs,
- compensatory justice,
- a solidaire economy,
- participation,
- rejection of hierarchies
all seem to figure in one way or another in.

The open-ended and openminded way debates are carried out (or are at least
intended to be carried out) is in line with a longing for a new democratic culture. It demands a number of ‘virtues’ or rather, a learning process that emphasizes and is expected to enhance:
- preparedness to listen to others, accompanied by a desire to be heard;
- tolerance, which amounts to accepting the existence of a plurality of view, and 
   a readiness to listen to them, hoping to find solutions that (to a certain extent) all 
   can agree to; as a consequence,  misgivings with regard to clever political 
   scheming or attempts to outmaoevre others within the movement are likely;
- a sense that a consensus among the disempowered should be found
   and that majority decisions that result in ignoring or snubbing
   minorities among the rank-and-file (the common people) are undesirable.

People active in social movements are likely to be convinced (or, if not, experience gained in the movement will teach them) that “we need to learn to take the concerns and problems of others seriously; and not just our own problems and, concerns, our misgivings and worries.”

This is especially relevant when the importance of various issues to a social movement is weighed. And when issues are defined broadly and in context, rather than narrowly (as is typical of those who have only particular interests in mind). As female citizens, for instance, is is not enough that we care for the emancipation of women and their recognition as a gender that has historically suffered from patriarchal oppression and that is still underrepresented in leading managerial positions under Capitalism.
If, for one of our sisters, emancipation of women means that a few women will join the rank of the bosses, this is not in line with a general orientation that rejects hierarchy and exploitation of others.
Furthermore, the fight for and concern regarding the emancipation of women cannot be separated from the real need of Others to achieve emancipation. For instance, women’s liberation cannot be viewed separately from concern about the unfullfilled needs of children in today’s society, from children’s rights and the necessity to right the wrongs children suffer. (Alice Miller has pointed out to what
extent mothers can hurt the sane or healthy psychic development of children.)
Nor can women’s lib be separated from the necessary anti-racist effort. (Some women, just as some men, among the oppressed and among oppressors, among the exploited and the exploiters, are racists.) And women’s lib cannot occupy us alone, among all concerns, as long as there exists millionfold hunger, on a worldwide scale. (Some women, just like some men, live in rich countries as rich persons, participating in the exploitation of the so-called Third World, either directly or indirectly, whereas other women and of course men too, live in abysmal poverty as exploited citizens of exploited poor countries suffering the burden of unequal terms of trade.) 
It’s possible to add yet other issues and concerns, such as the concern about global warming or climate change. Women, even those and perhaps especially those who have achieved ‘emancipation’  in the limited form of ‘rising on the ladder of success’ and ‘building careers,’ can ‘sin’ exceedingly, with regard to the world’s climate – as can men. As business executives, they can favor ecologically disastrous policies. As ‘wealthy consumers,’ they can act irrationally. Citizens of the so-called first world, of both sexes, are hurting the global climate as fequent flyers, as heavy users of energy (air conditions, excessive heating in winter time, heated pools, large cars), as consumers of goods that reach them by plane. Emancipation, as social movements comprehend it, is not achieved in such cases. 

This much is clear: Issues are interrelated, and social movements can’t be taken very serious when they remain focused on single issues. At least not, if they neglect the relationship of their main or central issue with other issues. Blindness to interrelationships, to contexts, is never good.
Still, concrete historical situations, a given time and place and its problems, can make it necessary to concentrate heavily on one issue.
Peace, for instance, when our rulers are intent on war.
Resistance to deforestation when we live in a place where mighty vested interests and the authorities are expanding cattle ranching or soy production (for ethanol) at the expense of the rain forest.

Open-ended debates, openmindedness, and intense awareness of the necessary virtues we must develop if grass-roots democracy is to work within a social movement will almost of necessity enable such a  movement to remain aware of changing situations and the problems inscribed in them.

Such movements need all who can contribute in their specific ways to the identification and the solution of issues:
- Left Catholics, 
- critical, non-conformist Buddhists and Muslims, and Agnostics, and Jews, etc.,
- Social Democrats, autonomous in their acting and thinking, perhaps disenchanted with their leadership,
- ecologists, especially when they are independent-minded rather than faithful believers in Green Party leaders,
- anarchists, like Alan Ginsberg,
- commies, like Jesus the carpenter’s son, or like Alexandra Kollontai, or the Hutterers, or Angela Davis,
- citoyens du monde, like Gary Davis,
- and, of course, people who are just people, concerned individuals who defy labels…
they all can be problem-oriented, and can agree on a lot of issues.
They can all contribute their perspective, their ideas and suggestions concerning a possible solution. But they don’t have to agree on everything.
Debate is good, disputing things is good, and if done honestly and with respect, all can learn something new, all can help others comprehend another facet of a problem.
Even views later on shown to be mistaken can play a role in a learning process. They propel debate and force us to think about what has been said. And why, perhaps, it wouldn’t work.

I remember that years ago, somebody told me: “In a situation of clear and present danger, you can’t have the grass-roots engaging in a broad democratic debate; you need a leadership that immediately decides what to do. You can debate that decision afterwards.”  This, I think, was probably true in certain historical situations: when the American revolution was close to being defeated by the British. When the allied reactionary forces invaded revolutionary France and the king tried to flee. Today, in representative democracies that can often be described as all but sufficiently democratic societies, we have nevertheless the possibility to assemble, to connect, to voice our views, to form strong movements that demand change, in a direction we see as necessary, after extended debates. The goals, the path to be followed, will be defined and redefined again and again, as the debating populace, the ensemble of social movements, sees fit. I think, and many think, that nothing compels the people to leave the debate and the identification of unsolved problems, the definition of goals, the deliberation concerning the next steps we want to take, to “leaders” or “experts”, to top members of a political caste and their advisers.

And still, what can our unquestionable concerns and our will to develop a genuinely democratic socioculture and political practice, both inside a social movement and in society-at-large, in the short or medium term profit society and the movement, if the other side, today’s high and mighty, with their manipulative tricks, their use of the still dominant ‘mainstream’ media and their crafty reliance on laws and courts instituted under their auspices, win the day and decide the political ‘battles’ in their favor? And this in the arenas they determine as relevant and decisive…

There are many questions, still, that lack a convincing answer. One of the most relevant questions is of course,  If, at some stage, 30 percent of the population are activated and are actually debating problems of their society and hazards facing the world in the context of social movements and democatic forums, if on the other hand, a tiny minority among us continues to own and control the mainstream media, to accumulate vast amounts, to finance the campaigns of candidates fielded by what still are ‘major parties,’ how can we, active in movements and asking for empowerment, for social and economic rights, for participation, limit the sway that the mainstream media have on those not yet active and resisting?  How can we, participants of a movement that is active on the internet, in clubs and forums and in the streets, thus outside parliament, effect change inside existing parties in so far as we are also (some of us, at least)  party members fighting for not yet sufficiently realized internal democracy in these parties? And thus for fair rules of the game which frequently don’t exist because strings are pulled by top echelons, whereas dissenters in parties that critique the leadership are often expelled before they can get the backing of other party members.

These questions concern a weighty problem or two: first, the inertia of part of the population, those among our co-citizens who have become accustomed to the practice of letting “party leaders” decide, while they worry very little to understand what these people do and why. And second, also the apathy of those who say, “I’m not satisfied as a voter, but what can I do? Nothing. I’m just a little guy…”

It is clear that social movements, which are including today the most active and the most concerned, often the best informed and politically fairly awake citizens, will always be attacked by the precious few presently controlling the levers. And they will be attacked as “not fully legitimized” because they are “a minority, even though a large one.”

We can only respond that those who form party leaderships, who pull the strings inside parties, who deliberate with big business behind closed doors, who profit from the support of a handful of media corporations, and who have placed their trusted friends on boards of directors and in advisory bodies of public television and public radio (the latter being true at least on the Continent, in Europe, in a number of countries), are a far smaller minority.

The problem remains that they still garner considerable support at the polls during national and regional elections. It is a well-oiled machine, and the grease is money. The old boys networks worked in Britain and still do. And something of the sort matters on the Continent (in Europe) as well as in the U.S.  It is up to us to change that by mobilization and by spreading information, in other words, solid knowledge, well documented facts.

Sometime, the obstacles posed by the power of the dominant media and of entrenched business interests as well as the unthinking loyalty of many voters to political parties that disregard burning problems of our time and disappoint their constituents again and again seem, for moments, to be quite overwhelming.

We see, however, that the movements that have the burning issues of our world at heart, are growing. In many countries. So why should we despond, rather than hope?

A last word, perhaps, an apology to readers from so-called Third World countries. The focus here has been on social movements in the “West,”  in Europe and the U.S.   This is not out of some Eurocentric bias or because of disregard for movements in the South of our planet. There, movements and populations, at least in some places, seem to be truly ahead of us. I just don’t know enough about it to write about this part of the reality of social movements that try to change the world for the better, in our still young 21st century. Hopefully, somebody or some authors from the South will fill this lacuna.
 
 
 

Check...:http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/17/democracy_uprising_in_the_usa_noam
 

Check: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/17/democracy_uprising_in_the_usa_noam

go back to URBAN DEMOCRACY issue  # 7