Laurence Cox: Eppur si muove: thinking 'the social movement'
http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp9.html
So much for "the social". But what is "the social movement"? Raschke writes:
"The concept of movement became 'a key concept of self-understanding in the "age of revolutions"'. Movement became used as a metaphor for social change. The concept of movement also served for the deciphering of the inner connections of social development ('laws of movement')�
Applied to a partial force within society and abstracting from its social-structural basis, early liberals from the 1830s spoke of themselves as movement in the sense of the only political direction which opposed the forces of inertia: of the 'party of movement' or the movement party� (6)
The 'social movement' is first discovered as the workers' movement: the concepts of social movement and workers' movement become accepted in the course of the 1840s. The concept is thus first applied to a movement with 'social' goals, i.e. to a collective with socialist answers to the 'social question'. The chronologically preceding liberal, national and democratic movement was not yet grasped with the concept of social movement; this only becomes possible with growing neutralisation of the term social movement." (1988: 23)
"Another phrase for "the social movement", in other words, is class, in the active sense used by writers such as Thompson. It is important to note what is not being said here. It is not that class is something other than, and explaining, the social movement: "Let us not say that the social movement excludes a political movement. There is no political movement which is not at the same time social." (Marx 1963 (orig. 1847): 244)"
Because the social movement is a threat, in other words, and a powerful one, the dominant order cannot exist without continually responding to it, and modifying its responses as and when they prove ineffective. Or, as Thompson put it,
"The notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship � we cannot have two distinct classes, each with an independent being, and then bring them into relationship with each other." (1966: 9)
"This would not be a history of a single "movement" in the conventional sense, whether that movement was the labour movement, the peace movement or the women's movement. It would, however, be a history of the shifting attempts to develop effective organization and theory, identities and everyday routines from below in the face of a powerful ruling-class offensive. It would place the interconnections between "movements" at the centre of the analysis, as against the fragmented discussion of single movements. Most crucially, the story would not hold "class", or "gender", or "ethnicity", outside the analysis, as "independent variables" relating to "structure", any more than it would treat "globalisation" or "the Cold War" as outside factors."
Ultimately, Thompson's history is a history of the development of a single movement (struggling against a more powerful and opposing movement). That movement is embodied in different themes (industrial, political, religious, ritual) at different times and places, sometimes formed into complex alliances, sometimes fragmented and isolated, but developing and changing. It is not a single network, with a common shared identity, as in Diani's (1992) definition: rather, such networks and identities are themselves occasional achievements in the developing self-consciousness and self-activity of the social movement:
"the outstanding fact of the period between 1790 and 1830 is the formation of 'the working class'. This is revealed, first, in the growth of class-consciousness: the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all those diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes. And, second, in the growth of corresponding forms of political and industrial organization. By 1832 there were strongly based and self-conscious working-class institutions - trade unions, friendly societies, educational and religious movements, political organizations, periodicals - working-class intellectual traditions, working-class community-patterns, and a working-class structure of feeling." (1966: 212 - 213)
Colin Barker and Mike Tyldesley, eds., Ninth international conference on alternative futures and popular protest: a selection of papers from the conference.Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University, 2002
So much for "the social". But what is "the social movement"? Raschke writes:
"The concept of movement became 'a key concept of self-understanding in the "age of revolutions"'. Movement became used as a metaphor for social change. The concept of movement also served for the deciphering of the inner connections of social development ('laws of movement')�
Applied to a partial force within society and abstracting from its social-structural basis, early liberals from the 1830s spoke of themselves as movement in the sense of the only political direction which opposed the forces of inertia: of the 'party of movement' or the movement party� (6)
The 'social movement' is first discovered as the workers' movement: the concepts of social movement and workers' movement become accepted in the course of the 1840s. The concept is thus first applied to a movement with 'social' goals, i.e. to a collective with socialist answers to the 'social question'. The chronologically preceding liberal, national and democratic movement was not yet grasped with the concept of social movement; this only becomes possible with growing neutralisation of the term social movement." (1988: 23)
"Another phrase for "the social movement", in other words, is class, in the active sense used by writers such as Thompson. It is important to note what is not being said here. It is not that class is something other than, and explaining, the social movement: "Let us not say that the social movement excludes a political movement. There is no political movement which is not at the same time social." (Marx 1963 (orig. 1847): 244)"
Because the social movement is a threat, in other words, and a powerful one, the dominant order cannot exist without continually responding to it, and modifying its responses as and when they prove ineffective. Or, as Thompson put it,
"The notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship � we cannot have two distinct classes, each with an independent being, and then bring them into relationship with each other." (1966: 9)
"This would not be a history of a single "movement" in the conventional sense, whether that movement was the labour movement, the peace movement or the women's movement. It would, however, be a history of the shifting attempts to develop effective organization and theory, identities and everyday routines from below in the face of a powerful ruling-class offensive. It would place the interconnections between "movements" at the centre of the analysis, as against the fragmented discussion of single movements. Most crucially, the story would not hold "class", or "gender", or "ethnicity", outside the analysis, as "independent variables" relating to "structure", any more than it would treat "globalisation" or "the Cold War" as outside factors."
Ultimately, Thompson's history is a history of the development of a single movement (struggling against a more powerful and opposing movement). That movement is embodied in different themes (industrial, political, religious, ritual) at different times and places, sometimes formed into complex alliances, sometimes fragmented and isolated, but developing and changing. It is not a single network, with a common shared identity, as in Diani's (1992) definition: rather, such networks and identities are themselves occasional achievements in the developing self-consciousness and self-activity of the social movement:
"the outstanding fact of the period between 1790 and 1830 is the formation of 'the working class'. This is revealed, first, in the growth of class-consciousness: the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all those diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes. And, second, in the growth of corresponding forms of political and industrial organization. By 1832 there were strongly based and self-conscious working-class institutions - trade unions, friendly societies, educational and religious movements, political organizations, periodicals - working-class intellectual traditions, working-class community-patterns, and a working-class structure of feeling." (1966: 212 - 213)
Colin Barker and Mike Tyldesley, eds., Ninth international conference on alternative futures and popular protest: a selection of papers from the conference.Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University, 2002
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