Global Social Movements

1
Global Social Movements
2
Week 3. Social Movements and the Making of
Modern Politics Nation, State, Capitalism.
3
Outline

• I. Introduction What Are Old Movements?
• II. Nationalist Movements Making the
  Nation-State
• III. Capitalism and the Making of Liberal
  Democracy
• IV. The Self-Making of the Working Class
• V. Politics of the Working Class I
  Revolutionary Socialism
• VI. Politics of the Working Class II. Social
  Democracy

4
I. Introduction What Are Old Movements?

• 1. Aim to look at some central features of
  nationalist, liberal and socialist movements as
  movements.
• 2. Consider features of the movement
• (i) aims and ideology.
• (ii) forms of organisation,
• (iii) tactics and forms of political practice,
• (iv) achievements and failures contribution to
  context of contemporary politics

5

• 3. I.e. Nationalism, liberalism and socialism as
  formative contexts of modern states.
• 4. Making sense of the distinction between old
  and new social movements.

6
II. Nationalist Movements Making the
Nation-State
7

• 1. Nationalism and the formation of the modern
  nation-state system.
• 2. Nationalist movements seek to align
• state sovereignty
• Nation
• i.e. imagined national community (B. Anderson)
• 3. Distinguish between movements of
• national expansion
• self-determination.

8

• 4. Nationality as usually
• exclusive identity
• overrides class, religion etc.
• 5. Political practice of nationalism
• (i) strong state/ state-centred politics
• (ii) hierarchical organisations
• (iii) war and violence
• (iv) language and culture
• 6. Are nationalist movements old?
• 7. The continuing place of nationalism in a
  globalising world?

9
III. Capitalism and the Making of Liberal
Democracy -
10

• 1. Historical contexts for emergence of
  liberalism
• (i) rise of capitalism
• (ii) Protestantism and religious conflict
• 2. Liberalism as ideology
• agents traders, capitalists and middling
  classes
• mainly Protestant
• i.e. as expression of a social movement

11

• 3. Liberal freedom as religious tolerance
• (i) individualism against religious state
• (ii) pragmatic solution to religious conflict
• (iii) i.e. product of religious social movements
• 4. Liberal freedom as economic
• (i) freedom from taxation
• (ii) market freedom and laisser faire
• (iii) invisible hand of the market (A. Smith)
• (iv) free trade and cf. globalisation/
  neoliberalism

12

• 5. Limitations of liberal freedom
• (i) no social justice
• (ii) abstract, so initially for (heterosexual)
  white male owners of property
• 6. Liberalism allows freedom without democracy.
• 7. Democracy as achievement of
• working class
• womens social movements.

13
IV. The Self-Making of the Working Class
14

• 1. Self-making of the working class (18th-19th
  centuries)
• E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working
  Class
• class identity and solidarity
• vs. parochial, ethnic and national identities
• 2. The working-class cultural revolution
• (i) education
• (ii) dignity of labour
• (iii) right to suffrage/ vote/ political rights
• (iv) material equality and social justice

15

• 3. Political practice of working-class social
  movement
• (i) trade union movement
• (ii) Chartist movement for democratic rights
• (iii) socialist communities (e.g. Robert Owen)
• (iv) mutual help, cooperatives
• (v) revolutionary and reformist socialism (see
  below).

16
V. Politics of the Working Class I Revolutionary
Socialism
17

• 1. Socialist revolution as only solution to
  problems of capitalism.
• 2. Leninist path to revolution in Russia
• militant party
• seizure of state power
• democratic centralism

18

• 3. Problems of revolutionary communism
• (i) non-occurrence of revolution in West
• (ii) failed revolutions in East
• (iii) collapse of communism (except Cuba and N.
  Korea)
• (iv) China socialism with Chinese
  characteristics

19
VI. Politics of the Working Class II. Social
Democracy
20

• 1. Sources of social democracy
• (i) trade union movement
• (ii) revisionist Marxism (E. Bernstein)
• (iii) social liberalism (T. H. Green)
• 2. Political practice
• (i) electoral parties e.g. ALP
• (ii) gradual path to socialism through reforms

21

• 3. Achievements of social democracy
• (i) welfare state
• (ii) reduced social inequalities
• (iii) workers rights
• 4. Limitations of social democracy
• (i) problems of the welfare state - bureaucracy
  and paternalism
• (ii) decline of working-class social movement
• (iii) neoliberalism and globalisation

22
Summary

• I. Introduction What Are Old Movements?
• II. Nationalist Movements Making the
  Nation-State
• III. Capitalism and the Making of Liberal
  Democracy
• IV. The Self-Making of the Working Class
• V. Politics of the Working Class I
  Revolutionary Socialism
• VI. Politics of the Working Class II. Social
  Democracy