Global Social Movements

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Global Social Movements
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Week 4. New Social Movements Challenging the
Boundaries of Liberal Democracy.
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Outline

• I. New Social Movements A Surprising
  Development?
• II. Welfare State Capitalism The Calm Before
  the Storm?
• III. Political Opposition of 1950s 1960s
• IV. Contradictions of the Welfare State
• V. Claus Offe on the New Politics

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I. New Social Movements A Surprising
Development?
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• 1. New social movements (NSMs) as successors
  to New Left and other opposition movements of the
  1960s.
• 2. Need to understand society in which NSMs
  emerged at least thats new!
• 3. Weve seen role of old social movements in
  creating that society.

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4. Dimensions of newness of NSMs

• (i) aims or object of politics
• (ii) agents, actors, identities or subjects of
  politics
• (iii) forms of political practice and
  organisation
• (iv) ideas, ideology and theory

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II. Welfare State Capitalism The Calm Before
the Storm?
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• 1. Self-understanding of Western societies in
  1950s and 60s
• (i) stability and apathy
• (ii) pluralist, democratic and free
• (iii) absence of class struggle
• (iv) affluence and consumerism
• (v) youth culture sex, drugs and rock n roll

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• 2. Post-WWII social democratic consensus
• (i) mixed economy capitalism nationalisation
• (ii) Keynesian economics
• (iii) full employment
• (iv) welfare and social security
• 3. Consensus on foreign policy
• (i) nuclear strategy under US leadership
• (ii) Cold War anti-communism
• (iii) McCarthyite witch-hunts against communists
• (iv) Menzies against the communists and the DLP

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4. Limited party-political disagreements over

• (i) degree of progressive taxation
• (ii) extent of welfare state
• (iii) trade union rights vs. rights of private
  property
• (iv) extent of nationalisation vs. private
  enterprise

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III. Political Opposition 1950s-1960s
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• 1. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and peace
  movement
• (i) middle-class radicalism (F. Parkin)
• (ii) moral protest
• (iii) active non-violence influence of Gandhi

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2. Black Civil Rights Movement in USA from
1950s

• (i) for civil and political rights of African
  Americans
• (ii) peaceful civil disobedience (Martin Luther
  King)
• (iii) Black Power, Malcolm X and the politics of
  identity
• (iv) transition to violence

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3. Anti-colonial struggles

• (i) wind of change (Macmillan) blowing through
  Africa anti-colonialism
• (ii) Frances last-ditch colonialism the War in
  Algeria
• (iii) Vietnam War France, USA and Australia

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4. Opposition to the Vietnam War and the
Counter-Culture

• (i) student radicalism
• (ii) New Left
• (iii) The counter-culture of alternative values
  and life-styles
• (iv) Hippies, Woodstock, Nimbin
• (v) Sex and Drugs and Rock n Roll.

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IV. Contradictions of the Welfare State
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1. Management of social conflict of labour vs.
capital

• (i) Class compromise of welfare state
• (ii) Working class as subordinate partner to
  capital
• (iii) Institutionalisation of working class
  social movement
• (iv) Social Democratic and Labour parties and
  Trade Unions
• (v) Neo-Corporatism government, labour and
  capital

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2. Limited Democracy of Welfare State

• (i) Exclusion of constituencies other than Labour
  and Capital
• (ii) Exclusion of interests and issues
• (iii) Examples of women, GLQ, ethnic groups etc.

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3. Unquestioned assumptions of welfare state

• (i) Economic Growth dubious measure of GDP
• (ii) Consumerism as a way of life or religion?
• (iii) Exclusion of nature/ environmentalism

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4. Bureaucratic regulation of everyday life as a
form of social control

• (i) Paternalism of Welfare State
• (ii) Aboriginal stolen generation
• (iii) Foucault on the disciplinary society

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V. Claus Offe on the New Politics

• 1. New Right/ Neoliberal critique of welfare
  state
• (i) Failure of Keynesian economics
• (ii) Impending fiscal crisis of the state
  (Huntington)
• (iii) Erosion of traditional values family,
  work ethic and self-reliance

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• 2. New Right or neo-liberal proposals
• (i) Free market and deregulation
• (ii) Minimal state
• (iii) Neoliberal globalisation
• 3. Old Left defence of welfare state/ social
  democracy.
• (i) Problem of globalisation
• (ii) Social democracy in one country?

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4. Solution of NSMs

• (i) against both state and capital
• (ii) issues of consumer, client or citizen
  rather than worker
• (iii) responding to the problems of modernisation

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5. Possible alliances between three ideological
tendencies

• A. Right Old Left conservative defense of
  welfare state model
• B. Right New Social Movements
• C. New Left New Social Movements (e.g. Greens)

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Summary

• I. New Social Movements A Surprising
  Development?
• II. Welfare State Capitalism The Calm Before
  the Storm?
• III. Political Opposition of 1950s 1960s
• IV. Contradictions of the Welfare State
• V. Claus Offe on the New Politics