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Marxism is a body of theory that emanated from and was crafted for socialmovements. Yet, paradoxically, it does not contain a theory that specificallyexplains the emergence, character and development of social movements.This article works towards the formulation of a Marxist theory of socialmovements. Grounded in Marx's philosophical anthropology, it argues for anontological conception of social movements, and outlines a series of conceptsfor the analysis of the collective action of dominant and subaltern groups associal movements from above and social movements from below in the his-torical processes that animate the making and unmaking of social structures.

To thoroughly examine all these questions, is it not to makereal profane history of the men in each century, to representthese men at the same time as the authors and the actors oftheir own drama? But from the moment that you representmen as the actors and authors of their own history you have,by detour, arrived at the actual point of departure since youhave abandoned the eternal principles from which you at firstset out. (Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy)

Marxism is a body of theory that emanated from and wascrafted for social movements. Indeed, the work of Marxand Engels is arguably best understood as a distillation ofthe experiences, debates, theories and conflicts faced by thepopular movements of the nineteenth century, and their work in

Abstract

Introduction

The authors and the actors oftheir own drama: Towards aMarxist theory of socialmovementsAlf Gunvald Nilsen

at COLUMBIA UNIV on February 17, 2015cnc.sagepub.comDownloaded from

turn sought to contribute to the further development of thesepopular movements. Furthermore, the subsequent evolution ofMarxist theory in the twentieth century has been intimately linkedto the development of oppositional political projects across theglobe, ranging from revolutionary struggles against old empires toanti-colonial movements and the emergence of new forms ofsubaltern assertion in the post-Second World War era. Given thisintimate link between theoretical and political labours, it is indeeda paradox that Marxism does not possess a theory that specificallyexplains the emergence, character and development of socialmovements (see Cox, 1999). However, it is precisely its origins inand orientation towards the crucible of forces and struggles thathave shaped and continue to shape the modern capitalist world thatendows Marxism with a prescient relevance in terms ofunderstanding and advancing the forms of oppositional collectiveaction commonly grouped under the social movement rubric.Unearthing this relevance, rendering it coherent and attuning it tothe practical requirements of contemporary popular strugglesrequires some groundwork, and in this article, I seek to make aninitial contribution in this direction.

The critical point of departure here is the claim recently voicedby Flacks (2004: 138) and Bebbington and Dixon (2005: 186)concerning dominant approaches to the study of social movements namely, that mainstream movement theory fails to produceuseable knowledge for those seeking social change and, as aconsequence, also fails to be of relevance to the very movementsthat it seeks to illuminate. This is not to say that activists areuninterested in theory knowledge production is, of course, acrucial part of social movement practice (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991;Kilgore, 1999); but that rather than reading the dominant socialmovement theory, [activists] are generating theory largely outsideof academic circles (Bevington & Dixon, 2005: 186). FollowingBarker and Cox (2002), it might be argued that this scenario arisesfrom the differing knowledge interests that animate activist andacademic theorising about social movements. Whereas activistsproduce theoretical knowledge for and within social movementswith a view to generating appropriate proposals for specific actionsin a specific conflictual setting, academics produce knowledgeabout social movements with a view to providing genericexplanations of chains of causality that fit most, if not all, socialmovements. Movements, in this latter view, become objects to beobserved, described and explained, rather than processes that areactively constructed so as to meet needs that are not currentlybeing met.

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The knowledge interest that Barker and Cox identify at theheart of mainstream academic research arguably also explainssome of the critiques that have been raised about the theoreticalweaknesses of the dominant trends in US and European socialmovement theory. In the US context, this applies to the criticism ofthe narrowness of the resource-mobilisation and political processparadigms pioneered by McCarthy and Zald (1977) and Tilly (1978),McAdam (1982) and Tarrow (1988, 1998) respectively. The focus inresource-mobilisation theory on how social movementorganisations mobilise money and elite support, and in thepolitical process approach on the ways social movements make useof political opportunity structures in their interaction withestablished political institutions, posits instrumental rationality asthe pulse of movement operations, thus closing off from view thedirect pleasures of protest, the moral visions being pursued, andthe emotions accompanying political activities (Jasper, 1997: 33) thatare at the heart of activist experience.1 Moreover, as Melucci (1989:23) has pointed out, these perspectives are marred by a politicalreductionism in which social movements are seen strictly ascollective actors seeking inclusion into a political market. Thisleads to a displacement of those aspects of social movementactivity that concentrate on the need for self-realization ineveryday life (ibid: 33), as well as of those conjunctures in whichsocial movements come to pursue anti-systemic projects that giverise to epochal changes in world history (Katsiaficas, 1987; Arrighi,Hopkins & Wallerstein, 1989). In the European context, a centralconcern in social movement theory and research has, of course,been the argument that changes in the structuration of modernsociety have given rise to new social movements that championissues, pursue projects, and mobilise social groups that are radicallydifferent from the politics of class that defined the machinations ofprevious generations of social movements (Habermas, 1987;Touraine, 1982; Melucci, 1989). Besides giving rise to a tiresomedebate over the validity of the claim to newness that has had littleif any resonance beyond the boundaries of academia,2 theseperspectives were, as Cox (1995, 1999) has argued, marred by theirpreoccupation with highly abstract, meta-theoretical discourses ofsocial change that fail to account for the actual extent to andpractical ways in which movement participants link their ownsituated struggles to ideas and understandings about socio-historical totalities.

The chief objective of this article is to put forward a set ofreflections on how social movements can be theorised on the basisof Marxist theory in ways that simultaneously overcome the

Towards a Marxist theory of social movements


shortcomings of mainstream paradigms and address activistknowledge interests. To this end, I shall present a theoreticalframework that seeks to overcome a narrow, a priori view of thecontent of the rationalities that underpin and the dynamics thatanimate social movements by proposing a set of heuristic conceptsthat restricts its universals to the most abstract micro-analyses ofhuman action and to the most general macro-perspectives on socialorder (Cox, 1999: 15). Moreover, I shall propose a processualunderstanding of social movements that encompasses a widespectrum of practices and projects, ranging from everydaystruggles to counter-hegemonic political projects that arepotentially interconnected through collective learning. I shall alsobroaden the definitional scope of social movements to incorporatethe collective action of dominant social groups, in an attempt tohighlight how the structures in relation to which subaltern groupsmobilise are always and everywhere the outcome of humanpractice, rather than being absolute givens which, in a best-casescenario, can be modified through claims-making and negotiationswith the institutionalised political order. In doing so, I hope notonly to contribute to the forging of a theory that remains open-ended and sensitive to application in and on concrete empiricalcontexts, but also to the advancement of an approach to movementresearch that speaks more directly to the question that is,ultimately, at the heart of activist knowledge interests: What is tobe done?

I have argued elsewhere that the starting point for a Marxisttheory of social movements is to be found neither in a discussionof forces, relations and modes of production, nor in a discussion ofbase and superstructure or class and class struggle, but in thephilosophical anthropology that constitutes the very bedrock ofMarxs historical materialism (Nilsen, 2007). Thus, this articlebegins by briefly reiterating this argument and its ramifications interms of an ontological conception of social movements. I thenmove on to argue that a Marxist theory of social movements needsto encompass the collective action of dominant social groups, andI propose the term social movement from above to this end. Idiscuss the principal power resources that social movements fromabove command and draw on in their efforts to shape thestructuration of human needs and capacities in such as way as toreproduce and extend the hegemony of dominant social groups,and the strategies through which they do so. I then engage with thecollective action of subaltern social groups what I shall refer toas social movements from below. I argue that social movementsfrom below originate as situated responses to particular

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infringements or constraints upon the development and satisfactionof human needs and capacities, but contain the contingentpotentiality of expansive development towards more radical andencompassing forms of collective action. I suggest a series ofheuristic categories for the analysis of the direction, form andmeaning of such movement processes. In the final section, I sketchout an approach that conceptualises epochal changes in socialformations as the outcome of struggles between social movementsfrom above and from below over the structuration of human needsand capacities.

The first step towards overcoming the narrowness that mars mostmainstream conceptions of social movements lies in a recognitionof the fundamental animating forces in the making and unmakingof social structures of human needs and capacities, and inconceiving of these animating forces as emanating both fromdominant and subaltern groups within a social formation.

This perspective is moored in a conception of historicalmaterialism in which praxis stands as the foundational ontologicalcategory, and as the substance of historical change anddevelopment. Praxis is understood here as the satisfaction ofhuman needs through the conscious deployment of practical andcorporeal capacities in historically evolving social formations.Constraints of space prevent a full discussion of Marxsphilosophical anthropology in the present article; it will suffice tonote that this particular conception of human species beingremained constant in Marxs thought from his discussion ofobjectification in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,via the outline of the fundamental principles of the materialistconception of history in The German Ideology, to the designation ofthe labour process as the kernel of the mediation of needs andcapacities in human life-activity in Capital (Marx, 1981; Marx &Engels, 1999; Marx, 1990; see also Geras, 1983; Fracchia, 1991, 2005;Nilsen, 2007).

Praxis is of course inherently developmental: the satisfaction ofthe first need leads to new needs; and this production of newneeds is the first historical act (Marx & Engels, 1999 [1845]: 49). Andthis spiral of developing needs and capacities is in turn intrinsicallysocial and historical. The sociality of praxis flows from the fact thathuman beings go about the business of satisfying their needs in acooperative manner, and this cooperation throws up socialformations that in turn come to constitute a condition for the

At the heart of society burns the fire of social movements 3



deployment of capacities for the satisfaction of needs. However,such lattice-works of social relations do not merely function asenabling conduits of praxis, but also as structural constraints byexerting pressures and setting limits. The outcome of the exertionof pressures and the setting of limits is the creation of a dominantstructure of entrenched needs and capacities (Nilsen, 2007), whichis reproduced over extended periods of time in relation to extantrelations of power between dominant and subaltern groups withinthat social formation.

However, such structures and the social formations in whichthey inhere are not static; rather they are internally contradictorytotalities that undergo constant processes of change as a result ofcontention between dominant and subaltern social groups over thestructuration of needs and capacities. Such changes can take theform of modifications of a dominant structure of entrenchedneeds and capacities that leaves the overarching societal frameworkintact, or the form of systemic convulsions in which suchstructures and the social formation that has crystallised aroundthem is fundamentally ruptured and replaced by something newand altogether different this is the defining feature of thehistoricity of praxis. The former kind of change occurs whensubaltern social groups mobilise collectively to either defend orcarve out a space for the accommodation of their specific needswithin an extant social formation; the latter takes place whensubaltern groups develop new meanings and values, new practices,and new relationships and kinds of relationship around emergentstructures of radical needs and capacities (Nilsen, 2007) that is,sets of needs and capacities that have developed but cannot befully satisfied and deployed within the confines of extant structures(see Heller, 1976).

On this view, a social movement can be defined as being theorganisation of multiple forms of materially grounded and locallygenerated skilled activity around a rationality expressed andorganised by (would-be) hegemonic actors, and against thehegemonic projects articulated by other such actors to change ormaintain a dominant structure of entrenched needs and capacitiesand the social formation in which it inheres, in part or in whole (seeCox, 1999: 99). In this definition, praxis and its social organisation isposited as both the subject and object of social movements. Praxis isthe subject of social movements in that movement activity is nothingmore and nothing less than the conscious deployment of capacitiesto satisfy needs. Praxis is also the object of social movements in thatmovement activity seeks to effect changes in or maintain thosestructures through which human activity is socially organised,

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and/or the direction in which those structures are to develop (seeCox, 1999: 80). This in turn leads to a particular approach to socialstructures and social formations as the sediment of movementstruggles that is, as a kind of truce line which is continuallyprobed for weaknesses by both sides and repudiated as soon as thisseems worthwhile (Cox, 1999: 98). When social structures andformations are investigated through this lens, they are approached interms of the conflictual processes from which an extant truce lineemerged, the character of the power relations inherent to that truceline, and the tendencies towards the formation of new forms ofmovement struggles that may lead to its dissolution. Crucially, theperspective I propose here does not restrict the referent of the termsocial movement to the collective agency of subaltern social groups.Rather, I shall argue that social movements emanate from and aregrounded in the collective skilled activity of both dominant andsubaltern groups, and consequently I make a distinction betweensocial movements from above and social movements from below,which also structures the argument that follows.

From castles and palaces and churches to prisons and workhousesand schools; from weapons of war to a controlled press, Williams(1977: 93) writes, any ruling class, in variable ways though alwaysmaterially, produces a social and political order. This productiveactivity constitutes the essence of the activity of social movementsfrom above. A social movement from above can be defined as theorganisation of multiple forms of skilled activity around arationality expressed and organised by dominant social groups,which aims at the maintenance or modification of a dominantstructure of entrenched needs and capacities in ways thatreproduce and/or extend the power of those groups and itshegemonic position within a given social formation.

The skilled activities in question can range from best practiceproduction processes be that agricultural improvement duringthe age of enclosures, or the global generalisation of Toyotasmodel of flexible production in the mid-1970s (Wood, 1999;Hoogvelt, 2001) to political practices, which range from the US-aided coordination of counterinsurgency and interrogationtechniques in Latin America in the 1970s to the generalisation ofthe neoliberal strategy of crisis management deployed in NewYork City in the mid-1970s (Klein, 2007: ch. 3, 4; Harvey, 2005: 448).Rationalities are typically expressed in ideological offensives suchas the moral campaigns against sloth and indolence during the era

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of primitive accumulation, or the anti-collectivist populism ofThatchers regime (Perelman, 2000; Hall, 1983a), around whichpopular consent is sought. Organisation can range from thecreation of small networks of notables such as Freemasonry, whichin Britain brought together the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, orpresent-day neoliberal think-tanks and elite forums such as theTrilateral Commission and the World Economic Forum. It can alsoinclude political parties like the New Right of the 1980s and NewLabour in the 1990s, and supranational institutions such as theWorld Bank and the WTO (Van Der Pijl, 1995; Gill, 1990; Robinson,2004; Hall, 1983). Through such organisation, dominant socialgroups attain some sort of subjective unity amongst themselves aunity which, as Roseberry (1995: 78) points out, cannot be taken forgranted but is rather created through the negotiation of sectoraldifferences and spatial differentiation, centred on a project thatseeks to maintain and/or extend dominance.

In articulating and carrying out such projects, movements fromabove typically draw on and mobilise the superior access ofdominant social groups to economic, political and cultural powerresources (Cox & Nilsen, 2006). I shall discuss each in turn.

Social movements from above draw upon and seek to maintain orexpand the directive role of a dominant class, or classes, or classfraction in economic organisation. This directive role consists inthe ability to determine what is to be produced, how it is producedand for what purposes, and, most importantly, the ability toappropriate the surplus that this production yields. In other words,it consists of the ability to exploit the direct producers bycompelling [them] to work longer than is necessary to produce themeans of subsistence for themselves and their dependents(Callinicos, 1988: 50). This ability in turn derives from the definingfeature of class societies as such, namely that one or more of thesmaller classes, in virtue of their control over the conditions ofproduction will be able to exploit that is, to appropriate asurplus at the expense of the larger classes (Ste. Croix, 1981: 44;see also Smith, 1991: 39, and Sohn-Rethel, 1978: 868).

Crucially, exploitation and thus also class relations as thecollective social expression of the fact of exploitation (Ste. Croix,1981: 43), are not self-perpetuating features of society: they must beactively and consciously reproduced. This in turn follows from thefact that that exploitation will tend to evoke resistance, if only insuch molecular forms as sabotage and cacanny (Callinicos, 1988:

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51), and this resistance has to be actively curbed throughrepression or accommodation in order for accumulation toproceed as smoothly as possible and for extant power relations tobe maintained or expanded. Furthermore, a determinate economicorganisation that enables a determinate form of exploitation doesnot come about automatically, but has to be actively createdthrough projects that seek to advance a new mode in which surpluslabour [can be] extracted from the actual producer, the worker(Marx, cited in Ste. Croix, 1981: 51). The point, then, is to emphasisethe agency that lies behind what Marx (1990: 899) referred to as thesilent compulsion of economic relations, both in terms of theconflictual genesis of a particular pattern of economic relationsand the equally conflictual internal transmogrifications of thatpattern, and how that agency is motivated by the perceived need toestablish, maintain, extend or restore class power.

In capitalist society, exploitation occurs between two greathostile camps (Marx & Engels, 2002 [1848]: 220): on the one hand,the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of socialproduction and employers of wage labour, and on the other hand,the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means ofproduction of their own, are reduced to selling their labour powerin order to live (ibid: 219n.). The nexus between capital and labourrepresents the final and most complete expression of the system ofproducing and appropriating products that is based on classantagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few (Marx &Engels, cited in Ste. Croix, 1981: 50). Finally, the dynamic and formof capitalism as a system of surplus appropriation constantlychanges, and this is evident in the range of transitions betweenaccumulation strategies and hegemonic projects (Jessop, 1990) inthe historical development of the capitalist mode of production. Inkeeping with the emphasis on the agency that animatesstructuration, such changes are not to be conceived of as beinggoverned by the objective laws of capital itself, but rather by theconflictual workings of the confrontation of the capitalist classsattempt to impose its social order and the working classsattempt to assert its autonomous interests (Cleaver, 2000: 76; seealso Lebowitz, 2003).

When I argue that social movements from above draw on theinherently differential access of social groups to the state, I amarguing that the state has unequal and asymmetrical effects on theability of social forces to realise their interests through political

Differential access to the state



action (Jessop, 1982: 224). I am not arguing this on the basis of anassumption of the state as a subject in its own right, endowed withagentic capacities, but as a set of institutions that cannot, quainstitutional ensemble, exercise power, and thus also as a complexsocial relation that reflects the changing balance of social forces in adeterminate conjuncture (ibid: 221). The state apparatus, then, withits array of administrative, managerial, distributional, coercive andideological modalities, is not a neutral instrument. Rather, the factthat the state constitutes an institutional congealment of a widermatrix of power-laden social relations entails that the structures ofpolitical representation and state intervention will tend to be biasedtowards the enablement of dominant social groups to realise specificeffects in the course of state intervention (ibid: 224).

This invariably warrants a comment on the notion of thecapitalist state. State power can be conceived of as capitalist to theextent that it creates, maintains, or restores the conditions for capitalaccumulation (Jessop, 1982: 221). State power contributes toaccumulation by guaranteeing private property rights in the meansof production and labour power, the enforcement of contracts, theprotection of the mechanisms for accumulation, the elimination ofbarriers to mobility of capital and labour and the stabilization of themoney system (Harvey, 2001: 274) thus reproducing and stabilisingcapitalist relations of production and capital accumulation. Beyondthe maintenance and reproduction of the social relations thatsustains the capitalist mode of production, there is also the issue ofstate intervention in the process of accumulation itself, as well as theprovision of public goods and the social/physical infrastructurenecessary for the reproduction of capital and labour, and in terms ofcrisis management (ibid: 274-5). Moreover, the state plays a crucialrole in mediating between factions of capital, particularly duringperiods in which factional struggles threaten the reproduction of thecapitalist system (ibid: 275).

Now, having said that the state and state power arecongealments of a wider matrix of power-laden social relationsit is also necessary to recognise the consequences of the fact thatthis matrix is not static for the suggested understanding of statepower. This entails that a given state formation is not a monolithicvehicle for the execution of the designs of dominant socialgroups. Indeed, the structures of political representation andstate intervention are subject to change as an outcome ofmovement struggles. In terms of representation, this is evident inthe enfranchisement of women as a consequence of the strugglesof the early womens movement and the enfranchisement ofblacks in the US South and South Africa as a result of the civil

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rights and anti-apartheid movements. In terms of stateintervention, it is arguably most evident in the emergence ofwhat Jessop (2003) calls the Keynesian Welfare National Statethat emerged as a consequence of labour struggles from the 1890sto the 1940s (see Silver, 2003; Halperin, 2004). Thus, the argumentthat social movements from above draw on the privileged accessof dominant social groups to the state apparatus must not beconflated to a crude unilateral wielding of state power. Statepower, rather, must be seen in conjunctural, relational termsrather than as a fixed sum of resources which can be appropriatedby one social force to the exclusion of others (Jessop, 1982: 225).

When I argue that social movements from above draw on theleading position occupied by dominant social groups in themoulding of everyday routines and common sense, I am of courseventuring into the terrain of Gramscis concept of hegemony.Gramsci (1998: 57, 12) asserted that the supremacy of a social groupmanifests itself in two ways, namely the function of hegemonywhich the dominant group exercises throughout society and thatof direct domination or command exercised through the Stateand juridical government. In Gramscis work, social hegemonyis defined as [t]he spontaneous consent given by the great massesof the population to the general direction imposed on social life bythe dominant fundamental group (ibid: 12). Such consent, heargues, entails the acceptance of representations of the directionthat dominant groups impose upon social life as being in theuniversal interest of society at large: the development andexpansion of the particular group are conceived of, and presented,as being the motor force of a universal expansion, of adevelopment of all the national energies (ibid: 182).

The ability to achieve such consent derives partly from thecapacity of dominant social groups to promulgate ideologies ofdominance through a variety of channels. An ideology ofdominance can be thought of as a cognitive horizon or system ofbeliefs in which an existing social order is represented as naturaland purposive, and therefore legitimate. At the heart of such acognitive horizon or belief system lies the belief abouteverything that exists, that it is natural, that it should exist, andthat however badly ones attempt at reform may go they will notstop life going on, since the traditional forces will continue tooperate and precisely will keep life going on (Gramsci, 1998: 157).

Moulding everyday routines and common sense



However, hegemony also entails something morethoroughgoing than merely the acceptance of an ideology ofdominance. As Williams (1977: 110) points out, hegemony revolvesaround the relations of domination and subordination, in theirforms as practical consciousness, as in effect a saturation of thewhole process of living of the whole substance of livedidentities and relationships that is, hegemony extends beyondthe ideational and into the practical organisation of everydayroutines. It is in this sense that social movements from aboveassume a leading position in relation to the moulding of everydayroutines and common sense: hegemony as practical consciousnessenables a dominant group to manage the task of providingeffective directions and orientations to the life-activity of differentsocial groups, meet at least some of their diverse needs andprovide a language with which they can express their thoughts(Cox, 1999: 104).

Still, hegemony has its limits. If we look closer at Gramscis(1998: 333) conception of common sense, we quickly discover thatits contents are not exhausted by hegemonic impositions; rather,it is a contradictory consciousness that fuses ideologies ofdominance and hegemonic ways of being in the world with thepractical and often tacit subaltern experience of the existent assomehow problematic, and the subaltern skills and responses thatare developed in response to this experience (see Thompson, 1993:86-7). Consequently, hegemony, as Williams (1977: 112) puts it, cannever be singular [and] it does not just passively exist as a formof dominance. Given its non-singular form, hegemony isvulnerable to resistance, limitations, alterations and challenges,and thus has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, andmodified (ibid: 112). Hence, when we study how social movementsfrom above draw on this leading position in relation to themoulding of everyday routines and common sense, we do wiselyto study this not as a finished and monolithic ideologicalformation but as a problematic, contested, political process ofstruggle (Roseberry, 1995: 77).

When social movements from above mobilise economic, politicaland cultural resources in projects which seek to expand ormaintain the hegemonic position of dominant social groups, theydo so in relation to how their activity is impacted by and impactsupon movements from below. The character of this field of

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force (Roseberry, 1995: 76) in turn has consequences for thestrategies developed and implemented by movements from above.

As a point of departure, I propose a broad distinction betweensocial movements from above that deploy largely defensivestrategies, and social movements from above that deploy largelyoffensive strategies. The deployment of defensive strategies tendsto occur in the context of considerable challenges from below,and such strategies can be of an accommodative or repressivecharacter. A defensive strategy centred on accommodationtypically revolves around the granting of concessions to theclaims and demands put forward by social movements from below,with the aim of appeasing and defusing a social and politicalforce that might pose a threat to the stability and reproduction ofan extant social formation. The archetypical example would, ofcourse, be the reforms implemented throughout much ofWestern Europe in the mid-twentieth century as a response to aworkers movement that was increasingly becoming an anti-systemic force to be reckoned with (Silver, 2003; Halperin, 2004).A defensive strategy centred on repression revolves around thecountering of movements from below through violent coercionand the suspension of civil rights. A typical example of such astrategy would be the state terrorism that authoritarian regimes inLatin America unleashed upon democracy campaigns and otherradical popular movements in the 1970s and 1980s as part andparcel of the implementation of neoliberal economic policies(see Klein, 2007). More recently, there is also the trend towards anarguably more subtle and molecular curbing of civil libertiesthrough so-called anti-terrorist legislation that allows for moreextensive policing of dissent and general surveillance ofeveryday life (Gill, 2003a: ch. 9). Repressive strategies can ofcourse also be of a more proactive character, seeking to quellcounter-cultures perceived as potential loci of large-scaleprotest. The passing of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Actin the UK in 1994 constitutes an example of a repressive strategythat, albeit less violent, still provided the means by whichsubcultures such as New Age travelling, squatting and the ravescene could be suppressed under the law (McKay, 1996: ch. 6).Accommodative and repressive projects are not to be conceived ofas being mutually exclusively strategies. Defensive socialmovements from above rarely rely on either accommodation orrepression, but tend to differ in terms of how they respond tosubstantial movements from below and their various segments, aswell as different subaltern social groups. An example of thiswould of course be the differentiated approach to labour in the



construction of the historical bloc which underpinned the post-war class compromise, in which moderate unions and skilledworkers were incorporated, whereas more militant unions andunskilled workers were to a far greater extent excluded andsubject to repression (Cox, 1988).

The deployment of offensive strategies typically centres on thelaunching of attacks on the truce lines left by movement strugglesof the past through the undermining and reversal of victories wonand concessions gained by movements from below. Offensivestrategies thus take aim at either the attainment of hegemony fornew dominant social groups, or the extension or restoration of thepower of extant dominant social groups, and tend to be deployedat conjunctures where an extant social formation in whole or inpart enters into crisis and starts to show signs of breakdown. Anexample of an offensive social movement from above that bringsnew dominant social groups to a position of hegemony would bethe bourgeois revolutions that heralded the rise of capitalism inEngland, France and the USA. The signal feature of suchmovements from above and the revolutions they animated was thedevelopment of a group in society with an independent economicbase, which attacks obstacles to a democratic version of capitalismthat have been inherited from the past (Moore, 1991: xxi).4

Neoliberalism is, of course, the most recent example of anoffensive movement from above that seeks to restore and extendthe hegemony of extant dominant social groups. As Harvey (2005)has argued, the prime achievement of neoliberal restructuring hasbeen to restore the class power of capital by fundamentallyundermining the social restrictions and regulations imposed uponcapitalist accumulation as a result of working-class struggles inthe first half of the twentieth century. In other cases yet again,social movements from above may be characterised by thedynamics of a passive revolution (Gramsci, 1998) in which therule of capital is introduced in a molecular manner by an alliancebetween extant and new dominant social groups via the statewithout directly dislodging extant dominant groups and the socialrelations upon which their hegemony has been constructed.5

These dynamics were characteristic, for example, of thearticulation of Indias postcolonial development project, and havealso animated neoliberal restructuring in the Mexican and Chileancontexts (Chatterjee, 1986, 1993; Kaviraj, 1997; Morton, 2007a; Motta,2008). The complexities of these cases only points out thenecessity of treating the categories suggested here as heuristictools in empirical and historical research, rather than as watertightconceptual compartments.

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I now turn to the collective action of subaltern social groups social movements from below. A social movement from below canbe defined as the organisation of multiple forms of locallygenerated skilled activity around a rationality expressed andorganised by subaltern social groups, which aims either tochallenge the constraints that a dominant structure of needs andcapacities impose upon the development of new needs andcapacities, or to defend aspects of such a dominant structure thataccommodate their specific needs and capacities.

The starting point for the theorisation of social movementsfrom below is the simple but important insight that subalterngroups experience deprivation and oppression within a concretesetting, not as the end result of large and abstract processes it isthe daily experience of people that shapes their grievances,establishes the measure of their demands, and points out thetargets of their anger (Piven & Cloward, 1977: 20-21). Yet thoseexperiences do not merely constitute isolated instances or singularepisodes of deprivation and oppression. Rather, they are clues tounderlying structures and relationships which are not observableother than through the particular phenomena or events that theyproduce (Wainwright, 1994: 7). Furthermore, these structures andrelationships can come within the cognitive reach of movementsfrom below and their participants if they combine and extend theirfragmented knowledge in ways that enable them to develop abetter understanding of the social mechanisms at work, so as todirect their efforts in order that their intentions might be moreefficiently fulfilled (ibid: 108; see also Kilgore, 1999; Barker & Cox,2002). This, in turn, means that the character of the grievances, thedemands, and the targets of the anger of social movements frombelow may change in an expansive way from forms of oppositionalcollective action that are bounded in scope and aims to a specific,situated and local experience towards more encompassing andradical counter-hegemonic projects in which situated strugglesshift gears, transcend particularities, and arrive at some conceptionof a universal alternative to that social system which is the sourceof their difficulties (Harvey, 2000: 241; see also Cox, 1998).

I shall refer to the realisation of this potentiality as a movementprocess, and propose the concepts local rationality, militantparticularism, campaign and social movement project as tools with whichto make sense of different facets and phases of movementprocesses. I am of course perfectly aware that the idea of amovement process centred on the widening and deepening of the

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scope of collective action from below can have a suspiciouslylinear and teleological ring to it. Hence I would like to point outthat the notion of an expansive movement process and thecategories suggested in order to grasp the various sequences ofsuch a process are to be thought of as heuristic categories, devisedin order to grasp what can be considered as a contingentpotentiality for the development of collective skilled activity bysubaltern social groups, rather than a foregone conclusion or anecessary trajectory.

In order to grapple with the experiential rationality that guidespeoples everyday activity, I propose that we return to Gramscisconception of common sense. As I argued above, common sense isessentially an amalgamation of the established ways of doing thingsand their rationale, which constitute the molecular workings of thehegemonic projects of movements from above, and the practical andoften tacit experience of those molecular workings as somehowproblematic and the various forms of practice developed and gearedtowards countering frustrations with the everyday status quo. Now,these latter elements can be conceived of in terms of Gramscis(1998: 327) notion of good sense that is, the more or less submergedaspects of subaltern consciousness that indicate that the socialgroup in question may indeed have its own conception of the world.For Gramsci, good sense constitutes the healthy nucleus that existsin common sense which deserves to be made more unitary andcoherent (ibid: 328). Good sense, then, is that reservoir of practicalconsciousness that may serve as a basis for subaltern resistance.

I propose that we consider the nature and origins of good senseas a local rationality (Cox, 1999: 111). A local rationality can be definedas a formal characteristic about the way people make sense of andengage with the world which is capable of being generalised andtaking on a life of its own (ibid: 113). A local rationality isconstituted by ways of being, doing and thinking that peopledevelop as attempts to oppose the routines and received wisdomsthat define the hegemonic elements of common sense. Thedevelopment of such ways of being, doing and thinking can bethought of as either being rooted in the experience ofinfringements upon subaltern needs and capacities that areaccommodated in a dominant structure of entrenched needs andcapacities, or in an experience of constraints imposed upon thedevelopment of new needs and capacities. In the first case, local

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rationalities typically assume a defensive character in opposition toattempts from above to reorder extant structures so as to extend thepower base of dominant groups for example, the ways in whicheighteenth-century food riots were mediated through localrationalities centred on the idea of a moral economy thatregulated relations between dominant and subaltern groups(Thompson, 1993). In the second case, local rationalities typicallyassume a more offensive character in which subaltern groups seekto carve out greater space for the satisfaction, deployment anddevelopment of emergent radical needs and capacities forexample, the urban counter-cultural movement networks analysedby Cox (1999), which seek to develop spaces for autonomous self-development. The precise character of local rationalities is ofcourse to be ascertained through concrete empirical research.6

It needs to be emphasised that I do not conceive of localrationalities as being an essential characteristic of social being(Moore, 1998: 352) articulated in hermetically sealed spaces ofotherness and difference.7 Subalterneity and the ways of being,doing and thinking that define it are forged relationally andhistorically (ibid: 352) in conflictual and contradictory fields offorce (Hall, 1983b). This in turn entails that local rationalities can bemore or less developed and articulated in the collective skilledactivity of subaltern social groups against those forms ofrationality that characterise the hegemonic projects of movementsfrom above. In highly repressive contexts, for example, they mightexist as what James Scott (1990: xii) calls hidden transcripts as acritique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant andconcealed under a veil of feigned compliance and deference. Inother cases, they might exist much more openly and thoroughly asa cultural fabric that saturates the outlook and activity of subalterngroups as overt and entrenched cultures of resistance (Peluso,1992: 12). A crucial aspect of the study of local rationalities is thusthe unearthing not just of their content, but also of the form of itsarticulation and development.

At times, a local rationality may give rise to or serve as the basisfor direct acts of confrontation with and defiance of socialmovements from above. This might happen when subaltern groupscome to act as an organic totality (Gramsci, 1998: 327) on the basisof the extraction and development of oppositional ways of being,doing and thinking in popular consciousness and culture, in whichconsciousness of being part of a particular hegemonic forceemerges as the first stage towards a further progressive self-consciousness in which theory and practice will be one (Gramsci,1998: 333). I propose the term militant particularism for those forms of



struggle that may emerge if such a process of extraction anddevelopment takes place. The concept militant particularism wasfirst coined by Raymond Williams (1989: 249), and has later beendeveloped by David Harvey (1996, 2000) to refer to the particularorigins of movement struggles. It refers to the way politics is alwaysembedded in ways of life and structures of feeling peculiar toplaces and communities (Harvey, 2000: 55; see also Harvey, 1996: ch.1), and is hence characterised by this specificity and situatedness,both in terms of the issues that are struggled over and the practices,skills, idioms and imaginaries that are deployed in suchconfrontations. Militant particularisms can be defined as those formsof struggle that emerge when a subaltern group deploys specificskills and knowledges in open confrontation with a dominant groupin a particular place and at a particular time in a particular conflictover a particular issue (see Cox & Nilsen, 2005). An example wouldbe the wildcat strikes in an iron foundry in New Jersey, analysed byRick Fantasia (1988), in which intra-group affinities between workersfunction as the energising force of a series of direct confrontationswith plant management over specific workplace grievances, andeventually assume the form of an informal network among thoseworkers inclined towards radical union activism.

The extraction and development of local rationalities and theconcurrent eruption of militant particularist struggles can be acondensed and intense affair that takes place over a short period oftime, or more long and drawn-out processes of confrontation,intervention, negotiation and persuasion between actors who seeresistance as fertile and those who see resistance as futile.Furthermore, militant particularist struggles may occur as asingular event, several parallel but unconnected events, or indeedas a chain of events that lead to the formation of moreinstitutionalised forms of local opposition. Again, the determinateform of militant-particularist struggles has to be discerned throughconcrete empirical investigation.

In his discussion of the particularist origins of labour struggles,Williams (1989: 249) emphasised the practical possibility oftranscending those particularist origins and building towards a moreencompassing form of mobilisation in which particular strugglesare welded together in a general struggle. Indeed, a fundamentalaspect of militant particularisms is the fact that the practices, skills,idioms and imaginaries of which they are made up can begeneralised and that through such generalisation they can transcend

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the particular locale in which they emerged and thus be appliedacross a spectrum of specific situations and singular struggles.

This is a process that occurs when activists involved in a militantparticularist struggle in one given locale make connections withother activists engaged in similar struggles elsewhere. Through themaking of such connections, activists typically discover and createcommon ground between them: common denominators arediscovered in the seemingly disparate conflicts in which they areengaged, common enemies are named, and common strategies andcollective identities are developed across social and spatialboundaries. These practical activities of mutual learning anddevelopment of self-understanding, communication, cooperationand organisation between militant particularisms bring about awidening and deepening of the scope of collective action; and assuch, they constitute the first steps in the process through whichmovements from below may shift gears and transcendparticularities through what is essentially an act of translationfrom the concrete to the abstract (Harvey, 2000: 242).

The organisation of militant particularisms across social andspatial boundaries entails something more than putting potatoesinto a sack. It entails the creation of a form of movement activitythat I shall refer to as campaigns, which can be defined as theorganisation of a range of local responses to specific situations inways that connect people across these situations and around ageneralised challenge to the construction of those situations (Cox,1999: 109; Cox & Nilsen, 2005). An example of this would be theprocess through which the radical campaign against dam-buildingon the Narmada River in central India emerged, as grassrootsgroups working in peasant communities across the states ofGujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh started to coordinatetheir efforts to secure compensation for the loss of land that thesecommunities would suffer as a result of the submergence causedby the dam projects. Faced with recalcitrant state authorities, theirdemands were radicalised towards opposition to the Narmada damsat a pan-state level, spearheaded by the Narmada Bachao Andolan,and the campaign was in turn embedded in national andtransnational movement networks that articulated a generic politicsof opposition to large dams, and championed the exploration ofalternative methods of water management (Nilsen, 2009).

As much as the development of campaigns revolves around aprocess in which the boundaries of militant particularisms are

Towards social movement projects



transcended through translation between and abstraction fromlocal struggles, the construction of collective identities that cutacross socio-spatial divides, and the widening of activistperceptions of the limits of the possible, they are still acircumscribed form of collective action in that they do not take aimat the social totality as an object of transformation. Campaigns, thatis, are typically constructed as field-specific forms of collectiveaction which do not necessarily or automatically relate a particularfield of protest to a wider social totality.

However, if activists pursue the activity of connecting differentlocalised struggles and indeed seemingly different struggles, ifthey engage in a critical interrogation of the structures thatengender the problems they seek to address and that may frustratetheir campaigns that is, if activists pursue the process ofabstraction from particular instances and circumstances (Harvey,2000: 241-2) then they may also come to an understanding of thesystemic dimensions of the specific field in which they operate.From this awareness, they may in turn start to move beyond thefield-specificity of campaign politics and towards a form ofmovement activity which posits the social totality as the object ofchallenge and transformation. I propose the term social movementproject for the conceptualisation of these forms of movementactivity. Social movement projects can be defined as (a) challengesto the social totality which (b) aim to control the self-production ofsociety and (c) have or are developing the potential for the kind ofhegemony leading the skilled activity of different social groups that would make (b) and hence (a) possible (Cox, 1999: 102).

At the heart of the challenges that social movement projectslevel at the social totality lie emergent structures of radical needsand capacities, and the transformative potentialities of amovement project resides in the objective of fully instantiatingand realising these structures. Militant particularisms and the localrationalities from which they derive, as well as the campaignsthrough which militant particularisms are transformed intogeneric challenges to the construction of a specific kind ofsituation, may well be expressive of the development of new andradical needs and capacities. However, what sets social movementprojects apart from militant particularisms and campaigns is this:to the extent that the latter are expressive of an emergentstructure of radical needs and capacities, they are orientedtowards its partial instantiation and realisation through themodification of extant structures, whereas the former consciously,actively and explicitly seeks the transcendence of a dominantstructure of entrenched needs and capacities and the constitution

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of altogether new forms of social organisation in which anemergent structure of radical needs and capacities can be fullyinstantiated and realised.

As an example, we might consider the alter-globalisationmovement that came to the worlds attention with the 1999 WTOsummit protests in Seattle. The movement is the outcome of a longprocess of communication between campaigns and militantparticularist struggles organised through these campaigns, spanningmuch of the 1990s (Wilkin, 2000; Broad & Heckscher, 2003).Through this process, particular struggles came to be understood interms of a more general set of interconnections between problemsand movements worldwide (Gill, 2000: 138). Slogans such asAnother World is Possible and We Live in a Society, Not anEconomy signal an insistence that ways of socially organising thesatisfaction, deployment, and development of needs and capacitiesthat are not defined by the logic of capitalist accumulation arewithin reach. This marks a clear rupture vis--vis the initial formsof protest to neoliberal restructuring, which were essentiallydefensive in character: strike waves in the North that sought torestore the Keynesian rights and entitlements threatened byneoliberal restructuring (De Angelis, 2000: 14), and the IMF riots inthe South, which sought to restore the social wage guaranteed in thedevelopmentalist pact between the state and the popular classes(Walton & Seddon, 1994: 48-50). It also marks a rupture vis--vismany of the single-issue campaigns of the 1990s, which soughtprimarily to curtail the scope of the project of neoliberalrestructuring, for instance the campaign against the MultilateralAgreement on Investments (Broad & Heckscher, 2003).

The trajectories of social movement projects are of course openand dependent upon such contingencies as the capacity to buildpotential for hegemony through the forging of ever-more andever-stronger connections with localised struggles as well as itscapacity for resilience in the face of opposition from socialmovements from above. However, a social movement project thathas developed significant momentum can reasonably be expectedto result in the development of an organic crisis (Gramsci, 1998)and concurrently a revolutionary situation, a scenario that Ielaborate further in the next section.

Social movements from above and below engage in struggles overhistoricity that is, they engage and encounter each other instruggles over the direction and form of the development of the

Social movements from above and below and struggles over historicity



social organisation of human needs and capacities. Such strugglesoccur when movements from below have returned up thesequence from the opposition to routines in localised strugglesfrom which they originate to opposing the structures from whichthese routines emerge, and ultimately the social movementsfrom above that have sought to install these structures.

If and when movement projects from below have developed acapacity for hegemony that allows for the articulation of achallenge to the social totality and take aim at the control of theself-production of society, they can usefully be thought of in termsof what Katsiaficas (1987) has called world-historical movements.The term refers to those social movement projects that throw upand animate [p]eriods of crises and turmoil on a global scale that arerelatively rare in history (ibid: 6). He discerns a handful of suchperiods of global eruptions and associates them with the years1776-89, 1848, 1905, 1917, and 1968 moments at which new forms ofpower emerged in opposition to the established order, and newvisions of the meaning of freedom were formulated in the actionsof millions of people (ibid: 6). At each of these conjunctures, andeven when they failed to seize power, movements from belowachieved substantial alterations in extant social orders.

World-historical movements and the processes of change towhich they give rise can usefully be related to Gramscisconception of organic crisis:

In every country the process is different, although the con-tent is the same. And the content is the crisis of the rulingclasss hegemony, which occurs either because the ruling classhas failed in some major political undertaking for which it hasrequested, or forcibly extracted, the consent of the broadmasses or because huge masses have passed suddenlyfrom a state of political passivity to a certain activity, and putforward demands which taken together, albeit not organicallyformulated, add up to a revolution. A crisis of authority isspoken of: this is precisely the crisis of hegemony, or generalcrisis of the state. (1998: 210)

However, this description too easily slips into a portrait ofrevolutionary movements from below launching a war ofmanoeuvre against a beleaguered, passive, decaying order anorder that is at best, perhaps, capable of mustering a defensiveresponse to the challenge from below. As Hall (1983a) notes,defensive responses on the part of dominant social groups willgenerally be insufficient in the context of an organic crisis the

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reproduction of hegemony will hinge upon a formative effort, or,in the terms suggested above, an offensive movement strategy fromabove.

Organic crises and their trajectory, then, must equally beconsidered as being shaped by offensive movements from above, i.e.movements that typically take aim at social structures that bear theimprint of the past victories of movements from below and theconstraints that these impose upon the power of dominant groups.And such offensive movements from above may in turn spurdefensive responses from below. Thus, an organic crisis should beconceived of as a complex field of force animated by a dialecticbetween reactionary and progressive forces in search of a solution,a new order (Gill, 2003b: 33). At the heart of such a scenario lies thesuspension of those truce lines handed down from past rounds ofmovement struggles, and thus also the eruption of thoseantagonisms and contradictions which they held in check. Newterrains of struggle open up in which movements from above andbelow vie for command over the direction of imminent systemicchanges, or seek to prevent these changes from taking place in thefirst place.

Gramscis (1998: 177-8) distinction between conjunctural andorganic movements on the historical terrain goes some waytowards capturing the patterning of the field of force betweendefensive and offensive movements from below in times of crisis,where the conjunctural movements constitute those forces thatseek to defend the status quo, whereas the organic movementsconstitute those forces that give rise to socio-historical criticism.Conjunctural movements can be thought of as being thosedefensive responses from above and below and, conversely,organic movements can be thought of as those offensive responses from above and below that emerge in times of crisis. I do notpropose these categories in terms of sets of diametrical opposites,but rather as broad general categories that might be of use as wetry to find our bearings, as we approach the empirical study ofthose periods in history that qualify as organic crisis. While organiccrises are per definition radically contingent conjunctures, it is stillreasonable to claim that as particular movements gradually gainhegemony through partial or total victories, the space ofcontention will be narrowed down through a dynamic of pathdependency, where nascent social changes assume a certaindirection that closes off or crowds out alternative possibilities. As aprovisional guideline to such processes, we might posit thefollowing general scenarios: a successful movement project frombelow will tend to result in some kind of revolutionary



transformation; a social movement project from below that isdisarmed through an accommodative response from below willtend to lead to significant reformist modifications, while the basalstructures of the social formation return to normalcy, at least fora time; and a successful offensive social movement from above willlead to significant modifications, but this time in favour dominantsocial groups in the form of the reversal of restraints upon theirpower.

In these notes, I have sought to make an initial move towardsunearthing some of the potential that Marxism holds as a theoryfrom, for and of social movements. I started by anchoring thisgroundwork in the philosophical anthropology that lies at the heartof historical materialism namely, a concept of human species-being which posits praxis as the basic ontological entity, and indeedas the very substance of historical change and development. I thenproceeded to outline a conceptual framework for engaging withsocial movements on the basis of this understanding of the essenceof historical materialism, and its major features are as follows.

Social movements can be defined as being the organisation ofmultiple forms of materially grounded and locally generatedskilled activity around a rationality expressed and organised by(would-be) hegemonic actors, and against the hegemonic projectsarticulated by other such actors to change or maintain a dominantstructure of entrenched needs and capacities and the socialformation in which it inheres, in part or in whole. At the heart ofthis definition lies a conception of praxis as the subject and objectof social movement activity, and the theory that flows from it is onechiefly concerned with the direction, form and meaning of socialmovement activity in relation to the making and unmaking ofsocial structures.

I proceeded to elaborate a concept of social movements fromabove that seeks to grapple with the collective action of dominantsocial groups, and the way this collective action aims at themaintenance or modification of a dominant structure ofentrenched needs and capacities in ways that reproduce and/orextend the power of those groups and its hegemonic positionwithin a given social formation. I argued that movements fromabove draw on the directive position of dominant social groups ineconomic organisation, the advantages that stem from differentialaccess to the state, and a leading position in relation to themoulding of everyday routines and common sense, and that their

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strategies can be either defensive or offensive in relation to socialmovements from below.

I then outlined an developmental conception of how socialmovements from below seek to challenge the constraints that adominant structure of needs and capacities impose upon thearticulation of new needs and capacities, or to defend aspects ofsuch a dominant structure that accommodate their specific needsand capacities. I argued for an understanding of movementprocesses that start from specific experiences in concrete lifeworlds,and which may proceed towards more encompassing forms ofmovement activity that seek to challenge the social totality as such.Movement processes are animated by praxis through which a fullerunderstanding of social structure and historical process aredeveloped. Finally, I brought this together in a discussion ofmovements from above and below and the dynamics of organiccrisis. I argued for a conception of organic crises as a complex fieldof force where defensive and offensive forms of movement activityflourish as opposing social forces seek to win hegemony over theimminent changes in the social organisation of needs andcapacities.

I conclude by stressing that this is groundwork: much remains tobe done in order to more fully develop the theoretical perspectivesuggested in these notes, and I can only hope that these notes gosome way to provoking the debate and argument necessary for thefuller development of a Marxist theory of social movements,capable of open-ended and constructive engagement with thosesubaltern forces which, at a conjuncture characterised by ever moreaggressive movements from above, seek to become the authors andthe actors of their own drama.

1 See Worth and Kuehling (2004) for a similar and interesting critiqueof the lack of sensitivity to the cultural dimensions of resistance ininternational political economy, with reference to the alter-globalisation movement, in a special issue of Capital & Class onCreative Industries: Production, Consumption and Resistance. Seealso, in the same issue of Capital & Class, Barnard (2004) for an articleon the Situationist International that brings out the importance ofcultural politics in resistance.

2 See Scott (1990), Boggs (1995) and Wilde (1991) for samples. SeeCalhoun (1993: 415) for a sober and appropriate appeal for theavoidance of absolute dichotomies between old and new forms ofpolitical agency in social-movement research.


Notes


3 Touraine (1981: 1). 4 Moore adds an important qualifier: The allies this bourgeois impetus

has found, the enemies it has encountered, vary sharply from case tocase (ibid: xxi). See Hill (1980), Halperin (2004) and Davidson(2005a/b) for instructive discussions of the various problematicsattached to the notion of bourgeois revolution.

5 See Morton (2007a/b) for an extended discussion of passiverevolution as a dynamic in the political economy of capitalism.

6 Cox (1999: 111) developed local rationality as a provisional concept thatidentifies the kind of object that is being sought for: a heuristicconcept that does not already impute a specific cultural form to itssubject.

7 See e.g. the critiques of resistance studies by Abu-Lughod (1990) andOrtner (1995). See also the critiques of the Subaltern Studies projectby Sarkar (1997) and Moore (1998, 2000).

Abu-Lughod, L. (1990) The romance of resistance: Tracingtransformations of power through Bedouin women, AmericanEthnologist, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 4155.

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