Rethinking Social Movements

Abstract

The article discusses the significance of social movements. The limits of Marxism, once considered to be the theory of the social movement of modernity, the workers' movement, have been pointed out by many. For the critic concerned with defending the achievements of political liberalism, there might be an inverse relation between social movements and democracy. The substantive claims of the movements are deemed incompatible with universalism and formal democracy. To many critics of modernity who seek to defend family, tradition, authority and religion as the sole sources of ethical interaction, the new movements might appear as one more example of the dangers of unbridled individualism, narcissism, and voluntarism. It seems reasonable to suggest that social movements have a role in reinterpreting norms and creating new meanings, solidarities and traditions. The telos of movements is not simply the defense of strengthening of informal, familial or small-scale private networks of autonomous social relations. Rather, their most important democratic potential is the creation of new public spaces, of additional democratic forms, and the restructuring or revitalization of old ones. Even if social movements are to be self-limiting, that is, non- revolutionary, then they can nevertheless take on an offensive role and confront the economic and political systems by raising the issue of institutional reform.