The New-New Social Activist Movements

The New-New Social Activist Movements

Raúl Zibechi

La Jornada, January 10^th, 2014

In her classic and monumental book that takes a state-centric approach, Theda Skocpol analyzes the three major revolutions (French, Russian and Chinese), their disintegration and post-revolutionary reconstruction. In “States and Social Revolutions” (Los estados y las revoluciones sociales, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1984), Skocpol puts under the microscope how revolutionary processes affected and modified institutions. For those of us steeped in Marx, she arrives at uncomfortable conclusions.

After a thorough comparison of the three [revolutionary] processes, she concludes that the state has been central in all, but that state changes cannot be explained in terms of class conflict. She points out the States’ “autonomous power,” which although not reducible to any of the social classes, is not neutral to them either.

The relevant aspect of her analysis rests in three conclusions distilled at the end of the work. The first is that revolutions are not caused by deliberate actions of the avant-garde; in support she cites the anti-slavery activist Wendell Phillips: “Revolutions are not made, they come” (p. 41)

The second is that disintegration of the ancien regime states lit the fuse of social conflict that resulted in expropriation of the ruling classes. The emergence of los de abajo [those from below] was crucial for modifying class relationships, preventing the triumph of the counter-revolution and neutralizing liberal stabilizations.

The third is that “in the three revolutions, states emerged more centralized, bureaucratic and autonomously powerful both domestically and internationally” (p. 441). Domestically, “peasants and workers were more directly incorporated into both national policy and State-supported projects.”

The historical analysis is unassailable, realistic and convincing. Another thing is that it turns out being agreeable for those of us who still believe that the State is an oppressive machinery and who aspire–following Marx and Lenin–to its “extinction.”

What the author does not state is that the anti-systemic forces were arranged hierarchically, with a distribution of internal power that was a “carbon copy” of state institutions, and they carried the knowledge from outside the rebellious subjects. Nor does she indicate that states born of revolutions eventually became machinery of domination very similar to those they replaced, to the point that Stalin’s regime could be compared to that of Peter the Great, and the Chinese communist officials to the imperial mandarins.

The latest cycle of struggles in South America seems to confirm Scokpol’s thesis: the states were weakened by neoliberal privatization, which sparked the social conflict that led the government to progressive forces that closed the cycle by strengthening the states. In parallel, the “new” movements completed their historical cycle: born in the final stage of dictatorships, they grew under neoliberalism, became institutionalized and went into slow decline.

However, the movements that played the leading role in this cycle were different from those modeled on traditional [workers] unions that had preceded them. Not everyone submitted to the new ways of governing. Some continue on their own paths, showing that history is not a road outlined by structural logic. Although they couldn’t break completely with the old state-centric political culture, they went farther than previous powerful movements and they left strong footprints that continue to serve as reference points.

In recent years, a new breed of movements is emerging that is different not only from the old ones but also of the “new ones.” On several occasions we have mentioned the Free Pass Movement (MPL) in Brazil, and the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students (ACES) in Chile. Although they are not the only ones, they are perhaps the best known. The movement against mining in Peru can also be included in this current crop as well as the Dignity Popular Movement in Argentina, and others that there is no space to mention here.

Some, such as the MPL, were born a long time ago with innovative features both in their political culture (autonomy, horizontality, federalism, consensus, apolitical nature) and the forms of action they employ. Other changes have been reinvented or re-founded during processes of resistance. The Guardians of the Peruvian Lagunas emerged from the Peasant Patrols, community defence organizations created in the seventies.

Among the “newest” and latest, the new-new, there is a noticeable difference in political culture: they neither reference themselves to the State with which they can hold dialogues and negotiations, nor do they reproduce in their internal organization the hierarchical-patriarchal forms. Peru’s Guardians of the Lakes are inspired by the Andean communities. Chilean students and young Brazilians are inspired by their forms of everyday life in urban neighborhoods, in their sociability and affinity groups, in hip-hop and in the various youth cultures in resistance.

They have neither formed structures of [organizational] apparatus nor do they have permanent leaders enthroned above the collective. These movements that arose after the dictatorships (the new ones arose against authoritarianism) are influenced by two movements that emerged on the continent in recent decades: feminist and indigenous.

They are nourished by their anti-systemic variants: peasant and popular feminists, community and indigenous feminists; they share with a sector of the indigenous movement their vocation for autonomy their aspiration to change the world from outside the State and to create post-state institutions like the Good Government Juntas. They are organized to build a new world, not to embed themselves in [State] institutions. They embody the real possibility that a new political culture might flourish that could work for the changes arising from below.

*Raúl Zibechi, researcher-activist and journalist, was born (1952) in Montevideo, Uruguay. Active in the youth and resistance movement until 1975, he sought exile in Buenos Aires (Argentina); then subsequently spent ten years in Madrid, Spain, associated with the Communist movement doing literacy work with peasants. Since 1986 working as a journalist and researcher-militant, he has toured almost every country in Latin America, with special emphasis on the Andean region. Familiar with many of the movements in the region, he helps to provide training and outreach for Argentine, Paraguayan Bolivian, Peruvian and Colombian peasant farmers and indigenous Mapuche communities. His theoretical work is aimed at understanding and defending the organizational processes of these movements.

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/01/10/index.php?section=politica&article=015a1pol&partner=rss

Translated by Jane Brundage

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