The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (103 page)

crises? Many postmodernists, reflecting on the contemporary global economy,

contend that hyper-industrialized societies that have moved beyond historicity

can only experience chaos or make adjustments to limited, controlled change.

Clearly, this pessimistic view is shortsighted and ignores the human capacity for reflection and for possessing an historical awareness. I take the view that societal movements emerge in all types of societies, and, in particular, they emerge in

those endowed with historicity ± capable of cognitively, economically, and

morally investing in themselves. For that reason, contemporary neoliberalism,

even on a near global scale, does not preclude societal movements.

Societal Movements and Democracy

One of the reasons why I have analyzed societal movements for such a long time

is that I felt it necessary to radically and intellectually criticize revolutionary actions and ideologies, which, from the Reign of Terror to Leninism, have

always resulted in essentially totalitarian governments or even in fascism. My

central thesis is that we cannot separate the forming of social actors and, therefore, of societal movements from the autonomy of the issues underlying their

actions ± hence from the political mediation that constitute democracy's central, indispensable element. The Subject, societal movements, and democracy are as

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443

inseparable as historical necessity, revolutionary action, and totalitarianism,

which represent their darker side. Societal movements, of whatever sort, bear

them within democratic aspirations. They seek to give a voice to those who have

no voice and bring them into political and economic decision-making. In con-

trast, revolutionary actors dream of cultural, ethnic, political, or social purification, of a unified and transparent society, of creating a new mankind, and of

eradicating whatever counters a unanimity that soon has no other reason for

being than to organize political support for a totalitarian power.

This general conception leads us, as sociologists, to maintain that the presence of a societal movement is linked neither to a revolutionary situation nor to the force of an ideological discourse or line of politics. Rather, it is linked to

the actor's capacity for working out a praxis ± to a commitment to societal

conflict and the defense of societal values, i.e. values that cannot be reduced to interests and, consequently, that cannot lead to the annihilation of one's

opponent. A movement's meaning lies neither in the situation where the move-

ment forms nor in the consciousness that ideologists ascribe to it or impose on it.

The meaning is in its ability to undertake a certain type of action and place social conflict and issues on a certain level. In opposition to an `èconomicist'' tradition often linked to Marxism, I have constantly defended the idea of a societal

movement and a historical actor. In my first study of the working-class move-

ment (Touraine, 1965), I stated that this movement was defending workers'

autonomy. We would be caricaturing the study of the consciousness of social

movements were we to reduce it to its most ideological forms. In effect, the latter often lie the furthest from praxis; and when they do not, the movement has, in

fact, turned into an authoritarian or totalitarian anti-movement. All forms of

absolute ideological mobilization ± the identification of a social actor with God, Reason, History or the Nation ± entail the destruction of societal movements.

The latter are open to conflict, debate, and democracy, whereas ideological

movements risk replacing plurality with unanimity, conflict with homogeneity,

and participation with manipulation. Revolutionary intellectuals and leaders,

demagogues and fundamentalists, are the active agents in the destruction of

social movements. How can this escape our notice at the end of a century

teeming with neo-communitarian movements, the most powerful of which call

for a theocratic society?

Nowadays, given the globalization of the economy, we see arising, on the one

hand, societal movements for minority rights, immigrant rights, and, more

generally, human rights, but we are also witnessing anti-movements, which are

giving birth to sects and cults in democratic lands and to new totalitarian

movements on a national, ethnic, or religious basis. Here I am using a notion

that many commentators ± without giving it much thought ± have avoided

because they wish to ignore the difficulties of comparing the Nazi and commun-

ist systems with contemporary nationalist and religious fundamentalist move-

ments. Is it so hard to admit that each totalitarian system, despite its specific aspects, belongs to a general type? Recourse to à`faith,'' whether Islam, Christianity, or Hinduism, leads to religious warfare, which communism and the

revolutionary Mexican system, despite their violently anti-religious campaigns,

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avoided. Beyond the specific aspects of each totalitarian system, all of them share one characteristic, namely an absolute political power that speaks in the name of a people (a particular historical, national, or cultural group) and an assertion of absolute superiority (as being representative of a reality above politics and the economy). A totalitarian system is always popular, national, and doctrinaire. It subordinates social practices to a power that claims to incarnate the idea that a people represent and defends a faith, race, class, history, or territory.

Obviously, totalitarianism destroys democracy, but it also annihilates social,

cultural, and historical movements and actors. It reduces historicity by using

economic or cultural resources for constructing a closed mythical identity, itself reduced in practice to the justification of an absolute power. The idea of a people has always been a disguise for an absolutist state. It is no accident that the

totalitarian, then authoritarian, governments in the communist countries

dependent on the Soviet Union chose to call themselves ``people's republics.''

Totalitarianism is the central problem of the twentieth century. In like manner, when political activists reject elections or bring excessive moral or material

pressure to bear on those who do not share their point of view, they destroy

the social movement for which they claim to be speaking. They act like dema-

gogues (or Red Guards) rather than like the vanguard leading a class, nation or

socioeconomic category. In short, a societal movement is praxis and not just a

consciousness, and is fully linked to the affirmation that there is no societal

movement without democracy, and vice versa.

Social Movements in a Non-democratic Situation

Situation

An objection immediately comes to mind. Does this vision not focus solely on

developed lands, where modernization is self-sustaining? Does it not overlook

situations where democracy does not exist, because of the arbitrary power

imposed by a national or foreign state or an oligarchy interested in speculation and social power more than in economic rationality? This is such an important

objection that the answers to it serve to guide the analysis of social movements.

It calls for two complementary answers.

The first answer is that there can be no development without popular societal

movements and democracy. Development results from combining three major

factors: the abundance and quality of investment; the distribution of the fruits of growth; and public consciousness of the political unit. In effect, nation and

modernization cannot be separated, since a developed economy is a dense,

coherent, convergent network of exchanges, transactions, and interactions

among all societal sectors. More simply, development supposes a ruling elite

accumulating resources and making long-term decisions; but it also requires

redistributive and leveling forces, universal participation in the process of modernization, and the reduction of social and cultural privileges. These forces, born out of popular mobilization, have recourse to political institutions. Instead of saying, as many do, that development is a condition for democracy, I contend

that democracy is a condition for development. The inability of the Soviet Union The Subject and Societal Movements

445

to really develop and its increasing paralysis provided evidence in support of

this. But is the fast growth of China and of other lands in Asia, or elsewhere, not counter-evidence? We must answer no. In China, we observe the breakup of a

totalitarian system and, in the coastal provinces, the rapid growth of a market

economy under the leadership of decision-making centers located abroad. This

breakup has positive effects, especially coming as it does after the Cultural

Revolution's destructive violence. But if social movements do not form, if

democracy is not born, the historical process under way in China will disinteg-

rate into a new authoritarianism or else into chaos. The Soviet Union's former

satellites and former Yugoslavia, too, are looking for a way between democratic

development and regression into authoritarianism. Such regression has had

tragic consequences in Serbia and has negatively affected Romania and several

other ex-Soviet countries. Meanwhile, the communists' comeback in Poland,

Hungary, Bulgaria, and Lithuania, and their success in elections in Russia and

elsewhere, cannot ± at present ± be interpreted as a defeat for democracy and

modernization.

Self-sustaining growth is a worthy objective, but this conception must be

broadened to take into account other factors. When the dominant mode of

development is of a domestic sort, there is a risk that authoritarian agencies

will attempt to control the people or reduce them to mere resources. And when

the dominant mode of development is of a market sort, social movements

inevitably disintegrate into a multitude of pressure groups whose demands

make social inequality worse. Can social movements exist in non-democratic

situations? Let us push these questions even further. Are there democratic

elements, hence movements, whose actions tend toward a despotic or market

model instead of a democratic one?

This second answer takes us back to the analysis of the Subject, which can

assert itself only through struggling against both the marketplace and commodi-

fied community. This means that the Subject arises as a form of opposition and

liberation within the world of the marketplace and within the universe of the

community. Indeed, societal movements, like the Subject itself, arise within a

mode of development or even in forms of social power.

The major historical case is that of collective movements in authoritarian

societies ruled by a despotic power, a national oligarchy, or a foreign colonial power. In this case, movements are forced to combine the defense of the

oppressed and the demands for democracy with a revolutionary action for

destroying the powers that be. Even in democratic lands, the working-class

movement has always borne its share of violence in reaction to the violence of

employers or governments. The strategy of a collective movement and of its

leaders consists in combining actions for breaking with the existing order with

democratic actions ± thè`logic'' of the struggle against the powers that be with actions for defending freedom and, thus, political consciousness. This combination often fails. For instance, the labor movement has sometimes been an

instrument, lacking autonomy, in the service of a new political power; and,

sometimes, it has only defended relatively privileged socioeconomic categories.

But these failures, however many times they have happened, must not keep us

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from realizing that a cultural, historical, or societal movement was present,

despite the non-democratic outcome. True, the Algerian national movement

has led to a military dictatorship that quells popular opposition. Nonetheless,

it was an anti-colonial movement for national liberation. Nor does the horror of the Reign of Terror detract from the events of June 1789 that introduced

democracy in France. A movement is never purely democratic, nor does a

revolution ever entirely lack democratic contents.

Despair or Hope?

We would weaken the idea of a societal movement were we to reduce it to

naming a particular ± more ideal than real ± type of collective action. It is a

concept or theoretical formulation. The idea of a societal movement (and, more

broadly, of a social movement) forces us to give up the too easy quests of

conservative thought, which looks for factors of integration, and of revolution-

ary thought, which denounces a system of domination as incapable of being

either restrained or reformed.

This idea also protects us against the fragmentation that menaces collective

action and, indeed, all aspects of social life. On the one hand, social movements seem to be less focused on being interest groups currently than on efforts for

defending social integration from ``social fractures'' and ruptures of social bonds.

The theme of exclusion, which has replaced exploitation, contains this idea. On

the other hand, `ìdentity movements'' are abounding, in the United States where

women, homosexuals, African Americans, and ethnic or national communities

are asserting cultural autonomy while also fighting against discrimination, but