new social movements

New social movements and the diffuse of political aims
Sardar Aziz
University college cork

This paper attempts to answer the question of whether the diffuse nature of political aims of new social movements is strength or weakness. In order to achieve that the article shows the emergence of the new social movements, and the external forces that helped to bring about that situation. The main argument of the essay is; the withering of old style cleavages and replacement by new post-modern style of cleavages is one of the main factors of having such a social movement with a diffuse political aims. This is showing namely in the bankruptcy of Marxism idea.
The postmodernist idea is rather decentralised and chaotic as response of many tragic phenomena that occurred during the twentieth century. The article dwells on postmodernism and its characters on the one hand and on the other hand how that affected the nature of political aims in new social movements.
Beside that the paper refuses to employee the term of new social movement as a generic concept. It attempts to distinguish between right wing social movements and left wing social movement. The specific characters of the both movements and comparing them helps to better understand the phenomena of diffuse of political aims.

The ambiguous nature of political aims of new social movements has many factors. Outlining these factors, at least the most significant ones, might help to shed a light on whether that ambiguity is a strength or weakness. The two main factors are cited for the propos of this essay are: end of Marxism as a relevant idea to the post-industrial world and the emergence of postmodernism.
In the communist manifesto Marx and Engels famously wrote: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. And they continue: “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another”. By looking at the condition of the post industrial at least in western society, one can easily judge that neither the history is so strictly defined nor the individual belongs to those criteria. However, there is no doubt that class was or maybe still is one of the mega cleavages in society, but it is just one among many. Therefore “A spectre [that] is haunting Europe [west]”, is not “the spectre of communism”
In the same book Marx and Engels (1888) stated: “The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms”. This statement had its merit in his time but it seems clear that mature or post bourgeois society has changed the landscape of class and it is not the only cleavages ant more. These changes has root in the for of the states that established especially in post world war two, in the other word the emergence of welfare state and more significantly the phenomena of middle class.
Marxism belonged and has a strong root in what is known as the Enlightenment. Enlightenment according to Kant (1748) “is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”. For Kant in his famous essay ‘what is Enlightenment’, “Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another” (Kant 1748). According to Kant: “This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another” (1748). He continues that “Sapere Aude [dare to know] have courage to use your own understanding that is the motto of enlightenment” (Kant, 1748).
If Enlightenment was a beginning of a long period known as modernity, then in the late or postmodernity those characters that Kant see as essential in some shape and figures are fulfilled. These can be seen in the emergence of the phenomena of individuality, democracy and many other significant phenomena. Modernity was the world of optimism toward human capabilities, toward better future, continues progress, toward the ability of the knower and the integrity of the known.
However, both the Enlightenment and the Modernity were revolution against the dominant of the divine discourse i.e. religion but at the end they tend to mimic their enemy. The modernity seems suffered what Friedrich Nietzsche alarmed other in his Beyond Good and Evil, he states: “whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster” (1911, 146). Ergo the discourse of modernity was manifested in an overall narrative that makes sense of everything. The modernity became another religious type metanarrative.
As religion the metanarrative was not regarded as just a story, but it demonstrated itself as the truth. The result was that it legitimated some knowledge, beliefs, and practices, and marginalizes others. Modernity was characterised and associated with rationality or a religious trust in human reason. This led to many horrific consequence, a “totalitarian temptations”, as Bauman (1997, 39) argues was “endemic in modernity”.
These conditions and many others like colonialism, wars, nature of economy and government, bureaucracy, nature of power all together in the one hand led to a sense of alienation and lack of freedom and identity crisis, on the other hand the universalisation of education and the progress of technology created an atmosphere more and more people wanted possessed knowledge about the situation and willingness to fight or demonstrate for it. Combination of all these led to the famous 1960s revolution. The 1960s led to a paradigm shifts in politics, in society, in identity forming, and all these led to the emergence of postmodernity. Postmodernity as Jean-Francois Lyotard defined it is, “incredulity toward metanarratives” (Lyotard, 1984). By this Lyotard meant that the postmodern condition is characterized by an increasingly widespread skepticism toward metanarratives, such as the unique status of the individual, the bounded-ness of information, and the march of progress, that are thought to have given order and meaning to Western thought during modernity.
In this paradigm shift many new social movements were born. Before indulge and make nay generalization one has to categories, however, crudely, the territory of social movements. Social movements are not only left style organisation (using the word loosely). There are numerous types of right wing social movements. The right wing types of social movements are less studied for an obvious reason, which the social science was born in 1960s and since then was dominated by left style of politics. The right wing types of new social movements are differing in their organisation and aims and the relation among its members.
As they belong to the conservative terrain of politics; they are more pro order and more organised. Their members are following their leader and tend to be more docile and less or not revolutionary at all. These new social movements are not suffering from diffuse of their political aims they are rather crystal clear about it. These movements are common among all religious societies; whether it is Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or even other non divine religions.They are all equally concerns about relatively similar issues. Issues of sexuality and reproduction, opposition to same-sex marriage laws and to other measures to extend benefits patterned on civil rights to homosexuals. These groups of social movements they focus on the family and traditional values, an emphasis on the value of the nuclear family in raising children. These groups are highly organised, hierarchical, with clear goal and political aims. Their cohesiveness and clarity about their political aims linked to their personal and general life perspective. They are less democratic, more docile. A comparison between the two right social movements and left social movements might shed a light on the nature of diffuse among left groups. Worth saying not every left is decentralised, orthodox Marxist are more militant than right wing social groups.
The parts of social movements which their political aims are diffuse are post-modern new social movements. “The membership among these groups does not follow traditional class line but rather falls into two categories: those who are paying the cost of modernisation and have been marginalised by the development of the welfare state and the middle class” (Paul D’Anieri et al. 1990: 447).
The issues that covered by these groups are often based on particular characteristic such as gender, race, or ethnicity. The old type of cleavages did not appeal to these groups they are more concern about universal, non-partisan issues such as; ecology, peace, etc. Because these issues are not burning issue for the individual the members tend to be easy and relaxed and not involve much in the group. For the same reason these group tend to be highly democratic and chaos in nature. They go beyond making ideology explicit. Postmodernism has not theorized agency; it has no strategies of real resistance. It cannot. This is the price to pay for that incredulity toward metanarrative.
For explanation the strength and weakness of the nature of diffuse political aims, the article examines the Anti [Iraq] war movements. According to Tariq Ali (2003)
On 15 February 2003, over eight million people marched on the streets of five continents against a war that had not yet begun. This first truly global mobilization—unprecedented in size, scope or scale—sought to head off the occupation of Iraq being plotted in the Pentagon. The turnout in Western Europe broke all records: three million in Rome, two million in Spain, a million and a half in London, half a million in Berlin, over a hundred thousand in Paris, Brussels and Athens. In Istanbul, where the local authorities vetoed a protest march in the name of ‘national security’, the peace movement called a press conference to denounce the ban—to which ten thousand ‘journalists’ turned up. In the United States there were mass demonstrations in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and LA and smaller assemblies in virtually every state capital: over a million people in all. Another half a million marched in Canada. The antipodean wing of the movement assembled 500,000 in Sydney and 250,000 in Melbourne.

One can argue one of the reasons that that big number of people marched together, when they were from various different groups, were the diffuse of their political aims. Because their political aims were not framed and they mostly came to oppose war from an ethical principle they found it relatively easy to set aside their differences and participate together. Groups like: “Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Socialist Workers Party, the anarchists as permanent antiwar movements. There were also nuns, toddlers, barristers, the George Orwell Society. Archaeologists Against War. Walthamstow Catholic Church, the Swaffham Women's Choir and Notts County Supporters Say Make Love Not War” (Cohn, Observer: 2007) rallied together.
Despite the strength the diffuse nature of political aim can be weakness for social movements. When the aim is not clear the action or participating in action or organising an activity is rather difficult. The movements with diffuse political aim find it hard to achieve any goal. However this phenomenon can not be avoided because of the nature of the post-modern society. As the article showed this situation it is a result of complex intertwined among many forces; like economy, politics, technology, etc.


Bibliography:
Ali,T. (2003). Re-Colonizing Iraq. New Left Review 21-May-June 2003 http://newleftreview.org/A2447
Bauman, Z. (1997). "The Camps, Western, Eastern, Modern", Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. X111, 1997, p.39;
Cohen, Nick. (2007) “Don't you know your left from your right?” The Observer. Sunday January 21, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1995122,00.html
Kant, I. (1748). What is Enlightenment.
http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/what-is-enlightenment.txt
Lyotard, Jean-François. (1984). The Post modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Marx & Engels, (1888). The Communist Manifesto
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61/61.txt
Nietzsche, F. (1911). Beyond Good and Evilhttp://www.gutenberg.org/files/18267/18267-8.txt
Paul D’Anieri et al. (1990). New Social Movements in Historical Perspective. Comparative Politics, Vol. 22, No. 4. (Jul., 1990)