POST-MATERIALIST YOUTH TRYING TO REDISCOVER THE SIGNIFICANT’
(Home-made sign from the TUC ‘March For The Alternative‘ 26th March, 2011)
In 1968, social scientists and politicians alike lamented the ‘end of ideology’, and a declining public interest in politics. Likewise at the end of the 20th century, immediately before the rise of the anti-globalisation movement and its ‘coming out’ party in the streets of Seattle in 1999, pundits focused on the institutionalisation of previous social movements into bureaucratised organisations and the ‘anti-political’ stance of a new generation that was supposedly without precedent. Society, coming out of periods of relative quiet, rarely sees the next wave of contentious ‘collective action’ on the horizon.
Genuine social movements interject energy into an environment charaterised by political inertia. The streets become vibrant only when we know that institutional politics is failing us. The present moment and the events we have witnessed during the course of the last twelve months are no different.
Protest movements have historically varied in dimension and duration. Yet there are a few common characteristics that unite rather than divide them. As Sidney Tarrow wrote, protests frequently coincide with “a phase of heightened conflict and contention across the social system that includes… a quickened pace of change in the forms of protest; a combination of organised and unorganised participation; and sequences of intensified interactions between challengers and authorities which can end in reform, repression and sometimes revolution.”
All that one can establish at the outset of any new ‘cycle’ is that what seemed established is once again in motion. According to one activist collective, “…social movements come into being by creating problems; or perhaps we could say, movements form as they make specific issues into problems that must be addressed.”
The occupy movement can be seen in this light as well. Those who complain about the lack of concrete demands or deem the movement irrelevant because “it lacks focus” fail to understand that this is precisely the nature of protest movements in their early stages. Contemporary public debate has lost its grasp of real grassroots movements.
Social movements are no lobby groups, they do not issue writs on the nuances of public policy or acclaim cardinal bulls about how to revivify economic growth. They are not think tanks or political parties. They are none of these things. Instead, social movements transform specific issues – unemployment, underemployment, privatisation of public services and space, high energy prices, high inflation, over-priced public transport, a feral 1 percent of financiers and politicians, tuition fees, the surveillance state, a supremely undemocratic political and electoral apparatus, low pay – into problems that must be addressed by institutional actors.
We must raise issues, and we must raise our voices. Problems of immediate pertinence to our everyday lives and material needs must be articulated. Amid political and economic stagnation, we must articulate shared public problems that demand to be addressed.
The rectification of current problems will take time. That is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the formulation of demands offers a rare glimpse into the inner working of democracy. As Manuel Castells writes, “political democracy, as conceived by the liberal revolutions of the eighteenth century, and as diffused throughout the world in the twentieth century, has become an empty shell.” According to Castells, “the new institutional, cultural, and technological conditions of democratic exercise have made the existing party system, and the current regime of competitive politics, obsolete as adequate mechanisms of political representation in the network society.”
Today, we have realized the shortcomings of the current system. And in our collective memory, we know the importance of preventing “tyrants from occupying the vanishing space of democratic politics. Citizens are still citizens but they are uncertain of which city, and of whose city.”
The uncertainty is perhaps beginning to fade. Things are in movement and times indeed are changing. We have reached a historical watershed moment. From Athens and New York to Cairo, London and Oakland, problems are being articulated. We have started a discussion that has been long overdue. And this is only the beginning. Indeed: We live in interesting times.
By Aaron John Peters
