Social movements and neoliberalism (original) (raw)
Related papers
On Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism
2015
My intervention this afternoon will attempt to summarize some of the main ideas put forward in We Make Our Own History – a book that it took my good friend and comrade Laurence Cox and myself well over a decade to write. We Make Our own History is intended, above all, to explore the relationship between Marxist theory and social movements, and in particular how this relationship works in the specific historical period that we are calling the twilight of neoliberalism. Or – put slightly differently – I’ll be talking about how we can reclaim Marxism as a theory that can serve activist purposes and knowledge interests in a context where neoliberalism appears to be undergoing a moment of organic crisis.
2013
Three chapters available under "Papers", below. ""Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both fields, discuss the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore the developmental processes and political tensions within movements; set the question in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary movements against neo-liberalism and austerity. Exploring struggles on six continents over 150 years, this collection shows the power of Marxist analysis in relation not only to class politics, labour movements and revolutions but also anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, community activism and environmental justice, indigenous struggles and anti-austerity protest. It sets a new agenda both for Marxist theory and for movement research." Download flyer for 25% discount offer."
Towards a Critical Theory of Social Movements: An Introduction
Why have social movement studies mostly ignored the concept of capitalism as an important factor explaining the rise, the decline, and even the absence of social mobilizations? Our thesis is that the silence of social movement research on capitalism is anything but strange. We contend that social movement studies have arisen and come out from the rejection of Marxist and capitalist explanations of societal transformations, which were relatively popular and relevant in the 1960s and 1970s. The institutionalization of the field of social movement research has been founded on a sort of “epistemological bias” vis-à-vis capitalist (and Marxist) analysis. The time seems ripe to broaden the scope of the analysis of movement studies to the macro-structural perspectives of (critical) political economy. The scarce scholarly attention devoted to the connection between the economic structures of society and the political conditions affecting the emergence of mobilizations has caused the diminished capacity of mainstream social movement research to fully understand the recent wave of protests. For us, the reception of some aspects of political economy may be helpful to grasp the variety and timing of the recent wave of protests, arisen in distinct regions of the world with different temporalities in opposition to the crisis of neoliberal capitalism. How can we interpret and translate these important intuitions for the study of capitalism into social movement research? The main lesson that we can derive from them is that it is not possible to come out with an explanation of the rise, development, and decline of social movements without taking seriously into consideration the dynamics of transformation implied in the never-ending process of capital accumulation.
We make our own history: Marxism and social movements in the twilight of neoliberalism
2014
We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and ordinary people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way. Pursued by global elites since the 1970s, neoliberalism is defined by dispossession and ever-increasing inequality. The refusal to continue to be ruled like this - "ya basta!" - appears in an arc of resistance stretching from rural India to the cities of the global North. From this movement of movements, new visions are emerging of a future beyond neoliberalism. 'We Make Our Own History’ responds to this crisis. The first systematic Marxist analysis of social movements, this book reclaims Marxism as a theory born from activist experience and practice. It shows how movements can develop from local conflicts to global struggles; how neoliberalism operates as a social movement from above, and how popular struggles can create new worlds from below.
Understanding Social Movements: A Marxian Approach
In the world where theories related to physiology and biology is studied to enhance the living of the people to bring hope for better health. On the other side, the theories within the social science discipline bring hope for better social ties and social relations to unveil the social realities. Marxist theory is one such theory which has inspired the people time and again in every aspect of life. 1 Karl Marx's most celebrated book ‗Das capital' has widened the horizon of thinking rationally for both his followers and even for those who never read anything from it. Marxist theory has been a quest for social change and distributive justice. It has been inspirational to reason the systems and the standards of living to study and to fight the oppression and encourage peoples' understanding and the worth of their being. Marxist theory has stemmed from and shaped its aura encircling the characteristics of social movements as such and yet there is dichotomy in its creation that it does not specifically talk about constituent parts of social movement. This paper works towards the nexus of Marxist theory (Marxism) with that of social movements and presents a lucid picture of -Marxist understanding of the social movements‖.