»Uusien yhteiskunnallisten liikkeiden» yhteiskunnallinen perusta ja näköalat

Författare

• Joachim Hirsch
• Roland Roth

Abstract

The article aims at analyzing the nature and significance of the »new social movements» (NSMs), especially as they function in the Federal Republic of Germany. The »classical» marxist doctrine, that the bourgeois society by the power of its own nature creates a revolutionary subject and socialist forces of production, is being critically assessed. The structural changes taking place in the present capitalist society, however, induce socialrevolutionary processes and movements, like the NSMs. They are not accidental phenomena but a permanent reaction against the present »fordistic» form of reproduction of capital. — Through their action to change concretely and radically the living conditions and social relations inside the present society, the NSMs acquire certain specific characteristics. They are firstly; point-by-point-wise, heterogenic and decentralized, secondly; thematically wide, thirdly; open and spontaneous, and lastly; they have heterogenic social basis. These multifarious and complex characteristics signify certain problems the NSMs face: they are in a pecualiar way ambivalent and contradictory. On one hand the NSMs oscillate between radical anticapitalism and reformism, between a tendency to form a counterculture (even a »subcultural ghetto») and a tendency to formalize etc., but, on the other hand, these ambivalences are productive as they break down »statebourgeois authoritarianism», so common to all parties, as well as abstract antietatism. The fordistic form of social reproduction compels the adoption of unconventional forms of political praxis. — The NSMs have generated conflicts and new forms of political mobilization, that the intellectual left was unable to anticipate. The result has been the well-known uncertainty in social analysis. This development only emphasizes the importance of NSMs for the intellectual left as a real and theoretical praxis.