A NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENT?

by Klaus Eder1

Preliminary Definition"New Movements" today embrace a vast array of phenomena but can be

separated into at least two types: (a) communal movements such as the youth,the feminist, and the anti-industrial movements seeking alternative relationsto nature; and (b) various regional or anti-bureaucratic movements (inenergy, housing or psychiatry) and, to a lesser extent, the student movement.The new movements can be best divided into cultural and politicalmovements. Cultural movements oppose present social life. Politicalmovements challenge modern state domination.3

Historically, cultural movements have challenged the process of culturalrationalization by developing anti-rational positions in epistemology, ethics,and aesthetics.4 Truth is seen as attainable not through research, but bymystical insight; 5 the good life is seen as being not the result of rational moraljudgment but of the expression of unrepressed feelings; 6 and the beautiful isseen not as being attained by artistic experience, but by overturningperceptions.7 Countercultures, then, seem to be protests against the overallrationalization of culture and society.8

Political movements seeking political power or decentralization have beenas common as cultural movements. From the viewpoint of Weber's distinctionbetween formal and substantive rationality, these radical political challengesto formal rationality can be described in terms of a material rationality.Accordingly, economic well-being cannot be attained through abstract andegoistic social relations, but by communal forms of exchange.9 The leitmotif

1. This is a shortened version of a paper entitled "New Movements in Historical Perspective,or, What Is New in the New Social Movements?" Parts of it have been presented and discussed inthe course on theories of modernity held at the Inter-University Center in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia,April 1982.

2. The countercultures upon which the cultural movements are based have been analyzed byF. Musgrave, Ecstasy and Holiness. Counterculture and the Open Society (London, 1974), pp.19ff; B. Misra and J. Preston, eds., Community, Self and Identity (The Hague and Paris, 1974),pp. 175ff.

3. Examples of such "populist" protest (in the most general sense) are discussed in C. Tilly, L.Tilly, and R. Tilly, The Rebellious Century 1830-1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1975); H.A.Landsberger, ed., Rural Protest (New York, 1973).

4. See J.M. Yinger, "Countercultures and Social Change," in American Sociological Review,42 (1977), pp. 833-853, esp. pp. 838ff.

5. This mysticism is represented not only in the romantic philosophers at the beginning of the19th century, but also in the Taborites, who protested against the rationalism of PragueUniversity as early as the 15th century.

6. Examples are the English Radicals during the English Revolution. For a good analysis, seeC. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Harmondsworth, 1975).

7. By ultimately basing the justification upon intuition, the potential for "irrationalization"has been enhanced to quite an extent.

8. Roth has analyzed this other side of rationalization in Weberian terms of charismaticorientations. See G. Roth, "Socio-Historical Model and Developmental Theory. CharismaticCommunity, Charisma of Reason, and the Counterculture," in American Sociological Review,40 (1975), pp. 148-157.

9. These ideas of an economic Utopia range from autarchy to communist collectivism. See R.

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of political morality is a kind of concrete political relations or directdemocracy.10 Similarly, political identity is defined by religious, ethnic orother cultural ties rather than citizenship.11

This account of a continual yet fruitless reappearance of political andcultural protest is challenged today by the ecological movement that seems tocrystallize all the aspects of protest into a historically new social movement.This movement is to contemporary political and cultural protest what thelabor movement was to various syndicalist, political, or cultural labor. Theecological movement is a new social movement displacing the institutionallyintegrated labor movement. Whether this self-conception is empiricallyjustified remains to be seen. At any rate, a new self-image of a socialmovement has emerged different from that of the labor movement.

"New" Movements as Neo-Romantic and Neo-Populist ProtestTo designate, countercultures and new radical political protest as

"neo-romantic"12 or "neo-populist"13 implies that these new movements areactually old ones. Romanticism is an anti-rationalist and subjectivistapproach to the social world, while populism is characterized by hostility tothe status quo and anti-intellectualism. These designations can be applied todifferent groups and movements. Those who do so, however, must show thatreactions are essentially the same throughout the development of modernsociety. They adhere to what I would like to call a cyclical explanation ofcollective protest in modernity as against a developmental explanation.

Romantic movements result from the identity crises of those strataobjectively identified with a mode of social development. These movementsare usually apolitical and non-violent and are staffed by members of theruling classes having different types of Utopian visions. In early modernsocieties such movements attracted the new nobility.14 The more radicalvariants of this romantic flight from reality are Utopian movements seeking arepublic of love and affection.15 This romantic backlash against the "age of

Feld, "Beispiele von AnsStzen alternativer Oekonomie," in J. Peters, ed., Die Geschichtealternativer Projekte von 1800-1975 (Berlin, 1980), pp. 7-72; L. Goergens, "Beispielezeitgenossischer Ansatze alternativer Oekonomie in der nordamerikanischen Community-Bewegung," op.cit., pp. 73-158.

10. This idea is often tied to a harmonistic ideal of social relations. See, for example, R.M.Unger, Knowledge and Politics (New York, 1975), who argues for harmony and sympathybetween man as the foundation of an alternative political morality.

11. Religion plays a most important part in the definition of such collective identities. See G.Levy, Religion and Revolution (New York, 1974), for a systematic and historical-comparativeaccount of this phenomenon.

12. For a definition of romantic movements, see H. Brunschwig, SociiU et romantisme enPrusse an XVIIe siecle (Paris, 1973).

13. For a definition of populist movements, see J.B. Allcock, "Populism," in Sociology, V(1971), pp. 371-387; M. Canovan, Populism (London, 1981).

14. This has been nicely described by N. Elias, Die hGfische Gesellschaft (Neuwied, 1969),esp. pp. 336ff, 377ff. The characteristic image of this romanticism is the free life of the shepherd,the idyllic representation of a pre-agricultural life.

15. For an analysis of this kind of Utopia in modern social and political thought, see F.E.Manuel, F.P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, Mass., 1979). Therepublic of love and affection has been developed in the most radical way by the Ranters, one ofthe radical movements during the English Revolution.

A NEW SOCIAL MO VEMENTf 7

reason" tends to occur especially when early modern societies are beingtransformed into liberal capitalist ones. This intellectual countermovement isbased on mystical insight and the wish for the extraordinary. Politically, thismentality is ambivalent.16 Thus, romanticism can guarantee both left andright-wing politics. Romantic movements in 19th-century liberal-capitalisticsocieties were based on a new social group: the BildungsburgertumPMembers of newly educated middle classes were reacting to the newphenomenon of industrialization. Thus, it was a new romanticism, focusingon the effects of technology. Its constructive feature was a "natural" life thatgenerated the idea of a general reform of life. It began with the reaction tomodern scientific medicine by opposing to it a natural medicine related to aholistic conception of the person.18 A second phase in this new romanticprotest against industrialism is characterized by attempts to seek analternative to both capitalism and socialism. Its vision was based on ruralcooperatives allowing for life with fresh air, the sun, and economicautonomy.19 Remnants of old religious beliefs were amalgamated into newreligions and religious feelings became more important than organization.Ultimately, the old religious base was completely displaced by Germanicreligious mythology. Nietzsche and Wagner were central in helping destroyold Christian elements. This religious no-man's-land allowed for theintroduction of scientific theories about racial inequality. This type ofbourgeois middle-class romanticism reached the point of no return with theideas of "Volk, Individuum and Land": a system of thought that easily fedinto the emerging fascist movements.20 After World War II a new rationalismdeveloped against romanticism and its fascist "application." This newrationalism has recently come under attack by "neo-romantic" movements 21

to the extent that they raise all the problems of the old romanticism.22 Thus,recent history can be read as an alternating cycle. The ideas are always thesame: rationalism and anti-rationalism constitute the more modernideological universe of discourse. What supposedly explains their differencesis their application: rationalist or romantic ideas have a function in the 20thcentury United States or Germany that differs from the one they had in 18th-century England or France. Therefore, it is not a matter of new movements,

16. That political romanticism is open for left and right wing politics is shown byBrunschwig, op.cit., p. 292.

17. See K. Vondung, Das iirilhelminische BildungsbiiTgertum. Zur Sozialgeschichte seinerIdem (GOttingen, 1976); W.P. Krabbe, Gesellschaftsvertlnderung dutch Lebensreform.Strukturmerkmale einer soziabeformerischen Bewegung im Deutschland der Industrialisierungs-periode (GOttingen, 1974).

18. Krabbe, op.cit., pp. 78ff.19. Vondung, op. cit., pp. 142ff. This movement implied also the freeing of the body from its

artificial distortions, namely nudism and the struggle against corsets, laced shoes, etc.20. The destruction of validity claims in the philosophy of Nietzsche has been analyzed in J.

Habermas, Nachwort zu Nietzsche, Erkenntnistheorietische Schriften (Frankfurt, 1968), pp.237ff. This destruction allows for a theory of power substituting for the theory of truth.

21. See, for example, J.-M. Greverus, Aufder Suche nach Heimat (Munich, 1979); a criticalanalysis of neo-romantic attitudes is contained in J. Peters, ed.. Die Geschichte altemativerProjekte von 1800-1973 (Berlin, 1980), pp. 327ff.

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but only of different contexts within which rationalism and romanticismconfront each other.

Populism is an attempt either to participate in a given institutionalstructure or to establish a lost institutional context that guarantees theautonomy of the people. The common denominator is therefore not aspecific social base, but a type of reaction and orientation. The term"populism" itself was first coined to describe 19th-century peasant protest inRussia. This was an ideological movement claiming that political revolutionand the moral regeneration of Russian society could only come from the"people" by rejuvenating peasant values: the future was to be constructed inthe image of the past. In this sense, populism vindicated peasant autonomyand self-determination in a changing social context (the commercialtransformation of agriculture).

The advent of industrialization and parliamentarianism changed thecontext for populism. Big entrepreneurs and state officials controlling andregulating industrialization came to threaten various social groups.25 Thesegroups reacted to these threats by attempts to achieve a moral regeneration ofold, cherished values, of the old "American" virtues. The ideologicalorientation of middle-class populism has a strong rationalist component.Within this populist context, the egalitarian dimension of nationalism, i.e.,the idea of being one nation among many others,26 is lost in a particularisticdefense of "universal values." Moreover, this protest generates moral rigidityconcerning social behavior: the world threatened is also that of a moralasceticism related to the "Great Tradition."

In Europe these phenomena were only slightly more complicated.27 Thisprocess threatened those middle classes (Kleinburgertum) bound structurallyto the bourgeois movements for political or economic freedom, for nationalunification and for bourgeois morality against the authoritarian morality ofabsolutism. Industrialization produced the typical ideological conversion ofthe petty bourgeoisie trying to live in an industrialized world that had noplace for it. The most extreme form of this defense was 20th-century fascism.

22. The old topoi of romanticism return in an unaltered form; affectivity, communalism,naturalistic life forms, and mysticism as the dominant mode of thought.

23. For the concept of populism as agrarian protest, see F. Venturi, The Roots of Revolution(London, 1960); H.-J. Puhle, Politische Agrarbewegungen in kapitalistischen Industriegesell-schaften (GOttingen, 1975); M. Holdermeier, "Agrarian Social Protest, Populism, and EconomicDevelopment: Some Problems and Results from Recent Studies," in Social History, 4(1979), pp.319-332. An application of this concept to middle-class politics can be found in C M . Destler,American Radicalism 1865-1901 (New York, 1966).

24. See the article on Populism in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, 1935.25. The central groups are the small farmers in the Midwest in the 19th century and the

small-town bourgeoisie in the 20th century; for the latter phenomenon, see S.M. Lipset, PoliticalMan (New York, 1963), and M. Trow, "Small Businessmen, Political Tolerance, and Support forMcCarthy," American Journal of Sociology, 64 (1958), pp. 270.-281.

26. For a well differentiated view of nationalism, see A.D. Smith, "Ethnocentrism,Nationalism and Social Change," in International Journal of Comparative Sociology, XIII(1972), pp. 1-20.

27. For a systematic account of the differences between movements with a nationalistcomponent, see K. Symmons-Symonolewicz, "Nationalist Movements: An Attempt at aComparative Typology," in Comparative Studies in Society andHistory, VII (1965), pp. 221-230.

A NEW SOCIAL MO VEMENT? 9

The collective behavior of peasant and industrial populism is identical. Itdefends social-structural autonomy against encroachment from above; seeksparticularistic collective identity; demands more participation in existinginstitutions; and generates a reactionary ideology. Today these orientationsemerge again in the movements directed against modern political rationality,e.g., parliamentary, administrative procedures and elections, against theformal rationality of modern political life. Modern regional movements, taxrevolts or Btirgerinittativen28 join the old populist orientations. Challenges tothe modern welfare state or bureaucratic socialism such as demands forparticipation on all institutional levels, from neighborhood, school,workplace to local and regional administration are seen as attempts toreintegrate the people's material interests back into formal-rationalinstitutions. This "neo-populism" is a further backlash against formalrationality in modern politics.

This explanatory model is based on the idea of two cultures: one of formalrationality, always accompanied by its counterculture of material rationality.Depending on the social location of the counter-types, they are eitherreactionary (i.e., carried by political elites) or revolutionary (i.e., carried bythose excluded from power).

This cyclic explanation presupposes a rigid separation of formal andmaterial rationality. The formal aspect is seen as the core of modernity andthe material aspects as its context. Thus a rational bureaucracy is seen drivenby material interests into different directions, always in danger of losing itsconstitutive formal rationality and of dissolving into anarchy. Therefore,populist and countercultural challenges have to be controlled. The coreinstitutional structure has one primary function: to extend its ability tocontrol. In effect, in this explanatory model, movements complement socialcontrol. They inform the system about the social reality to be controlled.They guarantee the adaptability of the institutional system. Thus, movementsare nothing but indicators for modernizing elites. Formal rationality goeshand in hand with a functionalist logic that treats social actors and theirinterests as "problems." But the weakness of this objectivist conception is itsinability to identify historical actors creating society.

Thus, it cuts off the most interesting questions. Whether there is somethingnew in contemporary movements can be answered only by looking at thesemovements as part of a process whereby society is created.29 From thisperspective political and cultural movements are alternative forms of socialintegration. Supporting that, these collective actions are preliminaryattempts to create a new society and clear the way for raising the questionwhether in these collective actions new forms of social integration are beingdeveloped.

28. For the German example, see D. Rucht, Von Wyhl nach Gorleben. Burger gegenAtomprogramm und nukleare Ensorgung (Munich, 1980); O. Rammstedt, ed., Biirgerinitiati-ven in der Gesellschaft (Villingen, 1980).

29. Here a perspective derived from the theoretical work of Touraine is of centralimportance. See A. Touraine, Production de la sociiti (Paris, 1973); A. Touraine, La voix et leregard (Paris, 1978).

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A Developmental Explanation of New MovementsTo answer this question, one has to distinguish several different types of

social protest. Not every kind of protest is a social movement. Only socialprotests that try to lead society from one level of development to another canbe considered social movements. Thus, movements as such are any kind ofsocial protest, including fascist movements. Social movements, however, arethose directly related to modernization from the 17th century on. In thissense, there are only two social movements. The first one appeared during thetransition from traditional domination to the early modern state and involvedprimarily the middle classes but also some plebeian groups.30 The second isthe labor movement, which challenged the restriction of emancipation only topolitical emancipation. Here the main emphasis shifted from politicalemancipation to distributive justice.31 This normative notion of "socialmovements" clearly requires a reconstruction of their relation to modernity.Social movements so understood are genuinely modern phenomena. Only inmodern society have social movements played a constitutive role in socialdevelopment.

In premodern societies, the dynamics of change are the prerogative of thosein power, and are directed by processes of domination.32 In primitivesocieties, social dynamics are even further removed from social practices.Change is largely determined by material conditions such as natural events orpopulation pressures.33 Unlike social protest in premodern societies, whichis institutionally bound, in modern societies social movements are locatedprecisely where change takes place. Thus, for the first time, they can play ahistorical role in the historical creation of society.

What makes this possible is that modernity entails that culturalorientations can be challenged. This is not the case in traditional societies,where disputes occur only on the social level; the cultural system is simplygiven. This pattern changes with modernity, where cultural traditions can bechallenged by means of conflicting values and norms, but the process ofchallenging cultural orientations rather than cultural traditions is what is atstake with modernity.

Both the movement for political emancipation and the labor movementchallenged cultural traditions and provided a normative direction to socialdevelopment. Both sought to redirect social evolution and have created a newsociety, although they have not succeeded in transforming state structures.Thus, it is necessary to ask whether they prefigure a new social movement

30. Implicitly this social movement has been dealt with in B. Moore, Social Origins ofDictatorship and Democracy (New York, 1966). There is no general and comprehensive work onthe early modern social movement.

31. The labor movement has been analyzed in many treatises; but there is none that gives agood systematic treatment of this movement. For a general overview, see W. Kendall, The LaborMovement in Europe (London, 1975).

32. S.N. Eisenstadt, Traditional Patrimonialism and Modem Neopatrimonialism (BeverlyHills, 1973).

33. M. Gluckmann, Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africal (London, 1963); K. Eder, DieEntstehung staatlich organisierter Gesellschaften (Frankfurt, 1976).

34. This is the underlying premise of Touraine's theoretical work.

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trying to rebuild society. Early populist and counter-cultural claims ofmillenarian movements have been Utopian. But the experience of most peoplein welfare-corporatist or socialist-bureaucratic states redefines autonomy,self-determination, and discursive procedures of decision-making. It is thisnew social meaning that allows for the transformation of populist andcounterculture protest into a social movement.

This approach presupposes a specific theory of modernity as a processseeking to fulfill the potentials of its constitutive structures. All historicalphenomena are thus seen as unfulfilled modernity.35 In this regard, newmovements are new only insofar as they bear new hope for the collectiverealization of the predicaments of modernity. Thus, developmental theory ofmodernity is not a theoretical no-man's-land. On the contrary, there havebeen theoretical attempts towards a developmental explanation for changingnormative and cultural orientations. There are first and foremost theoriespostulating changes in modes of social integration from economic problems topsychological ones. Accordingly, the new protest movements tap integrativeproblems located on the motivational level. What is problematic is notpolitical emancipation or economic justice, but subjective individualhappiness and "the good life." In this sense, the "paradigm of the lifeworld" 36 becomes the new movement's focus. But this model still leaves openthe question in what sense this paradigm is a new model of collective action, adevelopmental step in the history of collective action. Whether the newmovements amount to social movements depends on how conceptions ofhappiness and the good life are related to normative ideas about the socialorder and the resources of action available. This perspective thus focuses onthe capacity of actors to translate ideas about the good life into historicalaction.

The task then is to reintroduce historical actors into a theory of socialdevelopment by starting not with the ideological correlates, but with theconstitution of collective action.37 This approach to social movements relieson two things: a reconstruction of the cultural and normative orientations ofmodern social movements; and an analysis of how protesting social groupsorder these elements structurally and thereby constitute collective action.There are three criteria for defining collective action characterizing a socialmovement. A social movement must have a self-image and a clear idea of whoare those against whom it defends a way of life. Furthermore, it is necessary torelate the antagonistic relations between a collective ego and a collective alterto a common field of action, namely the control of the development of asocio-cultural life world.

35. J. Habermas, "Modernity vs. Postmodernity," in Humanities in Review (Cambridge,Mass., 1981).

36. A first version of this explanatory approach can already be found in K. Mannheim,Ideology and Utopia (1936); this has been taken up by R.H. Turner, "The Theme ofContemporary Social Movements," in Britishjoumal of Sociology, 20(1969), pp. 390-405, and J.Habermas, Legitimationsprobleme im Sp/Ukapitalismus (Frankfurt, 1973).

37. On a more abstract level, the relation of the form and the content of collective action is atstake. The approach to be proposed starts with the assumption that it is the structure of collectiveaction that counts.

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Towards a Theory of ModernityWhen cultural traditions can be questioned in terms of action theory,

all components of social action — values, norms, motives and facilities — canbe challenged. The evolutionary potential of modernity is in its opening thepossibility of criticizing the value component of an action system. Thispotential is developed by two theories dealing historically with systems ofsocial action: Smelser's Theory of Collective Behavior and Touraine'sSociologie de VAction.

Smelser accepts straightforwardly the hierarchy of the four functions asParsons has conceptualized it, putting 'values' on top, and 'situationalfaculties' at the bottom of the hierarchy. 'Norms' and 'motives' occupy theintermediate levels. This hierarchy implies some logical relations: changes ontop necesarily involve changes at the bottom, but changes at the bottom donot necessarily involve changes at the top of the hierarchy.

By constructing the system of social action in this manner, Parsons andSmelser have tried to give a general sociological answer to the old Hobbesianproblem. The theory of the structure of action systems is conceived as asolution to the problem of establishing a social order. This theory can beapplied historically (as Smelser himself has shown), but it does not explain theprocess of the definition and redefinition of an action system. It can beapplied to history but it does not explain historicity, the process by which asocial order is being created.

This is the point where Touraine tries to push the Parsonian approach onestep further. Touraine's Marxist heritage lies in the fact that for him, thecultural model, which determines the action system, articulates the materialprocess of reproduction in consumption, distribution, organization ofproduction, and production as a cultural activity. Leaving aside aconsumption-oriented cultural model, the cultural orientation of distributiongives rise to a society characterized by struggles over state power. A culturalorientation based on the organization of production gives rise to differentsocial struggles. Society is to be created on the basis of control over the forcesof production. The cultural orientation of the activity of production againchanges the action system. Instead, the telos of production is to be struggledover. The power to define what should be produced constitutes a new field ofhistorical action.

This is the basis of Touraine's distinction between different types ofsocieties, each representing different types of systems of historical action.Besides pre-modern subsistence societies, this account differentiates betweencommercial, industrial, and post-industrial societies. Commercial societiesfocus on the problem of distribution, industrial societies on the mobilizationof the forces of production, and post-industrial societies on the culturaldirection of social development.

Both Smelser's functionalist and Touraine's historicist account cannoteffectively deal with historical time. Whereas Smelser can only introduce time

38. N.J. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (New York, 1962); A. Touraine, op.cit.

A NEW SOCIAL MO VEMENTf 13

at a descriptive level, Touraine does so by means of a hierarchy of economicfunctions with production on top and consumption at the bottom. But thisbegs the question: how is the hierarchy of economic functions constituted? Isit a social universal? Touraine, however, is afraid to cross the barriers raisedby his arguments against an evolutionary interpretation. But his approachimplies an evolutionary logic of social development: the articulation ofproduction as a cultural activity on the level of cultural historical action. Inthis context, cultural models based on organization, distribution orconsumption appear as less evolved forms of systems for historical action.When the organization of production defines the cultural model for socialaction, questions concerning "use value" become subordinate. The same istrue for the other types of historical action.

What is this implicit evolutionary logic? 39 If modernity is characterized byits having all of its composing elements open to challenge, then theirhistorical meaning can be established in terms of the outcome of collectivediscourse.40 Consequently, changes in systems of historical action areregulated by changes in the universe of discourse, and these changinguniverses of discourse form a logical sequence. Of course, cultural models donot organize social relations, but a life world, which subsequently generatesconceptions of the relation of man to nature. The conception of work is aspecial case of this evolutionary process.

Aside from peasant society, where work is seen as interaction with nature,there are three structurally different41 cultural models based on an organic, amechanical, and a cybernetic relation of man to nature. In the first case, mancreates nature by transforming it through knowledge and organicallyadapting to it (e.g., the artisan world of the Renaissance); in the second case,nature is exploited by man instrumentally (industrialization since the end ofthe 18th century); and in the third case, there is a realization of the limits ofhuman and outer nature leading to the search for a reflexive form of relationsbetween the two.

These cultural models correspond to normative orders that regulate socialrelations and endow them with a moral quality. Changes in normative ordersare changes in the moral construction of such orders. They are the result ofmoral evolution, and the stages of such a moral evolution constitute differentconcepts of a just moral order. Again, neglecting the case of peasant society,types of a just moral order can be distinguished in modernity: moral ordersbased on the functional differentiation of professional roles; on possessiveindividualism; and on collective efforts to create justice and happiness for all.In the first case, rationality is based on the king's sovereignty as the unity ofparticular social orders; in the second, on the principle of negative liberties;

39. The term "logic" is used here in the weak sense of a developmental sequence of stages; fora use of this concept relevant to the purpose of this paper, see L. Kohlberg, The Philosophy ofMoral Development (San Francisco, 1981).

40. These claims presuppose Habermas' theory of practical discourse. For a sociologicalapplication, see J. Habermas, Zur Rekonstruktion des historischen Materialismus (Frankfurt,1976).

41. Here I follow primarily S. Moscovici, L'Histoire humaine de la nature (Paris, 1968).

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and in the third, on the principle of discursive dispute settlement.These two sequences constitute an evolutionary theory of modernity. In

Piaget's terms, the logic underlying these stage sequences is based on theassimilation of new experiences into the schemata of man, nature and society.It explains development as an attempt to integrate practical experiences,thereby complicating cognitive maps of the world and society. "Complexity,"however, is an empty category. It implies the ability to handle effectivelydifferent and sometimes conflicting information about reality. But this is stilltoo weak to provide a justification. Restructurations of reality must also claimgeneral validity for only by doing so can they fulfill the requirement ofcultural modernity: to be open to challenge. The logic underlying differentcultural models is a function of the restructuring of validity claims under thepressure of practical experiences. The starting point for such restructuringhas been the model of an order of things which can be rationally uncoveredand assimilated. This is the secular model of the world that freed activityfrom religious bonds, thereby allowing for a primitive capitalist mentality andthus primitive economic accumulation. The new phenomenon of man asmaximizer of wealth and of a nature to be exploited had to be assimilated intoa model of the world different from the organic order: it had beenassimilated into a productivist account of reality where everything is possible,and the goal is the development of the forces of production which compriseboth man and nature. Today the new experiences to be assimilated have to dowith the limits of growth of inner as well as outer nature.42 This is the task forcultural movements, and the intellectuals connected with them, but also fornew modernizing elites and neo-conservative intellectuals associated withthem.

Reflexivity comes increasingly into play. First, man and nature are seen aspart of an objective order; then, man and nature are taken as thingsoperating according to their own laws: they become objects of knowledgewithin the context of scientific control. Having become objects is crucial for anew reflexive step: to make objects of discourse into their subjects. This is thethird step leading to a structurally different model of reality.

This logic of evolution of cultural modernity also applies to social relations.The new moral order of early modern Europe does not lessen but increasesocial and political domination. This experience, prominent during theperiod of so-called "enlightened absolutism," conflicts with the vision of afunctionally differentiated social order held together by an enlightenedauthority. The intellectual assimilation of this experience led, sometimes byway of revolution, to a liberal social order with no pre-given privileges and anatural distribution of liberties. Still, it is only one liberty for everybody: todo what one wants as long as that of everyone else is not endangered. Here,

42. Sahlins stresses this point in his critique of the Marxian conception of praxis: practicalreason "takes as the distinctive quality of man not that he must live in a material world, circum-stances he shares with all organisms, but that he does so according to a meaningful schema of hisown devising in which capacity mankind is unique." M. Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason(New York, 1972), p . viii.

ANEW SOCIAL MO VEMENTr 15

everyone becomes his own sovereign, and only slight empirical differences arerelevant to creating social orderings. Attempts to institutionalize theseorderings, however, have produced considerable problems. Even attempts tocorrect this through welfare politics or socialist transformation have not beensuccessful. Today the task is to construct a moral order able to generate "ajust and good life."

The logic underlying these changes is characterized by the growth ofdiscursive ways of handling conflicts and thereby guaranteeing individualautonomy. The first step was to bind the prince as the supreme judge tonatural law; the second step was to bind everyone to the rule of law; a furtherstep should establish nothing but procedures for handling conflicts. Thesechanges may overcome the authoritarian form of non-procedural law withrespect to conflicting parties.

A Theory of Social MovementsHaving described the different structures of systems of collective action in

modernity, it is now necessary to explain how they are embodied in socialmovements. The two already discussed theories have laid the ground fordealing with social action on the collective level. Smelser's Theory ofCollective Action distinguishes different types of collective behavior. Thehighest form of collective action is embodied in value-oriented movementsthat try to "restore, modify or create values in the name of generalized belief.Such a belief necessarily involves all components of action, that is, it envisionsa reconstitution of values, a redefinition of norms, a reorganization of themotivation of individuals and a redefinition of situational facilities."43

Value-oriented movements thus challenge the entire action system.Touraine's account is very similar: a social struggle generates a socialmovement when it tries to direct social development, thus defining the centralorganizing aspect of a system of historical action. Both theories diverge inexplaining social movements. Smelser accounts for social movements througha "value-oriented theory," and lists the following variables: adaptability,social structures, structural s_train, growth and spread of generalized belief,precipitating factors, mobilization of participants for action, and socialcontrol. These variables account for the emergence of a social movement onlyin the previously logical order. Collective behavior is a reaction to structuralstrains resulting in a generalized belief subject to external variables whichcontrol its emergence as collective action.

The central problem of this theory is the behavioral perspective: collectiveaction is not creative activity, but behavior determined by externalconditions. Nothing within a social movement can explain why somereactions take place rather than others. There is no connection between beliefand action other than an empirical one outside collective behavior.

Touraine's concept of social movement provides an alternative to this. Heconsiders collective behavior as the activity of a collective actor governed by

43. Smelser, op.cit., p. 313.44. Op.cit., pp. 15ff.

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its own laws. As in the case of individuality, a social movement is defined by acollective identity, an antagonistic relation to an opposed group, and acommon field of action. The only difference is that the actor is displaced bythe social movement as a collective actor. This allows for a solution toSmelser's problem. Here the constitution of a social movement as a collectiveactor can be analyzed as the integration of the three above-mentioneddimensions. Similarly, the constitution of a collective actor implies aparticular kind of collective action which Touraine considers historical. Thefundamental difference between both theories is in that Smelser looks at thesocial system producing collective action, while Touraine looks at collectiveaction producing society. To the extent that Smelser's approach does not dealwith historical action but remains restricted to "reactive violence," it cannotexplain the rise and fall of modern social movements. In this sense,Touraine's approach is much more adequate.

Social movements move society by providing an alternative cultural model,and a moral order to institutionalize it, in that sequence. A case in point is theclash between the old labor movement in its trade unionist form and the newecological movements. This is the clash between a productivist and anecological model of development. Furthermore, this new cultural model is notadvocated only by social movements but also by modernizing elites. This ismanifest in the conflict between old and new technocrats — the firstconcerned with growth and the second with ecological problems. Even withinsuch a common orientation between the new ecological movements and thenew technocrats, there is divergence concerning the way to reach the goal orthe social relations to direct social development after the institutionalizationof a new cultural model. Social movements thus take the form of anopposition defined by principled moral standard.

Thus, in the 19th century, two classes competed to direct industrialization.Capitalist entrepreneurs were the modernizers who regard the outcome ofmarket relations as just. Workers were tied to the same model, but regardedthe capitalist path as unjust. Consequently, they developed a socialistalternative to the capitalist model. Both classes referred to the same industrialsociety. The social models within which their antagonism took place were notdifferent evolutionary stages, but diverging evolutionary paths. Conflictingmoral orderings emerged independently of a stage sequence, but as part of anantagonistic interpretation of the normative ordering of society. The commonground in the moral dimension is the individualistic concept of manunderlying different images of social relations.

The introduction of the moral variable adds a second criterion to definesocial movements (the first was relation to a cultural model); a socialmovement is a collective action trying to defend intrinsic normative standardsagainst their strategic-utilitarian instrumentalization by modernizing elites.Each stage of modernity has its specific social movement and its specificdominant elite (social classes). Antagonistic interpretations of a moral orderconstitute class antagonisms.

ANEW SOCIAL MO VEMENTt 17

The learning processes normatively constituting a social movement can beclarified through historical examples of social movements during earlymodern society, industrial society, and the emerging new society. The keyproblem for the early modern state was the organization of a new mode ofdevelopment characterized by a stratified town economy 4S and a bourgeoislifestyle. In order to direct this new mode of development, it was necessary toinfluence the social distribution of rights that defined access to land as well asto political titles. The modernizers of early modern Europe were the princesand the urban patricians trying to direct this 'legalization' of society.46 Theopposing movement was constituted by plebeians who challenged theabsolutist state or the patricians.47 This can be seen with the Puritans inEngland, the Jacobins in France, the radical democrats in 19th-centuryGermany, in the Jeffersonians and Madisonians in the United States. Bothmodernizing absolutist princes and democratic movements defined a newsystem of historical action and marked the beginning of the history ofmodernity.

A new mode of development based on a new social goal and a new moralorder became dominant with industrialization, the social goal was themaximization of the forces of production. This was tied to another type ofsocial order not connected with the distribution of rights but with the socialorganization of production. What was at stake was not the political but theeconomic order as a moral order.

The modernizing elites behind this new social order were capitalistentrepreneurs and state functionaries. They propagated the new mode ofdevelopment based on the industrial development of the forces of productionand the market economy. This economic system was structurallycompatible with the new social goal: everyone takes as much as one can.Questions of justice were reduced to questions of maximizing wealth. Thelabor movement emerged in reaction to this. It sought a different way ofdeveloping the productive forces, defined by an alternative economicorganization more just than that of capitalist modernizers. This movementcontained the radical-democratic features of its historical predecessor andadded the vision of a just organization of work in a democratic society.

Today the mode of development seems to be changing again. 49 Thedevelopment of industrial productive forces no longer generates antagonisticsocial relations. Rather, the development of applied science and informationtechnologies provides new potentials. This is not just a "third industrialrevolution." It is a new cultural orientation articulated in a new type of social

45. This model has been extensively analyzed by R. Mousnier, Les institutions de la Francesous la Monarchic absolue, Vol. I and II (Paris, 1974 and 1975), using the French example.

46. G. Poggi, The Development of the Modem State (Stanford, 1978).47. R. Bendix, Kings or People. Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley, 1978).48. K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York, 1943).49. There are many attempts to conceptualize this transformation as to the emergence of

post-industrial society, programmed society, and so on. An interesting concept is offered by L.C.Bresser Pereiera, "Notes d'introduction au mode de production technobureaucratique," inL'Homme et la sociiti, 55-58 (1980), pp. 61-90.

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antagonism between technocratic modernizes and the clients ofbureaucracies.50 This state of affairs redefines the principles of social organi-zation. It implies a model of society grounded in a new normative concept.There is no extra-social reference as was the case in the political model (amoral order based on a legal order) or in the economic model (moral orderbased on negative liberties). The grounds of the moral order are nowcollective needs and wants. A new social movement emerges if it has a newway of developing society and tries to direct it in the above sense. Thus, itwould be opposed to those who try to administer needs and wants, whiledefending free speech.

Based on this theoretical consideration, the new movement emerging todaycan be seen as the successor of the old movement tied to an earlier society. It ischaracterized by a cultural orientation of social development based on a newconception of nature and man, seen not from a productivist perspective but interms of the good life made possible by nature and wanted by man; by a newtype of antagonistic social relation between technocracy and its clients; andby a new collective identity that cuts across traditional lines and is ultimatelybased on the equal consideration of every particularity.

"New" Social MovementsDo the scattered social protests constitute a new social movement trying to

create a post-industrial society? Are "new movements" part of a system ofhistorical action within which a new type of society is to be constructed? Ifthey are not part of it, how can they be brought into a social movement tryingto control new cultural and social models of social development? Do these newmovements constitute a "social movement" in the normative sense? How dothey deviate from this normative concept of collective identity? Do theydeviate from this normative concept of collective identity? Do they know whoit is they oppose or the cultural and social models they advocate?

Against the claim that counterculture and radical political movements area normal collective deviance, nothing more than neo-romantic andneo-populist protest, the counterculture and radical political movementsshould be seen as distorted manifestations of a new social movement. Whatconstitutes these 'distortions'? Counterculture movements have a collectiveidentity, but no social relation to an opposing collective actor, so that theirnormative orientation to social action becomes Utopian. Radical politicalmovements are aware of an antagonistic relation but have no collectiveidentity which would allow for conflictual strategies of action. Thus, theirnormative orientation becomes particularistic. These Utopian modes ofnormative orientation relate to a new direction for social development, whileparticularistic orientations relate to a new social order waiting to beconstructed.

Political radicalism was historically tied to a millenarianism seeking torestore the order of a just and holy state. Today it struggles for participationin political decision-making. As such it is committed to 'radical democracy' in

50. See, e.g., C. Castoriadis, La sociiti bureaucratique (Paris, 1973).

A NEW SOCIAL MO VEMENTT 19

all social spheres. But this normative orientation takes a populist formstruggling from particularistic viewpoints without an image of socialantagonists. Hence, these movements are ambivalent. They can be channeledinto a social movement such as yesterday's labor movement or today'sinstitutional groups and integrate racist theories as well as nationalist andimperialist ideologies.

In a different sense, countercultural movements are also an ambivalentform of collective action. They seek new individual and collective identitieswith a romantic twist. Thus, the central question of political identity isreduced to mere cultural identity. By retreating from homogeneous culture,romantic movements became objectively opposed to official culture, butsubjectively this antagonism remains extraneous to their self-image.Romantics escape capitalism or bureaucracy simply by not relating to them:they behave as if they were irrelevant. This subjective denial of antagonisticrelations is the source of their ambivalence.

Early romanticism was a protest against formalized absolutist politics. Itwas an elite's protest against its own lifestyle. A more radical romanticismappeared in 18th-century Utopian writings, prefiguring ideal forms of lifemore or less compatible with the general thrust of the early radical-democratmovements. Nineteenth-century romanticism was also a retreat fromindustrial life seeking either a restoration of pre-industrial life or a new visionof the union of work and love. Philosophical romanticism began with thecritique of formal rationalism and ended up with an organic, reactionarythought. While this emerging philosophical irrationalism was open to everykind of pseudo-scientific belief, especially racism, it also had a moreprogressive side in the socialist movement.53

Neo-romanticism is as ambivalent as the old romanticism. It containselements of a counter-knowledge opposing the dominant knowledge. Theambivalence is clear in two opposing forms of this counter-knowledge: iteither perfects the technical world with behavioral Utopias or denies itthrough Freudo-Marxist Utopias of unrepressed wants and needs. The lattercomes nearest to a collective action seeking new forms of social life withoutbeing in the center of the social movement responsible for this creation.

As for the question whether the new movements are potentially part of anemerging new social movement, the normative potential of the newmovements is determined not only by its ability to act collectively but also byits ability to relate to a new way of developing society. This poses the questionof a historically adequate reference to a new logic for creating society. The

51. E. Laclau, "Towards a Theory of Populism," in Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory(London, 1977). Here Laclau tries to embed the new populist movements in the old labormovement, whereas Touraine et al,, in La prophetie antinucliaire (Paris, 1980), try to embedthese movements in a new anti-technocratic movement.

52. Examples are the monde ideal of Rousseau and the radical Utopias from Mably andMorelly to Saint Just and Robespierre.

53. One can think of the socialist Utopias such as those of Saint Simon, Fourier or Owen,which have been realized in social experiments such as the socialist community of New Harmony,Ind., or the Fabian Society.

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integration of all these aspects into a new social movement has yet to happen.But what can be done with collective actions that are not yet a socialmovement? One answer is to intervene in these collective actions and tocrystallize them into a new social movement. There is no way of knowing inadvance what the emerging new movement will look like. Yet, it is difficult torefrain from taking part in the learning processes constituting a new socialmovement. Thus, sociological intervention begins where theorizing about anew social movement must end.

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