Living Labour and Social Movements: A Dialogue with Antonio Negri

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Chironi ◽  
Federico Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Antonio Negri ◽  
Financial Capitalism

In this interview, Antonio Negri first focuses on the possibility of defining the concept of ‘social movement’. By mobilizing a spectrum of references that goes from Carl Schmitt to the Weberian sociology of religion, he insists on the necessity, not to sociologically crystallize the concept, but, instead, to think about it in a historical manner. Social movements would then be attempts at activating ‘liberation processes’, which nowadays can only be thought of within the conditions of financial capitalism. Negri then proceeds to examine the relation between the concept of social movement and those of class and class struggle: he suggests a dynamic and relational interpretation of the Marxian concept of ‘living labour’ as a bridge between a class analysis of society and the study of social movements, movements which in the contemporary landscape are ready to take an ‘entrepreneurial’ connotation. The political and intellectual experience of Italian Workerism in the 1960s is then recalled as a fertile example of the application of this method of social analysis, but also as an exemplification of the principle of ‘unrepeatability’ of social movements. The author finally claims to be a ‘theorist of immaterial labour’ in order to then develop a radical critique of the idea of so-called ‘post-materialist’ movements and of the effects that such a notion has had on the sociology of social movements.

scholarly journals MARXISMO, SUJEITO E SUBJETIVIDADE. NEGRI DIANTE DO ANTI-HUMANISMO ALTHUSSERIANO

Sapere Aude ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 250-273
Author(s):  
Émerson Pirola
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Structural Dynamics ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Abstract Notion ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
Antonio Negri

Um debate de longa data no interior do marxismo é o entre perspectivas que tenderiam para uma leitura da obra marxiana centrada nas análises sobre a constituição de sujeitos políticos de e em luta, na constituição de uma classe social revolucionária que enfrente a exploração capitalista, e perspectivas centradas nas transformações do capitalismo ou nas dinâmicas estruturais da economia. Podemos dizer, esquematicamente, que as primeiras perspectivas são “subjetivistas” e as segundas “objetivistas”. Nos anos 1960 esse debate se viu determinado pela chamada polêmica do anti-humanismo, lançada por Louis Althusser contra o marxismo por ele criticado como humanista, visto que advogaria por uma noção de Sujeito idealista e abstrata, descolada dos processos estruturais da economia política capitalista. Antonio Negri, por sua vez, deu e dá grande importância para a noção de subjetividade na análise crítica e enfrentamento do capitalismo. Negri, entretanto, não ignora as críticas efetuadas por Althusser ao chamado humanismo, tomando-as como pré-requisito para o desenvolvimento original de sua teoria. Mostramos, portanto, como Althusser desenvolve suas críticas do Sujeito e do humanismo para então desenvolver as posições de Negri diante destas, a construção de sua própria teoria da subjetividade, resgatada do Marx dos Grundrisse, e apontar as limitações do pensamento althusseriano no que concerne à subjetividade.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Sujeito. Anti-humanismo. Subjetividade. Negri. Althusser. ABSTRACTA long-standing debate within Marxism is the one between perspectives that would tend towards a reading of the Marxian work centered on analyzes of the constitution of political subjects in and in class struggle, the constitution of a revolutionary social class facing capitalist exploitation, and perspectives centered on the transformations of capitalism or the structural dynamics of the economy in general. We can say, schematically, that the first perspective are "subjectivist" and the second one "objectivist". In the 1960s this debate was determined by Louis Althusser's so-called polemic of anti-humanism, in which he criticized certain Marxism as an humanism, since it would advocate for an idealist and abstract notion of subject detached from the structural processes of capitalist political economy. Antonio Negri, in turn, gave and gives great importance to the notion of subjectivity in the dynamics and confrontation of capitalism. Negri, however, does not ignore the criticisms made by Althusser of the humanism, taking them as a prerequisite for the original development of his theory. We thus show how Althusser develops his criticisms of the Subject and humanism to develop Negri's positions for and against them, the construction of his own theory of subjectivity, rescued from Marx’s Grundrisse, and we point out the limitations of Althusser's thought as regards subjectivity.KEYWORDS: Subject. Antihumanism. Subjeticvity. Negri. Althusser.

Phantoms and Spectres: Capital and Labour at the Millennium

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Merrifield
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
Social Movement Unionism ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
Fictitious Capital ◽  
Political Economic

As the financial system tailspins and ‘Asian Flu’ reverberates everywhere and as 950 million people in South-East Asia struggle to get by on less than one dollar a day, Marx's ideas continue to nourish radical critique and action. If anything, his vision is more economically meaningful and more politically viable today than ever before. In this paper I try to bring Marx's insights on the “laws of motion” of modern capitalism to bear on prevailing global political-economic disorder. I discuss, more specifically, his theory of crisis and the dialectics of accumulation and circulation of “real” and “fictitious” capital as sketched out in the Grundrisse and Capital (volumes 1 and 3). I end with an exploration of the famous political prognosis from The Communist Manifesto of mass collective class struggle and the development of a “world literature”, and set all this within the context of a newly emerging workers' internationalism and social-movement unionism.

SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY: LESSONS FROM THE SOCIOLOGY OF W. E. B. DU BOIS*

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-136
Author(s):  
Aldon Morris
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Black People ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Movement Theory ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The 1960S

This article addresses why movement scholars had no idea that the civil rights and black power movements of the 1960s and 70s were imminent. In fact, their theories led them to predict that these movements were impossible because only whites possessed history-making agency. These scholars accepted the dogma that black people, their culture, and their institutions were inferior and incapable of organizing and leading powerful movements. This article demonstrates that the black sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois predicted those movements a half century before they occurred. He did so because he conducted concrete empirical analyses of the black community, and his lived experiences led him to reject the thesis of black inferiority. This article argues that the field of social movements remains too white and elitist and that this condition causes less robust and accurate analysis. The article suggests ways to make needed changes.

Nepal: Tarai/Madhesh Movements and Political Elites

2020 ◽  
pp. 002190962095488
Author(s):  
Abi Chamlagai
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Structure Theory ◽  
Federal State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Political Opportunity Structure ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Opportunity Structure

The purpose of this article is to compare Nepal’s two Tarai/Madhesh Movements using the political opportunity structure theory of social movements. Tarai/Madhesh Movement I launched by the Forum for Madheshi People’s Rights in 2007 became successful as Nepal became a federal state. Tarai/Madhesh Movement II launched by the United Democratic Madheshi Front of the Tarai/Madheshi parties and the Tharuhat Joint Struggle Committee of the Tharu organizations failed as political elites disagreed about the need to create two provinces in the Tarai/Madhesh. While Tarai/Madhesh Movement II confirms that a social movement is more likely to fail when political elites align against it, Tarai/Madhesh Movement II refutes the theoretical proposition. Tarai/Madhesh Movement I suggests that the sucess of a social movement is more likely despite the alignment of political elites against it if its central demand consistently sustains the support of its constituents.

Exploring the Crisis of the Reform Movement in Iran (1997–2005)

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-409
Author(s):  
SEYED AMIR NIAKOOEE
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Framing Processes ◽  
Comprehensive Framework

AbstractThe Second Khordad Movement was a democratic social movement in contemporary Iran. Investigation of this movement revealed two images, of flourish and of decline, as the movement was first generally successful until early 2000 and thereafter began to regress from the spring of that year onwards. The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive framework in which to examine the reasons behind the movement's failure and regression. To this end, the study utilizes the literature on social movements, especially the political process model, and attempts to explain the initial success and subsequent decline of the movement based on elements such as political opportunity, framing processes, mobilizing structures, and the repertoire of collective action.

scholarly journals Social Movement Literature and U.S. Labour: A Reassessment

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-179
Author(s):  
Keith Mann
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
New Social Movements ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Common Features ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Arab Spring

Largely due to its conservative profile at the time, the U.S. labour movement was largely absent from modern social movement literature as it developed in response to the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Recent labour mobilizations such as the Wisconsin uprising and the Chicago Teachers’ strike have been part of the current international cycle of protest that includes the Arab Spring, the antiausterity movements in Greece and Spain, and Occupy Wall Street. These struggles suggest that a new labour movement is emerging that shares many common features with new social movements. This article offers a general analysis of these and other contemporary labour struggles in light of contemporary modern social movement literature. It also critically reviews assumptions about the labour movement of the 1960s and 1970s and reexamines several social movement concepts.

scholarly journals Islamic "New Social Movements"? Radical Islam, AL-QA'IDA and Social Movement Theory

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Sutton ◽  
Stephen Vertigans
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Radical Islam ◽  
Movement Organization ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Social Movement ◽  
Post Industrial

European new social movement (NSM) theory was developed to describe and explain the apparently unique character of the wave of collective action that began in the 1960s and continues to this day. Key characteristics of NSM theory are a post-industrial orientation, middle-class activist core, loose organizational form, use of symbolic direct actions, creation of new identities, and a "self-limiting radicalism." The theory's claims to movement innovation were later criticized by many as exaggerated and ahistorical. However, the filtering down of key NSM elements into social movement studies has led to changing definitions of what social movements actually are and opened up new opportunities for the integration of religious movements into the social movements mainstream. Using the case of radical Islam, and with particular reference to the terrorist social movement organization al-Qa'ida, this article argues that drawing on key features of NSM theory should lead to a better understanding of radical Islam as well as a more realistic explanation of its continuing development and transformation.

scholarly journals Prefigurative Politics and Social Movement Strategy: The Roles of Prefiguration in the Reproduction, Mobilisation and Coordination of Movements

2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172093604
Author(s):  
Luke Yates
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
New Social Movements ◽  
Movement Strategy ◽  
Prefigurative Politics ◽  
The 1960S

Recent work historicises and theoretically refines the concept of prefigurative politics. Yet disagreements over the question of whether or how it is politically effective remain. What roles does prefiguration play in strategies of transformation, and what implications does it have for understandings of strategy? The article begins to answer this question by tracking the concept’s use, from discussions of left strategy in the 1960s, a qualifier of new social movements in the 1980s–1990s, its application to protest events in the 2000s, to its contemporary proliferation of meanings. This contextualises reflections on the changing arguments about the roles of prefiguration in social movement strategy. Based on literature about strategy, three essential categories of applied movement strategy are identified: reproduction, mobilisation and coordination. Prefigurative dynamics are part of all three, showing that the reproduction of movements is strategically significant, while the coordination of movements can take various ‘prefigurative’ forms.

Mundane and Everyday Politics for and from the Neighborhood

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo D. Fernández ◽  
Ignasi Martí ◽  
Tomás Farchi
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sustainable Change ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Everyday Politics

Social movement scholars and activists have recognized the difficulties of mobilizing people for the long haul, moving from the exuberance of the protest to the dull and ordinary work necessary to produce sustainable change. Drawing on ethnographic work in La Juanita, in Greater Buenos Aires, we look at local actions for and from the neighborhood in order to resist political domination, taken by people who have been unemployed for long periods of time. We identified concrete and local practices and interventions—which we call mundane and everyday politics – that are embedded in a territory and go beyond the typical practices of social movements and the expected infrapolitical activity in allowing the disfranchised to engage in the political process.

The French Strikes of 1995 and their Political Aftermath

1998 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dick Howard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrial Democracies ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
The Government

LIKE MANY OF HIS APHORISMS, MARX'S DESIGNATION OF THE FRENCH as the model political nation (leaving the economy to the English and philosophy for the Germans) contained enough of a grain of truth to remain relevant for over a century. Since 1989, the idea of politics based on the revolutionary experience begun in 1789 and pursued by a unified and international working-class subject has lost its utility for understanding the political choices facing modern industrial democracies. Nowhere is the need for a new understanding of the political more clear than in France itself, as illustrated by the strikes that paralysed the country for more than three weeks in November and December of 1995 and forced the government to retreat. While some saw the birth of a ‘social movement’, cheered the victory of society against the state, or imagined that class struggle had begun anew, the more pessimistic argued that the French had once again proven themselves incapable of political reform. The former presuppose a model of politics from the nineteenth century, the latter look forward to a globalized twenty-first century. For those of us still living in the twentieth, analysis of the French strikes can help us to understand how politics can make the shape of the twentyfirst century less inevitable.

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