March 17, 2006: Social Movements #2: Althusser
I think that Louis Althusser's concepts of a "fusion of contradictions," and "overdetermination," which he developed while looking at the situation of social revolutions (For Marx, 1969), might also make a good starting point for analyzing more "normal" social movement dynamics. In this framework, periods of major social conflict could be seen as arising through the interaction of a dominant set of contradictions within multiple social spheres--economic, political, cultural, etc. We also would expect each movement upsurge to be based upon a historically specific set of determinations: the partial resolution or displacement of the dominant social contradictions in one historical period leads to a new configuration of contradictions in the next; but short of a revolution in the mode of production, each of the succeeding periods will again contain the main contradictions of the capitalism in various displaced (and mystified) forms.
Althusser held that the main (economic) contradictions of capitalism were not typically dominant in any period, but were "determinant in the last instance." By this I believe he meant that at the deepest level (i.e., the last instance) of analysis, the dominant contradictions could be related to the underlying main contradictions. More literally, Althusser would say that the main economic contradictions determine which contradictions are dominant in the structure of dominance.
But this is all at a pretty high level of abstraction. Developing a "boots on the ground" theory of social contradictions, where we would have some capability to predict how and when broad-based social movements arise would be a formidable task.
Comments
The "boots on the ground" analysis is what Lenin insisted on over and over throughout his career. He was continually frustrated with the over-abstraction of the movement intellectuals. His major early work on the development of capitalism in Russia is -- I think! -- exactly the analysis you advocate. He called it the concrete analysis of a concrete situation.
Posted by: Mark Phillips | March 17, 2006 10:35 PM
BTW one of the most fruitful implications of Althusser's exploration of overdetermination and the logic of concrete complexity is in the analysis of concrete social formations in real history. L.A. points out that concrete social formations consist of multiple modes of production, one of which dominates the others, all of which exist simultaneously and interact to form the complex material foundation of specific social formations (societies).
For example, a concrete social formation may consist of the capitalist mode of production, pre-capitalist survivals including the medieval mode of production (latifundia, etc.), small scale pre-capitalist crafts production for the market, small peasant agriculture, and perhaps many others, many of which (capitalism, latifundia) are subsumed by imperialism into the global economy in a subordinate way. This sketch describes one situation common in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. It would be an analytical and political mistake to say -- as much of the left did at the time -- that these societies were "merely" capitalist, "merely" latifundist, "merely" imperialized. It was the complex articulation of all of these relationships which led to the explosive political conjunctures we knew and loved and which I personally miss very much.
Posted by: Mark Phillips | April 7, 2006 06:01 PM