We haven't prevented runaway climate change by camping beside Heathrow and by surrounding the offices of BAA, and nor did we expect to do so. But we have made it harder for Alf Pereira and the other invisible people to be swept aside, and harder for the government to forget that its plan for perpetual growth in corporate utopia is also a plan for the destruction of life on earth.
Scruffy anarchy social movements make history, lets face it political parties are part of the process can get ideas over too and if they succeed get the necessary policy change, so political parties are necessary.
However political parties often are too cautious to break the new ideas necessary for justice and ecology...social movements are almost always first with these.
Political parties risk becoming corrupted, social movements help keep them on track.
Here is George Monbiot's take, however this movement is not new it builds on reclaim the streets, Earth First(UK), Rising tide and they in turn built on the social movements of the 1980s like the Greenham Common women, who grew out of direct action against nuclear power in the 1970s, who drew upon CND, the peace movement and committee of 100 in the 1950s and 1960s, who drew upon the squatters who in the 1940s housed people...and so it goes....
well that's what I think, Monbiot writes here
1 comment:
"Political parties risk becoming corrupted, social movements help keep them on track."
Seems a very black and white, not to say simplistic, view for someone with a knowldege of the academic literature on social movements. Slightly odd view of politics too - as inherently dangerous and corrupting. Plenty of vested and 'corrupting' interests in social movements if you look critically.
Post a Comment