Social Movements, LIB 200

Spring 2018
The Task of Emancipatory Social
Science

Diagnosis - What/How
society looks like

Critique - What and How

society should be (for whom
and for what?)
 Social
Justice
equal access to the
necessary material and
social means to live
flourishing lives
 Political
Justice
equal access to necessary
means to participate
meaningfully in
decisions about things
which affect their lives
• Principles of SOCIAL Justice and POLITICAL Justice
provide a foundation for the diagnosis and
critque of social institutions
 social justice

• moves the critique of capitalism

• 1.human flourishing

• 2. necessary material and social means

• 3. broadly equal access

 human flourishing
• aspects of human well being

• health

• realization of individual potentials

• crucial: material resources and appropriate social

conditions: adequate nutrition, housing, clothing,
personal security
 human flourishing

• beyond material: institutiional requirements

• access to educational settings, work settings,

community settings -- provide opportunities for active
participation in civic affairs, cultural activites
 equal access

• criterion

• opposite of the game of chance/lottery

• not the same for everyone because necessary means for

people to flourish will vary accross cultures and
geographies
 equal access

• failure to flourish in an egalitarian society will not be due

to inequalities
 bleeding into each other

• social justice addresses class inequalities

• inequalities based on gender, race, physical disabilities,

morally irrelevant attribute which interferes which
interferes with a person's access to the necessary material
and social means to live a flourishing life
 2 kinds

• redistributive justice - politics of distribution, class

politics (material distribution)

• cultural justice -- politics of recognition, identity politics

• (ex on mothering p. 16)

 political justice

• individual freedom and democracy

• power of people to make choices about things which

affect their lives

• connect with Jodi Dean's "neoliberal fantasies"

 political justice

• freedom -- power to make choices about one's own life

• democracy -- power to participate in the effective control

of colletive choices that affect one's life as a member of
the wider society.
• democratic egalitarial principle of political justice:
people should have equal access to the powers needed to
make choices over their own lives and to participate in
collective choices that affect them because of hte society
in which they live
 electoral politics

• elite dominated

• expansive understanding of democracy: political equality

-- strong institutional mechanisms for blocking the
translation of private economic power into political
power
 democratic egalitarianism

• radical egalitarian view of social justice and radical

democratic view of political power -- broad normative
foundation for the diagnosis and critique of existing
institutions
 viable alternatives

• desirability

• viability

• achievability
 theory of transformation
• social reproduction

• gaps and contradictions within the process of

reproduction

• underlying dynamics and trajectory of unintended social

change

• collective actors, strategies, struggles

What's so bad about capitalism?
What's so bad about capitalism?
What's so bad about capitalism?
What's so bad about capitalism?

• capitalist class relations perpetuate eliminable forms of

human suffering

• capitalism blocks the universalization of conditions of

expansive human flourishing
What's so bad about capitalism?

• capitalism perpetuates eliminable deficits in individual

freedom and autonomy

• capitalism violates liberal egalitarian principles of social

justice
What's so bad about capitalism?

• capitalism is inefficient in certain crucial respects

• capitalism has a systemic bias towards consumerism

What's so bad about capitalism?

• capitalism is environmetnally destructive

• capitalist commodification threatens important broadly

held values
What's so bad about capitalism?

• capitalism, in a world of nation states, fuels militarism

and imperialism

• capitalism corrodes community

What's so bad about capitalism?

• capitalism limits democracy

 The Relevance of the Soviet
Revolution to Today's Struggle

• "The lessons from the Soviet era are a vivid reminder

that socialism is not a utopian ideal, but a historical
reality that workers must fight for. -Immanuel Ness
 The Relevance of the Soviet
Revolution to Today's Struggle

• Dictatorship of the bourgeosie was defeated by the

Bolsheviks -- promoted an alliance between urban
workers and rural peasants and rejected cultural and
ethnic chauvinism
 The Relevance of the Soviet
Revolution to Today's Struggle

• State power and fascism : violent suppression eradication

of political opponents of white supremacy and capitalism
in the US are testament to the fraudulent nature of
alleged "representative" liberal democracy
 The Relevance of the Soviet
Revolution to Today's Struggle

• struggle against imperialism

 Leninism?

• Marxism in the era of imperialism & proletarian

revolution

Leninism General Particular

Theory & tactics

Proletarian Dictatorship of the
revolution proletariat

33
Historical Roots
of Leninism
International situation

• Developed & took shape in the era of

imperialism

3 contradictions of the era: "flourishing capitalism" to

"moribund capitalism"
3 contradictions in the era of Imperialism

between labor and capital

between financial groups and imperialists

between imperialists nations and their colonies or semi-

colonies
 "Imperialism was
instrumental not only in
making the revolution a
practical inevitability, but
also in creating favourable
conditions for a direct
assault on the citadels of
capitalism."
In 1917 the chain of the imperialist world front proved to be weaker in
Russia than in the other countries. It was there that the chain broke and
provided an outlet for the proletarian revolution. Why? Because in Russia a
great popular revolution was unfolding, and at its head marched the
revolutionary proletariat, which had such an important ally as the vast
mass of the peasantry, which was oppressed and exploited by the
landlords. Because the revolution there was opposed by such a hideous
representative of imperialism as tsarism, which lacked all moral prestige
and was deservedly hated by the whole population. The chain proved to be
weaker in Russia, although Russia was less developed in a capitalist sense
than, say, France or Germany, Britain or America.
 Socialism in one country

• The task of the victorious

revolution is to do "the
utmost possible in one
country for the
development, support and
awakening of the
revolution in all countries.