The First Step
We begin with the deficit between our personal priorities and the political and economic agenda of our state. When we choose to reshape our culture and society, for the common good or not, we arrive at a set of choices. We can take this deficit and the related frustration as an opportunity for problem solving, or we can submit in several ways. One possible choice is to re-invest in the conceit of world views that obstruct change in the name of social stability, order, and reform. 
In considering the choices among the models for social movements, “successful” has to be accepted as a temporary rather than a permanent condition. “Success” also needs to be measured against the degree of cultural change that is accomplished, rather than by assimilation into the established cultural paradigm. In response to the short comings of various would-have-been “social” movements, there have been many prescriptions about what defines a “successful” social movement. Most of these suggestions have lacked an historical and an appropriately ideological base. Several focus on public relations, technical and administrative proposals, and most continue to not produce the promised major changes for a variety of reasons. Even so, each proposal probably made for an applauded speech to the assembled faithful. When we re-consider the received versions of our history, of our assumptions about social movements, and of what seems to establish significant change, a different model becomes possible. Until such reflection, the common assumptions and ideologies about social movements will continue to obstruct a practice based discourse.
Historical social movements have been narrated as the primary means for accomplishing the societal changes required in nearly every era. Yet the establishment of a social movement only becomes necessary in the absence of regulatory processes to control societal drift toward usury, and in the absence of leadership sensitive to systemic and injurious inequality. Without discussing the nature of formal leadership, politicians will often rise to take credit for what has become politically acceptable. The primary populations pressing for social change expanding democratic values have often been in stark contrast to those participating in the formalized discourse about social movements, or to the formal leadership of nominal “social movement” organizations. These same “social movements” have also become a way of obstructing and resisting societal change.
The baseline of social movements is that they represent organized challenges by those who are harmed under the power and privileges of the predatory elites. In describing social movements the tendency has been to accept the “popular” and elitist interpretations with their associated truisms of conventional wisdom. Declared “social movements” can also include anti-social agitation favoring the reversals of the practice of democracy and social causes that lack most of the identifying elements of genuine social movements. This has been particularly the case since the institutionalization of public education contrary to a culture of self directed or activism based education and engagement. This could be described as a form of “trained incapacity.”1
The current context in the US strongly suggests that we address why self nominated “progressive movements” here have been so frequently ineffective over the past thirty years. The diagnostic term “ideological paralysis” seems apt. It makes a certain sort of sense that an “anti-war movement” of the present era would want to repeat the never undersold success of the US Anti-Vietnam War Movement. It seems less clear why would-be social movements would not choose to model their efforts after the US Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's into the 1970's, probably the most successful social movement in recent times. There are two prevailing summaries of the US Anti-Vietnam War Movement, and they share an unexpected similarity. This period in the US also had a ferment of resistance and counter-cultural activities, which makes it difficult to neatly summarize. The two main movements of the period also shared some participants, though not their primary leadership. Even so, it is the summaries that seem to remain as the basis for strategies and “activism.”
Many of the nominal leaders of the US “Anti-Vietnam War Movement” were glad to take credit for ending the Vietnam War, if for no other reason than those credits assisted in inflating their self importance and coverage by the media. In addition to the adrenaline surges side benefits included publishing books, speaking tours, a few dissertations, and the launching of a few political careers. The reputed success of the Vietnam Anti-War Movement has persuaded many contemporary activists to earnestly replicate those imagined successes. In spite of the long standing acceptance of this interpretation, its use as a model has produced little. There should be serious concern about why the recipe is not producing the foretold “successes,” short of conceding to the vanguardists blaming “the masses” for not arriving upon command..
One piece of history that weakens the credibility of the US Anti Vietnam War Movement features how in general it refused to work in collaboration with the US Civil Rights Movement through the initiative of Martin Luther King Jr., winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. The decision was made within the US Civil Rights Movement to participate in the planning for the planned major anti-war demonstration in New York City for the spring of 1967. At a meeting of the 40 or so organizations involved, the decision was made to use the context of that demonstration of some 600,000 people as a showcase for the different participating organizations. Used as an educational opportunity, people could have returned to their communities with material and insights that they could use to advance their local efforts. The choice to operate as a showcase allowed each representative 3 minutes to speak at that demonstration.
The refusal to act together in other than a superficial sense included ignoring the history and real successes of the US Civil Rights movement, the possibility that the US anti-Vietnam War movement could learn from the organizing skills of the US Civil Rights movement, and the probability that together the two efforts would be stronger and could address the deeper effects and causes of both warfare, racism, and poverty.2 To the extent that this superficial collaboration was the anti-war standard it barely qualifies as a social movement. This is a description of ideological paralysis, a declaration favoring change paralyzed by an ideology that obstructs change by its anti-social assumptions.
There was also resistance within the US Civil Rights Movement that this involvement would dilute the focus of the US Civil Rights Movement. This failure to collaborate in a meaningful way left in place the very same societal structures and priorities which perpetrated the occupation of Vietnam in that era, and which have risen again to directly occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. Further, to the extent that the nominal anti-war movement failed and fails to integrate the interests of the population most harmed by warfare as a geo-political strategy, both domestically and within the targeted nation of the day, it chooses to limit its base to a population of “activists.” This choice was difficult to justify under the name of “Peace activism,” then or now. There often are times when reason and declared values are over-ruled by the extension of familiar patterns and ignorance.
It was during the fall of 1967 that the US Civil Rights Movement by Martin Luther King Jr.'s initiative attempted to include a “poor people's movement.” It was then that Martin Luther King Jr. came to be considered to be very dangerous to the established elites and the divisions within the US society. To the extent that the US Civil Rights Movement was dependent upon the leadership and oratory of a single individual, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and others the cohesion of the US Civil Rights Movement was challenged and intimidated beyond the capacity of its culture.
The militarists and global strategists acting to extend U.S. interests abroad were happy to give undue credit to the US anti-Vietnam war movement because it deflected scrutiny from their responsibility for the failure of their military strategies to accomplish the conquest and “pacification” of the Vietnamese people. Blaming the anti-war movement and the “liberal” media, allowed for the designers of this foreign policy to continue with their same basic strategies and to continue pressure for the growth and influence of the defense industries. In large part by using their version of the retreat from Vietnam they escape accountability for the use and ill conceived management of the military occupation and campaigns, including the funding of the French occupation and the convenience of the Gulf of Tonkin “incident.” To the extent that the former leaders of the US Anti Vietnam War Movement also prefer to assume undue credit, the second interpretation goes unchallenged. As this second version goes, it also sets the stage for the return of the suppression and containment of dissent to these policies right into present times in the name of “patriotism,” “US strategic interests,” and “National Security.”
There is credible evidence that the most effective resistance to the Vietnam War was from within the US military itself, both at bases in the US and in Vietnam itself.3 It can also be argued that what was perpetrated in Vietnam was a limited success allowing for the final US withdrawal. To this day the Vietnamese economy remains seriously damaged and the Vietnamese people still suffer from the toxic and mutative effects of the US use of Agent Orange and other forms chemical warfare. Reparations for this collateral damage has been repeatedly refused although the use of these materials against the land and civilian population was in violation of the Geneva Accords as crimes against humanity.
From the supposition that the US Anti-Vietnam War Movement was successful, it is also assumed that despite probable historical and contextual differences it should be used as a template. One major difference in the historical periods is the current greater degree of corporate control of public media. To satisfy the inflated importance of the 1960-73 US Anti-Vietnam War Movement, we are investing in an externalized perspective, upon the possibility of unbiased and occasionally sympathetic media coverage , upon the supposed effectiveness of celebrity leadership over effective organization and education, and upon a disinterest in placing front and center the very real effects of warfare both domestically and upon the people of the invaded nations of the moment.
For lack of the nail of an honest assessment of the history of both presumed and successful social movements we accept ideological paralysis and the opportunity for societal change is lost. This is not to diminish the importance of good intentions or substantial ignorance. Much like the adage about Generals always being well prepared to fight the previous war, the current US anti-war movement is committing the same errors again because they are repeating a pattern that they have accepted as successful even though what it actually produces seems to be very limited. The militarist and global strategist version also taught the value of controlling the public media through corporate consolidation and executive intimidation. This adaptation has also made these perpetrators better equipped to control public opinion and legislative initiatives. Even so, in believing their own deflection they have proven themselves to be equally ill-prepared to actually win at a similar colonial strategy.
The prevailing paradigms of social science have also contributed to the falsification of social movements. Science as a “modern” world view has a long association with the perspective and theoretical fabrications of gentlemen and elites. The embedded elitist prejudices within the corporate media and in corporatized academia is more strongly subversive in the study of social and societal patterns and in the formulation of public policies than in its influence within the fields of mathematics and physics. When this perspective is naively transferred into social and psychological scientific discourse the subjective perspective of those who are harmed by the related policies and practices tend to be excluded and the conclusions rarely seem to be toward an expansion of the democratic commons.
While some external accounts of social movements are interesting, they tend to provide little toward teaching people how to best organize themselves or how to frame issues to conduct an effective social movement or advocacy organizations. 
The “social physics” view of history tends to limit its interpretations in favor of famous people, places, wars, objects, and demographic inventories. By its external perspective it also fails to notice the periods of cultural intensification which have preceded and provide a foundation for the eras of high levels of artistic and technical developments, and of the periods of democratic expansion. A missing piece is the subjective experiences and engagement of those who have successfully pressed for societal change. 4 The implied suggestion is that ordinary people cannot contribute to the development of social movements and are obliged to passively wait for the next “celebrity” leader. In that celebrity status is a franchise controlled primarily by privatized public media, that wait could be either very long or a pretext to suffer an impostor who has no clue about how to work in collaboration with any one.
Additional presumptions also discourage the importance of organizing and advancing the demands for cultural and societal change. One is of the inevitability of social progress. An alternative form is the belief that “good” will ultimately prevail. A third posits that due to human nature being by definition flawed, it is necessary to have some form of leadership elite. Each of these encourage a slavish response. History is not inevitable, it is simply history. Though there is some coherence between one scene and the following, there is little necessary causality and is no less thereby worthy of understanding. For a counterinsurgency priority, opposing the formation of social movements and any potentially informed discourse about social movements and organizations, sometimes described as “the social sciences,” will have a high priority.
Assuming widespread deliberate errors may be both too generous and too harsh. It has to be allowed that the results are simply a product of ideological self preservation by the existing social order. It is by pursuing the conventional values and priorities of an ideology within an anti-democratic culture that the possibility for change is nullified. Social movements become by design ineffective and anti-social in part by only rising to the social capacity of herds and posturing. Social movements based upon cultural intensification and subjective engagement will not have the same level of personal recognition as those based upon external interpretations. It is also in the interest of ineffective “social movements” to perpetuate their reputation as successes and also ignore their decline.
The ideologies of societal structures tend to be self sustaining except for the conscious few among those at risk or excluded from sharing in the benefits of the societal surplus wealth. A part of this is that those who self identify as “middle class” will predictably first react to retain or restore their privileges and assets when those are lost through the liquidation of their productive contributions. Further, even those who are a part of the lower income stratas will often be much more concerned with receiving a portion of the surplus value within an “affirmative” action context, rather than modifying the basic principles of distribution, division, and control. There should be a high priority instead for the basic elements and identifying characteristics of successful social movements. One goal should be to distinguish between assimilation to forms of corporate state socialism as an ideology from the actual expansion of democratic practices and principles. The inability to accomplish peaceful societal change either by increments or by the confrontation of mass movements places a society in a position of unsustainable rigidity and embedded violence. The alternative process includes establishing a sub-culture which demonstrates a positive interpretation of societal capacities and which reverses subordination.
There are further aspects of social movements that also deserve examination and review. As a field of study it seems to have been largely surrendered to interests hostile to genuine social movements, lacking in substantial first hand experience, and conforming to paradigms which fail to interpret in a dialectical and practical way. Key is the absence of the subjective experiences of those involved as participating subjects and as a population subject to systemic harm.
Tadit Anderson, could be reached at ideasinc@ee.net
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