How New are the New Social Movements?

Kenneth H. Tucker

A groundswell of literature has appeared recently regarding new

social movements in the United States and Europe (including the
ecology, women's, citizen's and anti-nuclear movements) (Touraine,
1985; Boggs, 1986; Evans and Boyte, 1986). Contemporary critical
theorists, particularly Jurgen Habermas and Jean Cohen, have
placed new social movements at the center of their analyses. Accord-
ing to these theorists, modern social movements provide avenues for
the development of new values and identities, as well as novel
interpretations of social life, revitalizing a decaying public sphere
and freeing participants from the iron cage of instrumental assump-
tions. New social movements thus represent the main vehicle by
which a non-instrumental rationality can be brought into public life.
The theorists reject the working class as such a democratizing agent,
looking instead to broad-based, non-productivist movements for the
implementation of such goals (Cohen, 1985; Habermas, 1987).
This essay will evaluate the theoretical and empirical adequacy of
Habermas's and Cohen's approach to social movements. It will
concentrate on the problematic distinction between old and new
movements that lies at the center of their perspective. These authors
do not discuss in any depth the variety of nineteenth and early
twentieth-century labor movements, from the Knights of Labor to
revolutionary syndicalism to the German Social Democratic Party,
that appeared in the United States and Europe. The bulk of my
analysis concentrates on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century French syndicalism. This movement receives special scorn
from Cohen, for she argues that it foreshadowed authoritarian
regimes. Yet syndicalism can be understood in the very
Habermasian categories that she applies to new social movements.
Though syndicalism and other labor movements did not confront
the same specific issues as those in contemporary times, and they

Theory, Culture & Society (SAGE, London, Newbury Park and New Delhi), Vol. 8
(1991), 75-98

from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

76 Theory, Culture & Society

had different social bases than the movements discussed by

Habermas and Cohen, these labor organizations developed many
of the same value orientations and strategies as new social
movements. Contemporary labor struggles over worker control also
share these concerns. An examination of syndicalism thus demons-
trates not only the faults of their analysis, but also shows the con-
tinuity between the themes articulated by the movement and those
of today.
Habermas and Cohen ignore such issues in large part because
of their implicit teleology and concept of labor. They tie labor to
instrumental action, dissolving the history of labor and labor
movements into the growth of instrumental action. The history of
labor movements becomes the history of ideas about labor (espe-
cially concerning the concept of labor in Marx). Marxist philosophy
is seen to lead inevitably to productivism. Such a philosophy of
history makes the empirical investigation of labor movements
unnecessary, for labor's productivism is foreordained by its philo-
sophical assumptions. Questions of historical context, the internal
dynamics of labor movements, etc. have no place in this analysis.
This insensitivity to movements of the past results in an under-
developed concept of contemporary movements as collective learn-
ing experiences, structured by cultural traditions. Habermas and
Cohen specifically neglect the potential that contemporary labor
issues might have in instigating the further democratization of
Western society. Historically, attempts to wrest control away from
workers has resulted in radical democratic demands that could not
easily be met within the confines of the existing system (Thompson,
1963; Sewell, 1980; Calhoun, 1982). Issues such as workers' control
have not disappeared from the labor front.
This essay will analyze these issues in three sections. The first will
present Habermas's and Cohen's theory of new social movements
in light of Habermas's overall theoretical project. The second will
discuss criticisms of this approach as it relates to the analysis of
social movements. The third part will be an empirical study of
revolutionary syndicalism in France, focusing on the communica-
tive dimension within the movement and its thematic continuity
with contemporary social movements.

Habermas, Cohen and New Social Movements

Habermas (1984) distinguishes types of action in relation to
the objective, subjective and social 'worlds' opened up by
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 11

modernization. These social worlds represent differentiated and

relatively autonomous spheres of social action. They are indicative
of evolutionary processes that have progressively differentiated
system practices (the subsystems of economy and bureaucratic
politics), ruled by the media of money and power, from their
original life-world context.1 The life-world itself has also become
internally differentiated in terms of culture, personality, and
society. This evolutionary process opens up in each of these realms
the possibility, indeed necessity, of the achievement of solidarity
and identity through collective consensus based on the raising and
resolution of validity claims through argument.
Habermas believes that this formulation of the developmental
dynamics and interconnections of system and life-world constitutes
a significant theoretical advance within the Marxist tradition.
According to Habermas, Marx erred in equating system differentia-
tion and class rule. He was unable to conceptualize the necessary
complexity of system practices that transcend class rule, nor was he
able to distinguish between 'the dislocation of traditional lifeworlds
and the destruction of post-traditional lifeworlds' (Habermas,
1987: 349). In a complex, post-traditional society, welfare capital-
ism has displaced economic crises into administrative areas through
the politicization of the economy. The state must secure loyalty for
its projects, yet it cannot do so on the basis of administrative
rationality. This 'scarcity of meaning' results in a legitimation crisis
(Habermas, 1975). Religion, civil privatism and familial-vocational
privatism2 can no longer provide taken for granted meanings that
ensure motivation for filling the roles in the system. As traditions
are undermined by the spread of administrative rationality into
more and more areas of social life, possibilities for the generation
of non-instrumental solidarities are eliminated. The autonomy and
separation of action orientations based in the life-world become
threatened by the extension of bureaucratic and instrumental forms
of reason into everyday life. This 'colonization' of the life-world
threatens established values defining identities. Yet the colonization
of the life-world simultaneously politicizes previously taken for
granted traditions, thus subjecting all life-world norms and values
to criticism and freeing the path for the development of com-
municative action (Habermas, 1987).
It is in this context that the role of new social movements in the
rationalization of society becomes clear. The consumerist and client
roles created by welfare capitalism have generated new conflicts that
78 Theory, Culture & Society

displace older problems of alienated labor. Modern rationalized

life-worlds contain the potential for new forms of radical protest,
distinct from those of the past. Because the arena of material
reproduction is determined by system exigencies, new social
movements occur far from the economic realm, outside the control
of productivist, traditional political parties. New social movements
defend already rationalized life-worlds from colonization. Though
they defend endangered ways of life, they desire no return to a
nostalgically understood past. These movements occur at 'the seam
of system and lifeworld\ questioning the roles of citizen, consumer,
client that have been created through the encroachment of the
system into the life-world. New social movements raise questions
about the meanings of the 'grammar of forms of life' that can only
be resolved through communicative action, not through adminis-
trative manipulation (Habermas, 1987: 392).
Cohen's work essentially summarizes and extends Habermas's
approach to social movements. According to Cohen, new social
movements are unlike older movements (such as the labor move-
ment) in four areas: they desire no return to an undifferentiated
community free of power and inequality, participants maintain
universalistic principles yet respect autonomy, their values are
somewhat relativistic, and actors accept the democratic state and
market (Cohen, 1985: 669-70). Participants do not wish to return
to a romantically envisioned past state, as did many of the labor
movements of the nineteenth century. Unlike these latter move-
ments, which were defending a pre-modern existence against the
inroads of modernization, new movements are responding to the
penetration of the market and the state into an already modernized
life-world (made up of the nuclear family, an egalitarian society,
and a universalistic cultural tradition).
Though new social movements critique industrial culture, actors
reject not only the rhetoric of revolutionary movements of the past,
but the asceticism of these older movements as well. Cohen argues
that the new social movements also repudiate the 'productivism' of
past movements (concentrating on such issues as the quality of life,
world peace, the environment), and they provide a forum for the
realization of new identities for members. They are not merely a
means to increase a particular interest group's power. In so doing,
they develop democratic organizations in civil society that stress
grassroots self-help, alongside but outside of the bureaucratic struc-
ture of the state (Cohen, 1983: 99, 109; Cohen, 1985: 670).
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 79

These new movements are particularly important because they

have great potential for creating a more rational society. Actors do
not take traditional justifications of authority and progress for
granted. They are more self-reflexive about the conditions inform-
ing their development. Cohen sees contemporary movements as
potentially combining rationality and solidarity through creating
the conditions for relatively unconstrained consensus formation. In
her words,

Solidarities can form or be defended on the basis of communicating, reasoning

publics (itself a metaphor for solidarity), bounded by common convictions and
interests yet open to rational argument. Movements that are open to reason can
be seen as sources for the reconstitution of collective identities and the creation
of new public spaces. (Cohen, 1983: 105)3

These themes can be seen in a number of contemporary move-

ments. For example, the most radical branches of the feminist
movement oppose both traditional and utilitarian justifications of
action and conduct.4 Developing out of participatory democratic
concerns with the student movement in the 1960s, the women's
movement radicalized the critique of hierarchy to include sexism
and interpersonal power relations (Evans, 1979). The movement
addresses issues far from the productivist concerns of the traditional
labor movement. Identity formation and emotional insight form
central goals of the movement. Given Habermas's criteria, the
radical feminists adopt an implicit form of communicative action,
basing their ideas on a reasoned explication of moral principles. The
justification of an act is inseparable from dialogue, consensus and
unconstrained non-hierarchical interaction. Only in conditions of
unconstrained interaction and argument can rationality develop.
Solidarity develops not from calculated interests of mutual advan-
tage, or adherence to traditional values that cannot be criticized, but
rather from the free attachment to universal values such as equality,
autonomy and participation. The movement attempts to implement
these values outside of the centralizing apparatus of political and
economic representation, advocating change through decentralized
consciousness raising groups, bookstores, communes and other
'free spaces' (Evans and Boyte, 1986; Freeman, 1983).
Habermas's imagery of the colonization of the life-world, and
responses to it, is also replicated, from a somewhat different theo-
retical perspective, in Harry Boyte's (1980: Boyte and Riessman,
80 Theory, Culture & Society

1986) analysis of the new American populism. Boyte sees citizens

becoming deskilled and turned into clients and consumers through
capitalism's invasion of both the public and private realms. As pro-
fessionals determine control over childrearing, recreation and day-
to-day interactions, they tend to infantilize the citizenry (Boyte,
1980: 174). Groups such as the New Citizen Movement attempt to
combat this process, drawing on American traditions of radical
republicanism stemming from the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and
the memory of movements as diverse as the Knights of Labor and
nineteenth-century populism to implement a direct, decentralized
democracy outside of traditional elite politics (Boyte, 1980; Bellah
et al., 1985). Manifested in issues from community development to
rent control, the new populists posit that the actual experience of
participation and co-operation, outside of reified political pro-
cesses, is necessary to form the populist spirit and develop an
educated and politicized public. This grassroots radicalism privi-
leges direct action, popular initiative and self-actualization over
bureaucratic representation (Boggs, 1986). Revitalized community
life, based on coalitions and ideological pluralism rather than the
economic determinism of orthodox Marxism, is the means for social
change. Rather than revolution, the means for emancipation comes
from building a new participatory culture that extends into all areas
of life.
Habermas's and Cohen's analysis of new social movements is very
persuasive. Much of the empirical research cited above can be read
as evidence of their approach. New social movements do appear to
be making qualitative demands that outstrip the ability of tradi-
tional parties and bureaucratic organizations to channel them in a
productivist direction. Yet their perspective suffers from a number
of theoretical problems. These problems revolve around a super-
ficial understanding of the relationship between the historical con-
text and the labor movement. Their inadequate appreciation of the
past results in large part from Habermas's evolutionary schema and
theory of labor. After a discussion of the theoretical problems
encountered by Habermas and Cohen, the pitfalls of their approach
will be explored through a discussion of revolutionary syndicalism
and the legacy of syndicalism for present day movements.

Criticisms: Habermas, Cohen and Labor

Habermas's and Cohen's analysis of labor movements proceeds
directly from their discussion of labor and class (particularly in
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 81

Marx). They tend to see the history of working-class movements and

changes in the labor process in terms of a philosophy of history,
especially the history of thought. Present developments in socialist
theory and practice are read into past theoretical assumptions. The
productivism of present-day socialist movements was prefigured in
Marxist thought. This conclusion follows from Habermas's analysis
of labor.
In his re-evaluation of Marx, Habermas (1971) argues that the
culprit for positivistic developments in Marxist theory and practice
was not merely instrumental reason, but an implicit epistemology
based on labor as well. He states that a metaphysics of labor cannot
capture the richness and complexity of processes of social inte-
gration; further, an epistemology based on labor has inherent
features which privilege technique over practical (moral) questions.
The equation of labor and knowledge tends to reduce episte-
mology to a model of production, thereby 'eliminating reflection as
a motive force in history' (Habermas, 1971: 44). The individual as
homofaber overwhelms the individual as a reflexive subject and this
conflation of anthropological and epistemological processes
equates the material reproduction of the species with knowledge of
human self-development (Wellmer, 1976:233-4). Habermas states
that the knowledge resulting from interaction with nature is not an
adequate paradigm for knowledge associated with inter subjective
interaction, the latter based on the mutual recognition of subjects.
Cohen expands on this analysis. She ties the productivism to two
elements within Marxist theory: first, the equation of knowledge
and labor and second, the proletariat as a model for socialist
society. Such a perspective postulates an almost inevitable connec-
tion between Marxist theory and productivism.
Cohen argues that Marx conceives of human history in terms of
objectification, praxis and alienation. Marx errs by attaching these
processes to the proletariat. Cohen (1982:79) states, T h e class
theory rests on a twofold logic of representation that designates a
class as a bearer of universality and its labor as the representative
activity of the self-constituting, objectifying praxis of the species.'
Marx's analysis thus reduces praxis to labor, self-formative pro-
cesses to a particular socio-economic group, civil society to
economic processes and politics to a function of the mode of
production.
These considerations are undoubtedly important. An over-
emphasis on class and productivism has long plagued left-wing
82 Theory, Culture & Society

movements. However, by positing a necessary connection between

Marx and later developments in labor movements, and tying labor
to instrumental action, Habermas and Cohen neglect two crucial
issues. The first concerns the extent to which labor has eman-
cipatory potential, and the second involves a concrete examination
of the social circumstances influencing the development of produc-
tivist or emancipatory trends within movements.
Many critics have taken issue with Habermas's analysis of labor
(Keane, 1975; Arnasson, 1979; Honneth, 1982). The concept of
labor, as developed by Marx in his early writings, cannot be easily
encapsulated under the rubric of instrumental action. Marx's theory
of unalienated labor (which Honneth tied to skilled labor) has a
strong participatory element — work is a means for the self-
conscious creation of history. It not only involves economic growth,
but also the normative practice of emancipatory self-development
(Bildung). Labor, essentially, is a particular type of learning process
(Honneth, 1982).
By reducing labor to instrumental action, Cohen cannot contrast
the holistic aspect of work to the abstracted, alienated nature of
work under capitalism. As Honneth (1982:45) states, The possiility
of work activity which is wholly guided by a subjective plan, and
which gradually reveals the subject's own capabilities in the realiza-
tion of that plan, has disappeared from . . . theoretical view.' Such
a concept of labor, involving self-controlled and self-regulated
work, done on one's own initiative, with one's own knowledge, is
very different from the reduction of work to technique character-
istic of instrumental action.

Criticisms II: System and Life-world

Similar difficulties can be seen in Habermas's distinction between
system and life-world. Just as he sees no normative component in
labor, he views the system as largely an arena of administrative
rationality. He argues that the media of money and power govern
interchanges within the system, yet he reifies this very process. Both
economic and political systems need principles and values in order
to function effectively. Habermas thus has no way of explaining the
development of value commitments and value orientations in this
realm. By restricting instrumental rationalization to the realm of the
system, and communicative rationalization to the life-world, he
does not see that economic and political institutions are subject to
both kinds of rationalization that he maps out (in other words, a
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 83

'doubly contingent' process) (Baxter, 1987: 75). This criticism does

not mean that his distinctions are illegitimate, or that the unwar-
ranted epistemoiogical hegemony of instrumental reason should not
be of central concern. Tensions between both types of rationaliza-
tion are undoubtedly important for understanding normative
development. Yet the extent to which instrumental or consensual
rationality predominates in a given institution or sphere is an
empirical and historical question — and the recognition that these
processes do not progress in a self-enclosed evolutionary manner
allows the specification of concrete social context, political divisions
and debates, and the conflict of interpretation to be placed at the
center of analysis (Baxter, 1987).
Because Habermas neglects the extent to which economic and
political spheres have a normative dimension, he does not suffi-
ciently comprehend possibilities of normative protest arising from
conditions at the workplace. Historical research on artisans shows
that demands for worker autonomy resulted from both changes in
the structure of labor and workers' culture, for the two realms are
not easily separable (Hanagan and Stephenson, 1980; Traugott,
1983). The extent to which political and economic spheres can be
democratized should not be prejudged — nor should movements
attempting to accomplish such tasks be perfunctorily dismissed.

Labor Movements and Historical Alternatives

By positing an evolutionary schema, Habermas tends toward an
insensitive historical understanding. Though Habermas (1986:
139-40) argues for the importance of remembering the past, his
historical analysis is often flawed. For example, he dismisses eigh-
teenth and nineteenth-century artisanal revolts catalogued by
scholars such as E.P. Thompson as sad and doomed victims of
modernization, but necessary ones nevertheless (1987: 377). His
evolutionary model eliminates the possibility of historical alter-
natives. Habermas thus falls into the same orthodox Marxist trap
of historical inevitability that he has sought to criticize throughout
his writings. This leads him to overdraw distinctions between old
and new social movements.
Cohen has written more extensively than Habermas on social
movements, and it is in her work that an inadequate historical
analysis is most apparent. For example, though Cohen criticizes
Touraine and others for prejudging the values of social movement
actors, she dismisses nineteenth-century workers' movements as
84 Theory, Culture & Society

'productivist'. Cohen thus commits the same hermeneutic error as

the 'identity paradigm', for she does not investigate the meanings
and beliefs of nineteenth-century workers' movements, nor does she
consider their life-world context. For Cohen, the labor movement
represents only a discredited set of assumptions and errors, from
which new social movements can learn nothing constructive (1985).
Such a reductionist view of labor obviates any discussion of the
historical context and dynamics of labor movements. By postulating
an inherent link between labor and productivism, Cohen does not
analyze in any detail the literature linking centralized control over
the labor process on the part of capitalists to the destruction of
worker autonomy (Braverman, 1974; Arnasson, 1979). Cohen, like
Habermas, sees developments in the labor process as extensions of
a self-contained pattern (instrumental action). The ways in which
changes in productive forces could modify interpretive systems
plays but a small role in her analysis. Though Cohen advocates
examining the social structural potentialities and constraints
delimiting social movements, such considerations have little expla-
natory force in her analysis.
Cohen thus neglects any true historical grounding for her
theories. She tends to make broad, sweeping statements, conflating
social thought, social movements and historical context. For exam-
ple, Cohen writes of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Utopian
socialism, anarchism, revolutionary syndicalism and council
communism,

All of these anti-statist, anti-market movements imply the de-differentiation of

society, economy, and state. Their purely defensive character (they had no
genuine political interest in reforming or taking power) thus implies the protection
not of society, but of a Utopian model of a pre-modern community against state
and economy. Their rejection of achieved forms of democracy as 'bourgeois'
together with the dangerous myth of a community freed from power, sovereignty,
or even competition, reveal their affinity with authoritarianism. (1983: 104)

Cohen does not investigate tendencies within labor movements

toward productivism, toward 'authoritarianism' or toward a more
participatory socialism; she neglects the historical context and com-
plexity that such tendencies entailed. In sum, Cohen does not
analyze the conditions under which productivist or non-productivist
concerns may predominate in social movements. This neglect allows
Cohen to draw too great a distinction between the ostensible pro-
ductivism of nineteenth-century labor movements and the orien-
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 85

tations of present day movements. In her insensitivity to the past,

she replicates the very ahistoricism and implicit structuralism that
she criticizes.

Revolutionary Syndicalism in France

The problems of an inadequate philosophy of labor, an implicit
philosophy of history, and a lack of attention to historical context
are particularly apparent in Cohen's discussion of revolutionary
syndicalism. Habermas does not discuss syndicalism, though he sees
parallels between 'the social-romantic movements of early indus-
trialism led by craftsmen, plebeians, and workers' and the new
social movements of today (1987: 393). However, both theorists
view movements such as syndicalism as potentially totalitarian in
their attempts to revolutionize society (Habermas 1987: 354). As
Cohen (1983:104) states, revolutionary syndicalism and council
communism attempted to 'generalize one model of organization,
derived from the sphere of production, to all of society'. Though
anarchism had a vision of forms of life that were not simply reflec-
tions of production, it too demanded the 'de-differentiation of
society, economy, and the state'. She goes on to write that this
'defensive' desire for de-differentiation reflected a 'Utopian model
of a pre-modern economy' to oppose to the existing state. Finally,
these movements' 'rejection of achieved forms of democracy as
"bourgeois" together with the dangerous myth of a community
freed from power, sovereignty, or even competition, reveal their
affinity with authoritarianism' (Cohen 1983: 104).
This analysis of syndicalism is misinformed. Revolutionary syn-
dicalism in France in the years preceding the First World War can
be interpreted as an example of a labor movement with non-
productivist tendencies, in fact providing conditions conducive to
the development of communicative action among its members. The
bulk of syndicalists were skilled workers. They had shared expe-
riences and traditions of autonomy at the workplace related to their
possession of skill. These experiences meshed with the decentralized
and gradual development of the economy in France. Decentralized
working conditions and traditions of worker autonomy clashed
with a state and business elite often opposed to social reform (Moss,
1976). Workers' understanding of their autonomy was height-
ened by the tradition of republicanism in France. Despite differing
emphases and implications, many on the left, from Jaures to
Durkheim, utilized a republican vocabulary to describe French
86 Theory, Culture & Society

society. Durkheim especially was concerned with problems of

social differentiation and the need for a moral, democratic, and
republican form of social integration (Durkheim, 1958).5 Syn-
dicalists adopted and radicalized the universalistic cultural tradition
of republican virtue, emphasizing those elements of the tradition
that stressed dialogue, consensus and the participation of equals.
Because of space limitations I cannot discuss in detail the complex-
ity of the syndicalist movement. The remainder of the essay, by
focusing on syndicalism in France, will show that Cohen's analysis
of syndicalism is incorrect; also, it will point out the affinities of
syndicalism with modern movements. In particular, this essay will
stress four main points:

(1) Syndicalism was not responding to the encroachment of state

and society on a pre-modern life-world, but defending an already
modernized life-world.
(2) Syndicalism did not demand de-differentiation in any simple
way, but rather attempted to radicalize traditions of democracy.
(3) Habermas and Cohen neglect the cultural tradition of repu-
blican virtue that informed the syndicalist critique of capitalism and
the state and that is still very much alive today. This tradition placed
the movement squarely within the universalistic, democratic tradi-
tions of the West.
(4) Syndicalism shares many of the same concerns with modern
movements, ranging from the value of autonomy to an emphasis
on rational (rather than traditional) modes of justification and con-
sensus formation; further, the movement attempted to implement
these values in its very organizational structure.

Syndicalism and Modernization

Revolutionary French syndicalism, which emerged in the late nine-
teenth century, developed in a context of an already modernized
life-world (using Cohen's criteria). France, a highly literate society
by 1900, was the only full-fledged democracy in Europe at this time
(Furet and Ozouf, 1982: 46). The Enlightenment, as well as the
tradition of republican virtue (which will be discussed in greater
detail below), influenced all segments of the French left, including
the labor movement (Moss, 1976; Sewell, 1980). The labor move-
ment had received freedom to organize, as well as state subsidies,
in the late nineteenth century.
Habermas and Cohen fail sufficiently to distinguish concepts of
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 87

modernization, for it was far from a uniform process. French

economic development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century reflected a modernized and still modernizing society. The
French economy was not pre-modern, nor were syndicalists defen-
ding a pre-modern life-world. Charles Tilly (1979) points out that
French peasants, as well as craftsmen, were largely producing for
a market by the nineteenth century. Further, the skilled laborers
that made up the social basis of syndicalism in pre-First World War
France were by no means relics of a bygone age. Syndicalism
represented an already modernized workforce. Recent economic
historians have noted that the decentralized artisanally skilled labor
base of French modernization provided an alternative to the English
model of large-scale industrial development, and the French expe-
rience captured more closely the actual modernization of most of
Europe (O'Brien and Keyder, 1978; Cameron and Freedeman,
1983).
Syndicalist doctrine was correspondingly 'modern'. Though syn-
dicalists were responding to an encroachment on their privileges,
they did not advocate a simplistic pre-modern ideology. The move-
ment defended such 'bourgeois' democratic rights as the right of
association, freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial and laws
restricting the arbitrary power of the state.6

Syndicalism and De-differentiation

Syndicalists did not advocate a simplistic 'de-differentiation' of
society. As Sewell (1980) points out, the French labor movement has
elaborated on organizational forms developed as far back as the
craft trades of the ancien regime. Yet continuity is not reaction; the
syndicalist appropriation of these forms in a new context provided
the movement with strong organizational and cultural resources.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth-century syndicalist move-
ment mandated that workers be grouped in federations of craft or
trade, as well as regionally grouped in local Bourses du Travail
(Moss, 1976; Sewell, 1980). This distinction reflected an implicit
syndicalist acceptance of the separation of administration and
society. The Bourses du Travail performed many of the adminis-
trative functions similar to those of the state, ranging from compil-
ing statistics on employment to devising worker welfare plans. The
syndicat provided a space where workers of similar professions
could meet to discuss issues of mutual relevance. Both of these
institutions were created to further worker education through
88 Theory, Culture & Society

participation; accordingly, each was radically democratic, and all

leaders elected and subject to recall. Leaders conceived of them-
selves as co-ordinating action rather than leading it (Julliard,
1981: 117). Though federations of industry and the Bourses du
Travail were part of a national structure in the CGT (after 1902),
the autonomy of each individual syndicat and Bourse remained a
cornerstone of syndicalist doctrine and practice. Syndicat auto-
nomy was stressed at every stage of the organizational structure
(Leroy, 1913; Lefranc, 1967).

Republican Virtue and Syndicalist Doctrine

A major fault of Habermas and Cohen lies in their ignorance of
the cultural tradition of republican virtue and its relationship to syn-
dicalism. Republican virtue is a 'rationalizing tradition' par excel-
lence according to the criteria enumerated by Habermas (1984:
71-2) — and this tradition, examined in detail below, provided the
conceptual vocabulary for syndicalist self-understanding and criti-
que of capitalism.
A number of scholars have argued that the roots of democracy
can be found in republicanism rather than liberalism (Pocock, 1975;
Bellah et al., 1985). Early republican theory emphasized the rela-
tionship of morality to participation in a public realm. This tradi-
tion posits that the values of Western humanism, such as freedom,
independence and dignity can only be realized through the par-
ticipation of equals in public life and the community in which one
lives. Public life furnishes a forum in which consensus is achieved
through discussion and collective action. Further, this participation
is a form of moral education, for it shapes the character of the
individual. The individual acquires morality only through his rela-
tions with others; true participation requires love of the common
good and a desire to be a part of the community. In sum, participa-
tion requires virtue, the 'capacity to apprehend and pursue the good
and to recognize in others the qualities of integrity, grace, and
excellence' (Bellah et al., 1985:254). Virtue can only be realized
within the confines of a community.
The type of association guaranteeing the fulfillment of everyone's
moral nature can only be realized in a society of equals. Material
independence, though without great disparities of wealth, is a
necessary prerequisite to the exercise of virtue. Only in such a com-
munity could individuals love the common good without the
temptation of private gain at the latter's expense. This society must
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 89

be based on 'practices in which the coincidence of personal concern

and the common welfare can be experienced', practices guarantee-
ing universality of participation (Bellah et al., 1985:254). Ruling
must be a partnership where morally autonomous individuals exer-
cise their capacity for self-government.
A community that did not follow these principles would foster
dependence of one upon another and thus destroy the possibility of
virtue. A society which centralized power and that had little com-
munal participation would tempt individuals to follow their pas-
sions and individual desires. Such 'corruption' assumes that politics
and ethics, united in Aristotelian theory, have become institu-
tionally separate. This results in politics defined solely in terms of
power and technique, relegating virtue to the private sphere. A
society with abundant luxury, and corresponding inequalities,
distracts individuals from the common good and leads to the rise
of factions. Corruption replaces virtue. In the view of many within
this tradition, incipient commercial capitalism fits the description
of a corrupt society. Individual wills struggle with one another,
dissociated from the disciplining hand of the virtuous community,
following only their individual inclinations (Bellah et al., 1985: 209,
231). As Pocock (1975: 521) states, The decline of virtue had as its
logical corollary the rise of interest.'
Syndicalist doctrine appropriated this theory of polity and
society, drawing on its rich history for a critique of capitalism and
the bourgeois republic. The tradition of republican virtue has been
informed by the imagery not only of the citizen, but also that of
the warrior and the producer. This emphasis on warriors and pro-
ducers, both categories of autonomous men, is an attempt to over-
come the dichotomies of experience and expertise that create the
dependence of some upon others and destroy a virtuous com-
munity. MachiavelH saw autonomous citizen-soldiers as the basis of
a virtuous community (Pocock, 1975: 200-3). Sorel extended this
imagery, arguing that the republican armies of the past were made
up of autonomous, independent men possessing virtue and elan for
the defense of their community. Contemporary soldiers, on the
other hand, were similar to cogs in a machine; thus they developed
no esprit de corps. The division of planning and execution ushered
into armies with the military science of Napoleon dissolved the vir-
tuous armies that had been based on the will and intellect of the
soldier. Just as armies could provide the grounds for virtue only
when allowing the participation of soldiers, virtue was only possible
90 Theory, Culture & Society

in the economic realm when producers (workers in a later era) con-

trolled the circumstances of production, combining skill, experience
and expertise. Just as Machiavelli's free citizens must possess arms
and Harrington's free men must possess property in order to
guarantee virtue, syndicalists argued that workers must possess skill
as a prerequisite for independent participation in the community.
This imagery informed the social theory of Proudhon and Sorel,
and the doctrine of syndicalism (Proudhon, 1969: Sorel, 1972;
Stanley, 1983).
Though the language of virtue and corruption declined during
the nineteenth century, the central meanings of this particular
cultural vocabulary remained strong, providing an incisive critique
of capitalism and a powerful if somewhat vague vision of an eman-
cipated society. Autonomy replaced virtue as the defining metaphor
of freedom and independence. Though corruption remained a
salient descriptive term for the ruling class in the nineteenth century,
it was joined by the pejorative label 'egoist', applied to an indi-
viduality bounded by no moral constraints. 7 The association of
trade with luxury, and the perception that economic wealth
depended on political favors, were central themes of syndicalist and
other radical discourse. This constellation of metaphors united in
the critique of the specialization inherent in the division of labor,
for it made some men dependent on others, crushing autonomy and
fostering corruption. This vision also informed the syndicalist criti-
que of modern mass democracy. The secret ballot, severed from
other forms of democracy, destroyed connections between people,
thereby eliminating disputation and discussion, the bases of
virtue.
Syndicalist discourse stressed the importance of autonomy, the
fear of dependence and corruption, the association of luxury with
egoism, and the debilitating consequences of the growth of the divi-
sion of labor. Working-class independence, the syndicalist leit-
motif, was not simply a way to increase the economic and political
power of labor; it simultaneously, and primarily, created the condi-
tions for moral development, collective solidarity and the over-
coming of dependence. The syndicat was the organizational
embodiment of such sentiments, for it allowed equal participation
of all workers, and it encouraged the laborer to 'have confidence
in oneself, to rely on oneself, to be master of oneself, and to act
oneself (Pouget 1910:2).
Revolutionary syndicalism was animated by a fear of bureau-
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 91

cracy, represented by political parties such as the SPD in Germany.

Syndicalists believed that bureaucracy was the antithesis of
freedom — their doctrine and organization took measures to
ensure that bureaucracy would be held in check. They opposed the
bureaucratic organizations of the state and political parties with a
decentralized, federalist and radically democratic structure of syn-
dicats. This emphasis on autonomy and independence also formed
the basis of syndicalist doctrine.
Doctrine was formulated in syndicalist congresses. These con-
gresses were celebrations of rational democratic discourse, empha-
sizing the benefits of free and critical discussion within the confines
of an independent working class. The heritage of republican virtue,
enlivened by the traditions of moral unity and autonomy within
skilled trades, promoted the creation of a radically democratic
public sphere, a public forum characterized by critical discussion
and a shared belief in worker autonomy. Union representatives
engaged in face to face discussion, often eschewing private ballots
while voting on almost all issues, arguing in spirited and acri-
monious debate. It was as if these congresses were attempting to
concretely formulate Rousseau's general will. The very act of esta-
blishing a rational consensus was dependent upon, and intimately
linked to, the form of debate characterizing these congresses
(Tucker, 1986).
Such a conceptual vocabulary informed syndicalist notions of
direct action, the general strike and revolution. Syndicalists pro-
moted action in the service of autonomy. For syndicalists, direct
action consisted primarily of strikes and demonstrations, secon-
darily of the use of the boycott and the labeling of union sponsored
goods. These forms of collective action (particularly strikes and
demonstrations) dissolved the dichotomies of thought and action,
experience and expertise. They represented true democracy, for they
increased worker solidarity while giving workers a sense of their
own power. Syndicalists argued that bourgeois democracy atomized
and split apart people; their forms of direct action created worker
solidarity, providing workers with a method of mastering reality,
creating virtue through active participation. Syndicalist direct
action (particularly strikes) provided a 'gymnasium' where solidar-
ity developed and the class struggle was highlighted, concretizing
for the worker the links between individual autonomy, class,
community and virtue. Griffuelhes (1908) observed that a strike
'educates, it hardens, it involves and it creates'. First of May
92 Theory, Culture & Society

demonstrations performed a similar function. These demonstra-

tions were occasions of proletarian unity, in which 'workers of all
corporations . . . affirm, with increasing intensity, the solidarity
which ties together all of the exploited'.8 Change would come
about only through a revolution (on the model of a peaceful general
strike) in which the proletariat participated fully, a participation of
autonomous individuals not unlike Machiavelli's and SorePs discus-
sion of virtuous action within the context of a citizen militia. The
general strike represented the material embodiment of the theory of
integral revolution, foreshadowed by the 'levee en masse' of first of
May demonstrations, particularly the Mayday of 1906. Unlike the
'authoritarian' centralizing tendencies of capitalists and socialists,
syndicalists advocated a decentralized revolution.
Syndicalist doctrine stressed that workers could not take power
through a coup, but rather must await and encourage the parti-
cipation of the masses. Emancipatory social change could not be
brought about by the actions of an elite alone — only through col-
lective action could workers create a society that was truly free of
domination. The means to reach such a society were indistin-
guishable from the very society itself (Julliard 1981: 117). Thus for
syndicalism knowledge and action were intimately linked, and both
were deemed necessary for the creation and maintenance of vir-
tue — yet this was knowledge of a special sort, knowledge of the
ethical bases of labor and action.

Syndicalism and New Social Movements

An overview of revolutionary French syndicalism shows that this
movement shared many traits with modern social movements. Par-
ticipants freely debated all aspects of movement goals, respected
one another's opinions and autonomy (this was embodied in their
very organizational structure), and attempted to create a new
society based on the principles of a decentralized democratic
socialism rather than through the return to a past state. No doubt
syndicalism had productivist tendencies, based in large part on its
epistemological assumptions about class and labor. But these were
only tendencies. A sensitive historical analysis is necessary to docu-
ment the conditions whereby a movement develops in a productivist
or non-productivist direction.
Neither Habermas nor Cohen undertake such an investiga-
tion. Habermas sees nineteenth-century skilled and artisanal
workers as historical anachronisms due to be deskilled by the
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 93

self-differentiating system. My analysis has shown that this is not

the case with regard to French syndicalism. Habermas must take the
possibility of historical alternatives more seriously in order to avoid
a simple evolutionary determinism. His historical insensitivity raises
several questions about his analysis of contemporary social move-
ments. How do we know that new social movements are not doomed
to be swept away by the further differentiation of the system? What
criteria do we have for a sufficiently modernized system that can
be balanced with a rationalized life-world? Habermas is not specific
on this point. His analysis of social movements takes on something
of an ad hoc character.
Further, modern social movements do not escape the tension bet-
ween communicative and instrumental action orientations. The new
populism often tends towards interest group politics that reinforces
rather than criticizes traditional political parties and processes
(Boyte, 1980). The ecological movement has conflicts between those
favoring a more instrumental and rational use of nature and others
advocating a completely different understanding of our relationship
to nature, manifested in internal debates within the West German
Greens movement (Hiilsberg, 1988).
Simply postulating that contemporary social movements have
escaped such dilemmas is insufficient. A more closely textured
analysis of cultural traditions can provide an understanding of
social movement dynamics. Here the understanding of past labor
movements can be very important. For example, the cultural tra-
dition of republican virtue which informed the syndicalist move-
ment is still relevant today. A major problem for scholars is to
understand, reinterpret and thus reinvigorate these cultural tradi-
tions in the light of contemporary problems. Sociologists such as
Bellah (1975) and Alexander (1988) have undertaken such a task.
They have reformulated many of the moral ideas of republicanism,
often drawn from Durkheim, in a modern context. Bellah's dis-
cussion of contemporary American civil religion and Alexander's
analysis of the sacred/profane distinction in American political life
demonstrate this influence. Such efforts can also contribute to the
enrichment of the self-understanding of contemporary social move-
ments. Cohen states that modern movements are not solely defen-
sive, but attempt to implement positive values as well. Yet she has
no theory of republican virtue that could provide the source for such
positive values. Such theoretical considerations would lead her to
stress connections between older labor movements and those of
94 Theory, Culture & Society

today. Scholars such as Evans and Boyte (1986) and Bellah (1985)
have undertaken such a task, attempting to develop much more
historically informed analyses of modern social movements.
The significance of contemporary labor movements and struggles
for democratizing society must also be stressed. Workers' control,
traditionally integrally tied to democratic demands, has a rich
history in Europe and the United States. It also remains an impor-
tant part of any movement for a more democratic society today. 9
The concern with unalienated labor, characteristic not only of
Marx but of many other left-labor movements, may still provide the
best model for emancipation. Demands for control over the labor
process invariably lead to broader issues involving the democra-
tization of society. Such labor issues involve not only demands for
autonomy, but self-creation as well — the struggle for emancipated
labor may still provide the best model of a self-conscious humanity
realizing itself. Habermas may have prematurely rejected the
'philosophy of consciousness' in his move towards an intersubjective
analysis of communicative structures. Cannot the demand for
undistorted communication be coupled with the demand for
unalienated labor? The experience of labor combines the creativity
of self-formative processes with the opportunity for discussing prac-
tical/moral concerns.
Struggles over worker control may well provide the key to the
future democratization of society, for they raise fundamental ques-
tions of autonomy, identity and creativity — questions integral to
control over the labor process. These issues are far from resolved.
As Honneth (1982: 54) states, one cannot simply assume that 'the
process of liberation from alienated work relations, which Marx had
in mind, was already historically complete'.
In sum, questions of historical context, of the historical specificity
of the social structural constraints affecting social movements, must
not be submerged into a philosophy of history. The integration of
theory and practice demands a consideration of the objective cir-
cumstances in which struggles take place (Postone, 1985).
Despite these criticisms, the critical theory represented by
Habermas and Cohen, albeit with a more sensitive historical under-
standing, is nevertheless integral to a sophisticated understanding of
contemporary movements. Most work on social movements lacks
the theoretical understanding of the interconnection of modern
society, social movements and rationality found in Cohen and
Habermas.
 Tucker, New Social Movements? 95

Notes
1. For Habermas, the phenomenologically derived notion of life-world provides
the context for the generation of meaning. The life-world consists of the 'culturally
transmitted, prereflexively certain, intuitively available, background knowledge'
(1982: 271). These 'taken-for-granted context presuppositions' of interaction are
embodied in the cultural traditions, group solidarities and individual competencies
that participants make use of in communication. Yet the generation of meaning can
only be achieved through consensually based interaction. Although strategic action
is an inherent part of the life-world, rational purposive action presupposes consen-
sual agreement on action goals. Ideally, for Habermas, communicative action,
however fallible and implicit, serves as the medium through which such goals are
articulated and a meaningful life-world is reproduced. Also, the symbolically struc-
tured processes of the life-world furnish the context and the cultural resources that
give concrete shape to the interpretive accomplishments of actors in communicative
interaction (Habermas, 1987).
2. Habermas traces the traditions of civil and familial-vocational privatism to the
bourgeois worldview of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Habermas means
by civil privatism an orientation towards the administrative rationality of system
practices with little concern for issues of legitimation. It results in a depoliticized
public realm. Familial-vocational privatism is based on a devotion to career, achieve-
ment, and leisure and consumption (Habermas, 1975: 75-6).
3. The new values discussed by Cohen and embodied in contemporary social
movements can be more or less rational. Habermas distinguishes types of rationaliza-
tion and the role of cultural modernity in creating the conditions for greater reflex-
ivity. Habermas's communicative ethic provides criteria for distinguishing the
'rationalization potential* of new social movements, criteria based on non-coercive
participatory and universalistic precepts. Reactionary movements promulgate values
that assert community without rational and participatory rules for consensual
action — movements which encourage communicative rationalization embody such
principles in their very structure (Habermas, 1984: 71-2).
4. Luker (1984) distinguishes between the utilitarian world view of pro-abortion
activists and the traditional perspective of those opposed to abortion. Both of these
ideologies differ from the participatory and consensual orientation that characterizes
radical feminism.
5. On the history and vicissitudes of republicanism in France, see Keohane (1980),
Shklar (1969), and Hunt (1984).
6. These themes were often prominent in the 1912-14 issues of the syndicalist
newspapers La Voix du peuple and La Bataille syndicalists
7. The critique of an atomized individualism was a major theme of Durkheim as
well. See Durkheim (1973).
8. See the first of May poster, 1905, in Fonds Delesalle, 14AS 39, Institut francais
d'histoire sociale, Paris.
9. There is an enormous literature on workers' control, both from an historical
perspective and in contemporary times. On the history of various attempts at
workers' control and co-operatives, see Jackall and Levin (1984); contemporary
references include Simmons and Mares (1983), White (1980), Gunn (1984). For
France, see Kesselman (1984).
96 Theory, Culture & Society

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Kenneth. H. Tucker is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Mount

Holyoke College, South Hadley, USA.