New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Vol. 4, No. 1 (October 2010) Pp. 7-22

Social Movements and Counter-Hegemony:

Lessons from the Field
William K. Carroll
University of Victoria

R. S. Ratner
University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT: The urban centre of Vancouver, British Columbia has been a fecund research site for the study of capital,
state, and social movement relations over the past three decades. In this article, we summarize the findings of our research
program spanning that politically volatile period, and we reflect on the formidable, but not insuperable, obstacles to chal-
lenging the authority of global capital. We conclude that a ‘transformative politics’ articulated through a neo-Gramscian
approach and rooted in a generative ‘globalization-from-below’ is the most promising basis for counter-hegemony
today.

Keywords: social movements; counter-hegemony; Gramsci; civil society; neoliberalism; historic bloc; war of position;
social democracy; organic intellectuals

I n an era when some academic sociologists have

declared an end to class (Pakulski and Waters
1996), when others have argued that movement
radical alternative to capitalist modernity. In address-
ing these challenges, within the domain of empirical
sociology, we have found Antonio Gramsci to be a
politics is now centred around “symbolic challenges” particularly helpful theorist. This paper condenses
rather than material needs (Melucci 1996), and when and reflects on some of our findings from studies of
still others declare the death of transformative politics social movements in the last three decades.
that attempt to bring disparate currents into mutual Gramsci’s great achievement was to bring to
alignment (Day 2005), the cultural authority of Marxism a language of politics that recognizes
Marxism, and of the broad left, is under suspicion. For that the state is more than an apparatus of coercion,
historical materialism, the emergence of “new social that the classes that compose historic blocs are not
movements” has brought the challenge of mapping determined solely by the relations of production, and
these diverse forms of popular struggle into a theo- that popular forces and currents are often decisive
retical space defined primarily by classes and states. in giving shape and form to the moralities by which
For the left, the challenge has been to move beyond we live. Rejecting the economistic orthodoxies of his
the now doubtful projects of Leninism and social time, Gramsci’s open Marxism was a ‘philosophy of
democracy, and beyond the fragments of multiform praxis,’ an affirmation that the social world is consti-
oppositional politics that the new movements have tuted by human practice. For Gramsci, the analytical
activated, toward a more durable unity-in-diversity imperative to transcend economism was fueled by a
that respects difference while building support for a practical need for subordinate groups to move beyond
8 • W. K. CARROLL AND R. S. RATNER

a defensive understanding of their immediate inter- hegemony in these times. Our working assumption
ests, to create their own hegemonic conception of the has been that contemporary social movements are,
‘general interest,’ capable of guiding a transformative prima facia, agents of counter-hegemony in their
politics. Gramsci famously emphasized the growing organized dissent to the existing order. Within a
importance of civil society as a site distinct from state Gramscian problematic, the central diagnostic ques-
and capitalist production, on which an expanding tion is whether and how such movements might be
array of social and political identities are forged recognizable as counter-hegemonic “in a more pro-
and social struggles organized – a site for political active, visionary sense” (Carroll and Ratner 1994:6).
mobilization and coalition formation (Urry 1981). With this in mind, our research has emphasized the
With this in mind, Gramsci developed the concept broad question of counter-hegemonic historic-bloc
of historic bloc to indicate the way in which a class formation, a question that brings in its train the
‘combines the leadership of a bloc of social forces strategic issue of the conduct of a war of position
in civil society with its leadership in the sphere of through which the balance of cultural power in civil
production’ (Simon 1982:86). society can be shifted and space won for radical alter-
For the bourgeoisie, one of capitalism’s two natives, unifying dissenting groups into a system of
fundamental classes, hegemony is never more than alliances capable of contesting bourgeois hegemony.
a contingent accomplishment, secured by the efforts This paper takes stock of our work to date.
of vast, dispersed networks of organic intellectuals
– in administration, law, culture and politics – whose The Dissolution and Formation of Historic
business it is to organize the productivities, morali- Blocs
ties, identities, and desires of subalterns, thereby The temporal context for our research has been an
constructing a relatively durable bloc of alliances era in which the organic crisis of fordist-Keynesian
reaching into civil society which are sustained via regulation, dating from the 1970s, provoked vari-
material and symbolic concessions that are often ous neoliberal initiatives aimed both at dissolving
state-mediated. Gramsci likened the cultural power the historic bloc that had organized consent in the
of the bourgeoisie in the West to a formidable sys- post-war boom era and at constructing a new historic
tem of earthworks and trenches, obliging the left to bloc around the economic nucleus furnished by a new
conduct a war of position within civil society – to wave of capitalist globalization and post-industrial
gain ground through processes of moral-intellectual accumulation. In this period, what Gill (1995a) has
reform that prepare subordinate groups for self-gov- called a transnational historic bloc, composed of lead-
ernance by creating post-capitalist sensibilities and ing globalizing capitalists, incipient institutions of
values, practical democratic capacities, and a belief in global governance such as the Trilateral Commission,
the possibility of a radically transformed future. and various organic intellectuals active internation-
It is precisely in this sense that hegemony can be ally in political, cultural and economic fields, began
understood to cut both ways. It signifies the organi- to take shape, as the project of “globalization from
zation of consent – the practices and forms in which above” sought to discipline local populations to
loyalty to bourgeois leadership in economics, politics, new accumulation norms represented as non-nego-
and culture is secured – but also the possibility of tiable (“There is no alternative,” claimed Margaret
organizing dissent (Carroll 1997), and ultimately Thatcher), while offering the allure of cosmopolitan
of constructing a counter-hegemonic bloc around consumer choice and increased affluence for abstract
labour and its allies. individuals possessed of a morally worthy attitude
In a research program beginning in the 1980s of entrepreneurship. The relative success of neolib-
and continuing through the first decade of this eral interventions in reorganizing consent around a
century, we have spoken directly with hundreds of restructured economic nucleus and a different pat-
activists in a great range of social movements, in order tern of class and popular alliances has been highly
to gain a sense of the prospects for building counter- site-specific, and always qualified by problematical
 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY • 9

features of neoliberalism: the “free market” requires based left was quick to respond, assembling a broad
a “strong state” to enforce its formal rationality in the alliance of organized labour with community grass
face of unmet needs and aspirations, hence coercion roots groups under the banner of the Solidarity
can come to overshadow persuasion as the visible Coalition. But despite a series of escalating strikes,
form of state power (Gamble 1988); the decline of the Coalition collapsed when its core labour groups
class compromise and social reform renders the hege- opportunistically accepted a settlement that met their
monic bloc quite thin, as formerly integrated groups own demands for job security, but left unmet the
(organized labour, clients of the welfare state) become social and human rights agendas of the various com-
available for more radical oppositional politics (Cox munity groups. Thus, the 1983 Solidarity Coalition,
1987); the disintegrating impact of market relations that began by allying the social proletariat of state
and periodic crises on communal social relations can employees with the clientele of the Keynesian
lead to popular discontent with the anti-democratic Welfare State and with the radical left and NSMs,
and brutalizing character of full-blooded capitalism proved little more than a defensive mobilization
(Gill 1995b). that was betrayed by the tactical goal of its core con-
The spatial context of our research has been stituents in labour’s efforts to preserve remnants of a
British Columbia, Canada – particularly the large Fordist historic bloc that had already been disavowed
urban centre of greater Vancouver – a political juris- by capital (Carroll and Ratner 1989).4
diction which has had “a sharper left-right focus than Our subsequent research, focusing on the period
any other part of English-speaking North America” of social-democratic provincial administration in the
(Blake 1996:67) in which putative control of the pro- 1990s, has involved in-depth interviews with several
vincial state veered from a neoliberal party intent on hundred movement activists mainly in labour, femi-
dissolving the fordist-Keynesian bloc in the 1980s1 nist, environmental, anti-poverty, disability, peace,
to a social-democratic party which throughout the sexual liberation, and aboriginal groups. 5 In our
1990s attempted to reconcile the conflicting claims analysis of transcripts from interviews conducted in
of labour, capital and a variety of new social move- the early 1990s, we began by focusing on the reputed
ments (NSMs)2 and back to a consolidated party of divide between labour and NSMs, which in the wake
the right in the first decade of the new century.3 of the failed coalition-building of 1983 might well
The story begins in the spring of 1983. In a context have grown wider. Unions are often regarded as bereft
of a deep and protracted economic recession in which of transformative potential and mired in bureaucratic
the collapse of world demand for resource products economism, and conversely, NSMs are often thought
combined with labour-shedding transformations at
the point of production to produce unemployment 4 The 1983 campaign illustrated the problem of alliance-building on
the left in the absence of a counter-hegemonic principle. The basis of
levels above 15%, a newly-elected Social Credit gov- unity in the coalition was limited to the realm of contingency, pav-
ernment brought forward a Thatcherite program of ing the way for the state’s cynical manipulation of weaknesses in the
broad-based alliance and permitting a reconstituted class dominance.
deficit reduction through austerity, the withdrawal of This rearticulation of labour’s interests in corporative terms meant that
trade-union rights for state employees, and the weak- working-class struggle remained, at best, within the limits of ‘passive
revolution’ and the consequent disillusionment of the community
ening of safeguards for human rights. The austerity
groups deepened the existing distrust of organized labour for hav-
program signaled an abandonment of the project ing demobilized the post-Fordist historic bloc in its formative stages.
of class compromise and social reform, providing a When, in 1987, the provincial government made further attempts
to bring labour relations under more authoritarian control, spurring
conjunctural basis of unity between organized labour another defensive mobilization capped by threats of a general strike,
and a wide array of popular-democratic forces that organized labour acknowledged the limitations of its episodic ‘wars of
movement’ and undertook a strategy of dialoguing with community
included the radical left and NSMs. The Vancouver- groups in order to create the foundation for an eventual shift in the
balance of cultural and social forces. Whether this effort would be well-
1 The Social Credit governments headed by William Bennett (1975- received by community groups, in the aftermath of Solidarity, was the
1986) and William van der Zalm (1986-1991). cardinal question, one on which the formation of a ‘ new historic bloc’
2 The New Democratic governments headed by Michael Harcourt of dependable allies plainly hinged.
(1991-1996) and Glen Clark (1996-1999). 5 For descriptions of the methods used in these studies see Carroll
3 The Liberal government headed by Gordon Campbell (2001- ) and Ratner (1995, 1996a, 1996b, 1998 and 1999).
10 • W. K. CARROLL AND R. S. RATNER

to ignore structural issues in their valourization of frame. For the sample as a whole, the ‘political
identity politics; yet we found that both labour economy’ frame was by far the most prevalent, and
and NSM activists favoured fostering cooperative appeared to serve as a common interpretive scheme
relations across diverse movements and saw labour for most activists across the entire spectrum of
playing an important role in that process (Carroll movements in our sample. Most of the activists we
and Ratner 1995). Aside from a striking difference interviewed continue to understand domination
between them in their political party activism,6 our and injustice as structural, systemic, and materially
findings gave evidence of a labour movement increas- grounded. While the concern for “identity politics’
ingly open to popular struggles, sensitive to the needs enriches and partly transforms movement discourses
of diverse and marginalized constituencies, and tac- by calling attention to fields and sites of struggle not
tically prepared, if not psychologically predisposed, punctuated by the political-economy frame, most of
to yield a leading role in whatever new articulatory the activists shared an interpretive frame that views
process might form. Considerable networking was power as materially grounded in capital and the state,
already occurring between many of the labour and enabling activists in diverse movements to speak a
NSM activists, as well as indications that unions had common language in framing their political initia-
begun to join forces with NSMs in various coalition tives (Carroll and Ratner 1996a).
practices and strategies. Our findings, then, gave Further to the task of coordinating action
some basis for guarded optimism about prospects for between the various social movements, we mapped
a new historic bloc combining ‘old’ and ‘new’ social out the network of cross-movement activism cre-
movements. Labour activists clearly had some invest- ated by “cosmopolitan” activists who participate in
ment in building solidaristic ties to other movements multiple movement organization spanning diverse
on an equitable if cautiously implemented basis. In cultural-political fields, as in the trade unionist who
their diverse reflections they resonated with the con- is also active in an environmental group. Among our
cerns for difference, autonomy, and cultural politics key findings were that the cross-movement activists
characteristically ascribed to NSM activists. understood injustice within a political-economic
In two other respects – ‘master framing’ and frame, and that movements in which political econ-
‘cross-movement networking’ – we noted strong omy framing predominated – labour, peace, feminism,
commonalities and grounds for political cohesion and the urban/anti-poverty sector – tended not only
amongst the various activists we interviewed, where to supply most of the cross-movement ties, but to
the theoretically prescribed differences between labour be tied to each other as well, forming a loose politi-
and NSM activists would have predicted otherwise. cal bloc. A political economy framing of injustice
The system of alliances that constitutes an historic seems to provide a language in which activists from
bloc requires that constituent groups reach a shared different movements can communicate and perhaps
understanding of the sources and nature of injustice. find common ground, elevating single-issue and
Such shared understandings or “master frames” move local contexts into more comprehensive critiques of
beyond single-issue politics to integrate the specific power and more expansive forms of action. For these
agendas of diverse movements into central interpre- ‘cosmopolitan’ activists, cross-movement ties serve as
tive frameworks, and lend coherence to movement media for reaching or maintaining consensual view-
politics by providing a moral-intellectual basis for points on injustice spanning sectoral boundaries.7
solidarity. We found that three master frames were To a large extent, the network that knits movements
particularly prevalent in activists’ accounts of power into an incipient bloc emanates from the agency of
and domination – a liberal frame (emphasizing these core activists, who may be thought to wear the
individual freedom, rights and enfranchisement), Gramscian mantle of ‘organic intellectuals’ as con-
an identity-politics frame, and a political-economy
7 Twenty-six cosmopolitan networkers in our sample carried over
6 NSM activists generally shun electoralism at any level beyond the 50% of all the cross-movement ties that linked 155 of our respondents
local. into a network.
 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY • 11

ductors and organizers of the progressive movement and then NAFTA, drove the ACN, nationally and
sector. Virtually all of these activists shared the politi- locally (in B.C.) into a moribund state, reinforcing
cal-economic understanding of injustice. the perception that since nation-states were heeling
That three-quarters of our respondents under- to transnational corporations (TNCs), remedies
stood injustice in political-economic terms, while could not be sought on a strictly domestic plane – a
nearly half of them were “cosmopolitan” in their more global strategy was required, one capable of
pattern of activism, calls into question the claim that enlarging the historic bloc by reframing ACN along
social criticism has “split into myriad local critical more internationalist lines and around a unifying
analyses mirroring the social fragmentation of the principle or vision that could last beyond the shift-
left” (Seidman 1992:51). On the contrary, the adop- ing alliances and episodic responses that tended to
tion of a political-economy frame by cross-movement short-circuit the ‘war of position’ that was necessary
activists suggests that wider participation fosters to nurture the elements of social change.
more holistic political views, leading to recognition With the decline of the ACN, the role of reac-
of commonalities that cut across different movements, tivating widespread opposition to the ‘corporate
so that activists from diverse constituencies are bet- agenda’ was informally transferred to the Council of
ter able to grasp the interconnectedness of resistance Canadians, a citizens’ organization founded in 1985.
struggles (Carroll and Ratner 1996b). Initially focused on a left-nationalist project intent
As an important caveat to the above, however, on protecting Canadian sovereignty through opposi-
we found, in studying the experience of the first tion to the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the
national coalition of social movements in Canada Council soon countenanced the tentacular powers of
– the Action Canada Network – that shared politi- the TNCs and the collusive role of the institutions
cal sensibilities among networking activists may not of ‘global governance; consequently, it extended its
suffice to effectively challenge the ‘corporate agenda.’ citizens’ agenda to an international level, cooperat-
The Action Canada Network (ACN) was founded in ing with citizens’ organizations in other countries
1987 under the name of the Pro-Canada Network in successful campaigns to thwart passage of the
as a broad-based grouping of national organizations Multilateral Agreement on Investment (1998) and
and provincial coalitions working for social justice seriously disrupt meetings of the World Trade
and the defense of Canadian sovereignty, with the Organization in Seattle (1999).
specific mandate of opposing the Canada-US Free Since then, the Council has been a tenacious
Trade Agreement and later, the North American Free advocate for progressive policies across Canada, striv-
Trade Agreement. The advent of coalition politics ing to prevent corporate profits from trumping the
on a national scale was, in part, a response to the public interest over vital issues such as bulk water
waning executive powers of the nation-state, added exports, sustainable development, climate change,
to the growing realization that sectoral solutions public transit, and food security. In its short history,
to societal problems could not adequately address the Council has been a conspicuous participant in
the deleterious impacts of the global economy. The various International and Global Days of Action,
British Columbia chapter of ACN was formed in Alternative People’s Summits, and most recently, the
1991, presenting a second chance opportunity for protests against the G8 and G20 economic summits
a counter-hegemonic project that might, in retro- held in Toronto (Coburn 2010:215-18). It remains to
spect, atone for the failures of the earlier Solidarity be seen whether the Council’s consultative approach
Coalition, but, more importantly, halt the passage of with members, activists, and coalition partners, can
the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement continue to mobilize a new historic bloc linking
and build an authentic democratic political culture. regional, national, and international social move-
However, the national electoral victories of the ment groups, though its impressive successes amidst
Progressive Conservatives in 1988 and the Liberals in the growing forces of an imperious market economy
1993, resulting in the respective passage of the FTA makes it clear that, henceforth, the struggle against
12 • W. K. CARROLL AND R. S. RATNER

capitalist hegemony must be waged on both local To forge an alternative hegemony, counter-hege-
and global fronts. monic movements must wed justice with ecology:
“social groups that aspire to hegemony increasingly
The Conduct of a War of Position have to demonstrate their ability to pose solutions to a
As implied in the Gramscian elocution – ‘new variety of issues related to nature and the environment”
historic bloc’ – the purpose in constructing a new (Ekers and Mann 2009:289). This means, among
alignment of class and popular forces is to challenge other things, going beyond the politics of resistance,
the dominion of the leading class across the state into prefiguration; i.e., developing “alternative forms of
institutional networks and within the looser domains production and reproduction or alternative concep-
of civil society. For Gramsci, this entailed a strategic tions of nature-society relations” (Karriem 2009:318).
‘war of position’ spanning successive conjunctures and Recent developments in Canada do suggest a ten-
shifting the balance of forces through interventions tative move in this direction, on multiple levels. In
at various sites, particularly within the intellectual Victoria, a Transition Towns initiative has been
and moral realms of civil society. gaining membership since 2009 and now has work-
One marker of success in the war of position ing groups focusing on a wide range of justice and
is the achievement of a shared social vision for an ecology issues (http://transitionvictoria.ning.com/).
alternative future (Purcell 2009). Among the diverse In May 2010, a BC-based degrowth movement, with
group of activists we interviewed in the early 1990s, a strong critique of capitalist growth and an equally
there was some evidence of such a vision. When strong commitment to social justice, was launched
asked what kind of society they were striving for in Vancouver (O’Keefe 2010), bringing a counter-
in their activism, nearly half of them described a hegemonic movement already influential in Quebec
“caring society” characterized by mutual respect and into British Columbia. A month earlier, on 22 April
tolerance and by values such as compassion, fairness, 2010, the Ottawa-based Polaris Institute announced
and sharing; but while this vision of a caring society the formation of a national Green Environmental
resonated across most movements and particularly Network (GEN), an alliance of many of the country’s
among feminist, gay/lesbian and peace activists, few leading ecology groups, labour unions and social jus-
environmentalists subscribed to it, and by the same tice organizations, “uniting around a common cause
token few non-environmental activists subscribed of building a green economy in Canada” (Clarke
to the ecological vision that most environmentalists 2010). GEN was founded on the premise that “the
endorsed. The fissure between the social-justice vision economic model in this country has to be fundamen-
and the ecological vision points to a well-known and tally transformed if Canada is going to measure up to
highly consequential weakness in the political culture the ecological challenges of our times” (Clarke 2010)
of the contemporary left, to a breached flank in its Its vision statement, however, sees the “private sec-
war of position. To offer an ethical-political vision tor” playing a key role in building the green economy,
sufficiently robust to challenge capital’s domination under the leadership of governments and publicly
of people and nature, humanistic concerns for social owned institutions (http://www.greeneconomynet.
justice need to be welded to ecological concerns for ca/) – a transition strategy that could easily devolve
stewardship and sustainability. Failure to bridge this into an elite-engineered passive revolution involving
difference has furnished an object lesson in the divide- relatively minor regulatory adjustments to “business
and-conquer tactics of bourgeois passive revolution, as usual,” along the lines sketched by Luke (2006).
as business groups have mobilized working-class In our more detailed examination of selected
identities behind anti-ecological campaigns with groups, we explored some of the challenges of car-
the lure of short-term jobs, while middle-class envi- rying out a war of position as they relate to the
ronmentalists have been indifferent to the livelihood building of oppositional cultures and the pursuit
concerns of workers and communities (Doyle et al of media strategies suited to convey counter-hege-
1997; Foster 1993). monic messages to wider publics. A fundamental
 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY • 13

challenge to movements conducting a war of posi- of cultural and material politics: The Centre, a gay-
tion is to develop their counter-hegemonic capacities so lesbian/bisexual community centre which vigorously
that an oppositional culture can be sustained against contests the biases of conventional society and mainly
the colonizing and marginalizing moves of capital pursues a project of recognition; End Legislated
and state. Whether that challenge is met depends Poverty, the province’s largest anti-poverty organiza-
upon how creatively movement groups pursue three tion with ties to labour and the traditional left, and
analytically distinct tasks: community-building, oriented around redistributive politics; and the B.C.
meeting the needs of constituents, and mobilizing Coalition of People with Disabilities, which struggles
and engaging in collective action. The dilemma is to valourize and transform a precarious identity and
that all three tasks can be pursued by a given group to gain tangible improvements in the lives of disabled
in ways that either tie constituents to, or wean them people, thus addressing issues of both recognition
from, hegemonic constructions of their interests and and redistribution.8 Without recounting the detailed
identities. Ideally, movement groups achieve some findings based upon our in-depth interviews with
degree of practical efficacy in carrying out each task activists in each group (Carroll and Ratner 2001),
while framing their interests in ways that resonate some summary observations can be drawn about
with other movement struggles and avoid ‘system’ the organizational dilemmas that vitiate efforts to
cooptation or marginalization. How effectively sustain oppositional cultures under the hegemonic
movement groups manage these critical tasks is in constraints of neoliberalism.
turn related to how they conceive their political proj- In brief, the Centre (TC), faced with a needy and
ect – whether as a ‘cultural politics of recognition’ in diverse clientele, placed its emphasis on the provi-
which injustice is seen as rooted in social patterns of sion of specific services and on mitigating the effects
representation, interpretation, and communication, of homophobia and related forms of disrespect for
or as a ‘material politics of redistribution’ in which sexual minorities. Despite a premium on community-
injustice is located in political-economic structures. building as a means of increasing the self-esteem of
In addition to this recognition/redistribution axis, its members, its diverse but socially isolated clientele
Nancy Fraser (1995) identifies two basic forms of perpetualy subverted claims to any overarching iden-
intervention for remedying either type of injustice tity that might be politically affirmed. At the same
– ‘affirmative’ and ‘transformative’ – the first referring time, its small cadre of relatively affluent members
to ameliorative corrections to injustices that leave has been attracted to the affirmative benefits of ‘main-
intact the prevailing structures of power, and the streaming,’ leaving TC without the resources either
second to interventions that aim at restructuring the to address the pressing needs of its new constituents
underlying generative framework. The challenge for or the ability to engage in the deconstructive cultural
movement groups is to determine how they can pur- politics that might reverse the forms of misrecog-
sue their three domain tasks in ways that lead beyond nition suffered by its more discriminated clientele.
mere affirmation of their existing material needs and End Legislated Poverty (ELP), with its overriding
cultural identities, towards actual transformation of commitment to redistributive social justice claims,
the structural mechanisms that generate inequality subordinated need-provision to its central project
(‘maldistribution’) and disrespect (‘misrecognition’; of political mobilization in issuing challenges of a
see Table 1, below). Such counter-hegemonic politics transformative nature to the dominant order. While
break from reformist gestures of affirmation. They pursuing concrete affirmative goals in its advocacy
combine struggles for “cultural recognition and social
equality in forms that support rather than undermine 8 End Legislated Poverty began its work under that name in 1985
one another” (Fraser 1995:69). and continues to serve the indigent Vancouver community. The B.C.
Coalition of People with Disabilities was founded in 1976, changing
By way of exploring the intricacies of this process its name from the B.C. Coalition of the Disabled in 1990 to get rid
we focused on three groups from our research sample of the reifying negative label. The Centre was first established in 1979,
changing its name to QMUNITY in 2009, giving unabashed and full
that occupy fairly clear locations on the continuum compass to its diverse (LGBT) “queer” clientele.
14 • W. K. CARROLL AND R. S. RATNER

of an augmented welfare state and in its critique ways to accelerate its transformative stance. Their
of “poor-bashing,” ELP activists have been more combined experiences in the late 1990s underscored
inclined to view their group as addressing the radical that a counter-hegemonic war of position requires
emancipatory needs of its constituency rather than a political synergy of aims across the three task
the immediate needs for subsistence. The paradox for domains that constitute oppositional culture so that
ELP is that the community-building effort required affirmative and transformative goals can be pursued
to sustain the long-term struggle essential to the in ways that lead to short-term material and assimila-
pursuit of transformative goals is hard to accomplish tive gains as well as to the long-term disarticulation
with a demoralized clientele often preoccupied with of systemic hegemony.
sheer survival; moreover, ELP’s reliance on govern- One potentially invaluable resource for move-
ment funding to support its programs and modest ments in pursuing their material and cultural politics
staffing requirements places it in a supplicatory is the mass media, given their prevalence as key
position – dreading cut-offs and anxious about sites of political contention in advanced capitalist
exposing its dependent clientele to unacceptable societies. Conducting a war of position is obviously
levels of political risk. For the B.C. Coalition for facilitated by strategic use of the media for counter-
People with Disabilities (CPD), disability has been hegemonic purposes; consequently, we examined
a bivalent issue, calling up politics of both recogni- how three groups drawn from our research sample
tion and redistribution. Although CPD activists have have developed media strategies as aspects of their
projected a transformative agenda that would undo specific political projects (Carroll and Ratner 1999).
the basis for the abled/disabled distinction, their Alongside the ‘recognition’ project of The Centre
political action has focused primarily on lobbying for and the ‘redistribution’ project of End Legislated
the affirmative goals of increased rights and entitle- Poverty, we studied the practices of Greenpeace
ments, while also engaging in service-oriented work (its Vancouver branch), a high-profile international
to improve the efficiency of social service delivery for NGO which, in our view, represents a third kind of
constituents. This latter commitment strengthened political project that we classify as a ‘secular politics
members’ attachment to CPD, and thus enhanced of salvation.’ Greenpeace’s problematic is conceived
community building, but the organization’s reliance not in terms of ‘social injustice’ per se, but rather in
on an issue-oriented lobbying strategy tended to lose terms of planetary survival – i.e., the nexus between
ground in the context of ideologically spurred fis- humanity and nature. We compared the three cases,
cal retrenchments, prompting reconsideration of its again using Fraser’s (1995) ‘affirmative’ and ‘transfor-
‘pragmatic’ affirmative politics approach.9 mative’ categories, as well as Gamson and Wolfsfeld’s
In sum, with the advance of neoliberalism, all (1993) model of movements and media as interacting
three groups found themselves deeply compromised systems in which ‘asymmetrical dependency’ between
in their efforts to wage an efficacious ‘war of position’ social movements and mass media renders move-
given the desperate neediness of their constituents, ments highly dependent on media for mobilizing
the seductions of ‘mainstreaming,’ and the public their constituents, validating their existence as politi-
disapprobation (‘backlash’) fuelled by government cally important collective actors, and enlarging the
and media recriminations. It is no coincidence, there- scope of conflict in order to draw in third parties and
fore, that TC and CPD grew to regret their heavy shift the balance of forces in a direction favourable
investment in affirmative politics, while ELP sought to a movement’s interests. At the same time, move-
ments ought not be conceived as passive victims of
9 All three groups contend with many of the same problems and lim- mass media strategy, but can, to some degree, use the
ited resources that they faced at their inception. The Centre succeeded, media to advance their own goals within a broader
to some extent, in mitigating the stigma of ‘queer identity’ through
various celebratory spectacles (e.g., the annual Pride Day and parade)
war of position.
and human rights legislation, but ELP and the BCCPD are challenged Summarizing here how each of the three groups
by growing caseloads and forced budgetary restrictions in the current
period of economic downturn.
fared in developing their media strategies, Greenpeace
 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY • 15

was ostensibly the most successful of the three groups in a low-profile ‘war of position,’ building some
in manipulating mass media communication outlets sense of community and seeking to represent its
for its own ends. The modus operandi of Greenpeace sexually diverse constituency in a morally positive
can be likened to a ‘politics of signification’ – engag- light through well-targeted programs of popular
ing in often spectacular but non-violent direct actions education and alternative media, such a multicultural
of civil disobedience geared to attract media atten- politics had its limitations. In narrowing its political
tion to the group’s framing of environmental issues. horizons and tempering its actions to avoid hostilities
While these visual stunts have served Greenpeace with heterosexist (and intermittently homophobic)
well in a mediatized ‘war of manoeuvre’ – earning mainstream media, The Centre was able to wage
it media standing and group validation, as well as only a very circumscribed ‘war of position,’ one that
mobilizing financial resources from an otherwise is consonant with the dominant institutions and
passive conscience constituency – its actions have confines struggle within the limits of ‘passive revo-
often been journalistically packaged as ‘infotain- lution’. Given its apolitical mandate to affirm rather
ment’, predictably eroding public sympathy for than deconstruct hegemonic conceptions of sexual
Greenpeace campaigns and curtailing possibilities identity, and its cautious avoidance of conspicuous
for an expanded war of position on the causes of public actions that might provoke ‘backlash,’ The
ecological crises and their harmful consequences. Centre may have made itself even more vulnerable
Cognizant of the media’s asymmetric power to to the uncharitable mercies of the mass media, thus
select and frame what is newsworthy, and aware that reinforcing one of the key bulwarks inhibiting even
media stunts can be trivialized if disconnected from its affirmative-based war of position.
long-term educative strategies needed to anchor a Compared with The Centre, End Legislated
transformative politics of salvation, in the mid-1990s Poverty adopted a more pro-active media strategy
Greenpeace embarked on a new strategy of displac- focused on popular education and periodic collective
ing media corporations from the central position they actions. Committed to a transformative coalition poli-
had occupied in mass communications. The group tics of class struggle, ELP strove to reach out beyond
increasingly used the Internet to bypass mass media, its immediate constituency of “the poor,” ideally
thereby reducing media dependency and eliminating requiring a level of media support precluded by its
asymmetry by ensuring that preferred frames reach trenchant critique of capital and the elected legisla-
an ever-broadening population of web-browsers. tors of poverty. Like The Centre, and in contrast to
The scientific and cultural education component of Greenpeace’s deft command of mainstream media
Greenpeace’s program became integral to its global attention, ELP had only a peripheral media standing
war of position, although a decade on one can still and therefore came to rely upon alternative and local
query whether this informational networking strat- media – neighbourhood or regional newspapers, its
egy effectively complements Greenpeace’s dramatic own monthly paper, and cable channels – in order to
media tactics, saving the latter from the tepid fate of construct a more overt politicized identity grounded
media ritualization. in ‘community’ and direct experiences of privation.
Compared with Greenpeace, The Centre’s ‘rec- At times ELP has courted the mass media to mag-
ognition’ project was far less dependent on media nify specific campaigns and protests, but it remains
coverage, though its relationship with the media wary of media “poor-nography” with its denigrat-
was extremely asymmetrical. Since its affirmative/ ing frames of “welfare cheats” and “deserving poor.”
multicultural approach ruled out ‘wars of manoeuvre’ Indeed, given its radical transformative agenda, ELP
– media splashes or otherwise – its press releases has been nearly always on the brink of deviantization
were generally ignored by mainstream outlets. With by the mainstream media, especially when its counter-
little marketable copy to gain from The Centre, the hegemonic actions are perceived as truly threatening
media was by turns negligent and sensationalistic to the media’s own corporate sponsors.
toward it. While The Centre was content to engage In sum, the experiences of these three groups
16 • W. K. CARROLL AND R. S. RATNER

indicate that the mass media offer, at best, unpre- Hackett 2006). Indeed, the rapid growth of transna-
dictable support to movements engaged in tional corporations makes it virtually imperative that
counter-hegemonic politics. When organized diss- movement struggles now be internationalized since
sent is given coverage, media accounts are usually waging wars of position on sequestered fronts can no
commercially motivated and liable to reconstructions longer slow down the unfettered mobility of capital.
that mock or demonize the groups on which they An increased awareness of the interconnections of
report. No small wonder that mainstream journal- movement struggles and a global convergence of
ists – agents of the hegemon – are unlikely to lend strategies centered on the motif of ‘resistance to
credence to counter-hegemonic struggles. Barring capital’ (Rustin 1988), and facilitated by the new
the improbable accession to editorial control of untrammeled technologies of mass communication,
mainstream media by sympathetic (or merely neutral) may well be the foundation for a revisited socialism
purveyors of social reality, the mass media certainly in these allegedly post-socialist times.
cannot be expected, of their own accord, to reduce Ironically, the political party most ideologically
either asymmetry or partiality in the movement/ aligned with socialism is an unlikely instigator of any
media relation, especially with regard to transforma- socialist renaissance in British Columbia. The oppor-
tive agendas, notwithstanding any and all claims of tunity to reconcile the tasks of state management
journalistic “objectivity.” Where movement agendas and social democratization was afforded the B.C.
are more modestly restricted to afffirmative goals, the New Democratic Party in its two electoral victories
mainstream media are more apt to present such issues in the decade of the 1990s. Our in-depth interviews
to wide audiences, although here too, the media is with state officials from six key ministries and NDP
prone to exercise censorship depending upon the members of the legislative assembly at the end of this
existing scope of ideological tolerance and the fiscal period revealed the difficulties experienced by the BC
capacity to support social change. The ascendance of NDP government in its efforts to mobilize progres-
neoliberalism gives little comfort in that regard. One sive social policies in the face of business imperatives,
possible recourse for movements has been to produce an entrenched civil service bureaucracy, and the often
their own alternative media, a strategy sometimes single-minded purposefulness of its own social
adopted but often limited by a lack of sufficient movement allies.10 Whether it was the ‘brokerage
resources and by the practical restriction of alterna- pragmatism’ of the Michael Harcourt government,
tive media to specific target populations, making this or the bold class rhetoric initially trumpeted by Glen
tactic effective only for affirmatively oriented groups, Clark, neither approach could resolve the problem
not for those seeking broader changes that require a of sustaining a coalition of labour-left and the ‘new
wider base of support. social movements’ while heeding the functional
Perhaps the most hopeful prospect in the field of requirements of a capitalist system. Consequently,
media relations for a viable counter-hegemony lies the NDP’s decade in government led neither to a
in the proliferation of the Internet, which presents dominant position in parliament nor to the embed-
interesting possibilities for movements pursuing vari- ding of social democratic policies and reforms able to
ous political projects to circumvent dependence on fundamentally challenge the power of capital. Both
mass media by developing openly accessible interac- NDP administrations ended on a puerile note, with
tive communication networks at relatively low cost. the two premiers enmeshed in media-blown scandal
Such a strategy not only bypasses the mass media; – overall, a disappointing run of social democratic
it converts mass audiences into more engaged com- governance that ushered in a resounding electoral
municative agents and reaches beyond the regional victory by a united right-wing ensemble.
and national markets which typically delimit media Nor did the NDP display much political fortitude
audiences. These and other practices that democratize in its oppositional role during the subsequent decade
media may be crucial preconditions for transfor-
10 For a detailed account of our findings, see Carroll and Ratner
mative politics in a globalized world (Carroll and (2005a, 2007).
 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY • 17

of rule by the Liberal government, with its market- neoliberal regime of hegemonic despotism, in which
centered social vision. Between the government’s unprecedented mobility gives capital decisive struc-
accumulation of windfall revenues from the private tural power at the level of communities and states,
sector during the pre-2008 economic boom, and the and the Satanic mills of the mid-nineteenth century,
NDP’s timorous posture of civility on the chance of when submission at the point of production was
enhancing the party’s centrist appeal, political activ- largely guaranteed by the Hobson’s choice between
ism was quieted and public wealth incrementally wage labour and pauperism.
passed into private hands. However, the soaring costs Yet neoliberalism’s victory – the rational tyranny
involved in mounting the 2010 Winter Olympics, of the global market – unavoidably reinvigorated
combined with the effects of a sharp recession, has set opposition from below, which, like neoliberalism
the stage for Liberal stringencies, probable new waves itself, threw off the national castings of fordist-
of resistance, and inevitable calls for alternative social Keynesian class compromises and began to pose its
visions capable of molding the elusive ‘new historic politics in a global field (Carroll 2007). One of the
bloc.’ At this point, the electoralist predispositions remarkable implications of neoliberalism has been to
of NDP stalwarts – trained on recapturing the tradi- vindicate a class dialectic that post-modern fashion
tional centre of the political spectrum – suggest that reputedly consigned to the dustbin of history. As the
they are not poised to foment this transformation. neoliberal historic bloc has taken shape, particularly
in the form of its peak governance bodies such as the
Conclusions G8, OECD, IMF and WTO, a growing collection of
This article reports work spanning three decades, counter-hegemonic movements began to shadow its
which applies most immediately to the specific activities, making effective use of both a global mass
situation in a part of Canada. Nevertheless, we can media and a rapidly developing Internet alternative
venture to offer some conclusions that may have media to challenge the authority of global capital.
wider applicability in the consideration of counter- The participants in such momentous campaigns as
hegemony today. the Battle in Seattle (1999) hailed from many places
With regard to the question of historic blocs, and movements, but clearly shared the same politi-
we must acknowledge the paradoxical character cal-economic framing of injustice we found among
of neoliberalism’s remarkable successes in the last various activists in Vancouver. The networks linking
three decades. The consolidation, from above, of a these activists and their organizations not only span
transnational historic bloc championing neoliberal- across movements but are increasingly transnational,
ism, and the success of neoliberalism in converting as is the understanding of the forms of domination
human relations into market relations, in immiserat- against which activists are struggling (Della Porta
ing vast sections of a growing proletariat (North and et al 2006).
South), and in hollowing out much of the nation- In contemplating the conditions of possibility
state-centred politics through which the left won for an expansive counter-hegemonic bloc, develop-
concessions in the era of organized capitalism, were ments in nationally organized labour movements
by the turn of the century, incontrovertible. The left, seem propitious, but conceptualizing the crucial
in Leninist form, had largely collapsed, along with nexus between economic nucleus and the popular-
the demise of most socialist states; the social-demo- democratic requires that we think beyond immediate
cratic left had become in great part neoliberalized forms of class organization and politics. The reality
with the recognition that few policy levers remained of the 20th century was universalization of the capi-
for implementing progressive reforms in what for tal-labour relation: in the advanced capitalist North
capital is increasingly a “borderless world” (Carroll and tendentially in the South, the vast majority was
and Ratner 2005b). As Michael Burawoy (1985) proletarianized (Berberoglu 2009). Yet the global
presciently observed a quarter century ago, there working class is an extremely diverse and fractured
are interesting, if harrowing, parallels between the formation; therefore, the strategic alignment of
18 • W. K. CARROLL AND R. S. RATNER

labour, across national borders, though crucial, does a “caring” society that recognizes the internal rela-
not mean that there is one form in which such tion that links humanity and nature. Yet the task of
transnational solidarity might thrive (Rahman and developing counter-hegemonic capacities so that
Langford 2010). Equally important, particularly in oppositional cultures can be sustained against the
the North, is the growth of social unionism, a sign colonizing and marginalizing moves of capital and
that labour perspectives are reaching into popular- state is an immensely difficult one: it calls for a politics
democratic fields, and vice versa. that is transformative and that engages the cultural
Of course, recognition that the capital-labour media and state structures in ways that contest the
relation can only be undone through the collective system’s hegemony. Attempts to devise effective strat-
agency of capitalism’s fundamental subaltern class egies raise complex questions about whether “identity
does not imply that “class struggle” – with its reso- politics” and “material politics” are at all divisible and
nances of working-class identity politics – can suffice how they might be effectively linked, whether the
as a unifying counter-hegemonic trope. Given the short-term gains of affirmative remedies to injustice
diverse ethical-political claims that fuel contempo- obviate the possibilities for transformative change,
rary movement politics, a broader more inclusive restricting progressive politics to the dubious ben-
construction is more fitting, such as the “resistance efits of passive revolution. The utility of the Internet
to capital” political-economy theme suggested by in furthering a war of position poses the question
our research. But if “class” is no longer central in of whether it can assist as a means of linking local,
counter-hegemonic discourse, or if labour no longer regional, national, and international groups into a
qualifies as its singular spearhead, then the ques- functional historic bloc. War-of-maneuvre cam-
tion is whether labour, with its disproportionate paigns such as the defeat of the MAI (1998) and the
resources, is prepared to play a shared collaborative Battle in Seattle (1999) underline the effectiveness of
role rather than arrogate to itself the leading role cross-movement and cross-national communicative
in upcoming struggles. Certainly our research sug- practices, but as the hiatus in alter-globalization poli-
gests that any continuing imperiousness on the part tics following the declaration in 2001 of a ‘War on
of labour would seriously damage the potential for Terror’ (and accompanying criminalization of dissent)
the formation of a new historic bloc. Moreover, the showed, such campaigns may catalyze but cannot in
organic intellectuals of the left who coordinate future themselves construct a transnational historic bloc.
struggles should qualify to undertake this task not by Although problems of coordination and resourcing
virtue of their particular class background or even will prove massive in building and sustaining such
by direct experience of oppression, but by their cos- a bloc across specific conjunctures and beyond the
mopolitan political-economy understanding of the predominantly anglophone, advanced capitalist
roots of contemporary social conflict, as our study of centre of the world system, the recent emergence of
cross-movement activism suggests. progressive governments in South America offers a
As to the conduct of the war of position, here the model of revolutionary praxis and hope.
challenge for social movements is to create and occupy These are some of the considerations that stem
new spaces for alternative identities, moralities, and from our research and are pertinent in thinking
ways of life, thereby activating a long-term process of about how to wrest control of the globalization
building a counter-hegemonic bloc through popular process from its neoliberal paladins. In the years of
education, consciousness-raising, community devel- neoliberalism’s ascent, the dramatic weakening of the
opment, self-reliance, etc. These kinds of sustained mediatory role exercised by governments between
initiatives could, in combination, move beyond the capital and labour rendered the left strategy of
defensive mobilizations of protests to what Williams defending a nationalist stance more or less obsolete.
(2008) has aptly termed a counter-hegemonic gen- Yet like other social structures of capital accumula-
erative politics that supports a new ethical hegemony, tion, neoliberalism’s own successes sowed the seeds
marked by social visions of renewed community and of its crisis. In economic terms, as David McNally
 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY • 19

(2009) has shown, the crisis of neoliberalism was has a character reminiscent of Che Guevara’s call to
already evident in the Asian financial meltdown of create multiple Viet Nams in an international field of
1997. The ensuing decade inflated a bubble economy struggle whose strategic end is “the real liberation of
that burst in the autumn of 2008, putting neolib- all peoples” (Guevara 1967(1969:159)). Media-savvy
eralism’s own deregulatory logic into question and shadowing of the bourgeoisie’s attempts at transna-
also undermining premises of what Agnew (2005), tional governance, whether at the WTO’s meetings
following Gramsci (1971), has termed Americanism, or elsewhere, simply provides a particularly visible
as endlessly expanding, credit-driven consumption example; most initiatives will take a less dramatic
came unstuck in global capitalism’s heartland. But form, as in the practice of solidarity with progressive
this organic crisis has involved more than economic regimes such as Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela and the
failings and associated crisis management strategies mounting of local actions whose political significance
such as the corporate bail-outs and stimulus spending is strategized in a global field. As Gramsci recog-
packages of 2008-2009. Integral to it have been the nized, in such politics “the line of development is
challenges from below, from the Zapatista’s declara- towards internationalism, but the point of departure
tion of war against neoliberalism in 1994 through is ‘national’…. Yet the perspective is international and
the Battle in Seattle and the various incarnations of cannot be otherwise” (1971:240).
Social Forums, to recent general strikes in Greece and Ultimately, to pose counter-hegemonic politics
France in resistance to a new wave of post-crisis aus- in a global field requires us to expand our sense of
terity: in each instance, a critical, collective response justice beyond the recognition/redistribution distinc-
from below to the privations and indignities that are tion, discussed earlier, in two ways: to incorporate on
neoliberalism’s legacy. Such campaigns and wars of the one hand what Fraser (2005) has more recently
position challenge the hegemony of neoliberal glo- termed the question of representation, and on the
balization and work against the ideological effects other, what we have termed the question of ecological
of the commodification of everyday life, gesturing salvation. Fraser holds that recent globalization has
however incompletely to another possible world. driven “a widening wedge between state-territorial-
In sum, we see an important link between the ity and social effectivity,” thereby problematizing the
defensive coalitions of the 1980s and early 1990s and state-centred politics of representation in which human
the bloc that began to emerge more visibly by the mid- communities are inscribed within nation-states
1990s. In Canada and elsewhere, after decades of class (2005:83). In a globalizing world, the Westphalian
collaboration during the post-war boom, formations frame, which “partitions political space in ways that
like the Solidarity Coalition of 1983 and the Action block many who are poor or despised from challeng-
Canada Network of the early 1990s began a process of ing the forces that oppress them”, has been shown
rebuilding a popular oppositional bloc, initially united to be a “powerful instrument of injustice” (Fraser
around the state-centred defense of social citizenship 2005:78). For counter-hegemonic politics, the key
rights associated with the Keynesian welfare state. question is: “how can we integrate struggles against
But it is only with the consolidation of neoliberal- maldistribution, misrecognition and misrepresen-
ism that radical, internationalist claims have begun to tation within a post-Westphalian frame?” (Fraser
take hold, as movements repudiate the state-centred 2005:79). As with the politics of recognition and
politics of class-compromise and passive revolution. redistribution, mis-representation can be remedied
The failures, or at best strictly circumscribed gains, of through affirmation (replicating the state form, with
popular movements and coalitions that take national its inherent exclusionary practices, while validating
and subnational political fields as their operational the sovereignty of a subaltern group, as in national
horizons make it clear that globalization from below liberation), or transformation. A transformative
is the only viable basis for counter-hegemonic politics politics of representation rejects the hegemonic arro-
today. The formation of a transnational bloc, however, gation to states and transnational elites of control
cannot be reduced to a single formula or agency, but over the framing of political representation. Fraser
20 • W. K. CARROLL AND R. S. RATNER

Table 1: Four dimensions of contemporary justice politics (based on Fraser 1995; 2005;
Carroll and Ratner 1999)
Form of remedy
Type of injustice Affirmation within extant relations Transformation of generative
mechanisms
Recognition (status) Liberal pluralism (e.g. Deconstruction (e.g. queering
multiculturalism) identity)
Redistribution (class) Liberal reallocation (e.g. KWS) Restructure economic relations
(e.g. socialism)
Representation (state) Redraw state boundaries or create Change grammar of political
states (e.g. national liberation) representation (e.g. WSF as a
transnational public sphere)
Salvation (humanity-nature) Technological fixes, regulatory Transcending the growth economy
practices (e.g. alt energy; carbon (e.g., Cochabamba Protocol,
taxes and trading) degrowth)

offers the World Social Forum, with its emphasis possibilities in these four analytically distinct fields,
on constructing a transnational public sphere, as the both at a quotidian level and in strategic engagement
key example. She holds, further, that, owing to the with state and capital (see Table 1).
“deep internal connections between democracy and In adopting a neo-Gramscian approach today,
justice” (2005:85), there can be no redistribution or our task is to reformulate Gramsci’s ideas so that
recognition – in a transformative sense – without rep- they are applicable in the global context. Among
resentation (2005:86). It is transformative remedies, issues identified here, this means recognizing that
in all three instances, that point in the direction of the strategic alignment of counter-hegemonic forces
counter-hegemony, rather than that of co-optative must reach well beyond national groupings (indeed,
reform. the national and sectoral interest is now always prob-
What has become increasingly apparent is that lematic); that the war of position is unlikely to be
these three forms of social justice intersect with a conducted through the agency of a monolithic and
raft of injustices and survival concerns stemming statist political party but rather by coalitions (includ-
from ecological and climate crises – which as we ing parties) that create new political agents and forms
noted in our analysis of Greenpeace (1999) – can in civil society; that the class reductionism implicit in
also be remedied in affirmative and transformative the assumption of a “working class” identitarian core
ways. The former remedy attempts to mitigate the to the historic bloc is no longer tenable amidst the
impact of capitalism’s ecological overshoot11 through plethora of diverse subjectivities and discourses; and
technological fixes and regulatory policies that leave that the organizers of dissent need not originate from
unchanged the grow-or-die logic of capital that gen- or represent a “class,” but rather find common ground
erates ecological predation (Luke 2006). The latter in an ethical-political project that unifies oppositional
remedy strives to reconstruct the humanity-nature cultures around a democratic socialist alternative to
relation along truly sustainable lines that place human capital’s injustices and ecological calamities.
flourishing and grassroots democratic control at the
centre, as in the recent Cochabamba protocol (Angus
2010; Albritton 2007). The challenge for counter-
hegemonic politics is to foster oppositional cultures
and political forms that give life to the transformative

11 Overshoot refers to the tendency for humanity’s ecological foot-

print to outstrip the carrying capacity of the biosphere to maintain
complex living systems. See Rees and Wackernagel (1996).
 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY • 21

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