Icoined the term ‘antisystemic movement’ in the 1970s in order to have a formulation that would group together what had, historically and analytically, been two distinct and in many ways rival kinds of popular movement—those that went under the name ‘social’, and those that were ‘national’. Social movements were conceived primarily as socialist parties and trade unions; they sought to further the class struggle within each state against the bourgeoisie or the employers. National movements were those which fought for the creation of a national state, either by combining separate political units that were considered to be part of one nation—as, for example, in Italy—or by seceding from states considered imperial and oppressive by the nationality in question—colonies in Asia or Africa, for instance.
Both types of movement emerged as significant, bureaucratic structures in the second half of the nineteenth century and grew stronger over time. Both tended to accord their objectives priority over any other kind of political goal—and, specifically, over the goals of their national or social rival. This frequently resulted in severe mutual denunciations. The two types seldom cooperated politically and, if they did so, tended to see such cooperation as a temporary tactic, not a basic alliance. Nonetheless, the history of these movements between 1850 and 1970 reveals a series of shared features.
Analysis of the world situation in the 1960s reveals these two kinds of movements looking more alike than ever. In most countries they had completed ‘stage one’ of the two-step strategy, having come to power practically everywhere. Communist parties ruled over a third of the world, from the Elbe to the Yalu; national liberation movements were in office in Asia and Africa, populist movements in Latin America and social-democratic movements, or their cousins, in most of the pan-European world, at least on an alternating basis. They had not, however, transformed the world.
It was the combination of these factors that underlay a principal feature of the world revolution of 1968. The revolutionaries had different local demands but shared two fundamental arguments almost everywhere. First of all, they opposed both the hegemony of the United States and the collusion in this hegemony by the Soviet Union. Secondly, they condemned the Old Left as being ‘not part of the solution but part of the problem’. This second common feature arose out of the massive disillusionment of the popular supporters of the traditional antisystemic movements over their actual performance in power. The countries in which they operated did see a certain number of reforms—usually there was an increase in educational and health facilities and guarantees of employment. But considerable inequalities remained. Alienating wage labour had not disappeared; on the contrary, it had increased as a percentage of work activity. There was little or no expansion of real democratic participation, either at the governmental level or in the work place; often it was the reverse. On the international scale, these countries tended to play a very similar role in the world-system to that which they had played before. Thus, Cuba had been a sugar-exporting economy before the revolution and remained one after it, at least until the demise of the Soviet Union. In short, not enough had changed. The grievances might have altered slightly but they were as real and, generally, as extensive. The populations of these countries were adjured by the movements in power to be patient, for history was on their side. But their patience had worn thin.
The conclusion that the world’s populations drew from the performance of the classical antisystemic movements in power was negative. They ceased to believe that these parties would bring about a glorious future or a more egalitarian world and no longer gave them their legitimation; and having lost confidence in the movements, they also withdrew their faith in the state as a mechanism of transformation. This did not mean that large sections of the population would no longer vote for such parties in elections; but it had become a defensive vote, for lesser evils, not an affirmation of ideology or expectations.
Since 1968, there has been a lingering search, nonetheless, for a better kind of antisystemic movement—one that would actually lead to a more democratic, egalitarian world. There have been four different sorts of attempt at this, some of which still continue. The first was the efflorescence of the multiple Maoisms. From the 1960s until around the mid-1970s, there emerged a large number of different, competing movements, usually small but sometimes impressively large, claiming to be Maoist; by which they meant that they were somehow inspired by the example of the Cultural Revolution in China. Essentially, they argued that the Old Left had failed because it was not preaching the pure doctrine of revolution, which they now proposed. But these movements all fizzled out, for two reasons. Firstly, they quarrelled bitterly among themselves as to what the pure doctrine was, and therefore rapidly became tiny, insulated sectarian groups; or if they were very large, as in India, they evolved into newer versions of the Old Left movements. Secondly, and more fundamentally, with the death of Mao Zedong Maoism disintegrated in China, and the fount of their inspiration disappeared. Today, no such movements of any significance exist.
A second, more lasting variety of claimant to antisystemic status was the new social movements—the Greens and other environmentalists, feminists, the campaigns of racial or ethnic ‘minorities’, such as the Blacks in the United States or the Beurs in France. These movements claimed a long history but, in fact, they either became prominent for the first time in the 1970s or else re-emerged then, in renewed and more militant form. They were also stronger in the pan-European world than in other parts of the world-system. Their common features lay, firstly, in their vigorous rejection of the Old Left’s two-step strategy, its internal hierarchies and its priorities—the idea that the needs of women, ‘minorities’ and the environment were secondary and should be addressed ‘after the revolution’. And secondly, they were deeply suspicious of the state and of state-oriented action.