Can Power from Below Change the World?

2007 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS Can Power from Below Change the World? Frances Fox Piven Graduate Center, City University of New York Prevailing perspectives on power cannot explain why political protests from the bottom of societies sometimes result in reforms that reflect the grievances of the protestors. I propose a new theory of “interdependent power” that provides such an explanation. I argue that, contrary to common views, globalization actually increases the potential for this kind of popular power. uch of my academic work has been about American history. This has been especially true Mthe role of protest movements in generat- during the great moments of equalizing reforms ing reforms—reforms that ease the circum- that humanized our society, from the founding stances of people at the bottom of American of the republic, to the emancipation of the slaves, society. And much of my work as a political to the rise of the New Deal and Great Society activist, the source of real joy in my life, has order, to the civil rights acts of the 1960s, and been in collaboration with these movements. so on. In the years leading up to the In this address, I build on that experience by the- Revolutionary War, American elites restless oretically examining the kind of power that is under British rule struck up an alliance with “the at work when movements, in the United States people out-of-doors” or the mobs of the era. and elsewhere, become a force for change. I Without the support of the rabble, the war with think that the question of how power can be England could not have been won.1 But the exerted from the lower reaches has never been price of the alliance was elite indulgence of more important. It will ultimately determine radical democratic ideas about the people’s whether another world is indeed possible. rights to self governance. Moreover, the dis- Although this is not the way the story of ruptive threat of the mob and their radical American political development is usually told, democratic convictions were imprinted on the protest movements have played a large role in 1 This point is now widely accepted. The pivotal Direct correspondence to Frances Fox Piven work was probably Becker (1909) (see also, Bailyn ([email protected]). I want to thank Lori Minnite 1965; Bridenbaugh 1955; Morgan 1956; Raphael and Fred Block for their comments on this address. 2001; Schlesinger 1955; Young 1999). AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2008, VOL. 73 (February:1–14) Downloaded from asr.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA BERKELEY LIB on April 18, 2012 2—–AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW provisions of the new state constitutions, and 2000). Or the black freedom movement whose then, more dimly, on those provisions of the extraordinary audacity in confronting the sys- new federal constitution that spoke to popular tem of Southern apartheid led the federal gov- rights and representation—provisions that had ernment to at long last pass the legislation that to be conceded to win popular support for the implemented the promises of the Reconstruction new national government. period. Or the antipoverty protests of the 1960s To be sure, the process was complicated. The that forced an expansion of American social mob was powerful during the revolutionary programs so that the United States began to period because state power was weakened by the look something like a social democracy. Or the deepening conflict between colonial elites, the Vietnam antiwar movement, and especially its British crown, and British merchant interests G.I. component, that finally brought the war in who were influential with the crown. State Southeast Asia to an end, and left in its wake the power was also weakened by the vast distance so-called “Vietnam syndrome,” which inhibit- that separated the colonies from the governing ed the deployment of American military power apparatus and military forces of the mother in the world, at least for awhile. Or the women’s country, and by the fragmentation of colonial movement, and the gay liberation movement, governing authorities. Moreover, the building and their achievements in winning legal rights blocks of electoral representative democracy and transforming American social life and that were the achievement of the revolution culture. were soon encased in the clientelist and tribal- Needless to say, the protestors never simply ist politics developed by nineteenth-century won. Their demands have been inevitably mod- political parties. Still, even a limited electoral ulated and honed to mesh with ongoing insti- democracy sometimes helped to moderate the tutional arrangements and the powerful interests power born of wealth and force, at least when with stakes in those institutions. Moreover, once new surges of protest forced conciliatory these protests subsided, even the limited achieve- responses from electoral leaders. ments have been whittled back (which, while it Or consider the strange and even fanatical is never acknowledged, is further evidence of the abolitionists. Their boldness and single-mind- importance of movements in spurring reform). edness in pursuing the goal of immediate eman- Nevertheless, these setbacks notwithstanding, cipation shattered the sectional compromises the reforms won by protest movements left their that had made national union possible in 1789. mark. An electoral representative system per- Movement activists were embedded in the sists, chattel slavery was not restored, the churches of a largely Protestant country. Their Southern apartheid system is dismantled, and agitated oratory broke apart the major denom- while labor is taking a beating, there are still inations, preparing the way for the fragmenting unions, and they may matter again in American of the intersectional parties of the third party politics. system and ultimately driving the infuriated Well, why these victories? What did the slave states to secession. The achievements of protest movements do that forced conciliatory the movement are undeniable. The national gov- responses? Neither the literature on social move- ernment launched a war to preserve the union, ments nor the literature on American political which led to the emancipation of the slaves, development has a good answer to that question. and then, with the influence of Southern repre- When movements are discussed, they are often sentatives removed by secession, at the war’s end called disruptive, which seems to mean noisy, Congress passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th maybe disorderly, and even violent. Of course, amendments to the constitution. protest movements do make noise as they try to Or consider for a moment the mass strikes of communicate their demands, with slogans, ban- the labor movement of the 1930s—strikes that ners, antics, rallies, and marches. These sorts of won the basic framework of an industrial rela- actions give the movements some voice, and if tions system that, at least for a time, brought the conditions are right, some electoral impact. many working people into what is called the Perhaps more important, the big gatherings, the middle class and gave respect and self-respect, chants, and the signs, boost the morale of move- hitherto denied, to now unionized workers in ment participants. But the protests that marked autos, steel, rubber, and the mines (Metzgar American history confronted formidable oppo- Downloaded from asr.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA BERKELEY LIB on April 18, 2012 CAN POWER FROM BELOW CHANGE THE WORLD?—–3 sition that voice alone could hardly have over- sociologists who became interested in conflict come. As for violence, while it was sometimes as the Parsonian paradigm faded in the 1960s. used defensively, American protests have gen- The question that preoccupies theorists who erally shunned violence and the strategic risks accept this view is who has power, and why? it generated. And the answer to this question is generally Although I too have written about move- understood to depend on power resources, or the ments as disruptive, here I will use the term bases on which one actor is able to bend the will “interdependent” power, not because I want to of others. Weber avoided the question, arguing disarm the reader, but because the word suggests that the resources for power could not be gen- the sociological basis of disruptive force. I want eralized, but depended on specific circum- to show the importance of this kind of power for stances. Since this position denies the possibility the analysis of movements and their impact on of analyzing the patterned distribution of power politics, by which I mean the perennial con- in social life, it has not been satisfactory to tests over the allocations of material and cultural many analysts. Instead, conflict theorists have benefits that result directly or indirectly from the proliferated lists of the things and attributes actions of governments. I also suggest that inter- that give an actor the ability to sway other actors. dependent power is significant in other institu- Power is now seen as something that rests on tional arenas, most obviously in the economy, personal skills, technical expertise, money or the but also, for example, in the family, the church, control of opportunities to make money, pres- and the local community. Indeed, these patterns tige or access to prestige, numbers of people, or of domination—sometimes referred to as “social the capacity to mobilize numbers of people. control”—that prevail in other arenas very like- Randall Collins (1975:60–61) summarizes this ly have consequences for the power contests perspective: we recognize as politics. Finally, I consider the Look for the material things that affect interaction: prospects for the emergence of interdependent the physical places, the modes of communication, power as a transformative agent in contempo- the supply of weapons, devices for staging one’s rary politics, in the United States and in the public impression, tools, and goods. Assess the rel- world.

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