ABSTRACT
Protest movements cannot be understood without an awareness of what the movements are to and from, both in their own perspectives and in fact. The energy that generates movements lies in the situation of the protestors as well as in their psyches. Subjectivism can be recognized not only in the counter-culture but also in the Establishment, which thinks that the grounds of protest are only in the minds of the protestors. Protest is not always a projection of private needs onto public objects. It may be a response to objective conditions that deny fulfillment to these needs. The Establishment cannot see that real needs are being frustrated because protest is most marked when there has already been a measure of fulfillment. The partial fulfillment provides resources for the protest as well as arousing expectations of the possibility of greater fulfillments. Revolutions are carried out, not by those most oppressed by the regime, but by emerging counter-elites on their way to dominance. The needs to be fulfilled by the protest seldom coincide with those specified in the movements’ demands. The primary need is for power to control the process of need-satisfaction. “Behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter,” says the Preacher, “and on the side of their oppressors there was power.”1 Authority, seeing only the fulfillments already attained, is dismayed by continuing protest “after all we’ve done for them!” Dostoevsky’s man from underground is the paradigm of the protestor who places on autonomy a value so great that the little which is the work of his own hands is to him worth more than the much bestowed upon him by others. Demands may be escalated precisely in order to pass the bounds of what can be given, so as to provide an occasion for taking. The child is father to the man for whole societies as much as for individuals. The political movements of our day are the offspring of the revolutions of the last three centuries. “Liberty, equality and fraternity” is still the watchword, with equality and fraternity increasingly being seen as the positive content of liberty. Ethnic minorities, women, the young, the old, the poor, other disadvantaged groups, all those unheard in remote councils of decision-making – all have much to protest. Early in the modern era of revolutions John Milton, in his Areopaqitica, remarked that a dram of well-doing is preferable to many times as much the forcible hindrance of ill-doing.2 Protest is invited if not even a dram of well-doing
appears except as the outcome of many drams of ill-doing. The enemies of protest typically lack both wisdom and courage: wisdom to discern and fulfill real needs before protest, and courage to resist the transformation of protest into the coercion of decisions. The soil from which protest grows is indifference to injustice. The crisis of indifference is intensified by the mere existence of an authority structure. The “authorities” will do what is necessary: I myself need do nothing. In New York a young woman, her cries for help unheeded, was murdered in plain sight of several hundred people. Interviews revealed that fear of getting involved was one cause of inaction; another was taking it for granted that the police had been summoned and would rescue the victim. Authorities may be unknowing; they may disclaim responsibility, not being the “proper” authorities; they may be ineffectual. The United Nations provides numerous illustrations of all three failings. The indifference of youth to the normative structure of the adult world so familiar today has been interjected from the adult world. Unwillingness to get involved is pandemic in our time. We do not recognize the consequences of apathy, and could not care less what they are. For the young, apathy finds intermittent compensation in a frenzy of involvement which has no roots, reaches out to nothing outside its own scene and has no significance beyond its present moment. Protest is involvement of a very different sort. It is rooted in objective circumstances felt to be intolerable, reaches out to change in those circumstances and is guided by the vision of a better future. Democracy might almost be defined as the political institutionalization of protest. From Pericles to Jefferson and beyond, a politicized citizenry – its continuous and determined involvement in the political process – has been recognized as essential to the survival of democratic institutions. “As soon as any man says of the affair of the state, ‘What does it matter to me?’ ” Rousseau warns, “the state may be given up as lost.”3
