Rationalizing Resistance: Congruent trajectories of Gramsci, Weber, and social movement

theory

Enku MC Ide

Classical Social Movement Theory

SOC 651

Dr. Patrick H. Mooney

The University of Kentucky

January 13, 2012

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“Acts of resistance are moral acts…. They should be carried out not because they are effective, but because they are

right. Those who begin these acts are always few. They are dismissed by those in the liberal class, who hide their

cowardice behind their cynicism.” – Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class

“One must speak of a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life…until it becomes a new way of feeling

and seeing reality.” – Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks

Antonio Gramsci and Max Weber were contemporaries, although from opposed

traditions. Regardless, each was deeply concerned with social dynamics and undertook analyses

that grounded them in taking on similar questions. Many of their particular concerns are relevant

in dialogue with new social movement theory, as their analyses of the roles of cultural elements

and the relations between the subjective and objective aspects of social life have been explored

more recently in the movement literature. For example, an organizational leader, Gramsci’s

organizational theory shows remarkable congruence with Weber’s, and each was concerned with

interactions between leadership and the rank-and-file. Weber’s theme of rationalization, as well,

will be used to illuminate many processes recognized by Gramsci. A key concern of social

movement theory is the place and character of organization within a social movement, with some

scholars equating movements with the organizations that arise within them. While avoiding this

reductionism, this essay explores aspects of organizational and movement dynamics as they

relate to social movements, particularly framing and movement ideologies, organizational

leadership, and political opportunity structures.

Social movement theory:

According to Habermas, social movements exist in the social space “at the seam between

system and life-world,” or between “an economic and administrative system” which rules by

“power and money” and the lived experiences and values of individuals and communities,

respectively (Habermas 1981: 36). Such movements “defend popular interests” and create

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autonomous and democratic spaces for marginalized communities (Buechler 1995: 433). Zald

defines social movements broadly as “purposive and collective attempt[s] of a number of people

to change individuals or societal institutions and structures” (1966: 329). We could add to this

definition that social movements at times try to also influence national and community cultures,

particularly collective representations in the durkheimian sense (Meyer and Whittier 1994: 277).

Further, Steggenborg notes that “many scholars have focused on the social movement

organization (SMO) as a manageable unit of analysis” (1998: 181), but recognizes that this

excludes the fluidity of social movement communities and sentiment pools that can influence

mobilization within and across social movements, times, and spaces

New social movement theory purposively sought to “bring culture back” into social

movement analysis after periods of analyses dominated by collective behavior and rational

choice theories. One avenue for exploring movement cultures has been to analyze how

movements frame their concerns and the processes by which this framing is formulated and

disseminated. Snow et al. outline specific frame alignment processes and tasks of social

movements, whereby possible social movement actors come to see personal misfortunes as both

“unjust and mutable” (1986: 466). In seeing social conditions as mutable, possible social

movement constituents are able to recognize themselves, collectively, as change-agents. Frames

can exist at multiple levels, from localized issue-based frames to trans-movement “master

frames” with temporally lasting impacts throughout cycles of movement activity. In line with

framing, social movement constituents must build a collective identity, described as “both a

major prerequisite and a major accomplishment” of social movement organizing (Buechler 1995:

466). Further, although movements arise in the context of increased political opportunities, the

framing and collective identities generated and sustained by these movements can provide a

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“spin off” effect, with other movements emerging “in response to the culture of a protest cycle,

rather than to political opportunities” (Staggenborg 1998: 180). Movement culture is expressed

both through framing and movement ideologies, as well as organizational structures. For

example, Buechler notes, “the use of informal, egalitarian forms of organization is best

understood not as the result of a strategic calculus but as the expression of some of the core

values of a given movement constituency” (1993: 230).

From a political opportunity perspective, social movements arise in concert with long

term social dynamics. According to McAdam, changes in social organization and relations can

simultaneously improve the “bargaining position” of subaltern groups while hindering elite’s

abilities to suppress mobilization (McAdam 1982: 42-43). When such objective conditions

manifest, however, mobilization will only occur if oppressed groups have organization (either

formal organization or an informal community) to serve as a relation of communication, and if

cognitive liberation is undergone through framing processes (McAdam 1982: 50).

Social movements are based in social networks that can take the form of an organization

or community. Although Lo sees community as based in geographic proximity, we can extend

this conceptualization, particularly in the current age of digital communication, to goal- and

identity-based communities (e.g. the Black community, the queer community), including

“associative movements with proactive goals” (Lo 1992: 239). The formation of a collective

identity, then, may extend beyond a physical locale in similar ways as Said’s nation-based

“imagined communities” as people are connected by networks, culture, identity, and

participation in social movement activities (Staggenborg 1998: 182). In this vein, Staggenborg

recognizes that movements may lack formal organization and exist as socially submerged

networks. Springing from such communities, social movement organizations (SMOs) may

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emerge. When this is the case, movements may increase in efficiency but also risk the

emergence of bureaucratic structures, with SMO leaders and staff increasingly focusing on

organizational continuity rather than on movement goals, fatalistically described by Michels as

the “iron law of oligarchy” (Zald 1966: 327).

Gramsci:

Gramscian theory provides particular challenges and opportunities for analyzing

contemporary social movements. Gramsci, like Marx and other revolutionary theorists, was

concerned with macro-level revolutionary social change, and his discussion of reformist

“conjectural” movements is only in relation to such an overthrow. Gramsci, therefore, may have

dismissed current reformist social movements as bourgeoisie projects, particularly those which

demand increased government regulation or protections for minorities. Regardless, Gramscian

analysis shows significant affinity with social movement theory and research through a

reformulation of classical, orthodox Marxism. Specifically, Gramsci has been seen as a primary

Marxist of the superstructure(s), taking culture and politics as central, not only as reflections of

characteristics of the relations and means of production, but as having relative autonomy in a

dialectical relationship both among superstructural elements and with the economic base. The

movement toward socialism, then, for Gramsci, is not an automatic function of economic

development, but rather an active political project (Burawoy 2003: 213). This viewpoint allows

us to apply his theories of social change (toward socialism) to both radical and reformist

strategies for justice within the advanced capitalist nations even when radical elements are latent

or absent from social movement demands and perspectives.

Gramsci’s drew heavily on Marx’s earlier writings, particularly The Theses on Feuerbach and

The Paris Manuscripts. However, economic-reductionist views (which find support, particularly

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in Marx’s later works) gained predominance in the Second International (1889-1916) which

dominated Marxist discourse during Gramsci’s formative engagement with socialist thought.

Political movements in Gramsci’s time, specifically the rise of Fascism in his native Italy and the

rise of Soviet Communism, caused Gramsci to take political movements themselves more

seriously in his analyses. Why, for example, had many Italian workers who had previously

supported the workers’ movement fallen into line with the rise of Fascism, and how did a

communist revolution succeed in underdeveloped Russia, an event which Gramsci termed “the

revolution against [Marx’s] Capital?” In grappling with such questions, Gramsci was one of the

first Marxist theorists to incorporate a certain amount of idealism into his analyses, although

always highlighting links between ideas, intellectuals, and their relations’ to social classes and

the economic structure. Intellectuals are not fully autonomous, for Gramsci, from the primary

classes of workers and owners in the relations of production. Rather, intellectuals are organically

tied to such classes, and thus the ideologies they help to spread can serve the function of

conservatism, in the case of bourgeoise organic intellectuals, or revolution, in the case of

proletarian organic intellectuals (Gramsci in Forgacs 2000: 309). This move anticipates

standpoint theory in contemporary sociological theory if broadened to incorporate status into his

class-based model. In a statement clearly in-line with later New Social Movement Theory,

Gramsci writes: “One must speak of a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral

life…until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality” (Gramsci in Markels 2003: 85

emphasis added). These struggles for a new culture can be seen in many contemporary social

movements, as workers and oppressed peoples build their organizing experiences and social

power through an ongoing “war of position” in “conjectural political struggles.” Gramsci

distinguishes between conjectural politics and a “war of position” as opposed to a “war of

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maneuver” related to organic politics. The former relate to social issues that do not address the

central power relation of ownership of the means of production and social movements related to

such concerns, while the latter involve political questions which challenge such relations and a

revolutionary movement (Gramsci in Forgacs 2000: 222-224).

Gramsci’s writings are sociological in that he presents a clear theoretical model for

understanding society, expanding the Marxist base/superstructure model to incorporate

dialectical multicausality among the economic base and superstructural elements, including the

government and spheres of civil society. According to Burawoy, this reformulation places

Gramsci as one of the founders of Sociological Marxism (2003: 213). For Gramsci, advanced

capitalism is stabilized by the flowering of a civil society, including voluntary organizations, the

media, and public education, through which the ruling class disperses conservative ideologies as

socially-held “common sense,” thus containing class struggle (Burawoy 2003: 198; Forgacs

2000: 420). These ideological elements are called “hegemony,” and function through an

internalization of social assumptions among the masses which lead to spontaneous consent to

power holders (Gramsci in Forgacs 2000: 301; Markels 2003: 85). Hegemony is “formed and

nurtured” by intellectuals, those individuals whose primary social function is social organization

and the elaboration of ideas, serving as “political and cultural intermediaries” in social

reproduction (Forgacs 2000: 300; Markels 2003: 85).

Most intellectuals in advanced capitalism, including those in the press, business and

government leaders, and many union leaders, are organic leaders of the bourgeoisie. When

functioning as organic intellectuals of the working class, intellectuals help in giving form to a

counterhegemony based in the experiences and perspectives of that class (King and Szelenyi

2004: 39). For Gramsci, counterhegemony is formed in the dialectical relationship between the

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masses and intellectuals, mediated through the working class political party (Markels 2002: 101).

Whereas hegemonic ideology upholds the dominant class’ prestige and right to power,

counterhegemony undermines the legitimacy of the dominant class (Gramsci in Forgacs 2000:

307). In the formation of organic working class intellectuals and their elaboration of

counterhegemony, subaltern groups (for Gramsci, the working class) comes to recognize

themselves as distinct as a historic agent of social change through the formation of a critical self-

consciousness (Gramsci in Lemert 2010: 265).

Weber:

Weber’s concepts of social action, rationalization and legitimation are rich sources for

illuminating certain aspects of social movements. Weber’s theory of social change, particularly

in his analyses of social status and power, has been described as a nascent conflict theory

(Collins 1990a.: 4). Weber sought to understand “social action,” or those behaviors oriented

toward the other, thereby incorporating subjective and objective elements of social experiences

(Weber in Calhoun 2007: 218). One of Weber’s central concepts, rationalization, takes on

multiple meanings in the author’s work, but generally indicates the shifting relations between

individuals’ motivations and the actions they pursue (Collins 1990: 62). Most important for an

analysis of social movements are value- and instrumental-rationality, indicating those actions

that are “determined by a conscious belief in the value [of an action] for its own

sake…independently of its prospects of success” and those actions based in a “choice between

alternative and conflicting ends,” respectively (Weber in Calhoun 2007: 227, 226). Affective

actions, based on emotions and traditional social action, based on culture and habit, are also

important but garnered less attention by Weber, as he saw these as withering in relation to the

growth of instrumental-rationality, based in calculability and consistency. Different forms of

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social action may predominate in any given time or arena of social life, but when taken to excess

at the expense of other forms of social action, any one can lead to a substantive irrationality. For

example, bureaucratic components may increase organizational efficiency, but an excess of

bureaucratic policies can, ironically, become difficult to navigate and impede organizational

objectives.

In conjunction with social action, Weber concerned himself with social power, or the

ability to overcome opposition and achieve one’s objectives. Key to Weber’s views of social

power are legitimacy and status. Legitimacy, for Weber “is the willingness of followers to

accept orders given to them as properly to be obeyed,” (Collins 1990b.: 155). However,

legitimacy “is not an internalized consent but an emotional feeling that arises from assessing the

prestige of the state at any given moment” and thereby “the revolutionary downfall of a state is

due [partially] to its loss of legitimacy.” (Collins 1990b.: 155, 164). While Weber spoke of the

legitimacy of state leaders, the concept may be applied to organizational and community

leadership as well. Unlike Marx, for whom class is the “pivotal (social) relation,” for Weber,

class “is one of a menu of relations and processes around which social analysis is organized”

(Olin Wright 2009). Weber focused more attention on status groups, or those groups based in

particular lifestyles that exert normative pressure on their members (Weber in Calhoun 2007:

222). Further, status groups carry honor in relation to one another which causes stratification via

a “monopolization of ideal and material goods or opportunities” (Weber in Calhoun 2007: 222,

252, 253). For example, women historically have collectively carried less social power than men

and as such women were excluded from owning certain kinds of property or having powerful

occupations.

Congruent Trajectories: Gramsci and Weber applied to social movement theory:

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Weber’s sociology and Gramsci’s social theory show remarkable congruence, even

though it is unlikely that the two writers were aware of one another’s work. (King and Szelenyi

2004: 39) Both writers can be seen as having an ongoing conversation with Marx, both revising

and expanding Marx’s writings in light of new political and social events (Gramsci) and newly

available historical scholarship (Weber). Gramsci himself was hostile to sociology, seeing the

discipline as unscientific in its claim to political neutrality, in contradiction of Weber’s ideal of

value-free science and objectivity (See Gramsci 2003: 243-245). Further, although Gramsci has

been called one of the founders of “sociological Marxism” through his incorporation of idealist

elements into his Marxist theory, he may have discounted much of Weber’s work as overly

idealistic, associating idealism with a “social utopia by which the intellectuals think of

themselves as ‘independent,’ autonomous, [and] endowed with a character of their own” as

opposed to being organically connected to classes and their political struggles (Gramsci in

Forgacs 2000: 303).

As contemporaries, but from opposed traditions, the two theorists addressed many of the

same themes, particularly bureaucracy and legitimacy of leaders. Both writers also developed a

theory of Western politics. For Weber, the political situation was dominated by the state’s

ability to successfully undergo conflict with external enemies and for Gramsci the state was

stabilized to the extent that internal elites were able to dominate their domestic working class

through hegemonic or despotic means (Olin Wright 2010: 288-289). Both writers, however,

developed multicausal theories of social development, with Gramsci allowing “capitalism to

develop in multiple directions, assuming diverse configurations of state, society, and economy”

and Weber focusing on “continuous efforts to achieve consistency” among “balances and

tensions between opposing elements” in the rational development of capitalism (Burawoy 2003:

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206; Collins 1990a.: 74; Collins 1990b.: 36). In approaching similar topics from different

vantages and with different underlying assumptions, the writings of Gramsci and Weber, taken

together, can highlight nuances that theories based on one author alone might overlook. As such,

this project reflects what Erik Olin Wright describes as “pragmatic realism” in recognizing that

“different ways of analyzing…can all potentially contribute to a fuller understanding by

identifying different causal processes at work in shaping…capitalist society” (2009: 101).

In a Gramscian analysis, social movements exist within civil society, incorporating

organized communities, voluntary organizations, minority political parties and the press,

reflecting Habermas’ structural location of social movements as existing between the lifeworld

of communities and systems of power. A social formation moves from the lifeworld into civil

society through organization. As such, a community with no organization, based in status and

value-rationality may only harbor a latent social movement. When perspectives and objectives

are actively formulated within the community, we can see an ascendence of instrumental

rationality and the beginnings of a social movement.

Given Gramsci’s focus on working class revolutionary organizing, he may have been

ambivalent about many contemporary social movements as organs of civil society may either

resist or embrace the are dominant hegemony. For example, while radical social movements

may confront the dominant hegemony, many liberal social movements may fight for greater

inclusion into the power structure or may argue for increased government and corporate

“responsibility” toward their community. While the former scenario has counterhegemonic

potential, the latter two situations may help to strengthen hegemonic discourse among excluded

populations and increase the influence of systems of power over these communities. For

example, the New Left of the late 1960s to 1970s had several radical elements fighting for a new

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cultural paradigm, based in a “general view” of political criticism calling for participatory

democracy in all aspects of social life, particularly the economy (See: Mills 1960 Letter to the

New Left and SDS 1962 Port Huron Statement). However, the inability of radicals in this

movement to incorporate heterogeneous demands relevant to specific oppressed communities

helped to precipitate a fracturing of the movement, leading to the “spinning off” of the more

radical wings of the feminist and civil rights movements. Eventually, liberal organizations took

centrality of these movements, and we have seen a subsequent diversification of elites,

particularly in government, and an incorporation of movement demands into the platform and

program of the Democratic Party, thus strengthening the hegemonic influence of the “system” (in

a habermasian sense) within these populations. Perhaps the clearest example of hegemonic

reproduction among social movements are “lifestylist” and consumer “vote with your dollar”

movements. While ostensibly trying to create social change, such movements strengthen central

aspects of capitalist hegemony: we primarily exist as consumers; consumption is an act of

speech, self-expression, and self-fulfillment.

Weber described protest movements as being dominated by value-rationality and

charismatic leadership, contrasted to the instrumentally-rational action of institutional political

action (Collins 1990a.: 42-43). Weber recognized one of the key questions of contemporary

social movement theory: institutionalization. According to Weber, movements must take on a

“sort of political or hierarcratic organization” if they are “not to remain a purely transitory

phenomenon” (Weber in Calhoun 2007: 262). For Weber, movements were centered on

charismatic personalities. Whereas Gramsci and Weber take different views of charismatic

leadership, both recognize that it is an unstable system in relation to other kinds of leadership

legitimation (Weber in Calhoun 2007: 262).

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Taken together, Gramsci’s and Weber’s views indicate a cyclical pattern in which

charismatic leadership may arise and dissolve in relation to the political context. For both

theorists, charismatic leaders emerge when there is a disconnect between leaders and the masses.

For example, the feminist and civil rights movements emerged, in large part, to challenge the

male- and white-dominated state’s and the culture’s hostilities to the incorporation of women and

Black Americans in powerful positions. Public and private leaders were not in an organic,

dialogic relationships with these communities, and therefore could not incorporate their specific

interests into national development or ruling class hegemony. Through organization, these

movements precipitated a crisis of hegemony, or crisis of authority within their communities in

regard to the government (Gramsci 2003: 210). When a crisis of authority arises, charismatic

leaders or “men of destiny” arise, around which a social movement can consolidate (Gramsci

2003: 210). Such leadership can “result in a radical alteration” of group members’ worldviews

(Weber in Calhoun 2007: 262). However, such leadership must be transformed into either

rationalized or traditionalized authority to remain stable (Weber in Calhoun 2007: 262). If

leadership is stabilized through rationalization and organization, then the need for charismatic

leadership diminishes. When leadership within an organization, however, becomes remote from

the rank-and-file through bureaucratization, this can generate a crisis of authority within the

social movement organization itself, thus leading to subsequent rises in charismatic leadership or

the dissolution of the movement. Such dissolution can take the form of defeat or co-optation, as

movements “become entangled in the realities of power politics themselves” (Collins 1990a.:

77). For Gramsci, who conceived of the Party as the central form or organizing, “mass

democratic organization can be combined with clear leadership” through a “dialectical

movement” between membership and leadership (Forgacas 2000: 112) through which hegemony

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is “formed and nurtured” (Markels 2003: 85). Whether a leader is connected to their base in this

way is a question of one’s social network, as leaders must have “active participation in [the]

practical life” of the rank-and-file (Markels 2003: 86).

Collective identity formation and movement framing are central components of New

Social Movement Theory, and both Weber and Gramsci took up the question of the subjective

aspects of group formation. Although Marx discussed the need for the working class people to

become aware of their shared identity and interests, transforming itself from a class in itself to a

class for itself, Weber diversified this scheme to include groups based on “conventional styles of

life,” such as ethnicities and sexes, or status groups (Collins 1990b.: 6; Weber in Calhoun 2007:

252). When group designations based on “status” or prestige come to the fore, this encourages

social interaction among group members, with the subsequent formation of group norms around

which a collective identity is demarcated (Weber in Calhoun 2007: 222, 252). It is possible that

organizations will emerge from status groups as a rational means toward furthering the general

interests of group members, with Weber providing the example of the trade union growing “out

of the class situation.” This is not inevitable, however, and for organization to occur the situation

“must be distinctly recognizable” and give rise to social action (Weber in Calhoun 2007: 249-

250). Such a task is clearly central in the framing literature, with Snow et al. noting that

movements must render “events or occurrences [as] meaningful” in order to “organize

experience and guide action” (1986: 464).

The formation of counterhegemonic movement frame takes place in a process of

rationalization. Such framing may begin with a base in emotional or traditional concerns. For

example, Deborah Gould has outlined in Moving Politics, anger and shame related to the AIDS

epidemic were central in the early gay liberation movement, although emotion has often been

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overlooked in the movement literature. Many commentators have noted the overwhelming anger

of the Tea Party protests, demanding to “Take the country back.” It may be that righteous

indignation may serve as a catalyst for movement organizing, both at the organizational and

individual level. This emotional energy is often tied to traditionalist concerns, reflected in the

framing literature as “frame resonance.” For example, the claims and demands of a movement

will have more support in the general public if they are able to tap into previously-held values

and traditions. As such, the Tea Party revives the Gadson “Don’t Tread on Me” Flag, and the

feminist movement has called up liberal notions of equality. Radical movements, as well, draw

on traditions within historic anarchist or socialist movements. Marx recognized this in the 18th

Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, noting that, in the early stage of revolutionary movements,

activists “anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past” or “the dead of world history”…”to their

service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new

scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.”

Emotion- and tradition-based social action may continue throughout the lifecourse of a

movement, being drawn up again in particular situations. Specifically, highly-charged protests

may revive the emotional impetus for action. However, when these forms of social action

predominate a community or organizational culture, this may be unsustainable for generating

further action. In the first phase of rationalization, framing takes the form of an “ethical field,”

according to Gramsci (Gramsci in Lemert 2010: 264), dominated by value-rational social action.

Growing out of ethical framing, communities can begin to form “political consciousness” or

“progressive self-consciousness” as their formation of a counterhegemonic discourse moves into

“that [field] of politics proper” (Gramsci in Lemert 2010: 264). Although for Lenin, such

consciousness had to come from the outside, via intellectuals, Gramsci notes that movement

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intellectuals, to the extent that they are legitimate, serve only to systematize and articulate the

theoretical and practical knowledge of the community, subsuming the “linguistic skills”

necessary for intellectual work to the movement community (King and Szelenyi 2004: 41).

Weber’s analysis of group formation provides a strong foundation for Gramsci’s concept

of collective identity, described as a critical self-consciousness that begins in the “ethical field”

and is translated into “politics proper” (Gramsci in Lemert 2010: 264). Similarly in the New

Social Movement literature, the first key to framing of a grievance is to label a condition unjust

(ethical) and mutable (political) through a processes labeled “cognitive liberation” (Snow et al.

1986: 466). Once this framing is accepted by a group, the shared belief can unite activists and,

as Gramsci described the function of hegemonies “influence moral conduct and the direction of

will” (Gramsci in Lemert 2010: 264).

For Gramsci, a Socialist (and later Communist) Party leader, the working class must have

a critical self-consciousness in order to distinguish itself within society (Gramsci in Lemert

2010: 265). The “common sense” of society, “hegemony” for Gramsci, was formulated,

universalized, and disseminated in the interest of the dominant class. However, with

organization, subaltern classes were also able to create an ideology based in their own lived

realities which challenged capitalist hegemony. The formation of a counterhegemony could be

described as a holistic and amplified view of collective identity formation and movement

framing, similar to the creation of a master protest frame.

Counterhegemonic ideologies do not spontaneously arise from lived experiences, but

rather are formed in “a dialectic between the intellectuals and the masses” (Gramsci in Forgacs

2000: 334). Organizational and community leaders are cast by Grasmci to be intellectuals,

“specialized in conceptual and philosophical elaboration of ideas” (Gramsci in Lemert 2010:

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265). To the extent that these leaders do function in dialogue with and by the consent of

organizational membership, they are seen by Gramsci to be “organic intellectuals” with a stake

to legitimacy.

Both Weber and Gramsci took seriously the question of legitimacy, with Gramsci serving

as the first in the Marxist tradition to do so (King and Szelenyi 2004: 39). For Weber, types of

legitimacy were related to his typology of social action, with rational-legal legitimacy through

democratic elections serving as the basis of legitimate leadership in a system marked by

instrumental-rationality. However, for both theorists, bureaucratic tendencies endangered this

legitimacy. Weber notes that bureaucracy and democracy are at odds, and that under an overly-

bureaucratic system, “a formal election may hide an appointment” or may serve only as “the

mere acclamation of a candidate designated by the party chief…[or] for the election of one of

two designated candidates” (Weber in Calhoun 2007: 267). For Gramsci, “The bureaucracy is

the most dangerously…conservative force” with bureaucratic leadership risking becoming

“anachronistic” if it “feels itself independent of the mass of members” (Gramsci 2003: 211).

Democracy, therefore “inevitably comes into conflict with the bureaucratic tendencies” (Weber

in Calhoun 2007: 272). Both Weber and Gramsci recognized that internal organizational

dynamics may favor bureaucratization, with “organizational necessities” and the “material

interests of followers” taking precedence over movement ideals (Gramsci in Forgacs 2000: 191;

Weber in Calhoun 2007: 262). However, each also retained the possibility of democratic

functioning staving off or fighting back against such a tendency, in contrast to Michel’s “iron

law” that organizational growth is always accompanied by the formation of a bureaucratic

oligarchy.

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According to the theory of political opportunity structures, shifts in social relations make

rebellion more likely if objective power relations grow to favor subaltern groups which have

some form of extant organization and relations of communication. Gramsci spoke to this as the

“relations of force” which “emerge from the economic structure” and the political ability to

mobilize militarily or despotically (Burawoy 2003: 224). For Weber, a regime’s legitimacy

depends in large part on external military force, but he does not speak to military mobilization

against internal rebellions except to note that bureaucratic governments and centralized militaries

were necessary to pacify a territory (Collins 1990b.: 30-31).

The strategic choice between engaging in wars of position or maneuver (reformist or

revolutionary) is related to the relations of force, and therefore the legitimacy of state leaders, as

well as the economic situation. In societies with strong civil society, a prolonged war of position

was possible in which activists could build “an effective counter-hegemony” (Olin Wright 2010:

332). Feminist struggles have been offered as one form of war of position (Burawoy 2003: 250)

while terrorist networks have been described as one form of war of maneuver (Burawoy 2003:

241). From Weberian theory, we can posit that successes in the conjectural arenas could lead to

increased confidence and legitimacy for movement leadership (Collins 1990b.: 145-147).

Particularly during an economic and political crisis, movements may see an opportunity to move

from the conjectural war of position to the organic politics of a war of maneuver (Markels 2003:

103). While Weber did not write in such terms, he did note that “status is favored,” thereby

leading to conjectural politics, “when the bases of the acquisition and distribution of goods are

relatively stable.” However, “economic transformation” or crisis “pushes the class situation into

the foreground” (Weber in Calhoun 2007: 254). While Weber may not have given economic

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relations primacy over status in the upholding of regimes, he did recognize, along with Gramsci,

that class-based struggles were dependent upon changing economic situations.

Gramsci and Weber both note that legitimacy of leaders is closely tied to prestige

(Collins 1990b.: 155; Gramsci in Forgacs 2000: 307). For Gramsci, this is due to the “position

and function” held by the dominant class “in the world of production” while for Weber this is

related to geopolitical dominance (Gramsci in Forgacs 2000: 307; Collins 1990b.: 165-166).

Gramsci does recognize, however, that the military are “a political force” mobilized when

hegemonic domination fails (Gramsci 2003: 215). He notes that hegemony is “protected by the

armor of coercion” (Olin Wright 2010: 288). Movements may only successfully undergo a war

of maneuver given a political crisis, and are most likely to succeed when they have already been

involved in conjectural political struggles (Markels 2003: 103). As Weber notes, if movements

are successful they “inevitably become entangled in the realities of power politics themselves”

through either cooptation by the power structure or by replacing the power structure (Collins

1990a.: 77). In Weberian terms, the conversion of a war of position into a war of maneuver may

be seen as a choice to move from value-rationality to instrumental-rationality, with such

movements focusing on the means-ends calculation of power politics while becoming

“something active, a force that masters the world rather than passively adapting to it” (Collins

1990a.: 62-63). While movement actors may display various forms of social action, the

predominance of instrumental-rationality may be central in moving from conjectural to organic,

revolutionary politics.

The writings of Gramsci and Weber have been used to illustrate how movements arise

and rationalize through forming organizations and interacting with powerholders, either to create

counterhegemonic discourses or to reformulate and broaden the dominant hegemony. As a

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movement community coalesces around a status group, organizations are able to form within

which layers of intellectuals, in concert with the rank-and-file formulate messages and demands.

If this hierarchical relationship remains robust through democratic participation, the

rationalization can strengthen and sustain the movement. Although Weber was a supporter of

institutionalized politics and Gramsci advocated for revolutionary change, their analyses show

remarkable congruence with social movement theory, highlighting important aspects and

processes of movement framing, organization, and reactions to political and economic realities,

particularly in the transformation of a movement from a war of position to a war of maneuver.

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