What Does A Peace Sign Mean

NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS (Claus Offe)

"There is only one ROUTE TO ESTABLISH A GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM BETWEEN LEGITIMACY, EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY, COME CLOSER TO THE MERITS OF THE SYSTEM CAPACITY TO MEET THE DEMANDS AND SOCIAL NEEDS (Claus Offe, "Contradictions of the welfare state")

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

The Frankfurt School came as a logical consequence to the events that were initiated in Europe in 1923, there is a need to develop a global reflection on the processes that consolidate bourgeois-capitalist society and the meaning of
theory with such a consolidation. The final period s and can be located at the end of classical critical theory ( Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse ) and the emergence of "second generation" ( Jürgen Habermas, Claus Offe, Oscar Negt, Alfred Schmidt and Albrecht Wellmer, preferred). The seventies marked a turning back to the critical issue by introducing new paradigms of critical theory. Weber's work neofrankfurtiana enrich social research. And also, from empirical methods positivist tradition and functional-systemic become part of the studies focused mainly on the analysis of post-industrial society and its structures.

Claus Offe (1940) can be considered as a member of the "second generation" more focused on political science analysis, being the study of capitalist society advanced, and their structures, the center of their investigations. Like Habermas, Offe can be set in stages according to their analysis. These stages could be differentiated as follows: a) The notice of revision of capitalism, b) Studies on the formation and processes of crisis, c) The actual analysis political science, d) The reconsideration of the socioeconomic dynamics and in particular, the organization and sociology of work, e) Finally, the current theoretical concerns Offe have focused on the reunification of Germany and, in particular in the new direction on the left before the historic changes that have occurred in the early years nineties.

Claus Offe's work is built on three specific issues: review of contemporary capitalism, the crisis of political parties and the emergence of new social movements, and the contradictions of the welfare state to reset and change the structures of the system as a whole. Thus, Offe research is proposed with a very definite purpose: neocapitalism transformation, especially the study of mechanisms that consolidate and ensure this way of economic, social and political . Consequently, the review of contemporary capitalism will focus, however, from a perspective purely of Frankfurt, that is, from the contradictions and crisis processes This model of society. Offe emphasizes that capitalist society is built on its ability to create gains. Thus, that which does not or has ceased to cause capital gains is a burden, being also a burden that threatens the creation of plusvalía.El capitalist state must try to reconcile the private economy with social activities derived from it. Similarly, the political system will have to ensure the loyalty of the masses, seeking a balance between economy and society. But, the contradictions come when solving a problem in a subsystem adversely affect another. This is the origin of the crisis and regulation will be addressed or decisions on the fiscal resources available adequate resources to social needs political-administrative subsystem, or to the administrative rationality seek to separate economics and politics, streamlining both relationships, and finally organizing loyalty of the masses through collective acceptance of the underlying rationale. But as a result of the attempt to universalize the commodity form as a relation of relations, the State must continue to carry and protect institutionally self-correcting effects (benefits, pensions ...) or commodify relationships historically socialization outside this process (education, training, research ...). The result is the antagonism between political and administrative legitimacy of the state and economic efficiency for the creation of private gains. The final question, therefore, which comes Offe no longer: Is it possible to reconcile democracy and capitalism without a welfare state? So one of the most distinctive themes of Claus Offe research is the interrelationship between traditional political parties and new social movements .

In the new social movements of the seventies, there are three processes:

- increasing participatory ideologies and attitudes with a strong component of social solidarity.
- The growing use of non-institutional forms of political action such as protest, protest, boycott and, in general, actions that go beyond institutional channels.
- The emergence of political demands and claims relating to matters that used to qualify and be considered ethical, moral, social, economic and cultural, breaking the boundaries of institutionalized political demands.

Thus, the citizens through the articulation of new social movements demanding a direct and immediate control over the elites means putting into action policies that are incompatible with the maintenance of institutional order of the political societies post-industrial capitalist.

Difficulties Offe considers issues whose complexity can not be ignored :

l º) New social movements, in opposition to the state and bureaucratic regulation of social demands, can lead to a strange coincidence with the political and ideological neoconservative attempt. As Offe argues, in order to emancipate the state will have to politicize civil society and its institutions .

2 º) The praxis of the new movements pointing requirements and principles are not negotiable. For Offe, the alienation of the industrial working class and the most linked to intellectual criticism is a consequence of the lack of an interpretation of reality that sets the conditions for the transformation and upgrading of this . 3 º) The actors who make up these movements is another aspect: the social base of new social movements is made by the new middle class (especially those sectors, working in human services or public sector), by elements of the old middle class especially by people outside the labor market or in a peripheral position with respect to it (students, unemployed workers, housewives ...), thus no specific interests and situational variables but also claims based on events that are happening sporadically.

The critical-political position has to Offe regarded as one of the most interesting of the "second generation" approach when imminent problems now. Since the crisis of working society in which Offe describes the social exclusion of large sectors of the population and the fragmentation of the working class, standing in a urgent debate on the dynamics of the current neo-capitalist society, until his recent considerations role of the left (in Castilian, the article "From the annus mirabilis annus miserabilis?'s left after the change and Maastricht) and the direction taken by the Europe that emerged after the changes in Eastern Europe (Der Tunnel am Ende des Lichts. Erkundungen der Politischen Transformation in Neuen Osten), we can ratify and Offe and Habermas both printed a new twist to the analysis of the Critical Theory of Frankfurt aimed not only to understand and describe summarized in society but, above all, to transmit a theoretical methodological and whose singular interest is the collective self-emancipation.

"Trying to rebuild the capitalist system is to try
a shark smells blood and eat vegetables."