Social Transformation in Times of Uncertainty

How does social change come about? Social change, according to Marx, needs an active as well as a passive element. Social change becomes possible where there is a mismatch between different social practices and institutions, where relations of fit between them are disrupted, creating an entry point for change. But what motivates social change, what drives or prompts it? My lecture proceeds from the assumption that the driving forces behind such transformations are problems, crises, and conflicts. I therefore try to reconstruct Marx’s idea that new societies emerge from crises of the old order. Or, with Hegel: societies are transformed when the contradictions that they themselves produce are sublated (at once cancelled, superseded, and preserved). But what role then do social actors play in the overall process? How should we picture the relationship between structural change – the gradual drifting and grinding of tectonic plates – and the moments when actors take matters into their own hands? Finally, how should we think of the “deflationary” logic of development that emerges from this picture and is there something to be learned from those reflections for the transformation and struggles of our troubled times?

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