-- recognizing interdependence and the potential power from below such as workers withholding their labor or wives their domestic services;
-- the necessity of people breaking rules; rules are power strategies; they allow some people to dominate others, establish property rights, become law, and so forth;
-- individuals must coordinate their disruptive power for strategic advantage;
-- they must overcome constraints of an entire matrix of social relations; examples are the influence of family ties or the threat of religious excommunication;
-- disruptive power must be sustained, cooperation withheld, and be able to withstand whatever reprisals occur; and
-- the determination to stay the course in the wake of threats and uncertainty - employers who may hire scabs or relocate their plants and facilities.
New strategies aren't invented for each challenge. They're "embedded in memory or culture, in a language of resistance (and) become a 'repertoire' (of a) specific constellation of strategies to actualize interdependent power." New repertoires from below are developed in response to social and economic change. They become "forged in a political process of action and reaction." Popular struggles change over time, so, for example, food riots became rare and strike actions typical. However, they're now threatened with weakened labor protections, the growth of temporary workers, and the ability of employers to operate anywhere in the world under WTO rules.
Slowly over time, new repertoires emerge to respond to conditions of the times. Lessons are learned from defeat, anger and defiance builds, and creative imagination invents new solutions to old problems.
The Mob and the State - Disruptive Power and the Construction of American Electoral-Representative Arrangements
Disorderly and defiant crowds or mobs figure prominently in the history of disruptive movements. They played an important role in the Revolutionary War period and years leading up to it. American elites allied with mobs because they grew uneasy about British rule and developed radical ideas about the right of the colonies to self-government. Without mob support, the war with England couldn't have been won. They provided the troops who fought it.
Most colonists were from England, and by the mid-1700s numbered around 1.6 million. Most had egalitarian ideas and were ordinary people - artisans, apprentices, sailors, laborers, urban poor, farmers, bonded servants, and so forth. They also relied on mob action for results.
In the pre-revolutionary period, "riots and tumults" were commonplace. Bacon's 1676 Rebellion of discontented frontiersmen and slaves was the first one of note. In the next 100 years, another 18 uprisings erupted (according to Howard Zinn) against colonial governments along with six black rebellions and 40 riots.
Tensions grew as the years passed. They challenged Britain and colonial elites. Inequalities also increased, and they spawned protests against them. One study cited 150 riots in cities and rural areas between 1765 and 1769. In addition, merchants and landowners grew angry with the Crown. In 1763, it sent a standing army to the colonies, introduced new taxes, made demands to billet British troops and to curb colonial assemblies' power. It introduced the Sugar Act, Tea Act and a new Stamp Act. Colonists resisted and mob action was crucial.
They made Stamp Act enforcement impossible and dumped tea into more than one harbor to prove it, besides the notable December 16, 1773 Boston action. Historian Edward Countryman called it the "final rupture" leading up to war. Those who took up arms wanted popular democracy, and it affected the post-revolutionary drafting of state constitutions. They reflected "egalitarian and libertarian ideas that were spreading up and down the eastern seaboard." They wanted popular liberty and drafted laws that limited executive powers, established unicameral legislatures or at least powerful lower houses, short terms of office to force elected officials to face voters more often, and essentially make government accountable to the people.
It alarmed the nation's elites who, in turn, precipitated efforts to reform the new state constitutions and reign in their democratic excesses. Defeating England unleashed electorate demands, and they showed up in popular rebellions. They were fueled by postwar depression, debt, and legislative imposition of poll and property taxes on farmers. They petitioned for relief, got none, so armed mobs closed the courts to stop debtor suits and stave off foreclosure on their farms. Rebellions spread across New England with Daniel Shays leading the most famous one in 1786 and 1787. The rebels were dispersed, but they got amnesty, tax relief, and most imprisoned debtors were released.
Elites were alarmed, excess democracy had to be curbed, and the 1787 Constitutional Convention became the way to do it. There were other problems as well. The Articles of Confederation were unwieldy, had to be replaced, and a new document was needed that would last into "remote futurity" to serve the interests of "the (only) people" who mattered. They were established white male property owning delegates and members of state conventions who rammed the ratification process through in the face of a largely indifferent and uncomprehending populace left out entirely.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
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