Our need to belong to a community, large or small, is a constant in human history. Capitalism, and with it the rise of populism in politics, may have had a tendency – particularly in the West – to emphasise individualism, to isolate the individual and to appeal to the selfishness of the individual, but the basic need to stand up for a common cause, or even to live in a community beyond the nuclear family, has survived.
„Far from being a primitive form of organization, the family is rather a very late product of human evolution. As far back as we can go in the paleo-ethnology of mankind, we find people living in societies […] Societies, hordes or tribes – not families were thus the original form of organization of mankind and our earliest ancestors.“
Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, German edition published by Theodor Thomas 1908, p. 80
While the divisive effect of selfishness is well known, individualism need not be a barrier to connecting with others. Rather, individualism leads us to choose more consciously which society we join. Rather than simply being born into a community, in the postmodern age we seek out and shape our communities according to our visions and desires.
Associations form and dissolve so that the community is not bound together for life. Sects are perhaps the remnants of these pre-modern, coercive communities, which tend to be authoritarian because of their tendency to close themselves off. Voluntary associations, on the other hand, can be formed and organized in a more sociocratic way, becoming a model for a freer, less hierarchically organized society. Sociocratic action can be learned and become a habit in clubs, associations and active social networks (i.e. not Facebook and the like).
Clubs, associations and social networks are independent of the state apparatus and often also of economic profit interests. The concept of civil society as an intermediary sphere between the state and the individual can be traced back to Antonio Gramsci (theory of hegemony in Marxism), Alexis de Tocqueville (theory of democracy), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (systematic distinction between the state and civil society), and ultimately Montesquieu (separation of powers). According to this concept, civil society can prevent the ruling classes (today huge international cooperations and their political executive parties and lobbies) from ruling despotically.
But even in an open society, the space in which public power can unfold has to be fought for again and again through political action.
This is becoming increasingly clear right now: the concept of civil society—a key protective mechanism against the concentration of power—is under more pressure today than ever before. On the one hand, civil society movements are increasingly coming under fire: right-wing parties and authoritarian governments are questioning their legitimacy, discrediting their causes, and publicly defaming their activists. On the other hand, we are witnessing an unprecedented collective shift in consciousness: never before have so many people taken to the streets with such determination to defend the spaces of civil society and highlight their importance for democracy and freedom.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt describes this collective action as a second birth. According to Arendt, we are born into a world that exists before we are born. But as soon as we become aware of our existence, we intervene in events by speaking and acting. With her concept of natality, Hannah Arendt draws attention to the fact that the unique perspective of the individual awakening to his or her second birth through collective action contains something radically new, a possibility of action that did not exist before. This second birth affirms and takes responsibility for the very fact of being born (Greek: Zoé) through collective, meaningful action.
Learning from the Grassroots is born from this spirit. It seeks to explore and amplify these spaces of action, where people come together not just to resist, but to create new possibilities – new forms of living, organizing, and belonging.
„Power itself, in its true sense, can never be possessed by one person alone; power always appears in a mysterious way, as it were, when people act together, and it disappears in no less mysterious ways as soon as a person is completely with himself.‘
Hannah Arendt, in: Politik und Verantwortung. Zur Aktualität von Hannah Arendt, Offizin, 2004, p. 26 (citations from the German edition; English edition: Origins of Totalitarism, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973).
