Liberal compromise and the struggle for social justice

Ultimately, even where a democratic government carries a mandate, pursuit of justice demands that workers, citizens, minorities - engage in struggle for their liberal and social rights (and in the case of unjust wars - for diplomacy and peace).

Liberal democratic compromise might ensure the right of citizens and workers to mobilise and argue in the “public sphere”, and to exercise the right of universal suffrage.

But there are instances, also, when people need to push the limits of liberal democratic social compromise. Strategies of civil disobedience: rallies, occupations, political strike action, the holding of picket lines - can well be justified.

And while terror and brutalisation must be avoided, strategies of civil disobedience can lead to physical confrontation between ordinary people and the state power.

Such circumstances can comprise a delicate “balancing out”: one where physical confrontation and conflict is limited by mutual restraint. Failure to exercise restraint, though, can result in a crisis of legitimacy, descent into repression, and escalation.

Under circumstances of liberal democratic consensus, the state itself - to an extent - also comes to embody the social contradictions it is called upon to mediate.

Employees of the state involved in the provision of social services and welfare might develop an interest in the continuation or improvement of services in their field. Teachers, for instance, have not only been involved in struggles for wage justice: they have been at the heart of struggles for a more progressive curriculum.

And it is not unimaginable to suppose that some police - who themselves have experienced industrial struggles - might under some circumstances be reluctant to break the picket lines of other workers.

Furthermore, strategies of “dual power” may involve the creation of alternative democratic institutions - community media, mutual and building societies, non-exploitative co-operative enterprise - beyond the internal contradictions of the state power.

A more radical example might involve the establishment of “community development” or “citizens’ investment” funds from below - through industrial action.

“The Good Society”, here, is one which is open to change: through the dynamic of class struggle, as well as the struggles by minorities and interest groups for recognition, and socio-economic justice.

But such a society is also one whose liberal foundations allow for civil disobedience, while acting as a bulwark against the disintegration of social order, violent desperation: even terror.