Social Movements and Organizations

Social change needs movement(s). Social movements foster new demands, practices, and subjects, and serve as driving forces of left-wing politics. But how can continuous, broad-based forms of organizing succeed? How are interests brought together and generalized, how can shifts in the balance of forces be effected? 

The history of the Left is the history of a “mosaic” in which diverse actors with their own forms of action and organization work together: trade unions and workers’ associations, parties and organizations, initiatives and protest movements. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation addresses the broad range of actors across the Left and seeks to facilitate a space for joint discussion and strategy building, exchange, and dissemination of the kinds of knowledge that can inform and guide our action. The question of how to organize and re-organize the Left constitutes a core focus of our work at the Institute for Critical Social Analysis. This includes party and movement analysis, approaches to trade union renewal and “transformative organising”, practices of a connective party, and, broadly speaking, strategies for social hegemony based on a pluralistic Left.