**5. Conclusion**

That this potential arises out of an ominous situation—encompassing crises of humanity and of nature—is as manifest and clear as its consequences are dangerously uncertain. Massive social movements can of course go in several directions, and it is abundantly apparent that authoritarian, fascistic, racist, and other violent forms of mobilization and occupation inspired by fear and hatred are also possible responses to the freeing up of political subjectivity, now at once liberated and dominated by the technological transformation of our public places, both at the street level and virtually. Even more dire, perhaps, is the decline of the middle class and the radicalization of economic inequalities, with a reactionary oligarchic class desperately trying to cordon off its assets from the very public that has hitherto insured the risks of corporate capitalism via the states they legitimate. The apparent impasse between private profits for corporations and collectivized risks for the public exposes an unsustainable situation, with the prospectus for social change borne out of that specific division of interests, becoming clearer with each new crisis of corporate capitalism.

<sup>15</sup> On this inversion of the Golden Rule [26]*.* Huang proposes a cross-cultural ethic along the lines of the Golden Rule with a reflexive twist—that one treat others as **they** would like to be treated—a dictum that raises the baseline observation that ethics begins with difference; for if one were to begin with some sort of universal, then there would be no need for an ethos or a way in-between. We begin with our own differences to be confronted by the differences of others, wherein what may at first seem singular comes to appear as a manifold of appearances, with what overlaps between differences then emerging out of a sharing of what one lacks in oneself with the others who we need.

#### *Perspective Chapter: Options to Violence in Mass Movements – A Prospectus for Mobilization DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106381*

Now that there has been this wellspring of popular mobilization for a more democratic economic system and for direct participation in public life, what remains to be seen is how new modes of organization, so clearly needed in the absence of effective leadership from a corporate oligarchical class, can be applied to places of work and other instruments of the economy, as well as exert influence on civil society broadly construed. The *Yo Soy 132* youth movement in Mexico gives a powerful suggestion of such potentials, specifically to democratize the political framework at a systemic level, including the structure of mass media, through mass actions capable of meme-like spread from one place and public to another. And beyond this, there is the question of how these various occupations of what are presently empty sites of power—abandoned factories and stores, foreclosed homes, and evacuated city streets—can be linked together in common struggle for the public good. For here, we reach a crucial point in the building of more just and democratic communities via the reclamation of public spaces, wherein the interests begin with justice here and now, and extend to the relations between these emergent power units. That is to say that something like properly democratic relations could be had between occupations worldwide, whereas true democracy seems to have proven impossible between states, being unequal as they are in their sovereignties, and apparently incapable of transcending those inherent differences. This task of transformation, therefore, now belongs within the purview of the people and bears out the shared responsibility of our time: to either watch the world perish while a few profit or to build a better, that is more democratic and sustainable system. Risks can only be engaged in common, with full and freely willing participation, when all have made their wagers freely. However uncertain the consequences of collective actions may be, this legitimizing claim to consensus may ground common trusts even as the world as we know it falls apart.

In her reflections on the global surge in students' movements in the 1960s, Arendt insists upon the mere instrumentality of violence, as well as its increasingly apparent uselessness, when confronted by technological developments such as nuclear weapons and weapons of mass or indiscriminate destruction [27]. She makes a distinction that is perhaps even more apparent in the early twenty-first century between violence as a tool, necessary in strictly limited justifications of self-defense, and the power of mass movements. This power consists in the capacity for coordinated action on the basis of free association.

If violence and the responses to it are grindingly, tragically predictable, then the power to act in concert with others is uncertain both in its origins (i.e. apathy could set in and nothing could happen) and in its outcomes. While observing that the student movements she was witnessing then seemed to share in some common quality, and constituted a "global phenomenon," she is quick to point out that the phenomenon as such was not bound together by a singular cause. For if it were, then this determination would essentially limit the movement, as if according to some overarching historical necessity. This would make it something other than political action as such, which must act out beyond such determinations if it is to draw on the power of the people:

*A social common denominator of the movement seems out of the question, but it is true that psychologically this generation seems everywhere characterized by sheer courage, an astounding will to action, and by a no less astounding confidence in the possibility of change.16*

<sup>16</sup> *On Violence*, 15-6.

Fear in the face of violence is predictable; courage is not. The power to act in this sense is by no means a given, however catastrophic that precariousness may turn out to be.

There is some real truth in the observation from the origins of Western political theory that democracy represents a way for the masses to protect themselves against the powerful few, that is contra those who claim the privilege of doing injustice, and who must, therefore, be forced to honor claims to equality.17 If social contracts hold in this sense it is because they are agreements autonomously chosen, and against those who claim the right to domination only the power of the people can succor them both justice and equality.
