西方社会运动与革命理论发展之述评——站在中国的角度思考

A Critical Review and Analysis of Western Theories of Social Movements and Revolutions: A Chinese synthesis

本文批判地总结了20世纪西方社会运动和革命理论的发展轨迹,并在此基础上提出了研究社会运动和革命的三大视角:社会变迁、国家和社会的结构及结构性行为以及社会运动的话语(即变迁、结构,话语)。任何社会运动或革命的发生和发展都离不开这三个因素,但这三个因素之间却没有一成不变的逻辑关系。因此,建立一个不随时空和情境而变的社会运动和革命的系统性理论是不可行的。但是,这三个因素之间也不是没有关系。特别是对于一场大规模的社会运动或革命来说,这三大视角的核心和有机连接点,也就是说这三个因素对社会运动或革命发生和发展的影响,在很大程度上取决于国家和社会的关系。

This article provides a critical examination of the development of the theories of social movements and revolutions in the United States and Europe in the 20th Century. It proposes three broad angles as a starting point to understand social movements and revolutions:social changes,social and political structure,movement language and discourses.These three major forces can be seen as super-mechanisms with each involving many secondary mechanisms.These three forces have no time-space invariant systematic relationships.Therefore,no general theories of social movements and revolutions can be constructed.However,in most large-scale social movements and revolutions,what link the three forces together,and indeed what shape the rises and dynamics of most social movements and revolutions,are state-society relations.Under some kinds of state-society relations the impact of a major social change on the society can be minimized,while under other kinds of state-society relations even the initially minor reformist attempts may be radicalized and lead to revolutionary outcomes. State-society relations are,therefore,most crucial to the rises and patterns of the development of large-scale social movements and revolutions.