Political Will

Abstract

The best way to address questions about emancipatory political practice, I think, is to pose them in terms of political will. Right away, this foregrounds the basic difference between the involuntary and the voluntary dimensions of social life, and thus helps reduce or transform the one in favor of the other. In every situation where it applies, it helps clarify a version of what I take to be the most important question of political practice: how can a dominated and coerced group or class of people free themselves from this coercion and acquire the power they need to determine their own course of action, consciously, deliberately, or “willingly,” in the face of the specific obstacles and resistance this course will confront?