The End of Traditional Anti-systemic Movements and the Need for a New Type of Anti-systemic Movement Today

The aim of this article is to examine the systemic parameters that gave rise to the flourishing of anti-systemic movements in the 19th and 20th centuries and their subsequent decline in the era of neoliberal modernity. It is shown that their recent decline is not irrelevant to the nature of the traditional anti-systemic movement that challenged a particular form of power rather than power itself, as a result of the one-dimensional conception about the 'system' adopted by these movements which typically saw one form of power as the basis of all other forms of power. Today, the issue is not anymore to challenge one form of power or another but to challenge power itself, which constitutes the basis of heteronomy. In other words, what is needed today is a new type of anti-systemic movement that should challenge heteronomy itself, rather than simply various forms of heteronomy. The anti-globalisation 'movement', which is seen as a continuation of the democratic movement that began in the 1960s, has the potenti...