The conflict category articulates its situation and an alternative

The antagonism of interests has to be articulated to be possible to act upon. A collective has to answer question like Who are we? What do we want? What stops us? Why? And What shall we do? It has to formulate what some people call an ideology, but you can also call it just a language.

To construct a common language is not easy, particularly as such languages have to struggle against other, more or less completed languages.

The opposite party wants that the world should be perceived in such a way that structural inequalities should be invisible, or results of chance or the stupidity or evilness of poor people. That is how the rich see it, and thanks to the structural inequality they have many ways of propagating their view. But before the collective sees the structural inequalities it can’t act. To see it, and to see how it should be remedied, requires several steps. It has to
- identify the common interest from the often diversified interests within the collective; this is generally done with common mobilizations for common goals;
- select a few themes that are the most important to work with;
- select somebody to be the responsible for the plight of the collective; the responsible persons must be outsiders;
- when there is a structure that is responsible, one has to choose some human adversaries to represent the structure;
- select goals that imply that the structural inequalities are attacked, at least to some degree;
- chose a strategy and a tactic;
- integrate all this into a program.

Program

A program has many functions. It should contribute to understanding of realities. It should be a guidance to the participants and contribute to their integration and socialization into the movement. It should be a tool for mobilization. It should tell which aims are more important and which are less. Primarily, a program should be a vaccination against impractical, counter-productive and generally bad reaction pattern within the movement.

A program may often cause troubles, however. Its aims are incompatible. Understanding may be contrary to mobilization – one must often exaggerate to arouse people from passivity. Mobilization may be contrary to integration – to reach outsiders one must sometimes express oneself in a way that alienates the radicals within the movement. Programs are compromises between these demands.

Programs are often dogmatic and disregard that real actions are always depending on context. More than once, movements have done worse than possible because they have gotten over-ideologized. This has brought some peoples’ movement theorists to contend that only immature programs work as communicative languages for a collective. It is during its process of formulation a language fills a function, when it is completed it hardens into dogmas and prevents new insights.

Over-ideologization, or the development of languages unintelligible or disgusting for outsiders, may on the other hand be due to the necessity to develop at least some language and identity that is original, new and the collective’s own, different from the one attributed to it by the system. But nevertheless, it's a burden.

The advantage of playing down a conflict is obvious: it isn’t that dangerous to take such conflicts. If you aim at a broad audience – which is an advantage for a peoples’ movement – it may be good to minimize threats of punishments and claim that changes may be easy. Sometimes these advantages may be perceived as so great that all disturbing greater conflicts are swept under the carpet; all interest is focused on the immediate, on what is ”realistic”, and all challenges beyond that are turned away as ”utopian”.

The strategic advantage of an anti-systemic approach is less obvious. It is connected with the more enthusing nature of grand aims. Awakening, revival, enthusiasm and devotion – qualities that is more probable in a movement that doesn’t forge its position with glancing at the opportune – are valuable resources, exactly of a kind that may determine a conflict with a seemingly superior adversary. According to generally accepted business managing principles, it is better to set the aims according to what you really want, rather than according to what is ”realistic”.