Defining the phenomenon of socio-political movement through the concept of human alienation

PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

In modern society, socio-political movements are increasingly attracting attention as more and more people are becoming involved in political activity. These processes become the object of analysis in numerous social and political studies. Unfortunately, socio-political movements receive little attention in modern socio-philosophical literature. It must be acknowledged that today there is even no established socio-philosophical definition of this phenomenon. The paper suggests developing such a definition through the concept of alienation since politics and its institutions, including socio-political movements, appear as a result of a human’s alienation from his generic essence, from himself. The article also demonstrates that alienation is not only the key reason for the emergence of these movements but also, ultimately, their main (but not always realized) goal: every movement seeks to remove alienation, at least partially. In this sense, all socio-political movements objectively struggle to destroy the conditions for the emergence and existence of socio-political movements. However, the implementation of this aspiration may lead to both a social progress, understood as an increase in the diversity of human essential forces, the complication of a human, and to regression.