Civil disobedience reveals institutional power as contingent and disruptable

Evidence

You write, introducing your concept of coldness', that we would even have put up with the murder of the Jews at the time, without moving over into praxis, simply because it was barred to us’. Yes, and today, precisely, it is not barred to us. The difference in the situation is that between fascism and bourgeois democracy. The latter gives us freedoms and rights. But to the extent to which bourgeois democracy (because of its immanent antinomy) blocks qualitative change, even through the parliamentary democratic system itself, the extra-parliamentary opposition becomes the only form of contestation': civil disobedience’, direct action. And the forms of such action, too, no longer follow the traditional schema. There is much about these forms that I condemn just as much as you do, but I am reconciled to this and defend them against their opponents precisely because the defence and preservation of the status quo, and its cost in human life, is much more dreadful. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2672 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Institutions forcibly retake space surrendered in earlier concessions to protesters; Extra-parliamentary civil disobedience is justified when bourgeois democracy blocks qualitative change — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2672; Civil disobedience challenges formally valid laws in the name of higher duty — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1191 (+4 more)

Related

• Extra-parliamentary civil disobedience is justified when bourgeois democracy blocks qualitative change (similarity 0.89)
• Marcuse held bourgeois democracy’s blocked change justified extra-parliamentary direct action (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Extra-parliamentary civil disobedience is justified when bourgeois democracy blocks qualitative change #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2672
• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy #corroborates (0.80)
• Coercive government power depends on voluntary cooperation from many #corroborates (0.78)
• Civil disobedience challenges formally valid laws in the name of higher duty #expands (0.75) — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1191