From Chartism to Black Lives Matter: Class Struggle and the Reshaping of Moral Life in Britain and France

Abstract

Hegel's concept of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) should not be viewed as a permanent achievement of the modern state, but as an ideal undermined by its internal contradictions. Civil society systematically produces poverty, alienation, and marginalization that state institutions fail to resolve. Within this gap, social movements—ranging from feminist and anti-racist struggles to ecological campaigns—emerge as direct responses to the failure of the state's ethical claims, exposing the divide between formal rights and genuine justice. By synthesizing Marxist critique with social movement theory, this study frames social movements as both symptoms and drivers of Sittlichkeit's breakdown. It concludes that the contradictions in Hegel's theory of the state are fundamental, demonstrating that ethical life persists not within the state, but in the contested spaces of collective resistance.

The significance of this study is threefold. Theoretically, it bridges Hegelian research and social movement theory, and shows that each field provides what the other needs: Hegel provides a dictionary of normative words — identity, moral life, the erotic state — that social movement research needs to explain why movements exist The experience of movements provides the historical test that Hegel's idealism has not reached. Empirically, it offers a systematic comparative analysis of British and French movements over two centuries within a single conceptual framework, and links cases that are often studied separately. In practice, it discusses a contemporary political situation in which welfare decline, gender marginalization, and ecological crisis have questioned the moral legitimacy of democratic states: by showing that the role of civil society is to hold the state accountable rather than substitute it It is also anti-political to believe that official institutions no longer matter.