Since its inception in the historically momentous year of 1776,1 the United States has changed tremendously. The national population has grown by over 136 times to approximately 340 million people today, comprising a demographic “melting pot” of Americans bearing an astonishing array of ethnic backgrounds and other social-cultural characteristics (U.S. Census Bureau 2024a, 2024b) From a fledgling outpost in the Western hemisphere seeking emancipation from British colonial repression, the U.S. had shaken off past vestiges of isolationism to position itself as the world’s eminent geopolitical superpower.

America’s birth in political revolution was followed by generations of cultural, economic, political, scientific, social, and technological revolutions (Inglehart 1997; van Zanden et al. 2014; Goldin 2021). These multidimensional shifts have not only defined the nature of relations between the U.S. and the world but have fundamentally recast how Americans think of themselves and their communities. Despite the “kaleidic” aspect of change in the U.S., a remarkable aspect of America’s evolution has been the enduring sense that the country was uniquely founded upon the ideas of human freedom and liberty (Jefferson 1776; Scott 2014), although the extent of adherence to such propositions appears to have been tested in recent years (e.g., Hamburger 2017; Sunstein 2018; Main 2021).

Many factors have informed change in the U.S., and the implications of change upon the robustness of American liberal democracy continues to be debated. In this paper, we consider the role of social movements in contributing to the dynamism of America over its first 250 years. Social movements are both fluid and complex phenomena that tend to defy a comprehensive, or unanimously agreed-upon, definition. Novak (2021, 3) defines a social movement as “sustained collective engagement by multiple participants, typically involving counter-hegemonic or extra-institutional activities, aiming to effect change within society.” Notwithstanding their counter-hegemonic character, social movements are often considered as an element within that broader set of nonstate (and non-market) activities known as civil society.2

Numerous scholars and commentators have suggested that social movement activists have profoundly influenced the trajectory of American historical evolution (for an encyclopedic treatment of U.S. social movement history, see Ness 2015). The capacity of movements to attract public attention, and to generate disruption, appear to have increased over the past decade (e.g., Brannen et al. 2020), with contentious tactical measures—such as protests, strikes, and boycotts—seemingly posing as key to the transformation of community attitudes, economic practices, and political beliefs.

The study of social movements has recently attracted the attention of mainline political economy scholars (e.g., Goodman 2023; Novak 2021), as have similarly contentious events such as political revolutions (e.g., Ammons and Shakya 2024). Academic inquiry into the characteristics and implications of social movements is also traceable among those with an interest in classical liberal ideas more broadly (e.g., Fard 2024; Rojas 2024). This paper seeks to add to this literature by providing a perspective of the contribution of social movements to America’s past, present, and future. As noted previously, there is considerable agreement that social movements have affected economic, political, and social changes and, through it, shaped the course of U.S. history, but our exploration of this matter is animated by several questions. What kinds of contributions did social movements make to achieve change? To what extent were changes consistent with America’s long-cherished ideals of freedom? Importantly for our purposes, how could the fundamentals and analytical capacities of mainline political economy be deployed to better understand social movements’ contribution to U.S. liberal-democratic life?

The structure of the paper is as follows. The next section describes the presence and activities of U.S. social movements within the broader context of American civic associations and distinctive communal life. This is followed by a brief overview of the role and function of social movements in American history, pointing to the deep historical connections of activism as an agent for social change. Then, we turn to a discussion of the effectiveness of social movements in expanding liberties in the U.S. context. Our account points to a complicated historic relationship between social movements and liberty, and the portents of certain illiberal tendencies within contemporary American social movements in an increasingly divided socio-political system. To put it simply if we are to ask ourselves “Have social movements promoted American liberty?” a response may well be, “It depends.” This is followed by a conclusion.

KEYWORDS: Civil Society; Liberty; Social Movements; United States; Violence