ALFRED MARQUART discovery of one's own strength, the ensuing feelings of solidarity, and to the realization that alternatives exist and that each individual has the power to carry them out. "(28) The CAG's have certainly questioned the basic values of the German state, which is trying to expand its economic and political field of power all over Europe. They have realized that our starting point must always be the needs of human beings, that the "rules of capitalist system" cannot be accepted without question, and that it is possible and necessary to resist against a decrease in the quality of our lives, as has been shown by the occupations of many construction sites, by demonstrations, and more. A slogan cried out by farmers in Bavaria during a demonstration against the construction of a suspension railway gives a clear picture of this tendency: "Black or Red, if you bring us the suspension railway, we'll kill you ".(29) The more the state and the business establishment pretend to the absolute necessity of certain forms of "progress", the more this society becomes questionable for citizen's action groups and their members. This brings about new processes of learning, and these in turn lead to intensified resistance. Today's CAG's can see the situation from this viewpoint, for the CAG movement will lose its middle-class character the more state repression against its action and its form of organization increases. But the efficiency of this "movement of citizens" will also depend on how it manages to transform the learning that has taken place into new forms of action, forms of action carried out by people who want to bring about a new society in which they represent their own interests themselves, a society which is oriented to their needs and in which people have taken the making of their history into their own hands. (28) ibid. (29) Der Spiegel, 21.3.1977, p. 41. 78
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