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Send to friendHow can this thing called "nonviolent action" work? Over the last 100 years, against seemingly insurmountable odds and always to the surprise of official analysts and media pundits, unarmed civilians have prevailed over the power and weapons of some of the world's worst human rights abusers and most brutal dictatorships. There's a long list, but highlights include the Shah of Iran, Poland's Jaruzelski, Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile, P.W. Botha and apartheid rule in South Africa, not to mention a few Soviet-style regimes behind the Berlin wall.
Now how did THAT happen?
Does power not come from the barrel of a gun? Is violence not the most potent arbiter of human conflict? How could unarmed populations win against ruthless opponents equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry, intelligence networks, and trained police and armies?
In this series of blog posts, I'd like you to join me in an experiment. I'm aiming to put together a new, highly accessible and convincing resource to help explain HOW NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE WORKS. The goal is to refine and edit a dozen short pieces that will eventually form a single document, an educational tool on nonviolent action.
You can help by reading this series, and sharing your suggestions. I'm looking for improvements, comments, impressions, whatever feels like it could make these articles better popularization tools.
How can we best explain the central dynamics at play when nonmilitary forms of struggle are successful? First in this series of installments, let's start with the teasers. These would probably go on a first page (if you prefer, you can download a PDF). In the next few days I'll be offering more pieces on how nonviolent action works.
Thanks for taking part.
Be Free. Now's the Time.
WHY NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE?
A primer on the core dynamics of strategic nonviolent action
Struggle, or submit
photo: Benoît Aquin.
Your story may go like this. First, you face an injustice, want to defend something vital, overcome an oppression, or attain a great ideal. But good intentions, attempts at a negotiated compromise, and conventional politics fail. So the dispute escalates.
You now face serious conflict. Since you won't drop the issue or give up, that leaves two options: violent confrontation or nonviolent struggle.
You know the terrible price of violence. You agree nonviolent methods would be preferable, if they could work. You want to explore how nonviolent struggle might work for you. What is it really? Who has used it? Where did it work? How could you train and prepare for it?
And that's when you find this paper. It says right there on the front page that it seeks to bring some clarity to what nonviolent struggle is, and what it can offer. So you read on...
Social Power: Stronger than Gun Powder
Except for the law of gravity, few things have impacted the lives of so many people — yet been understood by so few — as the methods of nonviolent struggle.
Over the last 100 years, nonviolent struggle has become the principal, and most powerful technique to undermine ruthless regimes, uproot social oppression, and defend human rights. Yet, too few people can convincingly define what nonviolent action is, explain how it works, and much less defend it as a strategic choice.
This is about to change.
ACTION that is nonviolent
Nonviolent action is a means of combat, as is war. It involves the matching of forces and the waging of “battle,” requires wise strategy and tactics, and demands of its “soldiers" courage, discipline, and sacrifice.
This view of nonviolent action as a technique of active combat is diametrically opposed to the popular assumption that, at its strongest, nonviolent action relies on rational persuasion of the opponent, and more commonly it consists simply of passive submission. Nonviolent action is just what it says: action which is nonviolent, not inaction. This technique consists, not simply of words, but of active protest, noncooperation, and intervention.
Overwhelmingly, it is group or mass action.
— Gene Sharp
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Philippe Duhamel
interTactica — a liberation blog
Watch this space over the next few weeks as I'll be adding new pieces to our "Why Nonviolent Struggle" popularization project. Please add your comments to help improve these drafts. First, if you haven't done so already, you'll have to register as an official user of NewTactics.org. Don't worry, the process is quick and simple. In no time, you'll be part of the best global network of strategic and tactical thinkers for human rights. Go ahead, I'll just wait here while you do that.
This is the first piece in this series. Next piece in this series.
on the logic of civil resistance
thanks for your post, Philippe.
i would highly recommend Brian Martin's piece on Gene Sharp's Theory of Power:
http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/26/2/213
Cheers,
Patrick Meier, scholar, activist and writer for DigiActive, USA
Patrick Meier, Ushahidi
Gene Sharp's Theory of Power
Thanks so much for pointing us to this article, Patrick. The piece is also available for free on Brian Martin's own, and highly resourceful, site: http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/89jpr.html I agree that Gene Sharp's analysis of power tends to leave out most of the specific workings of current structures and systems, such as capitalism, patriarchy. Brian Martin makes the case for serious study of, and engagement with, the complexity of power relations within structural dynamics in order to wage effective struggle. I don't think Sharp would argue against that and certainly, the scope of examining those specific dynamics would have weighted down the core dynamics that Sharp sought to help people understand. Thanks for Brian Martin for brining up that necessary grappling with the complexity of current systems of oppression. And thanks to Gene Sharp for having brought forward a "generic" look at power relations simple enough for reasonable-sized works that provide vital insights. --
Philippe Duhamel
Intertactica — a liberation blog
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Philippe Duhamel
Intertactica — a liberation blog
nonviolent tactics for states lacking social cohesion
Sharp's ideas were applied successfully by the Baltic states during their struggle with Soviet oppressors. They disseminated clear instructions for nonviolent defense and coordinated a disciplined movement with a consistent message. Their social structures were favorable to this method. Their populations had a strong sense of nationalism and asserted their cultural identity through literature and music. How do we adapt or formulate theories of nonviolence to suit states that lack social cohesion, national identity, or means for disseminating information and coordinating responses? Which tactics are best suited for a state with several ethnic minorities, for example, or a state composed of clan-based societies?
Katie Madden, CVT Intern
Nonviolent tactics in multi-cultural societies
For an answer to your question, I believe we can turn to such historic examples as the Home Rule movement in India. India is the most ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse country in the world. The number of languages and dialects spoken there reaches over 1,600!
How do you coordinate a disciplined movement across such vast cultural and geographical expanse? I think Gandhi looked for, and found ways to adapt and use powerful fundamental symbols that reached across ethnic, language and cultural barriers. Salt-making as an open act of civil disobedience, the spinning of the wheel alongside the boycott of British-made clothes. These daily acts of defiance and self-reliance offer some tactical examples of how to act together beyond specific clans and ethnicities.
If you're interested, two of the best books I've read on the political genius of Gandhi are 1) Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict; 2) Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist.
Thank you for your important question.
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Philippe Duhamel
http://www.interTactica.org
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Philippe Duhamel
http://www.interTactica.org
Is non voilent comedy still relevent in 21st century
I have read blog of Phillippe Duhamel on non voilent struggle , it sounds good. but non voilent struggle is a tactical question. It depends on our socio economic, political and historic environment . There are some right and left deviations in his ideological debate. He has given arguments against brutal and totalitarian regimes mostly of thirld world , but he did not mention the hallowcost and brutal crime commited by very civilised and democratic Macharthy, Margrat Theacher, Ronald Regan, Tony Blair and Georgy W Bush, ironically he did not mention the hollowcost of millions of political workers and communist workers who were directly of indirectly linked with Marxist ideology for social change. There is a proverb that a barbar learns to shave by shaving the fools. I think we have not learnt any lesson from history . how can we challenge the might of brutal and totalitarian corporations, and monoplies, how can we stop nuclear arms race? how can we stop rape, prostitution and honor killing in pakistan, how can we eradicate fundamentalists, genocides and communal hate ? I think fools, baboons and official jesters have already played non voilent roles in history. DO u think non voilent comedy is still relevent in 21st century?
Moen
Re: Is non voilent comedy still relevent in 21st century
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean to say, and whether your take is genuine or ironic. To me, the choice between violent/armed struggle vs. nonviolent/unarmed struggle is a choice between two very different and incompatible strategic frameworks, not just tactics.
The choice of violent or nonviolent means at a given moment represents much more than a simple tactical decision. It has consequences far beyond the immediate situation, into how the struggle will unfold in the future. That is a monumental decision, strategic by nature.
I suggest you give this series of articles a chance, because I will try my best to explain how nonviolent struggle is relevant, and more so now than ever.
I want to reassure you. I have been a radical opponent of the murderous policies of my own and other governments in Western capitalist countries for over 25 years. Funny you should mention Thatcher and Reagan. Over 20 years ago, I organized a large civil disobedience action where over 100 of us tried to stage a "citizens' arrest" of Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterand, Mulroney and consorts for seriously (and independently investigated) Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes against the peoples of Central America, in the Falklands, in the Philippines, East Timor, against First Nations Peoples, in South Korea, etc. I have continued to oppose through means of nonviolent resistance, many times at the cost of being myself arrested, punished and sentenced, the wars and criminal policies of G-8 countries. I am also aware of the millions of lives lost, for instance, when the Suharto regime committed mass murder against the largest communist party in the world, in Indonesia in 1965. But I digress and this is not about credentials.
The purpose of this blog is to help activists and organizers find tools and tactics that are useful to them, not to offer a comprehensive view of what's wrong in the world or stay clear of what others might consider right or left deviations. There are other blogs for that. And if you want to find fault with the theory and principles of nonviolent struggle, can I please suggest that you target the theory and principles themselves, not simply try to discredit the writer or messenger?
You ask:
"how can we challenge the might of brutal and totalitarian corporations, and monoplies, how can we stop nuclear arms race? how can we stop rape, prostitution and honor killing in pakistan, how can we eradicate fundamentalists, genocides and communal hate ?"
You realize this a series of difficult and very far-reaching questions. If you ask me, I'd offer simply that we can start with creative strategies and methods of struggle that eschew murder and rape, genocide and hate, ideological warfare and torture, exploitation and mass murder. Such ends are, I think, some of the promises that those who choose to give nonviolent methods of struggle a chance see somewhere ahead in the (hopefully not too distant) future.
I hope that you'll stay with us. My hope is that by the end of this work, you too can feel that yes, nonviolent struggle is somehow relevant to the vital struggles of our century, and not at all some form of "comedy".
Peace (with justice),
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Philippe Duhamel
Intertactica — a liberation blog
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Philippe Duhamel
Intertactica — a liberation blog
Dear Phillipe
Dear Phillipe,
Karl Marx has once said, history repeats its self, first as tragedy, second as farce. I admire and highly appreciate your illusions and idealism about non violent comedy. It is neither a question of strategy nor tactics, it is a question of our subjective inner helplessness. I am not a court jester, but I think we are all wise enough to play a fool, to save our planet from death, and misery. Of course clowns who performed as court jesters are given great freedom of speech. The history of clowning is the history of non violent struggle.
I think great legendary pioner of non violent struggle Charlie Chaplin was very right when he said, I remian just one thing, and one thing only that is a clown. It pleases me on a higher plan than any politician. I think non violence is our repressed sentiment, an act of psychic cleanising or an ideological tickling to make ruling classes laugh. It is a parody of our inner subjective helplessness.
As far as Ghandhi is concerned,categorically he was an agent provocator of British imperialism. His treacherous and seductive non violent strategy was basically responsible for the massacre of one million innocent Indians. He latter himself felt victum of his own stupid non violent ideology.
Dear brother, I have seen the fate of innocent rape victums in Pakistan.And you have seen the fate of innocent 9/11 victims. Why rapists, fundamentalists, imperialists and terrorists are strong and influential, because we have lost our ideological and political integrity for the extension of bourgeois brothels and massacres.
I am a very stupid person , I am intellectually not as clever as you , but I donot know the art of painting prostitue as sweet Madonna.I think our words, our ideas, our art, our pen, our hair style, our proverbs, our dialects, , our perception, our imaginations are all intuitively violent expressions for social change.
Our nature is also intuitively violent. What is the significance and meaning of volcanic erruption, tremors,floods, climate changes, and what about metabolism and catabolism, what about fission and fussion reaction, what about action and reaction, what about mechanics, what about thermodynamicsand bio mechancis . Are they all non violent phenomenas. Biologoy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, geometry, cosmology, epistomology, phenomenology, ontology, archiology and most of all history, are they all non- violent branches ot learning of human civilisation.
What about Socrates, Bruno,Gallelio, Copernicus, Keppler, Newton, Einstein, Rutherford, Darwin, Marx , Engels, and other scientists were they not violent in their ideas and life styles.
What about English, American and French Revolutions were they also non violent. And what about Bolshevik revolution ironically it was very very peaceful and non violent as compared to other phenomenas.
I think diplomatic maneuvering is not good for ideology. We are suffering from ideological tuberclousis and intellectual metamorphosis I think tuber clousis and metamorphosis are both curable non violent diseases.
I HOPE dreaming impels us towards wakefulness for social change.
Yours revolutionary,
Moen[THE FOOL].