Nonviolence, Power, and Liberation

Nonviolence, Power, and Liberation
By Scott Foletta, Project Collective

Nonviolence, how misunderstood you are. When people look at you, they see passivity and weakness, a figurehead of the liberal cooptation of militancy; sometimes they see Gandhi’s impoverished figure on hunger strike, or Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaiming “I have a dream!” But your history, your inner workings, your very existence remains a mystery. Few recall the hidden history of insurrectionary civic strikes amassed upon Latin American dictators, the unspoken nonviolent resistance of thousands against the Nazi regime from occupied Netherlands and Poland, the coups that have been suppressed bloodlessly because entire armies of soldiers refused to take up arms against common people. Your existence has been a primary element in the shaping of political history since the dawn of recorded history, yet so few even know the name you go by. Yet, coming to understand you first demands that we throw out our preconceived notions of struggle and redefine our very concept of power.

POWER AND NONVIOLENCE

Imagine, for a moment, a dictator. Paint an image of him in your mind. Is he tall? Short? Brown-haired? Rude? French? Laotian? Handsome in uniform? Now put that image in the context of the nation he stands over. Try to focus on the power he holds. What does it look like? How does it work? Where does it come from? Better yet, how can it be taken away from him?

The popular idea of power assumes that it is an intrinsic trait of those who hold it; that subjects are dependent on their rulers for support; that power is “... a ‘given,’ a strong, independent, durable (if not indestructible), self-reinforcing, and self-perpetuating force.” The dictator is powerful because he seemingly stands at the head of government, commands the nation’s army, and has unilateral control over the nation’s laws. This model justifies war and violent revolution, as the only way to successfully challenge the power structure is with a greater destructive force.

The alternative idea of power, as described by Gene Sharp in The Politics of Nonviolent Action, recognizes that rulers derive their power from those whom they rule. For the dictator to exercise power, the cabinet must obey his commands. The generals must pass on his orders, and the soldiers must carry out his orders. The bankers must finance his political machine. The politicians must ratify his policies, and the police must eliminate his opponents. The journalists must report his truth. The workers must keep their factories running, churning out the resources of his war machine. The people must consent to business as usual. Without the constant, complete cooperation of every individual working underneath him, there is absolutely no difference between the most powerful ruler in the world and a crackpot with delusions of world domination.

Now ask yourself, which of these two models of power is a dictator going to want you to believe in? Which one is less likely to encourage daily acts of resistance? And which one is going to be perpetuated in social science books and historical accounts of revolution?

NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE

Nonviolent resistance is based on this second model of power. If our consent is necessary for us to be ruled, than we can challenge the power structure directly by withdrawing our consent, in every possible form. Better yet, we can instead use our power to build alternative structures to those we disagree with.

How many ways can you withdraw consent from an oppressor? Ask Sharp, and he’ll provide you with just short of two hundred.

Strikes are a form of nonviolent resistance based on withdrawing your labor. Boycotts are a withdrawal of economic support. Class walkouts are a withdrawal of your physical presence from a social institution. Public protest and advocacy, vigils, displays, guerrilla theater, marches, parades, assemblies, teach-ins, withdrawal from social institutions, staying at home, refusing to pay taxes, lockouts, general strikes, embargoes, sympathy strikes, slowdown strikes, sick-ins, boycotts of elections, boycotts of legislative bodies, refusing to recognize certain authorities, judicial noncooperation, fasts, hunger strikes, sit-ins, ride-ins, pray-ins, obstruction of buildings or roads, building occupations, intentional overloading of jails, physical land occupation, alternative markets, alternative economic institutions, and alternative transportation systems are all just a handful of methods that have been used successfully in the past to withdraw support from an institution in order to destroy its support base. Every one of these methods is the absence of a certain type of consent to authority that we unconsciously, habitually perform every day.

In absence of supporting the existing institutions, individuals can instead build their own alternative or parallel institutions from the grassroots level which, if successful, end up taking root and growing out of the destruction of the old systems. Instead of toppling a power structure with armed force and then scrambling to erect an alternative, nonviolent resistance comes from building those alternatives in everyday life as the very means of struggle.

In many cases, nonviolent resistance has been turned to not simply because of its tactical power, but because of its ability to change the fundamental structure of society. For one, it is more democratic; nonviolent action tends to disperse power throughout a society, whereas violent struggles tend to centralize power. This is partially due to the fact that anyone can participate in nonviolent resistance despite age, gender, or physical condition, while most armed struggles are taken on primarily by young, able-bodied men. For example, in Argentina in the late 1970’s, in the face of mass disappearances of political dissidents and guerrilla sympathizers, the dictatorship was brought to a standstill by a movement of the mothers and wives of disappeared persons who took to the streets and protested directly in front of the presidential palace despite rampant repression.

Nonviolent campaigns also have the residual effects of empowerment within their members that bring about political consciousness, confidence in the individual’s ability to change society, and personal development, while the use of violence tends to lead to callousness and dehumanization. Finally, the continued use of radical nonviolent action tends to create increasing amounts of public sympathy and support, especially in the face of harsh repression.

IN THE FACE OF VIOLENT REPRESSION

So what happens when nonviolent resisters are brought before firing squads or simply gunned down in the streets, when the most basic acts of resistance carry the threat of imprisonment or death?

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, violent repression often only serves to strengthen nonviolent movements. The government, with a virtual monopoly over political violence, is often able to justify itself to the public when it uses violence to put down armed uprisings. The police, military, and security agencies of a nation are the experts when it comes to violence, and would like nothing more than for an enemy to challenge them on their own terms.

Nonviolent resistance is harder to attack with state violence. You can’t chase it down in the streets, exchange gunfire with it, and place it within the crosshairs of a rifle. It can happen anywhere, anytime, by anyone, without warning, and without a trace left behind; it can come in invisible forms, such as choosing to work more slowly, or staying at home on a specific day. In the words of a historian who interviewed Nazi generals about their experiences in dealing with resistance:

“Their evidence also showed the effectiveness of non-violent resistance….Even clearer, was their inability to cope with it. They were experts in violence, and had been trained to deal with opponents who used that method. But other forms of resistance baffle them – and all the more as the methods were subtle and concealed. It was a relief to them when nonviolent forms were mixed with guerrilla action, thus making it easier to combine drastic and suppressive action against both at the same time.”

Furthermore, violent repression of nonviolent resistance often creates public sympathy for resisters and channels even more energy into the movement. Martyrs may be created, neutral third parties may decide to take a stance against the state repression, and the state’s own agents of repression may grow reluctant to carry out their orders against people who seem to offer no immediate physical threat. Gandhi’s salt satyagraha was a tactic of creating salt out of seawater to protest the British monopoly over salt production, and the resulting violent repression against individuals simply for engaging in the process of making salt created a very clear image of injustice that inspired mass uprisings across the nation.

The difficulty for the oppressor lies in the fact that a human can’t be physically forced to obey; they can only be convinced to obey out of the fear of physical force. Once a people become liberated from the fear of force or find ways to evade it, the state’s one-size-fits-all tactic of violent repression is no longer useful, and the more weight it throws into repression, the more off-balance it becomes.

NONVIOLENCE IN ACTION

So the theory of nonviolent action makes sense; but to what degree can this type of action be taken on a mass scale to challenge some of the most repressive institutions in this world? What happens when you face military coups, repressive dictatorships, or even full-on armed invasions? What’s the role of nonviolence when you’re trying to bring about a revolution?

These questions can’t be answered in theory, but by turning to long-overlooked historical examples.

THERE’S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO KILL A COUP

In 1920 a military coup led by Wolfgang Kapp captured the capital of Germany and forced the elected government to flee. From the city of Stuttgart, the government-in-exile advocated a campaign of total nonviolent resistance. Noncooperation was a vital part of the resistance; secretaries refused to type Kapp’s proclamations, authorities refused to sign his checks, banks refused to cash those checks without proper signatures. At the same time, a general strike accompanied by massive rallies shook the foundations of Berlin’s social and economic structure. Within four days, as the military regime found that it had no power without the consent of the populace, the coup came to complete collapse.

During Algeria’s struggle for independence from France, anti-independence French generals staged a coup in 1954. The coup attempt was brought to its knees, however, by the very soldiers who were supposed to carry it out. Most of them stayed in their quarters and refused to cooperate; pilots took off in their planes and then disappeared to prevent the generals from being able to use them. Meanwhile, massive protests erupted in France. After just a few days, and without a single person killed, the revolt collapsed.

OVERTHROWING DICTATORSHIPS

In 1944, an insurrectionary general strike in El Salvador set off a chain of seven separate nonviolent insurrections in Latin American countries that all succeeded in deposing their dictatorships.

Even in the face of mass unrest, the repressive military regime in El Salvador was able to put down an armed revolt with ease. Soon afterwards, however, rose a nonviolent insurrection. University students began a strike, and were soon joined by high school students, and then physicians and business people, until almost the entirety of the nation’s economic structure was paralyzed. Instead of going to work or class, people simply stayed at home, which became in itself a powerful act of resistance. President Martinez attempted to repress the insurrection with violence, and the police shot at several crowds, killing one young man. As a result, citizens poured out of their houses and held massive protests in the streets, eventually charging the palace gates. Martinez’s entire personal cabinet threatened to resign if Martinez used violence against the populace, and his military advisor told him that the soldiers would refuse to carry out those orders anyways (though they had little opposition to putting down the previous military revolt). By the sixth week of the insurrection, Martinez was forced into exile.

RESISTING MILITARY INVASION

In 1968 Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to put an end to communist rule. The Czechoslovak army, far outmanned, put up no military resistance. Instead, a movement of unified nonviolent resistance rose up against the invaders, from politicians to citizens. One of the most effective forms of opposition was active conversion of the invading force; talking to the soldiers, telling them the truth of the situation that their commanding officers had hidden, and encouraging them to support the resistance. While the goal of the invasion was to set up a puppet government, this was made impossible for eight months; leaders of the Czechoslovak Communist Party refused to cooperate with the invaders and no alternative leaders could be found.

NONVIOLENT REVOLUTION

Perhaps the best example of nonviolent revolution is the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979, which remained primarily nonviolent despite ruthless repression. The Shah’s regime imprisoned and tortured not only dissidents but other random citizens just to strike fear into its opponents. It was highly armed and supported by the United States, Soviet Union, Israel, and most Arab states. However, protest against the regime continued to build until police began firing on crowds and caused several deaths. A mourning procession held in Islamic tradition for the fallen turned into a political protest, and was also fired upon by soldiers of the regime. As the process of killing, mourning, and protest continued across the country, it escalated to the point of worker strikes and slow-downs that brought the Iranian economy grinding to a halt. Rallies continued to grow in size, and more people were shot dead in the streets, until finally the soldiers refused to fire on citizens and turned against the regime. The Shah, failed by the elements of state repression that he relied on the most, was forced to flee the country. Yet the horrific death toll, in the tens of thousands, still paled in comparison to many armed liberation struggles.

THE INVISIBLE METHOD

Why are movements of nonviolent resistance such an underrepresented part of our political history? Why has nonviolence never been legitimized as a form of political struggle?

Part of the answer lies in the central role violence plays in our culture and our conception of successful action. We raise our children on so many stories of successful violence that violent revenge becomes synonymous with justice. Time and time again, heroes who use violence to strike at evil are the ones who are romanticized in stories and histories. When social change advocates become frustrated with limited success through nonviolent methods, they are quick to turn to violence as the quintessential “more powerful” method always waiting to be unleashed, without bringing into question whether or not that violence actually is a more powerful force of democratic social change or not.

In addition, most historians have accepted the ruling class’s view that violence is the only legitimate form of combat. Nonviolent resistance as a method of social change has never been accepted. When compared to violent action, nonviolence is often subjected to a higher degree of doubt and criticism. When individual cases of nonviolence fail, the whole method is often written off as a failure, whereas when individual cases of violent action fail, the individual tactics and strategies are blamed instead of the method itself. Critics are quick to assume that if both forms of political action exist side by side in a struggle, the violent action is the only force that made a significant impact, without any further analysis of the power structure. It remains to be seen whether nonviolent resistance is a paradigm whose time simply has not yet come.