There is something of a genre of critique, one sometimes lobbed at Waging Nonviolence, which considers the discourse of nonviolence to be wholly subservient to the U.S. foreign policy interests, and/or the CIA specifically. It’s a line of attack that has generally baffled us, since anything worthy of the name “nonviolence” would certainly run counter to the doings of the largest and most pervasive military machine in the history of the world. Occasionally there seems to be some truth in these critiques, but it’s hard to know where that begins and the conspiracy-theory nonsense ends.
Now I think I know where to begin to draw the line. The reason is a new paper published in the journal Societies Without Borders in September by Sean Chabot and Majid Sharifi. It’s called “The Violence of Nonviolence: Problematizing Nonviolent Resistance in Iran and Egypt.”
Chabot and Sharifi do a helpful job of identifying just where the disconnect lies. The eminent theorist (and Waging Nonviolence contributor) Gene Sharp is often credited with at most directly influencing or at least describing the logic of recent nonviolent insurgencies, from the “color” revolutions of Eastern Europe to the Arab Spring; the authors focus on the cases of Iran’s Green movement and Egypt’s Tahrir Square uprising. The heart of the paper’s analysis, however, is in texts.
Gene Sharp has tended to present himself as codifying and systematizing the legacy of Gandhi. (Two of Sharp’s early books mention Gandhi in the title and a third was published by the Gandhi Peace Foundation.) But Chabot and Sharifi focus on identifying exactly how, especially later in his career, Sharp departed from his guru, and why that departure matters.
Sharp puts an overwhelming emphasis on nonviolent action as a method of carrying out conflict with an unjust regime. Although Gandhi developed his strategies in the midst of just such a conflict, his overwhelming emphasis was of a more prefigurative bent — putting the practice of better forms of social and economic relationships at the center of the culture of his movement. He believed that simply replacing the British Empire with an Indian empire would hardly be a victory at all. Chabot and Sharifi write:
While Gandhi highlighted the constructive program [that is, the practice of better forms of social and economic relationships] and downplayed the role of civil disobedience campaigns, Sharp focuses on dramatic mobilization and mass direct action against undemocratic states without aiming to contribute to personal, relational, social, or global transformation. And since Sharp’s work takes existing ways of life and systems of domination as given, it is easily adaptable to the contemporary imperial mentality and neoliberal world-system.
On several occasions I’ve heard Sharp asked why his model says so little about economic systems, and what resisters should do to confront them. He has usually replied with something along the lines of, “That’s for your generation to figure out” — as if it’s utterly foreign territory that brave young minds must explore in generations to come. This may be partly true, but Chabot and Sharifi make clear that a starting point has been before him, in Gandhi, all along.
The paper is less convincing in the authors’ empirical effort to map the difference between Gandhi and Sharp onto how movements in Iran and Egypt have played out; those movements and their influences are so complex as to resist an easy typology. Besides, explicitly Gandhian movements (Gandhian at least among some prominent segments) like the struggles for Indian independence and U.S. civil rights have also proven vulnerable to neoliberalism. Touting Gandhianism is no guarantee of Gandhian results.
Neither Gandhi, nor Sharp, nor any theorist of nonviolent struggle should be accepted as gospel. But their flaws don’t warrant dismissing their contributions altogether, either. Perhaps the most important thing about this paper is its spirit of discretion, of demonstrating a way of approaching the tradition of nonviolence critically without resorting to demonizing or conspiracy theories. For a tradition that has tended to worship its gurus more than listening to them carefully and thoughtfully, this could be harder than it sounds.
Good piece. A lot of people here in India wonder if Gandhi’s ideas are relevant. What they miss out is, his ability to put things into context and working accordingly. So, values are intact but processes change. He called for a personal reform; clearly Sharp has eluded that idea. I think the difference between the ideas of the 2 men (and not gods or gurus) was that the deceased one addressed the long term of the change of one’s heart and soul, and thereby the change of the society at large. The latter addresses issues at hand, which may (or may not) often leave protestors with a Q like, “Okay, now what to do since we have won the revolution?”
Thanks for this, yes! And the trouble with that Q you end on is, while the activists decide, the well-organized economic powers of the world move in and decide for them. Maybe that’s a compromise some people will be willing to accept; others might conclude that their movement must have its social agenda at its heart from the beginning.
I appreciate this article and its clarity. I have also heard the on-going arguments, discussion, and conspiracy theories. Ultimately, it is about critique. All good teachers from Gandhi to Sharp to the Buddha all tell us to go beyond, to not accept teachings unquestioningly, but to discover truth for ourselves.
Interesting article. I’m actually writing my master’s thesis on comparative economic critiques of non-violence.
Wow, that sounds fascinating. What kinds of materials are you looking at?
I cover some of the materials one might expect like the fall out of Meyssan’s article over at the Voltaire Network and Chavez’ speech denouncing Sharp. However, I have been spending much of my time going through old libertarian articles in the 80s that review Sharp’s work. By complete accident, I came across an old Murray Rothbard article that lambasted both Sharp and Gandhi. I dove deeper and found a whole conversation within libertarian circles analyzing non-violence. I am comparing and contrasting this conversation with more recent left-wing critiques.
That sounds really, really interesting. I hope you’ll keep us posted. Perhaps you’d be interested in presenting one of the main points of your thesis in an article on WNV. Feel free to reach me at nathan@…
Hello Nathan,
I have just published a post on my personal blog about the article. I am critical of Chabot and Sharif piece on various grounds. Here is my take:
http://maciejbartkowski.com/2013/11/06/unhelpful-critique-of-civil-resistance/
This is the correct link: http://maciejbartkowski.com/2013/12/03/unhelpful-critique-of-civil-resistance/
First of all, I want to thank Nathan for initiating this dialogue across differences and critics as well as supporters for their insightful comments. It is only by sharing our relative (and therefore inherently flawed) glimpses of truth with each other that we can improve our individual and collective experiments with truth. I will respond to only a few of the comments directly, but try to reference all of the posts at some point. I’ll start by responding to some of Maciej’s key points.
1) Principled (ethical) versus pragmatic (strategic) nonviolence.
In the preface of “The Politics of Nonviolent Action,” Sharp explicitly says that his project is scientific and therefore will not address ethics or cultural belief systems. I disagree with separating ethics/culture from strategy/politics and agree with Howard Zinn that “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Although I appreciate Robert Burrowes’ distinctions between pragmatic/principled and reformist/revolutionary forms of nonviolence, I feel it sets up a false dichotomy. I prefer Gandhi’s focus on “value-rational strategy” and find Sharp’s strict focus on “instrumental-rational strategy” problematic.
2) Promoting external forces imposing Gandhi or Sharp on civil resisters.
Our article does not argue that people should adopt a fixed set of Gandhian strategies and principles determined and imported by outsiders. It problematizes the mass media’s presentation of Sharp as “guru of nonviolent revolution” and the popular impression that Sharp’s Westernized scientific model of nonviolent action was the basic source of inspiration for people power struggles around the world. In my view, civil resistance scholars have generally perpetuated the “Sharp as hero” frame rather than highlighting its dangers and proposing other frames. I don’t dispute Sharp’s academic contributions, but find them useful as an overview of techniques and case studies as well as seriously limited theoretically (especially on the subjects of power, oppression, and transformation) and practically (in focusing primarily on “bringing down dictators” rather than on what Marina Sitrin calls “everyday revolutions”). I don’t agree that nonviolent struggles are mostly about shifting political power from “the regime” to “the people” in the form of another (liberal-democratic) regime. As Gandhi famously noted in Hind Swaraj (and confirmed throughout his life), such approaches merely replace “the tiger” (from one tyranny to another tyranny) without seriously confronting and creating alternatives to “the tiger’s nature” (what Audre Lorde refers to as the oppressor deeply planted within each of us).
3) Faulting Iranian and Egyptian people for not achieving Gandhian utopia.
Our article does not blame Iranians (including co-author Majid Sharifi) or Egyptians for neoliberal agendas or political failures, but points to the TRAGEDY of winning the war against oppressive leaders without significantly improving the plight of “the most oppressed in society,” which according to Gandhi (and many other decolonizing revolutionaries, including Fanon) was the main test for personal as well as collective struggle. Like Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, for example, we are concerned about the trend that neoliberalism seems to emerge as the dominant logic and discourse in the wake of every crisis (like a Trojan Horse). Klein and others show that this happened in the Czech Republic, South Africa, and other countries, but I feel something similar applies to Iran’s Green movement, Egypt’s uprising, and other apparently revolutionary movements in recent years. Unfortunately, I think that history is proving that “political liberation” gained through nonviolent resistance does not necessarily enable “socio-economic liberation,” especially if political liberation implies adopting the dominant (neo)liberal-capitalist model of representative democracy that has prevailed in the Euro-American parts of the world.
I’d like to take issue with what I see as two false impressions and an unfortunate error in Sean Chabot’s above comment.
First, I don’t believe that Gene Sharp’s choice not to address at length the ethics of nonviolence in his seminal work “The Politics of Nonviolent Action” should be interpreted as an objection to considering the values and intentions of those who engage in nonviolent action or the non-political effects of that action. He was, after all, devoting his attention to a previously neglected area of scholarship, namely, the strategic effects of nonviolent action. Those of us whose work owes a great debt to his historical analysis and modern restatement of the workings of civil resistance have gone on to consider those values and intentions in a number of contexts. Moreover, I know of no major contemporary scholar or commentator on civil resistance who insists on a “dichotomy” between the political uses of civil resistance and the principles at work in the adoption and use of nonviolent action. As an example to the contrary: In my own writing, I have often emphasized how critical it is to maintain consistency of means and ends in the work of nonviolent movements. The kind of society that a movement wants to foster or make possible should be prefigured in the language and the activity of summoning participation and of putting pressure on opponents that are part of what happens in civil resistance.
Second, I disagree that “civil resistance scholars have generally perpetuated the ‘Sharp as hero’ frame rather than highlighting its dangers.” It would be helpful if Sean could provide examples (apart from the exaggerations of the mainstream media, most of which have mangled the reporting of nonviolent struggle for decades). At the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, we emphasize repeatedly that our role and the role of scholars and trainers in civil resistance should be that of teachers and distributors of the knowledge, not as actors and certainly not as intervenors in conflicts. It does not make us “heroes” when campaigns and movements succeed in instances where leaders or activists say they have benefited from our materials or information. They are the ones who develop strategies of action based on their own experience as well as on what they may have learned about the history and dynamics of civil resistance, and they are the ones who take risks in direct engagement with oppressors. To them belongs the credit for whatever measure of success their causes obtain.
Third, it seems to me a misunderstanding of the motivations and results of the actions of those who lead and participate in nonviolent movements to say that it is a “tragedy” to win “the war against oppressive leaders without significantly improving the plight of ‘the most oppressed in society'”. Was it really a tragedy for stultifying, repressive, disastrously managed, and anti-democratic authoritarian regimes to be ousted nonviolently in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Chile, South Africa, Serbia and Tunisia (just to take a few examples), because the advent of free elections and democratic politics didn’t lead quickly to the solution of all these countries’ social inequalities and their peoples’ economic deprivation? I know of no political revolution in history, violent or nonviolent, which quickly solved endemic problems of long duration. What democracy can do is to clear the way politically for freely elected and thus accountable leaders as well as independent social forces to use the newly magnified public and media space to make progress that was previously blocked. Is injustice perpetuated by institutions that are carried over into the new order? Yes. Do economic elites still resist redistribution of resources? Yes. Can populist revanchism threaten civil liberties? Yes. Does pervasive corruption suddenly vanish? No. There is a host of residual and new problems that fledgling democracies face. There is also an expanding literature from scholars and civil society organizations about how to tackle these problems — and civil resistance can and has been taken up against new governments. To maintain that the continued existence of these problems justifies defining as a “tragedy” the arrival of a freer, more democratic politics is mistaken. During these days when we’re revisiting the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, as we celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela, it’s well to look back at how the activists who drove that struggle forward – and the people of South Africa – felt about their democratic breakthrough. https://vimeo.com/64419607
Maciej, thanks so much for sharing your response. As I suggest in the penultimate paragraph of the post, I agree with your points 2 and 4, which relate to the paper’s analysis of Iran and Egypt. And I find that their account of Gandhi’s constructive program/resistance is more sophisticated than you give them credit for in point 3.
Your first point, which attempts to explain Sharp’s choices in the context of the time in which they were written is a helpful contribution to the discussion. But I don’t think that recognizing that context undercuts the paper’s point; the context could even be read to reinforce it, in suggesting that Sharp chose to emphasize some things and not others in Gandhi because he was trying to make Gandhi admissible to the Western Cold War capitalist political science establishment. This could be considered a kind of positive baby step for “the field,” if we define the field as wholly residing in that establishment — but the true field of people-power is much broader than that, and in the context of trying to establish Gandhian ideas in that broader field, Sharp ended up taking us a few steps back from Gandhi (while also surely a few other steps forward). The issue of context that you raise in turn raises valuable questions of the impact on our thinking had by the fields we perceive ourselves as responsible to. What if Sharp had perceived his field differently? How might that have changed the picture he painted of “Gandhi as a political strategist”?
In this respect, I think your critique is really helpful, though I don’t think it represents as serious a challenge to the paper’s argument as you suggest.
Nathan, for these writers to suggest, as you say, that “Sharp chose to emphasize some things and not others in Gandhi because he was trying to make Gandhi admissible to the Western Cold War capitalist political science establishment” is ludicrous. He had to fight against that establishment’s longstanding disinterest in nonviolent action for more than 30 years before more than a handful of political scientists would pay any attention to his systematic explanation of nonviolent action as having potentially wide application as a form of struggle for political power, and that’s a fact of academic history.
As for being some sort of facilitator of capitalism as Chabot and Sharifi seem to argue, Sharp worked for A.J. Muste and knew Bayard Rustin, whose political views I presumably don’t have to recount. As did the Rev. James Lawson, another modern teacher of pragmatic nonviolent resistance, Sharp did prison time for refusing to be drafted and serve in the Korean War. Neither of them were or are apologists for any kind of elite or establishment, whether political, social, economic or military. That’s the real Gene Sharp, not the shadowy sympathizer with neo-liberalism that those serving up misinformation about him have purveyed.
Moreover, far from “taking us a few steps back from Gandhi,” Sharp — by dint of his tireless explication of the hard politics contained within Gandhi’s practice as well as his ideas — broadened immeasurably the serious interest in civil resistance that dozens of brilliant new scholars in the past 20 years have strengthened and extended. Without Sharp having taken this field across the threshold of strategic insight, enabling many campaigns and movements eventually to apply it in novel and even historic ways, civil resistance is unlikely to have developed its present acceptance as a major political force, and we would not be having this kind of debate about the meaning of his contribution.
I leave you with this interview with Sharp, which offers a clearer contextualization for his career and motivations, both early and recent. http://progressive.org/mag/intv0307
Thanks, Jack — good to hear from you. To be clear, I don’t mean to speak to Gene Sharp’s intentions; as you know, I’ve met him and interviewed him and have often written about him admiringly. He is a major contributor to the body of knowledge that we seek to foster on this site. My unglamorous statement in an earlier comment aside (which I stated just to illustrate how Maciej’s point might be interpreted another way, not necessarily to make a statement of fact), I think Chabot and Sharifi are pointing to clear gaps in Sharp’s work, which Sharp himself has said — he focused more on unseating dictators than transforming economic systems. There are good reasons to have chosen that focus in his time and place. But the choice also has consequences, and the resulting gaps points to areas where we need to further develop our theories of civil resistance. Thank goodness organizations like WNV and ICNC exist to do so.
I think we can point to the shortcomings in a given body of work without resorting to conspiracy theory, or misinformation, or throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I hope you can recognize that the latter is not my intent.
Nathan, thanks — and I know that’s not your intent. The authors of this article, however, leave the impression that Sharp’s work has in some way been used to advance neo-liberalism. That claim overlooks the reality that Sharp’s work has no ideological valence. His was the first thorough academic explanation of how civil resistance works in achieving political change, through people’s campaigns and movements. That has led to a cornucopia of strategic and tactical knowledge that tens of thousands of organizers and activists have applied in frequently successful efforts to obtain civil rights, political freedom, the ouster of corrupt rulers, women’s rights, limits on exploitation of indigenous people, and a host of other causes in scores of countries, all of which has helped to expand the global sphere of justice and equality.
Sharp’s work does have ideological valence even though nonviolent strategies and tactics can be used for a variety ends as well as means. The use of violence to resolve conflicts is one of the pillars of not just hierarchical politics but patriarchal social organization and taking power. Thus, any use of nonviolence is an improvement. Chabot and Sharifi are right to point out however, that nonviolence as a process and means can be used to achieve various ends – some quite patriarchal. But we can hardly blame Sharp, which to my reading nobody is trying to do.
Chabot and Sharifi’s central argument about nonviolent resistance reinforcing neoliberalism raises fundamental questions of about the nature of social change and revolution. Can social movements change the world without taking power? Is revolution about tearing down or reforming existing social structures, i.e. institutions, or is about creating fundamentally new and different social structures? Can real change retain hierarchical – and patriarchal – social structures or does it necessarily require new horizontal forms of social organization? Do economics determine and limit the range of available political action or can existing economic systems be fundamentally changed through revolutionary political action?
I would tend to agree with Chabot and Sharifi that even effective nonviolent campaigns that do not fundamentally alter the hierarchical structures of society are little more than a changing of the patriarchal guard that ultimately serves to maintain the status quo. This is especially true for a society’s economic systems. Political action, however revolutionary, cannot change the economic systems that underlie those political systems. Further, economics determines and limits the range of political actions available as well as the ability of nonviolent campaigns to mobilize mass movements for meaningful change. People will not change economic, let alone political systems, unless viable economic alternatives are already in place to meet their basic survival needs. Unless of course, people are desperate because the existing economic system has already failed.
The point that Gandhi understood and that Chabot and Sharifi are trying to get at, is that a constructive program which provides for basic economic needs must be in place before political action — no matter how effective or nonviolent — can result in real change of underlying social structures. Maybe it is stating the obvious, but nonviolent political action alone is not enough to make real, meaningful change of social structures and organization. But more, a constructive economic program is the essential prerequisite to effective nonviolent political action. When the goal of revolution is nothing less than changing society’s structure and organization from hierarchical to horizontal, the sine qua non is the creation of a parallel horizontal economic, governance and community structure to provide for people’s basic needs. And, that takes time. Changing the patriarchal guard is relatively easy, but also relatively meaningless when it fails to address the underlying hierarchical social structures and provide horizontal alternatives that meet people’s – and the Earth’s – basic needs.
Thanks for articulating this — and it speaks to the point that Maciej raises at the end of his critique:
Is it really the case that “liberation” from a certain kind of state regime is the necessary prerequisite for economic liberation? Or can economic struggles precede political ones? Certainly critics of neoliberalism, who see the way in which neoliberal regimes replaced communist ones in the wake of the color revolutions, have reason for pause here.
The difficulty of this question plays out in the life of Gandhi himself, who changed his mind over time about the relative urgency of building alternative institutions vs. shaking off British rule. Not simple.
Indeed, this is not simple. Much of my foundation of knowledge about Sharp and Gandhi comes from spending 12-15 hours per day reading them and others while sitting in a jail cell or a prison cell for some act of nonviolent resistance (strategic or not so much). That, I’d argue, is the best place to learn about the theories of both philosophical and strategic nonviolence–it sinks in, and one is prepared to be a better organizer ‘on the outs’, as they say. Or at least that is my touchstone experience. And I’d like to reaffirm some of the points made in Nathan’s piece, his comments, and the comments of others, including Jack DuVall’s in his historically helpful notes about the real Gene Sharp, not the fictional character dreamed up by some folks.
Mostly, it’s to note the complexity of it all and to value the confluence of philosophy and strategy unique to each individual and each culture and each moment of struggle. Hopefully, as we learn the strengths of strategic nonviolence we can see the massively reinforcing components of a nonviolent philosophy–and vice-versa. In the end, as I see it, Sharp simply chose to specialize in one aspect of Gandhi’s uniquely holistic life of nonviolence, which included his constructive program and much more. The more decades I put into this, the more value I see in both approaches and the more weak points I can see too.
So, for example, when is it time to take the Western individualistic witness approach and simply live a life that tries to promote and practice the highest values of peace and justice by peaceable means? When is it time to follow others? When is it time to dive into the circle of leadership? Without an ecological approach, these questions are paralytic. When we take the meta-view we can see that there are times to focus on a single goal, such as toppling a dictator. Indeed, when Gene Sharp started his intellectual work, dictatorial governments were more the rule than the exception. Does that mean that those of us from the US found little value in his work because we live in a democracy? It’s the opposite; in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and onward, we have used Sharp a LOT to oppose many US policies. And Sharp may have focused on the ideas that could help overthrow dictators, but some of those were US allies (e.g. in the Philippines, South Africa) and some were US enemies (e.g. Soviet empire). Sharp has been criticized harshly for helping to overthrow enemies of the US–really?? Any Sharp critique that says he was a tool for helping to bring down governments that pump journalists full of bullets, that put dissidents to death for saying one thing, that kept their jackboots on the throats of their own people–that critique of Sharp doesn’t even rise to the level of response.
What is true, for me, is that Gandhi was both culturally specific and universal and it is up to us to parse the difference. He was far more holistic than Sharp, who took scholarship on historical and worldwide strategic nonviolence to new depths Gandhi never dreamed of and ran Gandhian strategic nonviolence through a political science sieve. We see the results and those results are then twisted by some analysts who are so wed to the Leninist notions of violent revolution that they are driven to portray Gandhi and Sharp as neoliberal tools. They should get in the Guinness book for intellectual contortionism, with their collective heads up their collective…whatevers.
Thanks for this generous response, Tom. It’s a fine line to walk, I think, to honor the contributions of our teachers (and friends) while also identifying sides of the story that they missed. But it sounds like those prison cells have taught you well.
Very well thought out Tom. An someone who has taken classes in the “Sharp” model, and lives in. The United States I have always kind of wondered about how them training u.s. Citizens fit in to their supposed CIA plans
Patrick
Yes, Patrick, Srdja is committed to nonviolent training for everyone. It would be terrible, of course, if the CIA and Stratfor started only using nonviolence. World domination through nonviolence! Freebooter capitalism made possible by nefarious nonviolence!
“…even effective nonviolent campaigns that do not fundamentally alter the hierarchical structures of society are little more than a changing of the patriarchal guard that ultimately serves to maintain the status quo….Political action, however revolutionary, cannot change the economic systems that underlie those political systems.”
This is disproved by any number of successful nonviolent movements which changed political systems. Two examples: (1) The working class was the primary motor of Solidarity in Poland, and its defeat of the quasi-military apparat of the old communist order at the end of the 1980s gave new electoral power to the working class, whose votes have helped elect progressive governments, broadening social benefits and public services based on economic growth — there are still great inequalities, but there has also been greater sharing of the benefits of economic growth; and (2) The defeat of the Pinochet regime in the late ’80s at the hands of a nonviolent coalition using civil resistance paved the way for socialist governments in Chile in the last two decades, which have improved economic conditions for working people in that country.
It may be an ideologically satisfying armchair observation to claim that political revolutions alone can’t change the prospects of people who have been left out economically, but among those who would be unlikely to agree: The friends and families of the tens of thousands of ordinary people in about 20 different countries in the past 30 years who sacrificed their lives just to gain the right to vote. The work of these movements to achieve political freedom should not be dismissed. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2011/0426/Seventeen-years-after-freedom-came-to-South-Africa-a-status-check
Poland is a good example of exactly what Chabot and Sharifi are saying. Yes, the “workers” used nonviolent political action to take power and change the economic system. Lacan’s comments on the 1968 Paris uprising are most relevant, “as revolutionaries you aspire to a new master. You will get one.” And the switch from state to private ownership of the economy is hardly a fundamental change. Just ask the Greek workers how good life is under the EU Troika. Governance wise can you really say that a representative republican shamocracy is all that better than the rule of the communist bosses? There is little difference in Chile, as their nonviolent political changes have resulted in greater economic dependence on global capitalism – hardly a good thing. As we know so well in America, access to more consumer culture is cold comfort for those workers living on a dying planet.
Sorry, you’ve dodged the question: Were Poles better off economically after free elections commenced? By any material measure, they were. Were Chileans better off economically after the dictator was forced to resign and socialists won a couple of free elections? By any material measure, they were. That is undeniable, if inconvenient for your argument. “There is little difference in Chile”? How is it possible to validate that judgment in relation to the actual condition of the people themselves? It’s not. But if one substitutes one’s own utopianism for the political pragmatism of people who’ve used civil resistance to upgrade the way they are governed, it’s easy to refuse to appreciate how civil resistance can produce improved societies. When one actually reads the histories of these and other movements, what one sees over and over again is the utter realism of the people whose collective force becomes the hammer of this kind of change. Among them is Sergio Bitar, a Socialist Senator who fought nonviolently to bring down Pinochet, who I met once. Also in that category was Zbigniew Bujak, the leader of underground Solidarity during martial law, who I also met. When I talked with them years after their successful movements, they would have laughed at the notion that there had not been significant changes in their societies as a result of their movements. For them, as for most if not all of their fellow nonviolent warriors, the desire for the perfect is never made the enemy of the attainable good. That is what it means to be a successful revolutionary.
Ah, political realism! Isn’t that what Obama and the Democrats use to justify their betrayal of those that voted – twice – for him. No one disputes that the Poles and Chileans are “materially” better off. That is my point, superficial changes are not a substitute for transformational change in either political or economic systems. From the perspective of individuals materially better is good, but from the perspective of a social movement and the power for change through collective action, superficial change that maintains hierarchical structures is not just bad, it’s counter-revolutionary.
So as enlightened outsiders with well-focused ideological lenses, we can correctly judge the extent to which the people who have struggled in movements to rid themselves of tyranny, and who have done so, should be satisfied with either the material results or the supposed underlying structural and hierarchical realities of their new situation, whether or not they may be aware of how they are now positioned within this superior framework of analysis? To me that seems to have the fragrance of a slight intellectual colonialism (“You’re still repressed, you fools”), not unlike the attempts by external predatory companies and states to cut better deals with the new set of local decision-makers. The determination of the desirable scope of change to be sought by a movement should be left to its stakeholders, the people who made it successful. And that reflects another change that indigenous movements of civil resistance often accomplish: owning their own narrative, resistant to the stenciling of external intervenors, academic interpreters, international policy arbiters, and ideologues.
A couple thoughts:
First of all, Gene Sharp’s great accomplishment was bringing the study of nonviolent action out of its pacifist ghetto and brought it into the mainstream of strategic discourse. Though that certainly has its pitfalls, on balance it has effectively made it more possible for those who are not pacifists to recognize its power and utilize it for mostly good ends. Some tasks, such as bringing down dictators, are too urgent to wait until everyone embraces nonviolence in a personal transformative way.
Secondly, as a socialist and anti-imperialist, I recognize that liberal democracy is not adequate in terms of bringing about social justice. Free elections and political liberty do not guarantee a progressive government or a just society. However, without individual liberties and accountable government, building a just society becomes virtually impossible. Democracy affords a political opening whereby a democratic left stands a chance of challenging the excesses of national and global capitalism; of empowering local communities; of openly defending the rights of women, minorities, and the poor; and of eventually gaining power. Few in the Latin American left, for example, would argue that despite the failure of democratic governance to alter the continent’s underlying social end economic inequality, things were somehow better under the U.S.-backed military dictatorships that ruled those nations for decades. The nonviolent uprisings which ended dictatorship and brought electoral democracy to Bolivia in the early 1980s did not end the devastating impact of neo-liberalism on that country, but it enabled indigenous groups, trade unionists, human rights activists and other progressive forces to organize to the point where they could bring down the old elites and bring Evo Morales and his Movement Towards Socialism to power and begin work on making more substantive changes. In other words, while political and civil rights do not automatically lead to social and economic equality, such equality will be far more difficult to achieve without the establishment of democratic institutions and the guaranteed protection of individual liberties. And the empowered citizenry and revitalized civil society that emerges in nonviolent struggles against dictatorship can continue to build to force more radical changes.
Agreed on all points, here! Thanks for engaging, Stephen. The Bolivian case is an especially helpful example for exploring how political transition can lead to economic change.
One thing I would like to probe, however; you paraphrase their position as requiring a movement to “wait until everyone embraces nonviolence in a personal transformative way.” It sounds a bit like you’re seeing this as the old “philosophical” vs. “strategic” (or whatever you want to call the two sides) nonviolence debates. Is that right? There may be a bit of that in the paper, but I think it can be read most of all as identifying particular strategic differences between Gandhi and Sharp relating to the role of economic and social priorities in a movement. I don’t think they’re calling for activists to sit on their hands in expectation of some blessed unison; Gandhi certainly didn’t.
Thanks so much again!
The Bolivian example is an interesting and complicated one – as they all are. Here is an interview that gives another perspective on the connection between political action and economics.
The Government and the Street in Bolivia: An Interview with Julieta Ojeda of Mujeres Creando
Thursday, 05 December 2013
Benjamin Dangl and April Howard
http://towardfreedom.com/home/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3453:the-government-and-the-street-in-bolivia-an-interview-with-julieta-ojeda-of-mujeres-creando&catid=38:women&Itemid=61
This comment is in response to Jack DuVall below (the tread ran out). This discussion seems to breaking down on the familiar theory vs practice – with Jack representing the practical side of things. I think that Nathan did a good job of setting the stage, this isn’t about the considerable merits of Sharp’s work and accomplishments but how it is practiced. I read Chabot and Sharifi as more of a critique of the limitations of using nonviolent political action without an underlying constructive program. And more importantly, a discussion of how the patriarchal capitalist system co-opts nonviolent political action, when it doesn’t have a constructive foundation.
A similar attitude to theory versus practice, might be useful at this point. Of course nonviolent political action as practiced is messy, dirty and rarely even comes close to theory. How could it be otherwise, perhaps that is what Jack meant by real politics. And, I for one would never want to dismiss or discount the sacrifices and dedication of those who practice nonviolent political action, no matter where it may end up. Nor do I want to rehash any of the many arguments about the importance of having practice guided by theory. Suffice it to say that the line between revolution and evolution is a very broad one indeed.
Returning more to the theoretical side, I would like to elaborate on Jack DuVall’s comment that “Sharp’s work has no ideological valence.” On the contrary, nonviolent political action represents a fundamentally new and different kind of politics. It is perhaps the most powerful form of horizontal political action and its theorists and practitioners, Gandhi, Sharp et al are among the most brilliant, original and important in human history. Conventional hierarchical politics is based on violence, both physical and psychological. Clausewitz’s take on diplomacy is even more applicable to hierarchical politics – “war by other means.” Nonviolent political action is the antithesis of hierarchal and patriarchal politics. As such its “valence” is the polar opposite.
The real importance of nonviolent political action is that it embodies the change and social structures that it’s practitioners seek to realize, i.e. a society where conflict is resolved by nonviolent means. Whether nonviolent political action is co-opted by the neoliberal imperial system is not so much a critique of the practice and practitioners as it is a statement of the challenges and obstacles they face in the world of real politics. But, the theory is important, as are the philosophical and moral implications. We cannot create a society based on the nonviolent resolution of conflict by using violent taking power. The way that collective action is organized and structured means everything. It’s all about the process.
Ed, you’ve narrowed the distance between us, though there is still a bit of important definitional distance. At my organization, we’re sticklers for terminology, since the structuralists and the polemicists (of whatever persuasion) seem to have such a hard time grasping that agency-based political and social power is categorically different than institutionally based power. They are always defaulting to language that puts state actors in the center of political legitimacy and leverage. So I agree with you that “nonviolent political action represents a fundamentally new and different kind of politics,” though I wouldn’t call it horizontal, since I think that, in the long term, self-organized movements that use civil resistance will be seen to be adding a new dimension rather than extending an existing dimension of political life.
What I meant by saying that Sharp’s work has no “ideological valence” is that his claims about the reasons why nonviolent resistance can be effective don’t favor or aren’t imbued by an intentional preference for particular ideological outcomes, understood in terms of particular systems of government or economy. Civil resistance can be used by capitalists or socialists, by libertarians or benign statists, to transfer state-based power. The ideological valence is embedded in the program or goals of resisters. Civil resistance itself can be quite malleable as to its use to achieve various political end states.
Now you might say, and I might agree, that used for prolonged periods of time in popular political operations, by increasingly networked movements and by other non-state actors in an increasingly global civil society, civil resistance might contribute to producing new political norms. People have to organize, use language, attest to motives, be transparent, respect rights, and do all sorts of other things in ways that facilitate participatory rather than regulatory action, in order to be successful in using civil resistance. I don’t know that we can envision where it will all lead. Sometimes, just to get a rise out of an audience, I’ve cavalierly suggested that states will cease to provide the framework for political power by the end of this century. But I don’t know what that will look like in concrete terms. I just intuit that that is where we are going.
Having said that, paradoxically I do not think it is “about the process” of what is done. I think it’s about the substance of expressing political imagination and will in completely new terms. You can’t summon a movement with the kinds of propositions used to get people to vote in today’s democracies. Those propositions are decaying rapidly, and not just because they are hackneyed. It’s because they’re off-the-shelf of a politics that revolves around capturing the flag of state power, rather than producing a continuously self-refreshing source of fair, shared and valid power, which is accountable not because of constitutional or legal requirements, but because it reflects a deliberatively produced ground of common values and meaning. The latter is what T.S. Eliot referred to as “the still point.” The “dance” is what is political, on any level. Politics that transcends the state will take us beyond politics in how we organize life.
Since Ed Lytwak does a wonderful job of responding to Jack Duvall’s criticisms, I don’t want to cover the same ground. I’ll just address 3 of Jack’s specific points.
1) Sharp as facilitator of capitalism and neoliberalism.
Our article explicitly states that we are not attacking Sharp personally or accusing him for his political views. We are problematizing his arguments and texts, which say little about the connections between (neoliberal) capitalism and nonviolence, while defining violence and nonviolence in overly simplistic terms. As described by his grandson Arun, Gandhi gave him a list near the end of his life with a list of 7 blunders causing a continuum of passive and active violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principle. Capitalism in general and neoliberalism in particular are obviously closely connected to each of these 7 blunders. In addition, nonviolent action that does not confront and create alternative ways of life to these 7 blunders is inadequate, if not counter-productive. Rethinking the concepts of violence and nonviolence (and relationships between them) is too large a subject for this post. Suffice it to say that Sharp’s lack of attention to capitalism and neoliberalism in relation to civil resistance is a serious oversight that needs to be addressed.
As we mention in the article, moreover, Sharp explicitly relies on Freedom House to distinguish between democratic and non-democratic regimes in the world. I don’t want to repeat what we say in the article, but just want to emphasize that Freedom House explicitly aims at promoting U.S. leadership in the world, while its concepts of freedom and democracy are closely aligned with neoliberalism and contemporary capitalism. Since Sharp’s approach to nonviolent action seeks to enable civil resisters around the world to achieve “freedom and democracy” according to Freedom House’s concepts and criteria, it reproduces neoliberalism whether Sharp personally favors its policies and logic or not.
2) Statement on Sharp’s contribution to the field of civil resistance.
“Without Sharp having taken this field across the threshold of strategic insight, enabling many campaigns and movements eventually to apply it in novel and even historic ways, civil resistance is unlikely to have developed its present acceptance as a major political force.”
I object to the assertion that Sharp’s innovative strategic model is the central reason that civil resistance has evolved as a major political force. Saying that the scientific ideas of a white, male, American, former Harvard professor are the most important source for contemporary civil resistance struggles around the world (especially those outside of the West) sounds like a clear example of “intellectual colonialism” to me.
3) Civil resistance as malleable and used for various political ends.
This is exactly why our article warns against fetishizing nonviolence as good in itself and critically examines the content and repercussions of nonviolent struggles. It draws special attention to whether nonviolence benefits the dignity and capacity for self-rule among “the most oppressed in society,” not just to whether “the people” adopting strategic nonviolence win against “the regime” stifling their desire for freedom and democracy. Bringing down violent dictators or regimes does not necessarily reduce the multiple roots and tentacles of violence in society. To evaluate whether nonviolent struggles contribute to nonviolent societies in the long run requires critically examining the CONTINUUM of violence as well as nonviolence.
I’d like to respond to three statements made by Sean Chabot in the comment above, one of which mischaracterizes a statement I made in the thread above with Ed Lytwak.
First, it seems to me to be a breathtaking if indirect criticism of the achievements of millions of participants in the full kaleidoscope of nonviolent movements in history to say that “nonviolent action that does not confront and create alternative ways of life to these 7 blunders [as identified by Gandhi] is inadequate if not counter-productive.” Let’s ponder what that statement means. It means that a nonviolent movement which does not correct (1) wealth based on inheritance, (2) hedonistic pleasure, (3) “knowledge without character,” (4) immoral businesses, (5) inhumane science, (6) “worship without sacrifice,” and (7) unprincipled politics, is “inadequate if not counter-productive” (those being the seven blunders). I suspect this checklist would condemn to inadequacy virtually all of the nonviolent campaigns and movements in the past century, including Gandhi’s own movement for the political independence of India, the civil rights revolution led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Vaclev Havel’s movement to activate “the power of the powerless” — because none produced the moral utopia that would presumably be the result of reversing Gandhi’s seven blunders. Even wiping out neo-liberalism would leave five of these problems unresolved. Should we really impose this kind of purity test on the intentions and work of those who have nonviolently removed murderous dictators, dissolved racial segregation, forced the withdrawal of military occupiers, and enforced human rights?
Second, Sean Chabot objects to this statement of mine: “Without Sharp having taken this field across the threshold of strategic insight, enabling many campaigns and movements eventually to apply it in novel and even historic ways, civil resistance is unlikely to have developed its present acceptance as a major political force.” I said that Sharp took us across the first threshold of strategic analysis of civil resistance. That was 40 years ago. Since then scores of nonviolent movements and hundreds of scholars have created a vast case-based, analytical literature. It’s not the lone figure of Sharp who has made universal the teaching of civil resistance understood strategically. It’s a vast and broadening educational community — including academics, foundations and civil society organizations, in many countries around the world — which is doing that, full of the bustle of competitive ideas and the chronicling of the work of those whose impact has been central: the leaders and participants in hundreds of movements and campaigns. Let me offer just one example.
Last week, Howard Clark passed away. Howard was the coordinator of War Resisters International and was a passionate opponent of militarism and injustice in all its forms. He trained many nonviolent activists around the world, and he taught in seminars developed by the organization I work for. His book, “Civil Resistance in Kosovo,” will be read for the next 50 years. It’s a great case study. He was heir to the literature influenced by Gene Sharp, even as I know that he had lots of issues with Sharp’s work. Howard was a prototypical contributor to this great endeavor of thought and practice in recent decades. http://forusa.org/blogs/rene-wadlow/memoriam-howard-clark/12709
Howard was also a signer, along with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and many others, of an open letter in 2008 defending Gene Sharp from a number of critics in the media and blogosphere, which I encourage everyone to read.
http://stephenzunes.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Open-Letter_Academics_Zunes.pdf
In their posts, Chabot and Lytwak conflate– as in the article that I critiqued ( http://maciejbartkowski.com/2013/12/03/unhelpful-critique-of-civil-resistance/) – the theory, practice and history of civil resistance in a way that is contradictory and ahistorical.
“Sharp’s Westernized scientific model of nonviolent action was the basic source of inspiration for people power struggles around the world” writes Chabot and together with Lytwak he brings up the examples of Poland, Czech Republic, Chile and South Africa that are somehow the incarnation of that model.
I studied these campaigns closely, in particular the movements in Central Europe and I found neither dissidents’ narratives nor any other empirical evidences that would suggest that people fought against communism, antiapartheid and Pinochet’s regimes while having been inspired by “Sharp’s Westernized scientific model.” The inspiration for the resistance in these countries– contrary to what Chabot claims- did not come from Sharp or his writings or trainings. In fact it came from the populations of these countries and, specifically, from their own histories, cultures, traditions, type of repressions they faced and the learning from their mistakes in the previous struggles.
Since Poland was brought up a couple of times in various posts, let me focus on this case to show the fallacy of Chabot and Lytwak’s main arguments. These arguments center around the use of the Sharpian rational-strategic model by nonviolent movements (adopted by the Polish anti-communist opposition) to the detriment of the constructive program that might have created an alternative system to neoliberalism (that Poland – like its southern neighbor Czech Republic – now suffers under).
In my edited book Recovering Nonviolent History I wrote in details about the nonviolent struggle that Poles waged against the partitioning powers in the second half of 19th century (www.recoverinnonviolenthistory.org). This resistance took place well before Gandhi but was rooted in the extremely sophisticated nonviolent resistance initiatives known as ‘organic work’ – the equivalent of the Gandhian constructive program – combined with nonviolent direct actions. Next to describing and evaluating the impact of the constructive, cultural and direct forms of nonviolent resistance I also observed that the inspiration for the Polish anti-communist opposition and the Solidarity movement in the 20th century – rather than originating from Sharp or his philosophy that Chabot and Lytwak implied – in fact came from their 19th century progenitors. Here is the relevant part:
“… the 19th century nonviolent resistance and its constructive program of creating and running parallel institutions served as an inspiration for future generations of Poles faced with oppression. The conspiratorial experience of organizing and running secret education became ingrained in the collective memory of the national resistance. It was recalled during traumatic events such as the German occupation of 1939-45 and during communist rule, particularly the 1970s and 1980s when widespread illegal education, including the re-establishment of the flying university, ensured the truthful reading of national history, culture and tradition. In fact, working at the base of society became the imperative nonviolent strategy of the anti-communist opposition. Solidarity leaders drew parallels between their nonviolent efforts to liberate the society from the control of the communist government and the 19th century organicists and their nonviolent strategies to undermine the authority of the partitioning powers.
One of the most influential exegeses of Polish history and past resistance during the communist period was undertaken by the historian Bohdan Cywinski who published his 1971 book under the revealing title, “Genealogy of the Defiant.” The book made parallels between their nonviolent defiant attitude and practice against the Tsarist government and the then-contemporary resistance against the communist regime.”
In another writing (http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/index.php/movements-and-campaigns/movements-and-campaigns-summaries?sobi2Task=sobi2Details&sobi2Id=8) I describe the extent to which the Solidarity movement incorporated into its resistance repertoire the elements of the constructive program by building parallel legal, semi-legal and illegal political, social, economic and cultural institutions autonomous to and in opposition to the formal communist structures. In fact, the Polish anti-communist resistance that stretched over two decades provides one of the best examples of the effective incorporation of the constructive program that undergird other direct and cultural forms of nonviolent actions. Arguably, the constructive form of resistance under communism ensured the survival and development of the society despite repressive policies. The study also highlighted a longer term impact of this type of resistance that became apparent in the eruption of civil society organizations, including nonprofit foundations, independent media, women’s organizations, environmental groups, neighborhood associations that came from underground, were legalized and began operating freely very soon after the political change of 1989.
If Poland is now seen as the neoliberal project that was somehow forged in the fire of the Sharpian instrumental resistance this means that either someone has little knowledge about the nature of the anti-communist resistance in Poland (and for that matter neighboring states) or in fact that the constructive program and neoliberalism might in some aspects go hand in hand. It was the constructive way of organizing and running parallel underground and above-the-ground institutions that instilled in Poles individual entrepreneurship and civic initiative (that the communist government so desperately wanted to deprive people of) while combining it with self-empowerment and economic survival skills (particularly at the time of shortages of basic produce which I so vividly remember from my teenage years).
It might be then less surprising that throughout the transition years of 1989-1992 when the economic hardship of reforms was the greatest (25% unemployment combined with hyperinflation) Poles overwhelmingly – more than 70% – supported the direction of both political and economic reforms.
If now Poland is living through its neoliberal age it is not because the anti-communist opposition did not develop or implement- as part of their resistance – a genuinely impressive and effective constructive program. They did. Or because the resistance was driven by the invisible Sharpian hand. It did not. Poles live through the neoliberal order because they chose to.
I used Poland’s example to illustrate the contradiction in Chabot and Lytwak argumentation but one can as easily consider the cases of Chile, South Africa or Czech Republic to the same effect.
If we adopt the arguments presented by Chabot then what Ukrainians are doing on their ‘euromaidans’ today will be criticized tomorrow because of the EU neoliberal order that Ukrainians want to join. But in fact, the struggle is for something much greater than the economic order – it is about the core identity that Ukrainians fight for and the civilizational choices that the society is presented with: closer integration with undemocratic and nationalistic Russia or pursuing democratic, pluralistic and liberal Europe. Millions of Ukrainians that came out on the streets of numerous Ukrainian cities already made their choice.
Finally, the arguments of my interlocutors remind me of the far-left Western ideologues that defended communism in the Soviet Union and Central Europe for its egalitarian ideals as well as a creative practice of societal transformation. This was to bring us closer to some kind of collective (utopian) good even though individual freedoms and political rights were trampled. However, winning political freedom – even if one relies only on direct nonviolent actions (which in fact happens rarely if ever)- is an indispensable element of building just and open society that we all strive for.
Speaking for myself, I never stated or implied that Sharp was a “model” for Solidarity or that it directly or even indirectly shaped the movement that led to the over throw of communism. To my admittedly limited knowledge, Serbia was the only revolutionary movement directly shaped by Sharp’s work. What I did try to say was that nonviolent political action that focuses primarily on regime change is bound to have limited political outcomes. And, I do agree with Chabot and Sharifi that these limited outcomes almost always favor the neoliberal world system. Nonviolent political action that focuses primarily on regime change can not fundamentally change the underlying hierarchical systems of governance or economics. It is revolution betrayed by a thousand small victories.
P.S. We see a similar dynamic going on in Ukraine. To the extent that the nonviolent protests succeed, they will favor the neoliberal world order of the EU troika and U.S. – because their one demand is regime change. It’s no coincidence that Ashton and Barroso are deeply involved in the negotiations with the Ukrainian oligarchs. And, how sweet that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, handed out snacks to protesters – would that the Obama administration had been so kind to Occupy. Not to be outdone, Kerry called the police actions “disgusting” The Ukrainian police have actually shown remarkable restraint compared to the NYPD’s crackdown on the peaceful nonviolent Occupy protesters, not to mention extreme police brutality in Oakland, CA and elsewhere across the U.S.
This statement — “Nonviolent political action that focuses primarily on regime change can not fundamentally change the underlying hierarchical systems of governance or economics” — suggests a much too limited definition of the scope of change which can be brought about by civil resistance used in nonviolent political conflict. If by “regime change” we mean the deposing of authoritarian, dynastic or corrupt rulers and their system of political control, it has brought — when engineered by movements using civil resistance — sweeping changes in governance and economic life (which are always intertwined) in scores of countries, to the substantial betterment of the material and social benefits accruing to a large majority of citizens.
It has done so because political system change can lead to (a) substantially expanded space for the free organizing of independent labor unions, (b) the lessening of state corruption at the top of the system which restores to self-organized businesses and social organizations the portion of vital income previously appropriated by the state via the proliferation of fees, inequitably enforced taxes and illicit pay-offs, (c) freer access to democratically accountable courts of law, so that economic disputes in which ordinary income-earners and property-holders become embroiled can be resolved without reference to political loyalty, which is a central criterion of justice in authoritarian societies, and (d) freer media, which can expose abuses of state-connected economic power and activate public pressure on state-based discrimination against women, ethnic minorities and other groups disfavored for various reasons by the old elite.
In addition to these mediating processes that usually accompany democratization, there are a number of other practical consequences of dissolving authoritarian control which permits a far wider spectrum of social actors to use their own initiative to force further changes in the society beyond the apparatus of government control. The reason is that public space to which free access was previously denied is opened for action driven by citizens’ initiative.
The dynamic I’ve been describing was noticeable in Eastern Europe after the 1989 revolutions, and in the Balkans after the demise of the Milosevic regime. It was present to some extent in the Asian countries that were freed from corrupt political oppressors through people power (e.g. Indonesia, South Korea). It was also present in countries freed from rightist dictatorships by movements using civil resistance over many years in Latin America (e.g. Chile, Argentina). It was quickly noticeable in South Africa. There is no serious dispute about the objective economic benefits to millions of people in each of these societies, which came about by separating from political power the authoritarian cliques, parties, elites and families which had abused that power.
Does this mean that serious economic and social injustice does not remain in these societies? Of course not. But thanks to the broad diffusion of practical knowledge of civil resistance in the last decade (yes, much of it based on strategic nonviolent action), there are now campaigns and movements against the corruption that still exists within democratic societies (especially in South Asia) and against the environmental abuses of monopolistic land-owners and resource-exploiting foreign states and corporations in Africa and Latin America. There are campaigns against private violent repression conducted in local African communities by foreign oil companies, and there are campaigns for the rights of women in religious-fundamentalist societies (and indeed in most human societies) now. First forged in the nonviolent overturning of dictators and military occupiers in the 20th century, the tools of civil resistance are now being used in types of people’s struggles that no one expected or in some cases could have been conceived of 20 years ago. All this is the present reality.
So, it isn’t viable to claim that nothing meaningful can change until an undefined form of “hierarchy” is entirely unbuilt. If whatever is meant by “hierarchy” is a system of power that deprives people of rights, equality or justice, it’s already being dismantled — one town, one province, one government, and one society at a time, by the people themselves. They’re the ultimate arbiters of whether particular methods of liberation are effective.
Since the thread ran out i am replying to Jack’s comment below. The appearance of change is no substitute for fundamental structural change. Superficial, incremental change, that is often relatively beneficial is the primary means that the neoliberal hierarchy uses to co opt social movements and maintain both its governing structure and power. If you see “power” as collective action, then legitimacy in the eyes of the people is everything. Reforms and small victories are key to maintaining the patriarchy, as long as they don’t alter the hierarchical structure. While these changes may indeed produce materially improved conditions, they also ensure that future political outcomes will be limited and that further reforms will serve to maintain the legitimacy of the hierarchy. At least in the U.S. all of the political outcomes Jack lists a-b-c-d are good examples of how minor reforms co-opt social movements. Labor unions, neoliberal shamocracy (which is little more than the merger of corporate-financial and state power), the courts (which are based on a property not human rights legal framework) and the media all serve to maintain the hierarchical neoliberal system.
We have been dancing around the central question of this discussion. How can Sharp’s model for regime change be so effective, yet so often lead to strengthening of the neoliberal political and economic system? The answer lies in the nature of power as collective action. Even the most violent political dictatorship requires legitimacy, even if that is from the police/security apparatus or military. Nonviolent political action is effective because it challenges the legitimacy of the regime. Nonviolent political action on the model of Sharp is effective at regime change precisely because it does not challenge the underlying hierarchical political structure. And, most important, it provides legitimacy to the new hierarchical regime. Nowhere was this more evident than in Egypt. Mubarak fell because the nonviolent political action caused the regime to lose legitimacy with the military. The new regime, i.e. the military, was then able to gain legitimacy by co opting the collective action of the nonviolent social movements. Neoliberal democracy was useful only as a means for co opting the social movements. Once the nonviolent social movements, Muslim Brotherhood, used that neoliberal democracy to threaten the neoliberal system itself, the military was more than willing to return to the old hierarchical political order. Thus exposing the sham of neoliberal democracy. This is the weakness of nonviolent regime change without changing the underlying political structure. It is easily co opted to serve a new master.
Mahtama Gandhi has become an icon for the Judeo-Christian imperial powers to demean the resistance they face from their victims. Gandhi was a rcist Hindu leader for the Indian Muslim, Christian and Sikh minorities. His agenda was “one India” under Hindu domination.
As far Gandhi’s morality is concerned – I leave it to his Jewish biographer, Joseph Lelyveld, who in ‘Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With India’, wrote that Gandhi was “a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist – one who was often downright cruel to those around him”.
http://rehmat1.com/2011/03/29/gandhi%E2%80%99s-secret-love-for-jews/
You have perhaps the most perverted possible misunderstanding of who Gandhi was and what he did. How do you explain his role as the only nonMuslim official in an otherwise all-Muslim organization? How do you explain his door-to-door de-escalation work during the worst of the bicommunal violence–in Muslim neighborhoods, where he was probably the only Hindu who was capable of such brave work? How do you explain his call for massive compensation to Pakistan for what he felt were injustices to Muslims? How do you explain his assassination by Hindu fundamentalists who hated him for loving Muslims and wanting fair treatment for all, irrespective of religion? You have been reading inaccurate traducements of Gandhi, not actual history. As to his sexuality, who cares? He gave it up when he was 37 and whatever silly stuff he did about that is not your business, not mine, and utterly irrelevant.
Which “all-Muslim” organization your pervert mind is referring? All India Muslim League, or All India National Congress, or the Khilafat Movement?
Better buy Joseph Lelyveld
book and help one-third of Jewish children living in poverty.
http://rehmat1.com/2013/10/24/the-israeli-gandhi/
Although I am coming late to this discussion, I am pleased with how much dialogue is being generated through this piece. I want to thank Sean Chabot for raising these questions in his provocative article. Although he has clearly generated some opposition, and thus taken a considerable personal risk, I am reminded that this is how we make advances. It’s the old concept of a dialectic: thesis — antithesis — synthesis. Debate is at the heart of academic endeavors precisely because it pushes us to clarify our own positions and assumptions, to consider alternative perspectives, to rethink or re-articulate why we believe what we believe. Debate and controversy keep us from stagnating in our thinking and it prevents us from turning Sharp into a religious dogma. So I thank Nathan Schneider for initiating this and I would encourage us all to embrace these debates rather than trying to assert the correctness of one side or another. I’d encourage us to contemplate other views. It is good satyagraha practice and it is good for the advancement of nonviolent civil resistance knowledge. Maybe such dialogue can forge a new synthesis of principled and pragmatic nonviolence.