Italian doctors go too far

While this deserves some further research, I am compelled to say that “only refusing non-emergency surgeries” on a “one-day strike” is hardly tantamount to “refusing to care for their patients.” Without actually striking, doctors’ unions would be all talk, which might leave them vulnerable to neglect. Don’t doctors, just like any other organized group, deserve the right to struggle for better work conditions? While I agree that a medical caretaker strike, generally, is terrifying, I think it’s also a fact of life that they – like so many other sectors – have a right to wage whatever battle they deem necessary. Such a strike should serve to remind us all what society would look like without doctors but not last long enough, or be carried out in such a careless manner, that preventable deaths go unprevented.

I think this presents a conundrum of sorts. It makes the issue of nonviolence blurry in two ways: one, at what point does nonviolence become violence? If people die due to doctors engaged in nonviolent action, that action is hardly nonviolent. And yet, the effectiveness of a strike depends on its being carried out long enough to compel response; two, what sort of cause is appropriate for a nonviolent action? Say doctors are united in their greed and decide that a fair wage is simply not enough. Could a nonviolent action be waged that holds society hostage in attempts to increase their wages to obscene heights? Not that this would happen but it’s a curious question for those who believe that nonviolence ought be separated from principles and morality.

Also, Eric, would your conclusion hold absolutely? Say, for instance, that a group of doctors – who cater to rich politicians and their families – decided to strike in effort to make these politicians wake up to the plight faced by millions of their uninsured constituents. Say they refused to begin working until real healthcare reform was committed to. Would this be unjustified? Even if some among the politicians perished, would this not be a way of balancing the playing field for a greater good?

Would their efforts also be going “too far?” Or, if they stop just short of horrible consequence, and manage only to gain lip service and hollow promises in return for their return to work, would they have not gone far enough? If you consider injustice (segregation, apartheid, the suppression of women) social disease, then all of nonviolence may be a refusal to yield to those diseases (a possibly instructive pun), and the calculated sacrifice of that refusal. This is not dissimilar.

Incidentally, this reminds me of the Bhagavad Gita, in which Arjuna – a powerful warrior – encounters a moral dilemma while trying to decide whether or not he should engage in war. He wants to not fight, to abandon violence, but to do so would make the rest of the army (and his people) vulnerable. He, being the most powerful warrior, stands in the balance between war or genocide. He simply cannot abandon his duty for the sake of these self-indulgent moral dilemmas. Others would suffer. At some level, it seems that this is what these doctors must be encountering.

Thanks for this story.

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Eric.

It seems to me that your second paragraph, more or less, makes the case that doctors and nurses hold a very special position in society. What’s more, they hold that position by choice. Because their role – caring the the ill – is so critical, their choice to take up that profession includes a certain level of personal sacrifice. Namely, the forgoing of striking for better work conditions. Is this right?

As to the need of a just cause, I agree completely. No quotes needed.

And on the very last point, I’m afraid you’re simply the better man. Philosophically and spiritually, I feel your point. Existentially speaking, though, I cannot draw such a bold line. If a politician were dying and I could do something to help as a doctor or as a union organizer, I would of course do so. However, ruling out that sort of nonviolent tactic on principle alone is beyond me. I’m afraid I think that sort of absolutism is where nonviolence theory fails. Such a campaign may be exactly what this country needs – a radical shift in the paradigm, a chance for the privileged to feel what they impose on the underprivileged. A chance, in other words, for a critical shift in consciousness.

Ideally, no one would die as a result of it but for the experience to be real, the risk has to be real. The difference between this and killing politicians is that you’re not killing them; you’re allowing them to taste their legislation. If that legislation is poison, they ought confront it and change it. It’s the very legislation that’s killing people – every day.

All nonviolence risks being violent. The civil rights movement required people to strategize, to weigh the risks and benefits and, ultimately, to risk the lives of children for a greater good. Children and teenagers died, maybe without even the chance to choose their own fate, but we moved forward collectively as a result. Whether we unleash it or not, violence is an inherent part of the messy world we’ve inherited. Nonviolence never takes place in a vacuum and is always socially mediated within structurally violent circumstances.

We can talk about this with theoretical ease all we want. But if, say, “A Force More Powerful” had a chapter in it about a doctors’ union in Denmark that, in 1967, refused to treat politicians until those politicians conceded the right to medical treatment for all, I think we’d both cite it as a nonviolent success story. I know I would. Sure, we’d add our interpretations, ask critical questions, discuss the merits of the case and how it could have been more nonviolent but, at the end of the day, it would be a success story because it achieved a greater good, and was carried out in the name of a just cause as nonviolently as possible (I would hope).

This isn’t about whether or not one accepts nonviolence as a way of life. I think it’s quite possible to do so while still remaining weary of absolutism.