Our Tragic Flaw

How Nonviolence Protects the State
by Peter Gelderloos

Gelderloos argues that nonviolence is not only false but, in essence, evil. Obviously, this requires some response. Many of Gelderloos' arguments are valid ones that nonviolence practitioners should think about carefully; others are not. I am still forming my opinion of this work as I write--I have decided to address each chapter as I go. In this post I will respond to the claims and arguments of Chapter 1, the first of seven, entitled, "Nonviolence Is Ineffective."

In the first place, I entirely agree with Gelderloos that no tactic, philosophy, or strategy should be imposed on anyone. Insofar as Gelderloos is aiming at this attitude, I stand with him. In my lexicon, after all, imposition is violence.

On the other hand, I found somewhat ironic his complaint that

Because of the hegemony advocates of nonviolence exert, criticisms of nonviolence are excluded from the major periodicals, alternative media, and other forums accessed by anti-authoritarians.

I have no basis to challenge the veracity of this claim, but only find it wildly at odds with the fate of nonviolence theory in the larger world, where it is almost entirely marginalized and, when allowed, it appears only in its blandest forms. My own experience in radical circles is that nonviolence is little understood and garners only tepid support. For most, it may be accepted as a good tactic "within the belly of the beast," but is not uncritically accepted for all direct action organizing, especially in militarized contexts in the global South.

Gelderloos is admirably clear about what he is defending: not violence as such, but a diversity of tactics that may sometimes include a thoughtful use of violence. If this paraphrase of his position is accurate, then I have no complaint with him whatsoever--so far. In my own philosophy of nonviolence, as laid out in my book Our Tragic Flaw: A Case for Nonviolence, I never categorically reject violence. Instead, I suggest only that violence is always very expensive (in terms of the total suffering it creates). I argue that if violence is the least expensive option available to achieve some righteous end, such as a better world, then I would support it.

But I am deeply skeptical that any given instance of violent action will meet this standard.

Gelderloos spends Chapter 1 debunking the usual narratives of nonviolence mythology: that India achieved independence from Britain because of Gandhi and his nonviolent movement; that nuclear energy and weapons were capped because of nonviolent organizing; that the civil rights movement represents a nonviolent victory; that the peace movement ended the Vietnam War; and so on.

Apart from the fact that the author consistently overstates his case (which undermines his credibility with me), I happen to agree very largely with Gelderloos' deconstruction of these narratives. Though obviously sympathetic to nonviolence movements and those who cherish them, I find the usual mythology far too simplistic to be very credible. I agree that nonviolence has achieved relatively little on the world stage to date. It's absolutely true that few, if any, nonviolent movements functioned exclusively in nonviolent contexts, and that other movements were operating simultaneously using variety of tactics, including the use of violence. Thus, it is nearly impossible to disaggregate what impact the nonviolent arm of these struggles achieved.

It's also true that peaceful people are easily wiped out by powerful people willing to use violence. This has been a constant of history for thousands of years. Gelderloos takes considerable pains to point out that nonviolent resistance to the Nazis was easily flung aside: This is entirely uncontroversial, I believe, and absolutely in line with the broad trend in history.

As true as all this may be, despite what he may think, Gelderloos hasn't made the case in any conclusive way that nonviolence has never worked. What's more, he hasn't even begun to make the case that nonviolence CANNOT work. In fact, Gelderloos never completes any argument to defend the title of his chapter--that nonviolence is "ineffective." He has only shown that it was not as effective as some would like to believe in these several instances. (And I agree with him.)

Let's be clear about one thing: violence works. I can't imagine a credible person arguing this point--as long as they remain at a fairly shallow level of analysis, like Gelderloos. Let's say I need $10,000 in a real hurry. I can go into any gun store, buy a gun and some ammo, head to the nearest bank, put the loaded and cocked gun to the teller's temple and say, "Give me $10,000!" Then I can walk out of the bank, maybe shoot a few cops who have come screeching to the scene, and disappear into the night. Presto! Violence works!

Now, I did expose myself to a lot of risk in the short-term for those $10,000. I might have been captured or killed. But, I got a little lucky and got away with the money. For now. There remains a significant risk, however. At any moment, the FBI could knock down my door and haul me away, probably to serve decades in prison. But even if they never do, I still have to deal with the fact that they might. Also, I might have killed somebody. Maybe I shot someone in the bank, or a cop outside. All for a lousy 10 grand.

Well, maybe I'm not such a bad guy after all. I did it because if I didn't have $10,000 for medicine, I would have died from some fatal disease. It was life or death for me. I had no choice. But didn't I? Might there not have been many other ways to get the medicine? Probably.

And even if there wasn't, did I have the right to kill the bank teller (or the cop or whomever) in order to save my own life?

So violence works--but it comes at a high cost that's hard to predict or calculate. Typically, an act of violence initiates a cascade of consequences and much more blood gets spilled before it exhausts itself--or it does not exhaust itself at all, but spirals into an escalating pattern of violence. This story is as old as literature and has been told millions of times. Nothing Gelderloos can offer will make it not so.

And so long as we are locked into this repetition-compulsion, to fight violence with violence, we can never get out from under it. The majority of Gelderloos' arguments in Chapter 1, I might add, amount to little more than proofs of this point. Of course, when you use violence you get the attention of a violent system--if your high, short-term risk pays off--you will get short-term results, no doubt. But in no case has such a victory moved the world fundamentally away from violence and oppression. It just doesn't work that way.

One final quibble. Gelderloos argues, rightly, that "the elite cannot be persuaded by appeals to their conscience," but he seems to think that this fact somehow disables the whole raison d'etre of nonvolence theory. I agree that elites are astonishingly impervious to this sort of persuasion, but I think nonviolence survives even if we reject this notion, Gandhi's views notwithstanding. It is not the elite that is persuaded by nonviolent direct action, but the multitude. An effective nonviolent action is one that arouses the complacent masses to join in the movement and reinvent the distribution of power in society. The elite becomes persuaded, if it ever does, only by the impending collapse of the multitude's complicity in the existing hierarchy of power.

Gelderloos scoffs at the power of nonviolence--but this kind of mass mobilization, which has been accomplished before, is an instrument of awesome power. What's more, it's exactly the kind of mobilization most feared by the state. States are expert at fighting violence with violence. "Bring it on!" they might say. But nonviolence informed by moral rectitude threatens the very basis of state power.

Update on Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 11:20AM by Parke Burgess

This review continues in six further installments. See Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6 and Part 7.