Our Tragic Flaw

This is a continuation of my review of Peter Gelderloos' 2007 book, How Nonviolence Protects the State (see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4). Here I will consider some of the arguments offered in Chapter 5, "Nonviolence Is Tactically and Strategically Inferior."

After a long and somewhat fuzzy-headed lecture on the difference between goals, strategies, and tactics, Gelderloos suggests that nonviolent practitioners focus too much on tactics, while remaining vague and confused on the level of strategy. (Gelderloos argues, correctly, than nonviolence is not a strategy. But still, there are such things as nonviolent strategies--strategies that, among other things, do not include the use of violence.) 

Conceding for a moment that many radicals share the same ultimate goal, "complete liberation," Gelderloos observes:

That leaves a difference of strategy and tactics. Clearly, the total pool of tactics available to nonviolent activists is inferior, as they can use about half the options open to revolutionary activists. In terms of tactics, nonviolence is nothing but a severe limitation of the total options.

I find this a logical mess. Let's imagine that we were speaking of a distinction not between violent and nonviolent tactics, but between effective and ineffective options. In that case, it would be silly to argue that the set of effective tactics is "clearly inferior" to the set of all possible tactics simply because it contains a smaller number of members.

In fact, this is exactly what I and others are trying to say: that nonviolent tactics are superior precisely because they are the most effective. Despite how it may sometimes seem, violence does not work. Even when it produces the desired short-term results, the long-term result runs counter to our common goal of complete liberation. You can get somewhere from here (violence), to be sure, but you can't get there from here. 

Gelderloos then asserts, without any discussion or reference, that there are only four strategies for nonviolent activism: "the morality play, the lobbying approach, the creation of alternatives, and generalized disobedience." I will consider his treatment of each of these in turn.

1. Nonviolence as morality play

The morality play seeks to create change by working on people's opinions. As such, this strategy misses the point entirely.

Come again? Apparently, making change has nothing to do with what people think. I don't believe this is what Gelderloos could possibly have meant; I think he made a bad choice of words here that, typically, overstates his case. But he did say it, so let's pause for a moment to consider what a statement like this really means.

If you take the position that changing minds is irrelevant to changing the world, you already foreclose any peaceful way forward. It strongly suggests that those who disagree with you and are threatened by the change you want to make will always disagree with you and resist your progress. What choice does that leave you but simply to roll over them--killing them if you must? And if you represent a small minority of people, you won't be rolling over anybody because of an advantage in numbers or public opinion. What else can you do but make desperate attempts to destroy elites (and anyone who sides with them) with weapons?

And, more importantly, even if you succeed in toppling the world order by this means, how can you possibly expect the new order to be non-coercive and "completely liberated"?

Gelderloos supports his condemnation of the "morality play" approach with a laundry list of reasons why nothing can ever change (a list very reminiscent, incidentally, of the one that liberals always give for why radicals of all stripes should just close up shop and go home). The first reason is "elite control of a highly developed propaganda system that can decimate any competing propaganda system nonviolent activists might create."

Let's clear this up some. In the first place, nonviolence campaigns cannot use "propaganda" in its negative sense--the spinning of truth to win hearts and minds. Nonviolence is entirely dependent on what's actually true. This gives the modality of nonviolence a great advantage over mere propaganda, because everyone knows what's true, even if they dare not speak it out loud. And anyone who recognizes that the activist is speaking their truth (of being oppressed, or whatever) will resonate with that message in a way that they cannot do to mere propaganda. So long as activists are speaking the truth of the multitude, they stand a good chance of gaining the resonance of the multitude to their cause, sooner or later.

The basic flaw of states, and of elite-controlled propaganda systems, is that they must lie to us continuously. That is their strength, I suppose, but also their weakness. Part of the nonviolent strategy must be to target this weakness and fight it with exactly the appropriate weapon for the purpose: truth.

There will always be ways of undermining state control of the media (as the Marquis de Sade, ironically, famously exposed) but of course it always amounts to a kind of arms race as each side tries to out-maneuver the other. Unlike Gelderloos, apparently, I happen to believe that this is very important revolutionary work. We must articulate our critiques, visions, and models clearly and consistently without fail. Of course, this is rarely easy, but I maintain that it is utterly necessary. In this conviction, I find myself in the excellent company of most revolutionaries of the past. 

The second barrier in a way of educating people toward revolution is a structurally reinforced disparity in people's access to education. Most people are not currently able to analyze and synthesize information that challenges the integral mythologies on which their identities and worldviews are based.

Ouch. This sounds really patronizing to me, and it happens to be the same argument that vanguardists have long used, not to mention the neo-conservatives. I'm not sure how violence works in this context, but I must admit to being a little frightened by the idea. In any case, the sentiment is so profoundly anti-democratic I will just leave it there, hoping that Gelderloos will come to his senses and disavow it.

Gelderloos is absolutely right that a strategy restricted to education alone is not sufficient to promote revolutionary change; this hardly merits debate. But education--or as I prefer to name it: the articulation of liberatory ideas--is a necessary component to revolution, Gelderloos' stated contempt for ideas notwithstanding.

In a bald assertion of belief, again with no argument or reference to support it, Gelderloos claims that, in the best case, strategies of this sort would be "functionally [incapable] of winning over more than a majority." I assume he means you might be able to get 51% of people to agree, but no more. I have no idea how he knows this, or what theory might explain such an upper limit.

However that may be, this leads Gelderloos to the speculation that "At the absolute best, strategies of this type will lead to an oppositional but passive majority, which history has shown is easy for an armed minority to control (colonialism, for example)." Gelderloos performs a kind of historical bait-and-switch here. Colonial populations were often resistant to colonial control, of course, but only in certain cases did the native population become explicitly revolutionary. Obviously, the American colonists became revolutionary (and violent) and threw off the British. India is a very rare case of a colony that became both revolutionary and, to a significant extent, nonviolent--and this didn't happen until sometime within the last century.

In short, organized nonviolent resistance in a truly revolutionary context is a relatively new idea which has neither proven its mettle, nor disproven it. Gelderloos, therefore, has no cause to assume that, "at its absolute best," nonviolent revolutionary activism will produce an easily controlled "passive" majority. (Furthermore, as I have now pointed out several times over the course of this long review, the conflation of "passive" with "nonviolent" is erroneous and misleading.)

2. Lobbying

I agree entirely with Gelderloos that lobbying the halls of power may be nonviolent, but it is certainly not radical. One has to assume that the state will never willingly give its power away, and will only make deals that it regards as favorable to itself. Especially as long as state power holds most of the cards, asking for concessions from them virtually guarantees a bad deal for the changemaker.

3. Building Alternatives

While building [alternative institutions] is of the utmost importance in creating and sustaining a revolutionary movement and laying the groundwork for the liberated societies that will come after revolution, it is absolutely absurd to think that the government will sit back and let us build science-fair experiments that will prove its obsolescence. 

I am tempted to rest my case after the first clause of this statement. Gelderloos and I agree on this point entirely. But his second clause (the main clause) suggests that we must violently defend the institutions we create from the efforts of the state to shut them down, or those efforts will simply collapse the moment the government finds them inconvenient.

To illustrate this point, he gives the example of unemployed workers taking over abandoned factories as worker co-ops in Argentina. The workers only succeeded, he argues, when they were able to fend off efforts by the owners of those factories who used police to retake control of the property.

Obviously, a lot depends on the government in question. While I agree that all governments will work actively to suppress radical experiments that gain their attention, some governments have a lot more freedom to do so than others; and some populations are less tolerant of government violence than others. It seems to me that radical activism must focus on steeling the populace to see oppression when it happens and resist it (nonviolently).

What if, for example, the workers in the Argentine worker-run factories had nonviolently resisted police, had been arrested and the factory re-closed; but the workers throughout that industry working for capitalist masters had responded by refusing to go to work until the arrested workers were allowed to return to their factory? What if workers in other industries followed suit? Before long, the government would fall. It's happened many times before.

Of course, that government would be replaced by another government. The revolution must continue. There is still far to go. But one significant truth has been freshly exposed: the government serves at the pleasure of its people. That, I believe--whether they are a member of the elite or the poorest peasant or factory worker--anyone can understand.

4. Generalized disobedience

This category includes, according to Gelderloos, "strikes, blockades, boycotts, and other forms of disobedience and refusal." He refers here to the extraordinary number of techniques outlined in Gene Sharp's authoritative study, Methods of Nonviolent Action. But Gelderloos argues these methods are insufficient:

This type of strategy can only create pressure and leverage; it can never succeed in destroying power or delivering control of society to the people.

Even if this were true, how does Gelderloos know? ("Never" is a strong word!) And it's based on a foregone conclusion: since nonviolence is ineffective, then no nonviolent techniques can deliver the ultimate goal. The logic of this is unassailable, but Gelderloos has never argued conclusively that nonviolence is, in fact, ineffective. For those of us still convinced both that nonviolence can work, and that violence cannot, we can just as unassailably reach exactly the opposite conclusion: that violence can never succeed, only nonviolence can.

In principle, I can see no reason why nonviolence cannot deliver the goods using three of the types of strategy just discussed (plus others unmentioned by Gelderloos). A tireless campaign of truth-telling combined with building community-based alternative institutions, alongside non-cooperation and even outright resistance (in the form of civil disobedience) to violent structures can result in an entirely different social structure.

If a sufficient number of the populace believe that state power is always violent, and they believe that nonviolent community-based institutions can work to meet their various needs, and they are skilled at using the many techniques of non-cooperation and civil disobedience, the state can (and will) fall, and in one place or another, a purely community-based network of free associational groups will spring up instead of a state.

Of course, this will be violently resisted. But it is the conviction of nonviolent revolutionaries that by encountering this violence nonviolently--but always with firm resolve and an unflinching eye on the truth--this counter-revolutionary violence can be largely exhausted and, so, overcome.

Only then can a "completely liberated" society emerge untrammeled.

Update on Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 11:26AM by Parke Burgess

This review continiues here.