History has shown that some of the most dramatic and beneficial political changes of the twentieth century were achieved by radicals where moderates failed for generations. The Sinn Fein movement in Ireland, Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement in India, and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement are all great examples of successful nonviolent radicalism. In each case, when politics failed to move the needle, disobedience to unjust laws proved perhaps the most important political tool and last peaceful recourse for the disenfranchised.
The pioneers of civil disobedience were those who fought British Imperialism in the early to mid-twentieth century Ireland and India. The famed radical strategist Saul Alinksy saw history as a “relay of radical movements” whereby the “have-nots” seize power back from the “haves” to improve a sense of social equilibrium. Along these lines, the original disobedients can be thought to have inherited an old tradition.
In many respects, they were passed the ideological baton that began with the American Revolution and continues to find its way into the hands of alienated and oppressed populations around the world. The core idea that motivates all of these movements were those of the Enlightenment period and emphasized natural law, individualism and self-reliance as a means of motivating oppressed people to organize and strike back against their oppressors.
Libertarians are cast from the same mold; criticizing the
close relationship between the state and large corporate interests, abuses of
power, over-criminalization, opaqueness in government, and inequality before
the law while demanding monumental changes rather than settling for table
scraps from those in power defines a radical. Insofar as a significant portion of
its adherents seek the liberation of the individual via the dismantling
of political power, the modern libertarian movement can count itself an
ideological heir of those who fought the British Empire a century ago.
Methodologically, active resistance seems to be manifesting
a bit differently in the U.S., and not necessarily among those who are
self-identified libertarians. The mass refusal to register firearms in
Connecticut and the peaceful standoff with government officials on
Cliven Bundy’s ranch were property rights-related examples of
disobedience in the last few years. But libertarians have been strongly identified with the rise of bitcoin, cypherpunks, leakers and civil libertarian protest by the media and general public, and it is in those spaces that their most significant impact seems likely.
The comparisons with the aforementioned liberation movements
made here are primary ideological in nature; however, methodological lessons
abound. I don’t aim to show their ideologies are exactly alike of course, only
to show common themes and lessons for frustrated libertarian radicals who are
contemplating adopting the Fabian strategy as the likelier path to
victory for libertarian ideas. The big takeaway here: Gradualism isn’t always
more effective. Stick to your ideological roots and remain patient.
We can demonstrate how many radical non-violent movements through history:
We can demonstrate how many radical non-violent movements through history:
1. Are similar to libertarianism in
that they demanded drastic changes to power relationships in order to reduce or
eliminate prolonged injustices;
2. Have demonstrated that the most
successful movements have appealed to a sense of outrage, opened the hearts of
those who were otherwise apathetic, and capitalized on events that should have
otherwise devastated them, infusing their ideas with moral authority through
the sacrifices of their heroes and martyrs;
3. Ensured that the political and cultural
impact of the successful movements were made an unassailable part of the
national narrative, and thus were unlikely to see their legislative changes
ever repealed;
4. Proved the success of nonviolent
ideologies rooted in natural rights in achieving radical goals where
conventional activism has failed;
5. Proved that liberation movements,
when successful, lead to the best social and economic outcomes, while
egalitarian movements often lead to oppression and poverty, succeeding where
incrementalism or appeals to power failed.
I. The
Sinn Fein (1905-1922)
The Sinn Fein were founded in Dublin in 1905. After many
years of marginality in Irish politics, they rose to prominence in 1916 and led
the Irish people to independence from Great Britain in 1922, after 700 years of
exploitive foreign rule. Thereafter, the Sinn Fein remained one of the most
powerful and respected parties in Ireland and continue to play a major role in
Irish politics.
The founding of the Sinn Fein occurred at a low point in
rebellious sentiments in Ireland when most of the population favored a push for
home rule via the Parliamentary Party, which sought compromise and incremental
changes in the way that the British ruled Ireland. Other groups, such as the
Irish Republican Brotherhood, revived the militant anti-colonialism of the
Fenian movement, calling for violent revolt against the British, despite the
repeated failure of previous attempts in 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867.
The Sinn Fein, whose name translates roughly to “we
ourselves” from the Gaelic, were an Irish liberation movement that stressed
self-reliance, independence, preservation of Irish culture and civil
disobedience as the method of resistance against British rule. Rather than hope
for compromise with the British Empire on the issue of home rule, the Sinn Fein
called for a complete dissolution of the Act of Union and full independence for
Ireland.
The Sinn Fein were the libertarian movement of their day in
many ways: small and unknown, marginal publishers of newsletters and fiery
orators, populated by middle- and upper-class Irishmen who, largely due to
their radical ideals, dealt more in philosophy than politics. They also
believed in the concept of natural rights, inalienable and separate from
government fiat. Their policy “was revolutionary inasmuch as it sought to
displace existing British institutions and substitute Irish institutions to
which the Irish people would respond…” according to Robert Mitchell Henry
(1873-1950), author of The Evolution of
Sinn Fein.[1]
The Sinn Fein believed that a nation, like any other group
of individuals, had a fundamental right to be independent from any other social
group. “They may be forcibly deprived by another and stronger group of rights
the exercise of which seems to the stronger to be inimical to its own
interests; or rights may be surrendered in return for what may be judged to be
a fair equivalent. But it is not held that rights can be extinguished by force
or that, if a suitable opportunity should occur, they may not be regained
either by force or by agreement.” They also emphasized the preservation of
language and heritage and held that a nation can maintain its “moral and
spiritual [independence]... long after it has forfeited its political and
cultural independence.”[2]
The Sinn Fein, having formed in the wake of the disastrous
uprisings of the 19th century, vehemently opposed violence, if mostly for
practical reasons. “We believe, said Arthur Griffith, its founder, “Ireland
would be no match in the field for the British Empire. If we did not believe
so... our proper residence would be a padded cell.”[3]
The Sinn Fein also took strategic concepts from 19th century
Irish politician and anti-colonialist John Mitchel (1815-1875). Mitchel
believed that an obstructive form of civil disobedience practiced in parliament
might at length help to exhaust the British and bind up the gears of the state.[4]
“Systematic passive opposition to, and contempt of, law might be carried out
through a thousand details, so as to virtually supersede English dominion here
and make the mere repealing statute an immaterial formality.”[5]
The Sinn Fein also pursued abstentionism, calling for the formation of a
parallel parliament to exist in Dublin, and for all Irish MP’s to serve there
rather than at Westminster.
The Sinn Fein’s obstinate “self reliance” policy contrasted
sharply with the policy of patient constitutional agitation, in particular the
quest for home rule by the Parliamentary Party (and embraced by moderates),
which had proved as impotent as violence for many years, as the British
continued to defend their stake in Ireland at all costs. “The belief that
nothing was to be expected from Parliamentary action received later a striking
confirmation: for when the Irish demand was whittled down to a bare minimum and
all claim to independence expressly renounced, a pretext was found in the
exigencies of English political relationships for refusing even that.”[6]
Despite the persistent political frustration of the Irish
and repeated abuses by the British occupiers, the Sinn Fein’s principled
radicalism remained marginal and unpopular for most of its first decade of
existence. They succeeded in winning only a few local elections and in 1910 the
party conference was so poorly attended the members had difficulty filling
leadership seats.[7]
Fortunes changed for the Sinn Fein in the wake of the
dramatic Easter Rising of April 1916. Angered by the proposed partitioning of
Ireland and other legislative failures, Irish militants, organized by members
of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, stormed Dublin Castle during Easter
celebrations in an attempt to overthrow the British government. After six days
of battle, sixteen of the defeated rebel leaders were taken prisoner and
unceremoniously executed without charge or trial.
The executions provoked outrage among the Irish people not
seen in generations. “The conclusion drawn by nationalist Ireland” explained
Henry, writing in 1920, “was that if they had been Englishmen they would have
been tried by English courts and sentenced by the judgment of their countrymen:
that if they had been Germans or Turks they would have been treated as
prisoners of war: but that being Irish they were in a class apart, members of a
subject race, the mere property of a court-martial. The applause of Parliament
when the Prime Minister announced the executions was taken to represent the
official sanction of the English people... It was resented in Ireland with a
fierce and sudden passion: a tongue of flame seemed to devour the work of long
years in a single night.”[8]
It became apparent to large swaths of the population very quickly that home
rule, the Parliamentary Party and patient compromise so longed for with Britain
would no longer be possible.[9]
The impact of the failed uprising served to shake the Irish
out of complacency and forced them to reassess their long relationship with
Great Britain. It also sparked interest in the Sinn Fein, particularly after
the media mistakenly identified them with the uprising.[10]
“People who had hardly heard of Sinn Fein before wanted to know precisely what
it was and what it taught... Sinn Fein pamphlets began to be in demand: a month
after the Rising it was hardly possible to procure a single one of them.”[11]
By February 1917, Sinn Fein’s newspaper presses were fired up again, appealing
“no longer to a few enthusiasts but to a wide public eager to learn more of the
only movement which promised anything definite.”
The pamphlets, such as Sinn
Fein: An Epitome published in June 1920, detailed the struggle of the Sinn
Fein and its use of civil disobedience against the hypocrisy of the Empire. Epitome tugged at the heart, describing
“young Irish women with their faces turned toward Wormwood Scrubs, where their
brothers and fathers were imprisoned without charge and without hope of trial,”
noting that “many a man and woman paused during those days of the hunger-strike
of the Irish political prisoners to ask themselves what manner of people these
might be whose devotion to a principle led them to suffer such hardships rather
than fail of their ideal… someone might have answered, that is Sinn Fein… yesterday
a political theory, then an opposition party and today a democratic government
which is actually functioning… as a great ethical principle and as the guiding
star of men’s passions it is as old as the Irish people—as old as the human
race itself. Its other name is Liberty.”[12]
The blood of the Irish rebels spilled in Dublin had
purchased a sense of purpose and unity among the Irish and ensured the primacy
of Sinn Fein’s hard-line republicanism over attempts at moderation or home rule
that enjoyed decades of political favor. Policy prescriptions previously
thought unworkable or extreme exploded in popularity. “[Sinn Fein] offering the
Constitution of 1782, [had] failed to carry… more than a few doctrinaire
enthusiasts: agreeing to the constitution which the leaders of the Rising died
for, it might (and did) carry the country with it.”[13]
According to Robert Mitchell Henry, The Rising had also
raised the bar for political action among the Irish. “If men had died for
Ireland (men asked) facing the old enemy, what lesser sacrifice could be called
too great?”[14]
The wave of nationalist enthusiasm “which no appeal to
policy or prudence could withstand” swept the Sinn Fein into power in the next
national elections and unified several different factions under their banner.
The next five years in Ireland would be ones of great suffering and eventual
victory. The Irish Republican Army came under the direction of the Sinn Fein’s
political leadership, and waged an effective guerilla campaign against the
British while the Assembly grew in political strength. Vicious reprisals by
British “Black and Tans” led to even further widespread support for the rebels,
but it was the heroism of those who employed civil disobedience that won the
hearts of the international community, placing enormous pressure on the British
to give up their colony.
The Sinn Fein’s policy of civil disobedience, designed to
make the country ungovernable and turn sympathies against the British, had two
prongs: abstention, to build confidence in self-governance, and encouragement
of individual non-compliance with unjust and de-humanizing laws. Sinn Fein MP’s
(Members of Parliament) elected in 1918 convened the first Dail Eireann
(Assembly of Ireland) in 1919. Rather than serve in London, the MP’s refused to
recognize the right of Britain to rule Ireland, and created an “illegal”
parliament, encouraging popular recognition of independence.
Civil disobedience in its most effective role took the form
of hunger strikes. Begun among prisoners in Mountjoy Prison in April 1920,
several IRA members began the strike to demand “prisoner of war” status. They
were joined by dozens of other IRA prisoners in prisons across Ireland.
On October 25, 1920, imprisoned IRA leader, playwright and
Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney died following a seventy-four day hunger
strike. Thousands attended his funeral in Cork and his death further galvanized
the country, which had followed his agony and decline in the newspapers. His
protest and death, reported as far away as the San Francisco Examiner, also brought international attention to the
cause of Irish independence, leading Americans to boycott British goods.
Protests across Europe and Australia and pressure from South Americans on the
pope to intervene in Ireland also occurred. “One day the consciousness of the
country will be electrified with a great deed or a great sacrifice and the
multitude will break from lethargy or prejudice and march with a shout for
freedom in a true, a brave, and a beautiful sense,” Terence MacSwiney
prophesied years before his fateful hunger strike. He fulfilled his own
prediction.[15]
The Sinn Fein’s strategy to “make Ireland ungovernable”
worked effectively as their political jiu jitsu led to ever worsening hatred of
the British. A combination of civil disobedience in political life, political
support for the IRA’s guerilla war, the Crown’s own excessive violence and
weakened hand following the First World War led to British capitulation by the
summer of 1921. By the end the disobedience campaign had such an impact even
large swaths of the British population supported Irish independence.
The lesson of the Sinn Fein’s battle for independence is
clear: for radicals, violence alone will not win the day, nor will patient
debate, appeals to power or parliamentary procedure. Only a firm, unwavering
reliance on principles rooted in self-reliance and natural rights and the
willingness to suffer hardships courageously can inspire populations to demand
seismic political changes. Only then are heroic, even mythological narratives
created that become an enduring legacy for future generations, and ensure that
the changes wrought are permanent.
II.
Gandhi, Satyagraha and Indian Independence (1914-1947)
MacSwiney’s hunger strike had been a great inspiration for
the Indian Independence Movement, who were, like Ireland, fighting to rid
themselves of British rule. Indian freedom fighters Jawaharlal Nehru and
Mahatma Gandhi had read MacSwiney’s work and counted him among their
influences.[16]
In 1924, four years after MacSwiney made international headlines by dying for
Ireland in a hunger strike, Gandhi took up the same strategy in India. Gandhi
went 21 days without food in an attempt to force reconciliation between Hindus
and Muslims, who had begun warring while he was in prison.
Finding the hunger strike an effective political tool, he
took it up several times in 1932, 1933 and perhaps his most famous in 1947-48
to end religious conflict that was killing thousands.
Little needs to be said here about the greatness of Gandhi,
one of the pioneers of civil disobedience as a political weapon. Gandhi
understood a few crucial points that were well known among twentieth century
political actors but seem to be largely forgotten in the West: to initiate
seismic political changes, you must maintain moral authority, never show any
hostility toward your opponents, and throughout maintain holistic spiritual
purity through self-denial and humility.
Gandhi showed us, more than anyone else, exactly how powerful
sacrifice can be. Gandhi followed in MacSwiney’s footsteps, allegedly
foretelling his own murder. As with MacSwiney, his death accomplished the
change in public opinion that he fell short of in life: Interreligious violence
that had sprung up in the power vacuum created by the British’s absence
virtually ceased overnight after his murder in January 1948; violence that
claimed half a million lives in just one year. India has been a relatively
peaceful and democratic society since.
“We can’t rebel against the government unless we first rebel
against ourselves,” Gandhi had told his followers. He understood a fundamental
human problem of political action: People are willing to be party to their own
enslavement in order to maintain a peaceful status
quo. Energizing them into action requires sacrifice on the part of their
moral leaders, in India’s case, the practitioners of Satyagraha.
Gandhi’s
Philosophy
Satyagraha, Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, which
translates to “truth force” or “love force” carries with it some distinctly
libertarian ideas. It incorporates elements of both the “knowledge problem” and
the non-aggression axiom, although taken a step further into moral obligation
to others than libertarianism demands. According to Gandhi:
In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that
pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent
but that he must be weaned from error by patience and compassion. For what appears to be truth to the one may
appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the
doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on
the opponent, but on oneself.
Gandhi noted that the purpose of Satyagraha was to “convert,
not to coerce, the wrong-doer.” Success is thus defined as cooperation towards
a just end, rather than a political “win.” He also spoke of means and ends as
inseparable, rejecting the use of violence or the “victory, by any means
necessary,” mentality of some who had practiced passive resistance in the West,
on the grounds that using coercive or violent means will embed injustice in
whatever ends are attained, exacerbating the cycle of injustice that plagues so
many societies. In this way, the practitioner’s authority is rooted in moral
force instead of violence, and has the potential to reduce antagonisms within a
society without harming the antagonists.[17]
Gandhi developed a set of very particular rules and mores
for Satyagrahis to follow, including mandatory spinning, chastity and
abstinence from alcohol. With these we are unconcerned, since different
disobedience movements employed different particulars in their belief systems.
What is interesting and relevant is the commonality among them, and the
parallels to libertarian beliefs. The notion of the moral abhorrence of
coercion, and the acknowledgement of coercion’s role in perpetuating injustice;
the belief in natural rights that oblige disobedience to unjust laws; finally,
and most pertinently, the almost mystical ability of this approach to inspire
entire populations to mass action is a historical fact.
Foundations
of Indian Liberty: Satyagraha in Action
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 13, 1919 (also known
as the Amritsar massacre) has been characterized as the turning point in the
history of British India, the event that lost Britain her 'jewel in the crown'
and eventually her empire.[18]
The event, condemned by Winston Churchill, nevertheless produced and escalation
of tension and insults against Indian subjects and shattered the notion that
Indians were British subjects with the same rights as the British themselves,
much in the way the Easter Rising created that same clarity for the Irish.
The massacre was a watershed moment for Gandhi personally as
well as a crucial starting point for Indian independence. The massacre and
subsequent praising of its perpetrators in the British Army forced Gandhi to
conclude that India’s only hope of social justice lay in achieving full
self-government. After the massacre he famously proclaimed “the impossible men
of India shall rise and liberate their Motherland.”[19] The
outrage it provoked likewise propelled Gandhi from minor figure experimenting
with Satyagraha to a major national leader.
The Tribune of India
described the massacre as a “milestone in the struggle for freedom which brought Mahatma Gandhi on the scene in his
capacity as a leader of the masses whose presence inspired millions of
people for three decades.
“In the annals of our freedom struggle the Jallianwala Bagh
massacre occupies an unforgettable place. Overnight,
men and women resolved to defy the British might. For Gandhiji, the
incident was a turning point. He became
a ‘rebel’ and realised the futility of achieving freedom through British
cooperation. The seeds of his ‘do or die’ movement were thus sown then and
there.”[20]
According to libertarian blog Reason for Liberty: “When Amritsar unrest started, the British had
one rebel city in front of them, when JBM took place they had many rebel cities
in front of them and by 1920-22 (Non-cooperation movement) they had whole
nation against them.” The massacre provided both the justification and momentum
for the Indian independence movement and galvanized an otherwise largely
lethargic and timid populace into action.
The event continues to resonate with Indians nearly a
century later. According to the Tribune:
“On this fateful day every year, Indians revive the anguish and bitterness that
followed the carnage in which hundreds of lives were mowed down with a
ruthlessness that does not have many parallels in civilised society.” The site,
Jallianwala Bagh, became a national place of pilgrimage. Soon after the tragic
happenings of the Baisakhi day, 1919, a committee was formed with Pandit Madan
Mohan Malaviya as president to raise a befitting memorial to perpetuate the
memory of the victims, who were already considered martyrs in the cause for
independence.[21]
Noted the Tribune:
“History bears ample testimony to the fact that the ill-conceived and unwarranted
1919 military operation proved to be a catalyst for bringing the doom of the
British Raj as it created an unbridgeable gulf between the British Government
and the Indian people, leaving the British with no other option but to transfer
power to the Indians.”
Gandhi capitalized on the anger against British rule with
the first concerted civil disobedience campaigns, the non-cooperation movement
that began in the 1920’s. The Salt March of 1930 was among his most famous
successes. The march began with a mere 78 people, greeted by throngs of
30,000-50,000 at the 48 villages and 4 provinces they marched through to
protest the salt tax. Gandhi went to sea to make illegal salt, a highly
symbolic and dangerous act that challenged British authority. The British
responded by arresting 60,000. The end result was not changes in law, but in
widespread support and media attention, and the building of national
self-confidence and a broad-based move towards Indian independence.[22]
Gandhi’s
Libertarian Ideology
Mohandas Gandhi was nothing if not consistent. Gandhi’s
actual political philosophy is seldom discussed precisely because he was an
anarchist who believed government should be dissolved in favor of a cooperative
agrarian economic model that prevented stratification of classes and political
power. This has been discussed in relation with modern libertarianism at the
blog Reason for Liberty. “We the
contemporary libertarians have managed to figure out that the State is the
aggressor, but what we have not managed to figure out is how to fight this
aggressor. Everything Gandhi did was against state. Every Ghandian
principle becomes libertarian if you consider it a libertarian principle
applicable against an aggressor with twisted right and wrong.”
It is well known that Gandhi was motivated by a desire to
see India gain independence from the British Empire. Beyond that, his
experience with governments seemed to have led him to a deep abhorrence for the
institution, and an embracing of individualism, self-reliance and spontaneous
order, part of a moral system he called the Swaraj,
which translates literally to “self-rule.”
According to Swaraj.org:
The call for Swaraj represents a
genuine attempt to regain control of the 'self' - our self-respect,
self-responsibility, and capacities for self-realization - from institutions of
dehumanization. As Gandhi states, "It is Swaraj when we learn to rule
ourselves." The real goal of the freedom struggle was not only to secure
political azadi (independence) from Britain, but rather to gain true Swaraj
(liberation and self-rule).[23]
Gandhi also recognized the dependence of both owners and
workers on each other in a just economic system. Via Reason for Liberty:
“It can be easily demonstrated that destruction of the capitalist must
mean destruction in the end of the worker and as no human being is so bad
as to be beyond redemption, no human being is so perfect as to warrant his destroying
him whom he wrongly considers to be wholly evil. We invite the capitalist to
regard himself as trustee for those on whom he depends for the making, the
retention, and the increase of his capital. Nor need the worker wait for his
conversion. If capital is power, so is work. … Either is dependent on the
other. Immediately the worker realizes his strength, he is in a position to
become co-sharer with the capitalist instead of remaining his slave. If he aims at becoming the sole owner, he
will most likely be killing the hen that lays golden eggs. Inequalities in intelligence and even
opportunity will last till the end of time. A man living on the banks of a
river has any day more opportunity of growing crops than one living in the arid
desert.”
Gandhi recognized inequalities will always persist. He was,
however, deeply skeptical of government as a tool of social “improvement” and
valued individualism highly:
“I look
upon an increase of the power of the State with the greatest fear, because
although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the
greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of
all progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted
trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor. …
“The socialists and communists say
they can do nothing to bring about economic equality today. They will just
carry on propaganda in its favor and to that end they believe in generating and
accentuating hatred. They say, when they get control over the State, they will
enforce equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will
of the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will.
“It is my
firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be
caught in the coils of violence itself, and will fail to develop non-violence
at any time. The State represents
violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but
as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to
which it owes its very existence.”[24]
Gandhi was a believer in spontaneous order as well:
“We find the general work of mankind
is being carried on from day to day be the mass of people acting as if by
instinct.”
Influenced by Western traditions in part due to the time he
spent in Britain in his youth, Gandhi was also a believer in individualism, and
the use of reason to underwrite a person’s morality. According to Professor
T.N. Madan, Honorary Professor of Sociology at New Delhi University:
One of Gandhi's outstanding
contributions to social and political thought, I suggest, was the conception of
altruistic individualism within a cultural setting that was generally
considered group- centred… In regarding reason and moral sense as the primary
sources of good conduct, Gandhi asserted the right of the individual to arrive
at judgments and, if necessary, to defend them against collective opinion,
whether traditional or contemporary. His excoriation of the practice of
untouchability was not merely an assertion of his own individual right to make
moral judgments — indeed he considered this an obligation — but more
importantly the assertion of the moral worth of every single human being,
irrespective of his or her ascribed social status. Such moral worth is the
basic premise of good society; whether it is enhanced or eroded depends on the
dialectic of social pressures and individual agency.[25]
Gandhi’s Swaraj
principles are so libertarian, there are too many libertarian ideas from him to
list here. He not only believed in asserting individual rights against the
coercion of the state, he evidently believed in market processes and private
property to best meet man’s needs and scorned the use of parliamentary systems
in attempting to achieve social ends. He was hostile to centralized authority
of any kind and believed strongly in individualism and self-rule.[26]
“If we become free, India becomes free and in this thought you have a
definition of Swaraj. It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves.”[27]
It is worthy to take a moment to note the similarities
between Gandhi’s Swaraj and the Sinn
Fein’s emphasis on self-reliance. Such emphasis, particularly coupled with the
concept of natural rights, is necessary to inspire an inert and defeated
population to action against an increasingly rapacious government. As the
American founders discovered in the 18th century, so the Irish and the Indians
found when dealing with the hostile forces of the British Empire. In all cases,
the British proclamation of the enjoyment of rights as British subjects by
those under their rule was farcical and entirely at the pleasure of the rulers.
Whenever conflict arose, those rights seemed to dissolve quickly into coercion and
bloodshed as the British fought to maintain unquestioned supremacy.
Even during the worst of times, however, Gandhi maintained
his principles, angering some by extending his notion of power and Swaraj to the history of colonization.
While acknowledging the British Empire's cynical intentions in India, he places
the responsibility of the disaster of colonization on the India people. “It is
truer to say that we gave India to the English than that India was lost... to
blame them for this is to perpetuate their power.” Because power resides in the
people and they can only lose it by relinquishing their own power (often
through coercion by others), petitions to the government get a new meaning with
Gandhi. “A petition of an equal is a sign of courtesy; a petition from a slave
is a symbol of his slavery.”[28]
Here again, is a similarity with Sinn Fein’s
conceptualization of natural rights—rights don’t come from government, but from
within. Therefore, rights continue to exist when they cannot be openly
expressed due to coercion. This is a crucial intersection for libertarians.
Radical ideologies must inculcate oppressed and apathetic populations with a
sense of self-worth in order to provoke an activist spirit. The concept of
natural rights was important during the colonial period, when colonized people
believed rights were rare morsels tossed to them on the whim of their
superiors. Gandhi sought to rob Britain of their power to determine the law as
a sort of demystification of white rule.
Gandhi, not being able to realize his anarchist “oceanic
villages” system with Indian liberation in 1947, settled on minarchism:
Gandhi recognized that there would
be a national government, and his anarchic, oceanic circle would not yet be
possible. Nevertheless, he used the terms of nationalism to move towards the
ideal of Anarchy. He advocated for a minimal level of State organization to
fund some education programs and to promote his economic concept of
trusteeship. Hence, Gandhi was a compromising Anarchist.[29]
In the end, Gandhi proved to be on the right side of
history. Remembered as one of the greatest advocates for the downtrodden that
the human race has ever produced, the radical anarchist who had been repeatedly
imprisoned, classified as a terrorist by the British parliament[30]
and derided as a threat to law and order, was described by former U.S.
Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall as “a spokesman for the conscience of
all mankind.”
As with the Sinn Fein, Gandhi won by using civil
disobedience, underwritten by his individualist philosophy and religious ethos,
to build confidence within long-oppressed people and break the myth of
impotence while assuring British authorities that he would not endorse violent
reprisals. The technique won the admiration of both the oppressed and
oppressors, winning Indian independence and serving as a template for a new
disobedience movement in the U.S., one that proved that disobedience need not
be against a foreign power, nor involve widespread loss of life.
III. Civil
Rights Movement in the U.S.: The Ideology and Strategy of Martin Luther King
Jr. (1955-1965)
America’s most significant contribution to the school of
civil disobedience was the fight for equal rights for African Americans,
culminating in two landmark pieces of legislation: the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which effectively ended statutory
discrimination in the U.S. It’s most famous voice, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
is also remembered as a martyr whose achievements are considered a sacred part
of the American political narrative. The violence endured by King, the Freedom
Riders, the Children’s Crusaders and many other activists propelled them to
victory in just ten years of activity after enduring centuries of slavery and
over a century of horrific discrimination.
Dr. King acknowledged that Gandhi’s struggle, which he had
first learned about from a lecturer at Howard University in the 1940’s, was the
primary influence on his ideas. In his college days, King searched for a
“method whereby social evil could be removed from society.” Having read the
works of social philosophers such as Marx and remaining unmoved by the
communist argument, King was deeply moved by Gandhi’s peaceful strategy and
strict moral code, which dovetailed well with his Christian values.[31]
One of Dr. King’s greatest insights, derived from his
reading of Gandhi’s idealism, was that only radical change, not patient,
incremental change, was going to accomplish his goals. “I think the word
‘gradualism’... is so often an excuse for escapism and do-nothingism which ends
up in stand-stillism. I think we must move on toward this great goal… we must
re-examine this whole emphasis that the approach to desegregation must be
gradual rather than forthwith or immediate” King stated in a 1957 television
interview.[32]
No generation wants to be the one to endure a painful shake-up in the status
quo, a fact Dr. King and his generation knew too well.
King, like Gandhi, believed that the morality and
methodology of civil disobedience were parts of a single system, one that he
believed in the power of to change hearts and minds by social disruption.
“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a
tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to
confront the issue,” he stated in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
As King notes in his famous “Letter,” when his protests
started creating serious tension, white and black conservatives alike balked,
imploring him to “wait” and chiding him for wanting social change to happen
“too fast.”[33]
As with the Sinn Fein and Indian Liberation movements, the Civil Rights
radicals found themselves up against considerable resistance from the
mainstream of political thought when the status quo of peace—even a peace that
masks gross injustice— was threatened. Many black church leaders opposed
radicalism in favor of using the court system, fearing reprisals by whites.
But central to King’s success was radicalism at its finest:
shaking people out of racial apathy by exposing government evils and drawing
out latent hatred within both the state and civilian population, then using
non-violent resistance to foster guilt in southern whites and drum up sympathy
from the rest of the country. Civil rights groups like the Freedom Riders
sought out to confront racists in order to deliberately provoke violence,
hoping the publicity would show that desegregationists had the moral high
ground. “The Freedom Riders typified one of the standard contradictions within
the civil rights movement... on the one hand it’s nonviolent... on the other
hand they’re really courting violence in order to attract publicity that will
forward the cause... so you have these mixed motives” said Julian Bond, former
head of the NAACP.
Jesse Jackson agreed: “Every time the blood of the innocent
was spilled, every time a worker was martyred, it exploded interest in our
struggle.”[34]
Dr. King saw the strategy as an effective way of exposing discomfort among
bigots in the South with their own attitudes…”I think it arouses a sense of
shame among them in many instances… it does something to touch the conscience
and establish a sense of guilt.”[35]
Dr. King also saw the value in deliberately receiving abuse
for a cause. “Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is
redemptive,” he exhorted his followers in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
Deliberate suffering for political ends, no matter how worthy, seems a foreign
concept to most people, rich and poor alike. Regardless, it was essential to
the success of the Civil Rights Movement.
The resistance was necessary to expose both racism and
perverse government interests; not only the interest of local governments to
preserve their racial feudalism, but the interest of the federal government to
keep things quiet and preserve the status
quo, no matter how unjust. Much of the violence against the Freedom Riders,
including a firebombing of their bus and a vicious mob beating in May 1961,
happened with the complicity of the local police and authorities. The FBI, under
the direction of the Kennedy administration, knew of the threats to the
protesters but declined to intervene. Undeterred, the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE) sent a second wave of demonstrators to Birmingham later in the
year. Their beatings and the assault of photojournalists drew in King along
with increased public interest in civil rights, culminating in federal
intervention and the opening of a dialogue between King and Attorney General
Robert Kennedy.
The Kennedy brothers, focused on the Soviet threat, had
previously been extremely reluctant to intervene in civil rights issues and
considered the protests a mere nuisance. Civil disobedience in Birmingham
forced their hand. It also forced the Kennedys to proclaim to the world that
they sided with civil rights against the mobs in Birmingham. The national media
attention created waves of hundreds of freedom riders pouring into Jackson,
Mississippi, many of whom deliberately went to hard labor at Parchment Prison
for their actions. The Interstate Commerce Commission, under pressure from the
Department of Justice desegregated interstate bus travel shortly thereafter.
More importantly, it also shattered the myth of impotence for African
Americans. President Kennedy finally called on congress in 1963 to ban Jim Crow
laws.[36]
His successor, Lyndon Johnson, used public sympathy generated by successful
disobedience incidents such as the Children’s Crusade in May 1963 (during which
fire hoses were turned on children) to pass the monumental Civil Rights Act of
1964.[37]
The Civil Rights Movement, like the Indian Liberation
Movement, had its share of heroes, martyrs and villains. One of its most
striking villains was the psychopathic Eugene “Bull” Connor, Birmingham, AL
Commissioner of Public Safety. A rabid racist and devout segregationist,
Connor’s brutal tactics won a great deal of national support for civil rights.
Connor believed the entire social order and the survival of civilization
itself, depended on segregation. So much so, that he was willing to turn the
city’s police dogs and fire hoses on full blast against a protest of children.
Thanks to civil disobedience, Connor is remembered as an international symbol
of racism and brutality. His aggressive tactics backfired when the spectacle of
the brutality being broadcast on national television served as one of the
catalysts for major social and legal change in the southern
United States and helped in large measure to assure the passage by the Congress
of the Civil
Rights Act.[38]
Bloody
Sunday
The last great victory of the Civil Rights Movement also
came about as a result of public outrage over violence against protesters.
Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, SNCC leader John Lewis led a voting rights march
in Selma, Alabama that drew a fury of violence. State troopers attacked the
marchers and Lewis suffered a fractured skull. The violence and subsequent
public sympathy gave President Johnson the last thrust of momentum he needed to
pass the Voting Rights Act, which was signed in to law August 6, 1965. Johnson
noted during remarks on the day of the signing:
And then last March, with the outrage of Selma still fresh,
I came down to this Capitol one evening and asked the Congress and the people
for swift and for sweeping action to guarantee to every man and woman the right
to vote. In less than 48 hours I sent the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the
Congress. In little more than 4 months the Congress, with overwhelming
majorities, enacted one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of
American freedom.[39]
That quote from President Johnson speaks volume about not
only the success of Civil Rights radicalism, but the success of the American
Left in general. For decades, the Left has advanced its agenda by exploiting
depressions, wars, and national tragedies, appealing to the public’s sense of
empathy to advance their own brand of radicalism that redefined the role of the
federal government over the last century.
Empathy is unquestionably a powerful force in politics. Dr.
King’s use of Gandhi’s strategic nonviolence was powerful and effective,
creating tension without warfare, and forcing acknowledgement without violence.
Like Gandhi, King’s strategy, which showed respect for the oppressor as well as
demanding it for the oppressed, built a bridge between whites and blacks so
effectively that the very idea of segregation for any reason is anathema today.
Former opponents of integration, such as former governor of Alabama John
Malcolm Patterson, have long since rescinded their segregationist views. The
twisted, self-serving ideas that were once considered integral to social
stability by many whites have long-since fallen out of favor, even if
underlying pathologies have not disappeared entirely.
It is also important to note that liberation from an
oppressive government is the only sort of constructive radical change that is
possible through civil disobedience. Radical egalitarianism has often either
ended in disaster or just fizzled out. The Civil Rights movement in the U.S.
for example successfully pushed for statutory equality for African Americans.
Dr. King’s subsequent fight to make up for past oppression with taxpayer-funded
reparations, however, failed to materialize, largely because it threatened to
infringe on the rights of others.
Dr. King’s movement is a great example of how one man’s
dream overcame the Public Choice problem: government self-interest and public
apathy was overcome by appealing to the heart and the moral sense of the
public.
Otpor! and Other Subsequent Movements
Following the colossal success of the Civil Rights Movement
in the U.S., civil disobedience largely fell out of favor in the U.S., becoming
a tool of myriad small movements that never gained much political steam or
public empathy. Environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists have still
employed similar tactics for decades and with some success, but to little
broader public notice.
Internationally, however, resistance movements sprang up in
dozens of places. The Solidarity movement in Poland is credited with setting
the wheels in motion that led to the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union. The
famous “tank man” of Tiananmen Square became an enduring symbol of resistance
to oppression to millions. Most recently, the self-immolation of Tunisian small
business owner Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010 set off the Arab Spring
protests.
A little known fact is that the Arab Spring was coordinated
by student protest organizations who had been training for years under leaders
of the successful Serbian nonviolent resistance movement Otpor! (Resistance!)
that was instrumental in overthrowing Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Otpor! had
themselves been inspired by a manual on nonviolent resistance called “From
Dictatorship to Democracy” by American scholar Gene Sharp, who had in turn been
inspired by Gandhi’s independence movement. Sharp realized that nonviolent
disobedience was a powerful and under-utilized tool that could be used anywhere
in the world to break down institutional and popular support for dictatorships.
By employing a coordinated strategy, Sharp noted, leaders could harness
frustration and direct it productively without inciting violence.[40]
Movements like Otpor! that have sprung up in the last four
decades to fight dictators around the world tend not to be underwritten by a
specific ideology, but embrace more general democratic principles. There are
still lessons to be taken. Otpor! for
example, managed to achieve its goal of a democratic Serbia with legitimate
elections without an identifiable leader, functioning with a loose inner circle
that divided tasks based on an agreed upon overall strategy. This indicates
that a disobedience movement does not need an iconic, messianic leader to pull
people together, at least insofar as activists agree on both the strategy and
the goals. It does further bolster the idea that goals must be narrowly
tailored and specific.
In advanced, western societies that already have legitimate
elections but struggle against ignorance or inertia, a specific ideological
underpinning including natural rights is likely more necessary in order to
justify opposition to the established laws. In this way, one can justify an
attack on unjust government activities without claiming the entire government
is unjust. It is also a crucial tool to prevent hostility from bubbling over
and improving political unity behind positive, inclusive and democratic ideas.
“Nonviolent struggle is reserved for the particular area of
activity where people would otherwise feel they were required to use violence.
A lot of our theories of just war, etc. are based upon an assumption that
violence is the most effective thing you can do… that violence is really the
most powerful. That is another claim that I deny,” noted Gene Sharp.
“Nonviolent struggle is growing in the world because it is rooted in an
understanding of the nature of political power. Political power is not
intrinsic to the people who hold it,” he claimed, noting that political power
rests on the support of institutions such as academia, the police, the
military, business and religious leaders, etc. In a hegemonic world full of
advanced, well-armed powers capable of brutal retaliation against uprisers,
violence becomes too costly as a means of effecting radical political changes
when electoral politics and the judicial system fails to achieve it.
Nonviolence is the last, best tool to achieve that change.[41]
This notion is empirically supported by the research of
University of Colorado political scientist Erica Chenoweth. Her study of
political movements around the globe that took place between 1900 and 2006
revealed that nonviolent campaigns were twice as successful in removing
dictatorships as violent ones, and that they were 15% less likely to see a
relapse into violent conflict. She also found that it only took 3.5% of a
country’s population to rise up and successfully overthrow an oppressive
government, while armed conflict took considerably more. In part this is
because of the ability of nonviolence to include women, elderly and youth as
well as ambivalent segments of the population. The research showed that
nonviolent struggle has been improving in effectiveness over time, while
violent struggle is declining.[42]
Civil disobedience has been employed for years to great
effect all over the globe, and has a rich history of success in the West. Yet
its impact has been marginalized in both academic and political thought, a mere
footnote in events between wars and elections, and thus remains poorly
understood. Libertarians have perhaps the best opportunity in a generation to
revive it in the West.
Note: This is excerpted from the paper "Radical Libertarianism in Historical Context: The Case for Civil Disobedience" (2013) that can be found here.
Note: This is excerpted from the paper "Radical Libertarianism in Historical Context: The Case for Civil Disobedience" (2013) that can be found here.
[1] Henry, Robert
Mitchell. The Evolution of Sinn Fein. 1920. p 247.
[2] The Evolution
of Sinn Fein, 39-41.
[3] The Evolution
of Sinn Fein, 41.
[4] This “death by
a thousand paper cuts” strategy was identified by Gene Sharp and practiced by
Saul Alinksy as a method of civil obstruction.
[5] The Evolution
of Sinn Fein, 53.
[6] The Evolution
of Sinn Fein, 42.
[7] Brian Feeney.
Sinn Fein: A Hundred Turbulent Years. pp 52-54.
[8] The Evolution
of Sinn Fein, 222.
[9] The Evolution
of Sinn Fein, 227.
[10] A few Sinn Fein
members did participate in the Easter Rising, but it was neither organized nor
endorsed by the party in any official sense.
[11] The Evolution
of Sinn Fein, 223-224.
[12] Sinn Fein: An
Epitome. 1920. Published by Friends of Irish Freedom, National Bureau of
Information, Washington DC.
[13] The Evolution
of Sinn Fein, 225.
[14] The Evolution
of Sinn Fein, 228.
[15] MacSwiney,
Terence (1879-1920). Principles of
Freedom. Published posthumously in 1921.
[18] Blog of Vinay
Lal, Assoc. Professor of History, UCLA. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/British/Crawling.html
[27] Ibid.
[28] Cal Peace
Power, Vol. 2, Issue 1, Winter 2006. http://www.calpeacepower.org/0201/gandhi_anarchist.htm
[29] Ibid.
[30] OneIndia News,
5/22/2013. http://news.oneindia.in/2013/05/22/gandhi-was-declared-terrorist-declaration-sold-cheap-1222573.html
[32] Ibid.
[33] King, Martin
Luther. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” April 16, 1963.
[42] Erica
Chenoweth, TEDx talk on nonviolence. University of Colorado at Boulder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w
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