From D to D, Chapter 3: Whence Comes The Power?

This is the third installment of my commentary and "study guide" on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp.  (In my series, I am shortening the title of the book to "From D to D.")  In the last post of this series I made the following statement:

The goal of the organizers of effective resistance against a dictator is to turn a large number of their fellow sufferers into a coherent, focused source of effective non-cooperation, and to focus that non-cooperation on one or more of the dictator's pillars of support until the pillars start to shatter.

The key to effective resistance against a dictator is therefore a strategy of focused, coherent non-cooperation and defiance by a large number of the citizens of a country against its ruling dictator and the dictator's institutions of power.  The question therefore that arises from this realization is how to persuade that large number of oppressed citizens to withdraw their cooperation from the dictator.  Chapter 3 of From D to D begins to answer that question.  But the chapter starts first with showing the reader what that noncooperation might look like - and the devastating effect that such noncooperation would have on the power and survival of anyone who might wish to live by oppressing others.

Sharp presents a fourteenth-century Chinese fable titled, Rule By Tricks, about an old man who made his livelihood by enslaving a group (pack? tribe? barrel?  Ah, it is a troop!) of monkeys.  Without spoiling the fable for you, let me just say that in exchange for his exploitation of the monkeys, the old man became dependent on the service they provided.  Therefore, the monkeys were able to kill the old man - not by a violent attack against him, but simply by withdrawal of their service.  This illustrates a principle stated by community organizing scholar and teacher Dr. Marshall Ganz - namely, that systems of oppression always depend on those whom they exploit.  The Monkey Master fable (as Sharp calls it), has become very popular among those who study and seek to bring about the disintegration of dictatorships, as can be seen here, here, and here, for instance.

Every state or polity has institutional bases of power which enable its leaders to foster the cooperation of the citizens or subjects of that polity.  In addition, in free societies, the citizens or subjects have  bases of power which are separate from the leaders of the polity and which can potentially act as a curb or brake on excesses committed against the subjects or citizens by the leaders of the polity.  To quote Dr. Sharp, the ruler's bases of power include the following:

• Authority, the belief among the people that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it;
• Human resources, the number and importance of the persons and groups which are obeying, cooperating, or providing assistance to the rulers.  (Not: these obedient persons and groups cannot exist at all unless there is a base of the population who believe that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it.)
• Skills and knowledge, needed by the regime to perform specific actions and supplied by the cooperating persons and groups;
• Intangible factors, psychological and ideological factors that may induce people to obey and assist the rulers.  (Note: it is vital to understand the psychological and ideological factors which underlie the loyalty of the dictator's human resources noted above.  These may vary from regime to regime.  This is why opponents of the dictator's regime must learn to study their opponent.  Or, as a character in a mildly interesting 1990's action movie once said, "Полезно знать что думает противник, не правда ли?")
• Material resources, the degree to which the rulers control or have access to property, natural resources, financial resources, the economic system, and means of communication and transportation; and
• Sanctions, punishments, threatened or applied, against the disobedient and non-cooperative to ensure the submission and cooperation that are needed for the regime to exist and carry out its policies.

Note the interdependencies of these bases of power.  Without authority, the ruler has no human resources.  Without the requisite psychological and ideological factors, the ruler has no authority.  Without skills and knowledge, the dictator's human resources are useless.  Without human resources, the dictator has no access to material resources.  Without human resources or material resources, the dictator cannot apply sanctions.  The members of the dictator's regime who are committed to him comprise his human resources and are known institutionally as his pillars of support.

On the other side of the equation are the bases of power that are independent of the government and are held by the subjects or citizens of a free society or of a group of oppressed people who seek to liberate themselves.  These consist of the groups and institutions that have been founded by citizens or subjects and that are not under government control or dependent on government support.  When these groups become weak or begin to disappear from a democratic society, that society becomes increasingly vulnerable to democratic backsliding and authoritarian takeover.  In Chapter 3 of From D to D, Sharp notes that dictatorships frequently target these independent groups for co-optation or destruction, but such groups can die by means other than deliberate destruction at the hand of a dictator.  Thus it is that in the United States, independent groups such as strong trade unions have been deliberately weakened or disintegrated by the application of State power and the power of the filthy rich.  But American social life has also been disintegrated by a culture that is addicted to electronic entertainment, excess mobility fostered by the automobile, and other factors which were not necessarily deliberate, but rather emergent properties of certain technologies.  

The first task of democratic resisters against dictatorship is therefore to re-build independent groups and institutions in the oppressed society.  Let me repeat: this is the FIRST resistance task, the prerequisite to all that follows of successful strategic nonviolent resistance, just as bread is the prerequisite before you can have a sandwich.  As Gene Sharp says, "Their continued independence and growth [that is, the independence and growth of these independent groups] is often a prerequisite for the success of the liberation struggle."  Note also that Mohandas Gandhi said much the same thing in outlining his program for nonviolent liberation of India from British rule.  Gandhi started his organizing by organizing Indians to come together to meet their needs collectively without reliance on the British.   He called this approach the "constructive program," and said that "... my handling of Civil Disobedience without the constructive programme will be like a paralyzed hand attempting to lift a spoon."  

This is why basing a liberation struggle solely around mass protest marches and rallies is such a losing idea.  It lacks the prerequisite strength for long-lasting success.  Even when it seems to succeed, as in Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2011, the "victory" is fragile and thus easily taken over by a new round of would-be dictators as the Muslim Brotherhood and later, the Egyptian military, did in the aftermath of Tahrir Square.  (For a couple of commentaries on the failure, see this and this.  Note that I do not endorse everything these authors say.  Take them with a few grains of salt.  YMMV.)  (Second note: I am a great fan of the OTPOR! nonviolent revolution that deposed Slobodan Milosevic.  However, I would say that one potential weakness of the OTPOR! strategy and of the CANVAS Core Curriculum is perhaps a failure to look at the prerequisite of building or re-building independent groups and institutions by the democratic nonviolent resisters.)

The building (or re-building as the need may be) of these independent groups and institutions is such an important topic that my next post in this series will focus on this subject.  And I will refer to some additional sources that will shed light on the subject of institution-building from multiple angles.