From D to D, Chapters 6 and 7: A Rut By Any Other Name

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr. Gene Sharp. In this series of posts, I have shortened the title of the book to From D to D. As I have said in previous posts, the consideration of this book is highly relevant for these times, in which those who support the supremacy of the world's dominant peoples have created a world in which a select few get to Make Themselves Great by exploiting everyone else. The poor of the earth experience this exploitation as enslavement, discrimination, harassment, dispossession, and the threat of genocide. Many live as refugees. Theirs is an experience of apparent utter powerlessness in the face of an all-consuming, murderously abusive power. Yet the poor of the earth do have at their disposal a "weapons system" and a strategic method which holds the promise to liberate them from their oppression if they dare to use it. That means of liberation is strategic nonviolent resistance.

This topic is timely even today, even though Donald Trump is no longer the President of the United States.  For the structures of inequality which he amplified are not yet dismantled.  Thus the need of the hour for communities of the oppressed is to organize ourselves for our collective liberation.  For organizers, this involves learning to persuade significant numbers of people to do things that are hard, that involve cost, that involve risk.  My interest in studying the art of community organizing has therefore been to learn to do just that: to learn to persuade my brothers and sisters to engage in effective liberating collective action.  To me it seems that the study of community organizing is a natural outgrowth and next step in the study of strategic nonviolent resistance, since this resistance is most effective when it is practiced by organized collectives of people instead of isolated individuals.

But the act of liberating oneself and one's people from long-term oppression is unavoidably disruptive to those who benefit from the present oppressive status quo.  This is especially true when the oppressed follow a strategy which their oppressors are not ready to meet, and which these oppressors therefore cannot counter.  Therefore, the masters of the present oppressive systems will do all they can to prevent the rise of this kind of effective, disruptive resistance.  In this pursuit, these masters have developed their own strategy.  That strategy has been to condition society in such a way that any expressions of collective discontent emerge within certain channels for which the masters have already prepared effective countermeasures, and which these masters are therefore quite ready to meet.

One example of the strategy of the oppressors has been the ways in which collective labor action has been tamed over the decades to the extent that officially recognized unions in their dealings with organized business are forced to follow rules of engagement which effectively de-fang and de-claw these unions so that they are no longer a threat to big business.  Therefore these unions have become worthless, because their most powerful weapon - the strike - has been declared unlawful (or "unprotected") in the vast majority of cases.  Also, most officially recognized unions have by now become "business unions," whose leadership actively discourages their members from the kind of disruptive collective action that could actually threaten economic inequality.  Collective bargaining and organized labor have therefore become the kind of challenge that holders of concentrated wealth and power are quite ready to meet.

I'd like to suggest that another strategy of the oppressors has been to define nonviolent resistance solely as mass protest.  Leaders of oppressive regimes (and of oppressive systems in supposedly democratic countries) have known for a fairly long time that the most disruptive change-making movements are nonviolent.  Therefore they have known for a long time that the best way to neutralize such movements is to inject violence into them.  While there are well-documented cases of this injection of violence into Russian anti-tsar protests and American labor strikes in the 19th century and early 20th century, it is important to note the history of the injection of violence into protests from the 1990s to the present day.  This was especially apparent during the clashes between the "Antifa" and various right-wing white supremacist groups before the 2018 U.S. elections and the infiltration of Black Lives Matter protests by various white supremacist groups in 2020.  (For documented proof of white supremacist infiltration in the protests of 2020, see "Riots, White Supremacy, and Accelerationism" by the Brookings Institution, "Far-right extremists keep showing up at BLM protests. Are they behind the violence?" by the Kansas City Star, "Small But Vocal Array of Right Wing Extremists Appearing at Protests" by the Anti-Defamation League, and "Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests:Indicators of White Supremacists," by Mia Bloom of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law.)  As these events have shown, it is childishly easy for an oppressor to inject violence into a supposedly nonviolent protest.  After this injection occurs, it then becomes childishly easy for the oppressor to justify the use of lethal force to crush the protest.  To base a "movement" solely on the tactic of mass protest is therefore to mount a challenge that the holders of concentrated privilege are again quite ready to meet.

(One note about that last paragraph.  The advice given by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict during the "Antifa" clashes of 2018 and the BLM protests of 2020 is yet another reason why I have largely stopped listening to the ICNC - as I think at least some of their members have gotten into the business of deliberately giving bad advice to victims of American oppression who are trying to free themselves from that oppression.  Otherwise, how can one explain Tom Hastings' criminally stupid suggestion that there are cases where destroying other people's property can help a nonviolent movement?  And to think that the ICNC let him say that under their masthead!  Or Steve Chase's suggestion that we who seek to prevail by means of strategic nonviolent resistance must sometimes be willing to work with the kind of "protestors" who embrace "diversity of tactics" and follow the "St. Paul's principles" as he suggested during a 2018 online civil resistance course hosted by the ICNC?  He failed to mention that nonviolent organizations which attempt to partner with or dialogue with groups who embrace violence can themselves also become legitimate targets of police action!  Or take Daniel Dixon's suggestion during that same online course that movements that combine both violent and nonviolent tactics can achieve greater synergies than movements that remain strictly nonviolent.  What an idiotic thing to say - especially since history shows that movements that combine violent and nonviolent tactics are more easily crushed by their opponents!)

But there is yet another strategy of the oppressors which should be pointed out.  And that is to define the goal of community organizing as the building of power by a constituency in order to prevail in a political contest and a political system whose rules of engagement have actually been set up by people who dominate and exploit that constituency.  In other words, we are told that the main reason why we organize should be in order to help us prevail in electoral politics according to the rules of the present political system.  To say such a thing, however, is to ignore the fact that the rules of that system were set up by rich, powerful oppressors in order to maintain and preserve the power and positions of those oppressors.  To play the game by these rules is therefore to lose unless you are one of the privileged people for whose benefit the game was originally created and rigged.  To me therefore, the goal of learning to organize is not to try to build power to win at a game that was actually rigged to make me a loser.  The goal of learning to organize is to teach myself and my people to start playing a different game altogether in order to make the first game irrelevant.  Here it must be remembered that nonviolent civil resistance is a means of seeking change by means that lie outside of existing institutions.  That is the goal of my organizing and of my study of the art of organizing.

Let me close by re-quoting Basil Henry Liddel-Hart:

The most effective indirect approach is one that lures or startles the opponent into a false move so that, as in jiu-jitsu, his own effort is turned into the lever of his overthrow.

And from Gene Sharp, 

Even in military conflicts, argued Liddell Hart, generally effective results have followed when the plan of action has had "such indirectness as to ensure the opponents' non-readiness to meet it."  It is important "to nullify opposition by paralyzing the power to oppose"...

In other words, don't get stuck in ruts that someone else has dug for you. 

 

From D to D, Chapter 6 (Continued): Spending Wisely

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr. Gene Sharp. In this series of posts, I have shortened the title of the book to From D to D. As I have said in previous posts, the consideration of this book is highly relevant for these times, in which those who support the supremacy of the world's dominant peoples have created a world in which a select few get to Make Themselves Great by exploiting everyone else. The poor of the earth experience this exploitation as enslavement, discrimination, harassment, dispossession, and the threat of genocide. Many live as refugees. Theirs is an experience of apparent utter powerlessness in the face of an all-consuming, murderously abusive power.  

Yet the poor of the earth do have at their disposal a "weapons system" and a strategic method which holds the promise to liberate them from their oppression if they dare to use it.  That means of liberation is strategic nonviolent resistance.  But employing that means of liberation involves accepting the risk of further suffering by the oppressed as part of their struggle.  And here we encounter a common problem: namely, that those who are in the group which must struggle for its liberation have been conditioned by the historical experience of their suffering into patterns of compliance by which they hope to minimize their suffering as much as possible.  It's as if they are saying, "Life is already hard.  Why make it harder for ourselves by challenging our masters?  After all, they can make things really hard for us!"  This attitude might seem to make sense, but it contains the seeds of a contradiction, namely, that the oppressed will suffer regardless of whether they comply as good little victims or whether they choose to resist.  The only difference between the two choices of suffering is that suffering as good little victims is pointless and ultimately hopeless, for it does not accomplish anything.  On the other hand, the suffering that comes from struggle contains within it the seeds of liberation.

The first persons in an oppressed group who choose to struggle for liberation are those who have experienced cognitive liberation as I define it.  This is the point at which an oppressed person decides that he or she will no longer tolerate the oppression and its accompanying humiliation, and that he or she will begin to live in truth from now on - even if it means suffering.  These cognitively liberated individuals frequently become the "seed crystals", the organizers around whom an organized liberation struggle forms and grows.  This willingness to live in truth no matter the cost (and the accompanying willingness to accept that cost) is essential for those who begin to struggle for liberation.  Cowards and Uncle Toms don't liberate themselves.  As Gene Sharp says in How Nonviolent Struggle Works  (HNVSW), "A prerequisite of nonviolent struggle is to cast off or control fear of acting independently and fear of the sufferings which may follow."

Yet this cognitive liberation (and its resulting courage) is not the only ingredient needed for a successful liberation struggle.  A fully human being has both a feeling heart and a thinking head.  The heart guides people to where they should want to go, but the head tells people how to get there.  The head is where strategy is crafted.  Strategy is the answer to the question of how to act "in order to meet one's moral responsibility and maximize the effects of one's actions...The better the strategy, the easier you will gain the upper hand, and the less it will cost you." (HNVSW, page 66).

Concerning the crafting of strategy, it is important to note how much the practitioners of strategic nonviolent resistance can learn from the military.  For the armed forces of most nations that have been around for a while contain entire departments that are devoted to developing and teaching strategy.  (Think of the National War College of the United States, for instance.)  As with nonviolent actionists, those who become soldiers must be willing to pursue a course of action in conflict even though pursuing that course carries with it the risk of suffering and death.  Yet the soldiers and their commanders must also be willing to adapt their course of action to achieve the greatest effect with the least cost.  Those nations whose militaries do not count the cost tend to lose.  This is why a significant portion of Gene Sharp's thinking on the strategic element of strategic nonviolent resistance was drawn from military sources.  We will consider one of these sources today.

Basil Henry Liddell-Hart fought in World War 1 as a British army officer.  He was twice wounded in action, and the entire experience of the war (both personal experience and as an observer of strategy) had a profound effect on him.  In particular, he saw the wastefulness of that war, the damaging effect of the egos of the chief leaders on the conduct of the war, and the futility of two evenly-matched armies going head to head against each other in a straight-up slugfest.  This is what motivated him to write The Strategy of Indirect Approach in the 1940's.  This book contains several terms that are mentioned by Gene Sharp in his writings, particularly the concepts of grand strategy, strategy and tactics.

Among the other elements in his book are the following gems:

• The purpose of strategy is "to diminish the possibility of resistance [by your opponent]."  This is achieved by choosing a course of action which your opponent is not ready to meet.
• The perfection of strategy is to achieve a decision "without any serious fighting."
• Clausewitz said that "All military action is permeated by intelligent forces and their effects."  Liddell-Hart comments that "Nevertheless, nations at war have always striven, or been driven by their passions, to disregard the implications of such a conclusion.  Instead of applying intelligence, they have chosen to batter their heads against the nearest wall."
• Instead of "battering his own head against a wall," the strategist's aim "is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this."
• Therefore, the aim of strategy is to dislocate one's opponent - whether psychologically or logistically.  This occurs as the resisters pursue the opponent's line of least resistance, which on a psychological level is the same as pursing the opponent's line of least expectation.  
• One of the best ways of dislocating your opponent is to pursue a course of action which has multiple possible objectives.  By doing so, you increase your chances of achieving at least one or more of these objectives, while at the same time you put your opponent into a dilemma, as he will not know which of your objectives to guard against.
• "The more strength you waste the more you increase the risk of the scales of war turning against you" - in other words, the more strength you waste, the greater the chance that you will lose!
• "Do not throw your weight into a stroke whilst (or, for us Americans, "while") your opponent is on guard."

If strategy is so important in military action in order to achieve goals with the minimum expenditure of strength, how much more important it is in conflicts in which one side does not use physical weapons at all in its struggle against a potentially violent opponent!  In his writings on strategic nonviolent resistance, Gene Sharp points out how the method of strategic nonviolent action can itself be a powerful indirect response to the direct organized violence of an oppressor, and how that indirect response can shatter the oppressor's ability to oppress.  As Sharp says, "It is important to 'nullify opposition by paralyzing the power to oppose' and to make 'the enemy do something wrong'..." (HNVSW, page 67.)  Nonviolent means are uniquely suited to accomplishing this task.  

But nonviolent means must be directed by a wise strategy in order to achieve this goal.  It is not enough simply to be committed to a certain moral or spiritual philosophy.  Case in point: I have suggested to some of the Black Lives Matter organizers that they need to do more in-depth study of strategic nonviolent resistance.  They might not realize this, but the reason I suggested this is that I think that last year, their opponents were able over time to run rings around them during the protests over the police murder of George Floyd and other African-Americans.  One of these organizers  responded by emailing me a link to "an amazing organization" that does training in "Kingian nonviolence".  A quick look at this "amazing organization" shows that they want to train people in what I call "nonviolence as a an expression of spirituality."  That is NOT what I'm talking about when I say the phrase "strategic nonviolent resistance."  In fact, I would say that every time someone hears me say "strategic nonviolent resistance" and thinks I'm saying "nonviolence", a kitten dies somewhere.  (Stop killing kittens!  The cat you save may be your own.)  Strategic nonviolent resistance is NOT a mere "expression of 'spirituality.'"  It is instead a means of liberation.  I want it to be used by historically oppressed people of color as a means of liberation of historically oppressed people of color.  And on a very pragmatic level, this method works better (and is much cheaper) than violence.  Please forgive my tone here, but I'm trying to correct a serious mistake.

The chief element of an effective strategy is the grand strategy of the struggle group, and this grand strategy orchestrates the development and choice of  campaign strategies, tactics and methods.  In my next post in this series, God willing, I will discuss what makes a good grand strategy, as well as discussing how campaign strategies, tactics and methods should be chosen to implement this grand strategy.  Stay tuned.