Strategic Nonviolent Power

Mark A. Mattaini

• Publisher: AU Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781927356432
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

History indicates that there are powerful routes to liberation from oppression that do not involve violence. Mohandas Gandhi called for a science of nonviolent action, one based on satyagraha, or the "insistence on truth." As Gandhi understood, nonviolent resistance is not passive, nor is it weak; rather, such action is an exercise of power. Despite the success of Gandhi's "Quit India" movement, the resources dedicated to the application of rigorous science to nonviolent struggle have been vanishingly small. By contrast, almost unimaginable levels of financial and human resources have been devoted to the science and technologies of killing, war, and collective violence. Mark Mattaini reviews the history and theory of nonviolent struggles against oppression and discusses recent research that indicates the substantial need for and advantage of nonviolent alternatives. He then offers a detailed exploration of principles of behavioral systems science that appear to underlie effective strategic civil resistance and "people power."

Strategic Nonviolent Power proposes that the route to what Gandhi described as the "undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries" of nonviolent resistance is the application of rigorous science. Although not a simple science, Mattaini's application of ecological science grounded in the science of behaviour brings exceptional power to the struggle for justice and liberation. At a time when civil resistance is actively reshaping global political realities, the science of nonviolent struggle deserves the attention of the scientific, activist, strategic, military, spiritual, and diplomatic communities, as well as the informed public.

PART ONE

UNDERSTANDING NONVIOLENT POWER

Mohandas K. Gandhi often stated that nonviolence—by which he meant nonviolent struggle for liberation, not passive acceptance—is, or could be, a science. This book takes him at his word, applying the emerging science of behavioural systems analysis to the practice of nonviolent struggle and civil resistance. A valid scientific approach requires an acceptance of uncertainty and a tentativeness and humility regarding “truth,” both of which characterized Gandhi’s life and thinking. In adopting a stance of humble curiosity, practitioners of science can advance human and other life; should they lose their humility, science can contribute to terrible damage. In attempting to bring state-of-the-science knowledge to nonviolent struggle in this book, I fully acknowledge that such work is in its early days.

Valuable social science research exploring dimensions of nonviolent struggle is available. Over four decades ago, Robert Klitgaard used game theory to analyze Gandhi’s tactics, with some success, while Amut Nakhre subsequently employed survey methods to study commitment to nonviolent norms among those practicing civil resistance.¹ Gregory Wiltfang and Doug McAdam have researched predictors of such activists’ willingness to engage in high-risk and high-cost activities, and James Downton and Paul Wehr have examined factors that contribute to the persistence of peace activism.² Clearly, these and many related investigations have made valuable contributions. The approach taken here, however, draws on a different body of scientific knowledge and theory, which I believe has unique contributions to make not only to the study of resistance movements themselves but also, and especially, to the practice of effective resistance. As Gene Sharp, the most important civil resistance scholar and practitioner of our time, once told me, the study and practice of nonviolent struggle needs to be examined from many different perspectives if we are to continue to advance both theory and methods.

In Part 1, I reformulate current thought about and experience in nonviolent struggle for liberation by drawing on behavioural science theory and research, and emphasizing the behavioural systems that constitute both resistance movements and structures of oppression. The first two chapters introduce the current state of knowledge and stress the urgent need to know more about nonviolent struggle (chapter 1), with particularly attention to the central place of strategic analysis (chapter 2). Chapters 3 and 4 bring contemporary behavioural systems science to that analysis. Chapters 5 and 6 explore the possible contributions of that science to the process of developing and sustaining cultures of resistance prepared to engage in nonviolent struggle. The chapters in part 2 then explore in depth the scientific principles and dynamics underlying major methods of nonviolent action.

A reminder for us all, however, is in order: the analyses and conclusions presented here should be held lightly in hand. Like war, nonviolent struggle is complex and messy, and all science-based knowledge in complex areas should be regarded as tentative and constantly open to correction and refinement. Given these caveats, though, I have little doubt that science can contribute much more to the cause of justice and liberation than it has to this point.

1

NONVIOLENT POWER

There is such a terrible urgency about halting the machinery of death that is still unimpeded. For our actions even to be effective as symbolic actions—as actions that speak the truth of our condition—they must communicate this urgency.

—Barbara Deming, Revolution and Equilibrium

Barbara Deming, a key figure in the recent history of nonviolent struggle, challenges us with the “terrible urgency” of action to confront the human rights violations, genocide, oppression, and violence that Gandhi recognized as so deeply interwoven into contemporary human life. “I do not know whether you have seen the world as it really is,” wrote Gandhi to his son Harilal in 1918. “For myself I can say I perceive the world in its grim reality every moment.”¹ The World Health Organization reports that over two hundred million people died as the result of collective violence in the twentieth century alone.² In addition, the lives of hundreds of millions of others either ended or were deeply affected as a result of structural violence, violence resulting from social structures and institutions that cause and maintain poverty, imprisonment, systemic oppression, and lack of access for many to education, health care, and other basic human rights, while simultaneously supporting the comfortable lives of the privileged.³ These realities are not new; the history of “civilization” parallels, in many ways, the history of the emergence of structural injustice.

Such oppression ultimately and inevitably breeds resistance, however cloaked or circumspect.⁴ Scott Wimberley, exploring the roots of guerrilla warfare, succinctly summarizes this situation: “Resistance, rebellion, or civil war begins in a nation where political, sociological, economic, or religious oppression has occurred. Such discontent is usually caused by a violation of individual rights or privileges, the oppression of one group by a dominant group or occupying force, or a threat to the life and freedom of the people.”⁵ While the resulting violence may be terrible both to those directly involved and to third parties, history—and science, as we shall see—teaches us that resistance is a natural response to experiences of oppression. Violent resistance often seems the natural, or perhaps the only, response to violent oppression, whether physical or structural. When violence meets violence, groups on each side strive to develop and access strategies and weapons that increase their capacity to create damage to the enemy while minimizing damage to themselves, leading each group to continuously intensify the struggle.

Governments and their corporate surrogates have invested unimaginable human, financial, and scientific resources to what Deming calls “the machinery of death”—the science and practice of weapons development, the science of armed conflict and war, the science of repressive policing.⁶ Insurgencies have drawn on and contributed to those sciences and practices. Yet victories obtained through these practices are seldom, if ever, clean or stable; as noted by Václav Havel—the notable Czech playwright and dissident, and, ultimately, the country’s president—violent revolutions typically are “fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure [them],” and current research supports that assertion.⁷ Given the enormous costs of violent resistance, the search for other possible options is critically important but has proven difficult in a world deeply immersed in hatred and death. Faced with utterly dehumanizing conditions, threats of terrorism, or deadly repression, escalating counterviolence often seems like the only realistic option. This “escalation to extremes” has only continued our historic march toward an increasingly dangerous and inhuman world.⁸

Nonetheless, history demonstrates that there are, in fact, powerful routes to liberation from oppression that do not involve violence. To clarify the potential and strategies for such options, Mohandas Gandhi called for a science of nonviolent action—but remarkably few resources have been dedicated to the serious pursuit of such a science. This lack of attention is rather puzzling; as will be seen, hundreds of examples of the successful use of nonviolent power over many centuries and on every inhabited continent on earth have been well documented.⁹ Historians of nonviolence and scholars of peace studies have chronicled many successes and failures of nonviolent struggle from which others can learn.

While we know that nonviolent action has been powerful in many cases, some quite surprising, we do not know the limits of either obstructive or constructive nonviolent resistance, nor do we have a clear understanding of what forms of action are most effective under what circumstances. Activist David Dellinger’s observation in 1965 that the knowledge base for nonviolence was only at a “primitive” state of development remains nearly as true today.¹⁰ The need and potential for an extensive program to refine, extend, and leverage what we know seems evident.

Without question, the challenges of nonviolent struggle in such places as Somalia and Afghanistan are enormous; they are nearly as great, if perhaps not as newsworthy, in dozens of other contemporary struggles for justice around the world. And it is not enough to simply interrupt injustice, difficult as that often is. As David Cortright insists, nonviolent campaigns must also make a real difference in shaping a new reality. While engaging “legitimate concerns for justice and human rights,” those involved in social change “have a political and moral responsibility to devise constructive alternatives to the policies they oppose.”¹¹ As discussed later, we know much less about such constructive alternatives than we do about protest and disruption. Advances in this area are therefore an especially high priority.

Other limitations to present knowledge include, for example, the extent to which and conditions under which nonviolent practices could replace military, police, and other currently legitimated forms of force. The potential contribution of nonviolent methods in cases of genocide is unknown, and more study in this area is clearly required; in such cases, a policing strategy appears to be required, but how such a strategy might be effectively implemented remains obscure. A scientific perspective requires maintaining an open mind about such questions and a commitment to pursuing them without bias. Despite these knowledge gaps, however, there is very strong evidence that nonviolent strategies can achieve substantial reductions in threat and violence across a broad range of situations.

The challenges to developing a rigorous understanding of nonviolent struggle are serious. Although the variables involved in effective nonviolent resistance (as well as in failures of such struggles) are, at root, behavioural and cultural, the behavioural and cultural sciences have thus far paid little attention to exploring them. The thesis of this volume is that those sciences, particularly the study of behavioural systems dynamics, have unique potential contributions to make to the further refinement of strategic nonviolent resistance. Both the promise and the uncertainties call urgently, as Deming noted, for deeper analysis. Before turning to that work, however, it is important to ensure a common language. We begin, therefore, by briefly defining and tracing the history of nonviolent struggle.

UNDERSTANDING NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE

For at least two and a half millennia, and probably much longer, countless groups and individuals have dedicated—and often sacrificed—their lives to nonviolent struggle. These include activists and resistance movements; community organizers; spiritual communities, including the traditional peace churches (Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren) but also members of many mainstream religious groups; scholars, particularly in peace studies, history, and political science; and an astonishing array of ordinary citizens. Many of these groups offer somewhat different perspectives on what nonviolent resistance is (and what it is not), but a number of understandings of the concept are now well established, including the following:¹²

1. Nonviolent resistance is not passive, nor is it weak. Rather, such action is an exercise of power—what Gandhi called satyagraha. The word, which derives from satya, “truth,” and āgraha, “appropriation” or “insistence,” is commonly translated as “truth force” or “soul force.” A recurrent emphasis on truth is repeated throughout discussions of nonviolent resistance, as will be seen repeatedly in what follows.

2. There are times when negotiation and mediation are effective approaches for resolving conflicts, but basic human rights cannot be negotiated away. History offers few, if any, cases where individuals or groups perpetrating structural violations of human rights have been willing to give up significant power and privilege without struggle; effective resistance requires challenging that power and privilege with opposing force.

3. Nonviolent resistance is not necessarily safe. While the exercise of nonviolent options generally results in fewer casualties (particularly to innocent noncombatants) than do violent alternatives, nonviolent campaigns that face serious oppression do experience casualties and therefore often require substantial and continuous courage. As Gandhi declared, “There is no Swaraj [interdependent self-governance] without suffering. In violence, truth is the first and the greatest sufferer; in non-violence it is ever triumphant.”¹³ The more intense the level of dehumanization present, the more costly and challenging that dehumanization is likely to be.¹⁴

4. The many forms of nonviolent action (Gene Sharp lists 198 methods in Waging Nonviolent Struggle) range from relatively modest persuasive efforts to major disruptions of the social fabric. Because nonviolent struggle is complex, substantial humility is required in trying to capture its power coherently and comprehensively, yet that effort is critically important.

5. While some nonviolent movements have emerged from deeply spiritual stances or other passionately principled positions, most nonviolent campaigns and most participants in such campaigns have not acted primarily out of such convictions. As Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler observe, “In the overwhelming majority of known cases of nonviolent conflict, there is no evidence that concepts of principled nonviolence were either present or contributed in a significant way to the outcome.… Often nonviolent action is chosen because a viable military option is simply not available.”¹⁵

6. Effective nonviolent action is difficult, if not impossible, to sustain when driven by hatred, although many participants may initially engage with a movement out of anger. It appears that in the most successful cases, nonviolent struggle confronts oppression aggressively while maintaining respect for all parties as human beings. For example, Gandhi recommended that “men composing the government are not to be regarded as enemies. To regard them as such will be contrary to the non-violent spirit. Part we must, but as friends.”¹⁶ And Deming recommends what I refer to in later chapters as the “two-hands principle”: that in nonviolent campaigns against an opponent, activists “have as it were two hands upon him—the one calming him, making him ask questions, as the other makes him move.”¹⁷ For Deming, the message, at its core, should be “We will not hurt you, and at the same time, we will not allow oppression to continue.” The issues here are two. First, neither hatred nor anger can provide direction for what is to be built. Second, structural oppression is always maintained not by a single individual but by an entire system; this fact has extensive implications, as explored in depth in later chapters.

Theorists of nonviolent resistance differ regarding the extent to which actions involving some level of coercion, interference, property damage, and the induction of stress are acceptable. Deciding on such actions involves both moral and practical considerations; a scientific perspective can be genuinely helpful with the latter and even, to some extent, with the former. The language used to describe nonviolent resistance also varies: the terms nonviolence, nonviolent struggle, nonviolent conflict, nonviolent so...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Part One: Understanding Nonviolent Power
• Part Two: Strategic Options
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index