I am not advocating Violence

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Thu Jul 5, 2012, 07:47 PM - Edit history (15)

I am not advocating violence, but it is a fair historical question to ask whether progressive change (as a trend) happens without violence. (Technically, the strong fear of violence, but that generally follows upon some sort of actual violence.)

Order holds the status quo in place and thus favors haves and disfavors have nots. (As classes, not individuals.) The tactical advantages of wealth lead to more wealth, and if the system runs in an orderly fashion an inequality ratchet will tend to recreate the middle ages or the worst of the industrial revolution. Or ancient Egypt... those pyramids didn't build themselves.

It is the nature of inequality that the have-nots must vastly outnumber the haves, and the only intrinsic advantage that workers and poor people have is raw numbers. The haves know that the have-nots can, at any point in time, rise up and take all their stuff, or even kill them all.

Throughout the story of civilization the ratchet tightens until the people revolt. Then the ratchet begins again, and another revolt follows, and so on. Slave revolts, worker revolts, peasant revolts... it's a constant theme. (Only someone alive fairly recently could think the arc of history bends toward justice. Were workers better off in 1000 BC than in 2000 BC? Were they better off in 1840 than in 1640? We have had a good recent run of social progress but that is not the social norm, nor is it guaranteed to persist.)

Real wealth is a combination of privilege, affluence and security. Modern societies where the people have some power can be viewed as empowering the people or, more cynically, as a technology to maximize the benefits of wealth. It is hard to quantify the value of living without fear of your servants carving you up while you sleep.

Anyway... the point I want to make here is that popular history minimizes revolt. You might think that the haves would want to paint the have-nots in the worst possible light by dwelling on their occasional savagery, but to do so would merely remind the people of the power inherent in their numbers.

The Chandler family who owned the LA Times (and pretty much everything else in southern California) was the sort of outfit the word "reactionary" exists to describe. The worst of the worst. In 1910 the LA Times building and the adjacent printing press building were leveled by a bomb. It was assumed by the PTB that labor was involved. It really doesn't matter, however, whether labor was involved... it doesn't matter who really did it. The point made was that anyone could do it. For all your wealth and influence, you are never more than a day away from somebody blowing up your buildings.

It is odd that most people don't know the LA Times building was blown up. If it wasn't for 9/11 very few people would know Wall Street had been bombed in 1920. These things are soft-pedaled in our history.

During a generation of real global class war anarchists assassinated royals and/or heads of state in almost every western nation. (Including the US.) The powerful throughout the world could no go outdoors without wondering when a bearded revolutionary would lob a bomb in their laps. Literally.

In 1901 President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist acting for purely political reasons. His secretary twice tried to cancel McKinley's trip to the temple of music at the Pan-American Exposition because he feared McKinley would be assassinated. That was the tone of the times.

I recall being taught that McKinley was shot by a disturbed man. Nothing to see here... But at the time everyone knew it was part of a global political struggle. A wave of anti-anarchist laws were passed everywhere. Anarchist groups were attacked, buildings burned.

And, though this was not Leon Czolgosz's motive, the assassination made Teddy Roosevelt president, America's first "progressive."

And almost all big progressive gains for workers in the Western world just happened to come out of that period. (Added to the gains that followed from the worker revolutions of 1848, of course. There's a theme here.)

The anarchists did not win. The anarchists were shot or imprisoned. But the constant fear of violent revolt was a powerful driver of (non-violent) reform. Similarly, if there had been no communists in the labor movement we would not have passed all those laws that protected organized labor as long as it was a tame force largely co-opted by government. And as the threat to the system of the IWW receded into history we forgot why we had allowed and protected tamer unions in the first place. There was no risk of America going communist if Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Today there is nothing left to to fear in breaking unions.

Popular history highlights the good guys working within the system to make it appear that all gains are the largess of the haves toward well-behaved and downplays that the haves were in terror. Our national mythology is that voting and peaceful protest are the really effective ways to get things done. We are so indoctrinated on the point that we actually believe it, though it is awfully hard to read history to support that.

I am writing this on the anniversary of our founding act, the declaration of war against the British. It is odd that we started shooting British soldiers instead of holding a series of candle-light vigils. The symbolic Boston Tea Party seems not to have done the trick. The American Revolution was, like all such things, a two-track affair. our Revolution had substantial popular support in England AND we were shooting a bunch of people. Without the shooting part there is no reason to think the Crown would give away half a continent. And if England was 100% in favor of repressing the revolution the Crown would have never given up.

Historically, it takes both the carrot of moral persuasion and the stick of popular violence, overt or implicit. (Or, in a pinch, merely the stick of popular violence, but a change in popular ethos will make concessions wrested by threat of violence more lasting.)

Martin Luther King was a great man, but it is fishy that we are so steeped in the idea that moves in the direction of equality came from peaceful and principled moral appeals. That is a very convenient view of history for the PTB. The PTB come off quite well in our mythology of good-hearted northern whites helping out southern blacks because they asked so politely. But the period from which black Americans gained the most in legal rights and government money outside the deep south happened to be the same period that black Americans burned down large areas of many, many large non-southern American cities. If that's a coincidence, it's sure a big one.

Gains made without the ongoing implicit threat of violence are not typically lasting gains. The ratchet is always in operation and will retake any short-term concession as soon as the countervailing pressure decreases. (The LA riots in 1991 were tragic for everyone but, sociologically, served as a reminder of the 1960s. The USA had forgotten that concern for inner-city populations was part of a loosely negotiated peace, not merely liberal largess. Coincidence or not, a Democrat soon entered the White House.)

Our history, white-washed to exclude the threat of popular violence as a driving force, reads like a morality play between nice rich people and mean rich people. Why did FDR do all that swell stuff? Was he just that nice a guy? He was a smart man governing a nation that was a stone's throw from major cities turning into insurrectionist soviet (small s) enclaves. That is not to his discredit. He was a great man for recognizing that the status quo was inherently unstable and that popular revolt is always a very real variable in a governing equations.

The usual course of things is popular revolt > armed force puts down the revolt > leaders of the revolt are hung > most demands of the revolt are quietly acceded to in a way that allows the system to pretend the concessions are spontaneous charity.

The steel boot and the social concessions are both parts of how you put down a revolt. Give the crowd enough to isolate the "extremists," thereby moderating the crowd.

The sad truth is that throughout history I don't see much progress without the haves being genuinely afraid.

[rhett o rick]

1. I think it's possible for the aristocracy to back off their looting just enough to

reduce the uprising threat to below the violent revolution stage. However, there may be a tipping point here. When you have a band of thugs looting, who will be the first to "back-off"?

[Wounded Bear]

2. I'm thinking that TARP was supposed to be that....

Mayhap it didn't work. "They" seem to be back at it again.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

3. TARP? That was just changing a flat tire on the loot-wagon.

[cthulu2016]

4. And that is, to me, the heart of the difference between the parties

The Democrats want to manage the status quo to achieve social peace.

The Republicans are so infantile that they want an apocalypse, thinking they would prevail.

Both are ways of managing inequality. One is much more responsible than the other.

[villager]

5. Exactly -- which is why true "change" will never actually come from the Democrats, either

It will have to come from the streets -- though in an age where information is power, and releasing it can be an act of resistance -- new "street strategies" will continue to emerge...

[BOG PERSON]

7. information is power if/when power derives from consent

and to a certain extent it does. but in the final analysis, consent is still protected by the armor of coercion.

[aquart]

15. So sweet of you to be willing to sacrifice...how many of us?

[villager]

43. ??

[Doctor_J]

11. They don't have to

Hate Radio convinces the hoi polloi that the looters are the good guys, and those who protest the looting are the bad guys.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

6. The it-takes-both-carrot-and-stick theory is supported by the ending of the Viet Nam war

which did not occur until there were both protests and fragging.

[Doctor_J]

8. A quick look at the last 20 years in the US should be a clue

the weak, timid, appeasing Dems have lost ground immensely to the violent, rabid, fascists. And this despite trying to act more like the Repukes.

[RagAss]

9. K&R

[Odin2005]

10. This is why I reject pacifism.

Elites only make concessions if they are scared of losing their heads.

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. Violation of the social contract has only one pushback mechanism.

It may be possible for enlightened elites to perpetually keep their greedy impulses in check, but an example of that doesn't yet exist.

[BOG PERSON]

21. a pact which exceeds the natural rights of one of the co-contractors

or which does not provide a clear retraction clause, is considered de facto null and void.

[Sirveri]

13. What is your opinion of Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy?

His primary argument is to use non-violence, however he's coming from a position of dealing with dictatorships. His primary thought was that in a dictatorship the governing apparatus will be able to respond with force in such a way as to successfully squash any violent uprising. But in a democratic nation, that isn't the case, there are limits to the level of violence that they can employ. If they employ them it simply grants strength to the opposition. He has a very insightful view of conflict, while he says non-violence, he doesn't say non-force.

http://www.aeinstein.org/
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD-2.pdf

In reality, the real thing that will scare them is organisation. A disparate rabble is easily dispersed. A disparate rabble that moves and pulses towards a common goal, that is a threat. If Occupy was not the threat of organisation that they feared, then why the obviously over the top and brutal crack downs?

Another concept going through my mind relates to peak oil physics. Basically the decline starts at the half way point, however technology can extend this peak point but with the drawback that the production collapse is much more severe on the other side. Is it possible that social engineering and propaganda techniques have gotten so good, that the blinders have been placed onto enough of the populace to demolish any attempt at popular movement? If such it can only last so long until real triggers outweigh the constant media bombardment, but at that point so many of the population will be radicalized that the only resulting option is a chaotic snap back to equilibrium.

Just stuff in this vein I've been thinking about.

[treestar]

14. We have a pretty good system

It has seen change take place within it and within the law, for the most part.

[Doctor_J]

17. It has completely broken down, due in large part

to the fact that whose who determine what is "within the law" are themselves criminals. If you look over the past 20 years and believe that the system is working, you need to re-orient your viewpoint.

[treestar]

18. It is still functioning

And has not broken down. Who are you calling "criminals?"

This system may not work to your liking because your fellow citizens are often right wing nuts. But that doesn't mean the system does not work.

If it did not work, things would be a lot worse. You need to re-orient your viewpoint by an education on how things have worked in the past in some other countries, and still do in some countries today.

[Doctor_J]

25. No, it's not

the banksters are holding the economy hostage, and there is nothing legal we can do about it. Elections are rigged by voter purges and phony counts, and there is nothing legal we can do about it. We are the only rich country where people can't get health care, and there is nothing legal we can do about it. Are airwaves are flooded with lies, hate, and propaganda, and there is nothing legal we can do about it. Our unemployment and wealth disparity are as bad as they have ever been, and there is nothing legal we can do about it.

Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito are criminals - they lied under oath at their confirmation hearings. The crimes of Rove, Cheney, and Bush take up volumes.

If you really think this is "working", you're a mole or one of the 1%. The only reason it's still functioning is because people are either blind to how bad things are (your posts indicate you're in that camp), afraid to take the necessary steps to fix it, or content because they don't want their overlords to take away the crumbs they're now given.

[RagAss]

42. Amen !

[PETRUS]

16. Erica Chenoweth has explored this question

You might be interested in her research. She has collected data on over 300 social campaigns. I learned about her work from a blog post on Naked Capitalism. Here's a graph that applies to your OP:

[cthulu2016]

19. I think her work is sort of side-ways to the question

Last edited Thu Jul 5, 2012, 08:25 PM - Edit history (1)

I appreciate your post a great deal. I wanted to say that because I don't want my comments to be read as rejecting it.

It is obvious that armed revolutionary movements will typically lose to armies. Her results rely on boot-strapping that obvious historical fact into a conclusion that doesn't mean what she wants to say it means.

It would indeed be absurd for any group seeking social change in a Western nation to become an armed resistance seeking the violent overthrow of a government to replace it with a different government.

I agree.

But that has little bearing on the subject of the OP, which is that a credible fear of violence from the oppressed is a necessary element of a lot of social change.

If we try to divide history into campaigns and movements, yes, violent movements typically fail in their stated objectives. And I hope everyone would have assumed that to be the case. But social history is not a scorecard of how different manifestos worked out.

For instance, did the Black Panthers succeed or fail? By the standards of the Black Panthers that movement failed spectacularly. The Black Panthers did not achieve the overthrow of the US Government and its replacement with a revolutionary socialist regime. Almost all the Black Panthers ended up dead or in jail.

The Black Panthers would get a zero on the "campaigns and movements" scorecard.

But the fact that militant black Americans were shooting police and firemen had a tremendous impact. Negotiations with the city about resources devoted to black neighborhoods were shaped by the environment. The existence of an armed, revolutionary splinter group made concessions to more moderate groups likelier.

If the electrician's union was negotiating a contract the week after the bombing of the L.A. Times building they were backed by a threat they did not make conveyed by a tactic they had not employed. The same way somebody seeking a library or park in a black neighborhood, or a commission on police brutality, was backed by a threat they did not make and would not countenance that was conveyed by the environment where the Panthers were shooting people.

An armed movement, conceived as such, will almost always fail. Like I said in the OP, the first phase of a popular rebellion is the brutal suppression of the rebellion and hanging all the leaders. As a movement or campaign that's a failure. But the broader movement typically advances.

King was more successful than Malcolm X. But without what Malcolm X was thought to represent (it's all perception) people would have been less eager to make concessions to King.

Martin Luther King certainly did not plan or encourage waves of riots, but the riots shaped the environment of the last few years of his life. There is a world of difference between, "Do Y because it is right," and "Do Y because there will be less cities burned down." The later is not a threat, it's a social observation. But it focuses the minds of the people holding the power.

Much of the respect for and sympathy toward King among whites was fueled by the fact that he could have been so much "worse." He was one of the reasonable ones. Without the implicit fear of "the unreasonable ones" there is not power in being reasonable.

Many of Chenoweth's non-violent revolutions are based on the threat of violence, whether she recognizes that or not. She notes that a million people marching peacefully is more effective than an armed militia. True. If, however, it was guaranteed that the million marchers would remain peaceful then the powers that be wouldn't care much. A million people marching in the streets, however peacefully, is a plausible threat of popular revolt. A million people anywhere is scary.

Why do the powers that be respond to a million people in the streets? Out of a moral sensibility awakened by the spectacle or out of fear? I suggest that later. Why is a vast crowd assembling peacefully in a Cairo park intolerable? Because they can take every government building apart stone by stone if it comes to that.

I agree that any self-proclaimed violent movement will be met with military force and quickly fail.

And I also maintain that a mass movement in a world where violence was not on the table in same way would find much less influence.

[PETRUS]

44. Hiya

I understand what you're saying. And I think your thesis about the threat/fear of violence has merit. I'm not particularly familiar with Chenoweth's scholarship but one could interpret her data to mean that the threat of violence is more potent than actual use, which seemed on point. Plus I just found the information on her slides to be quite interesting and wanted to share.

[Zalatix]

30. Do those figures include the founding of the United States?

[Doctor_J]

37. Um, the header says 1900-2006

so probably not

[Zalatix]

38. Rhetorical question

[4th law of robotics]

22. Odd thing for Cthulhu to say

I'd say bringing madness and despair and blanketing the world in darkness constitutes violence.

[Nye Bevan]

23. "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

http://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/mlkquotes.htm

[Doctor_J]

24. Yes, all of the bromides are in favor of pacifism

that's the entire point of this thread

[Nye Bevan]

35. Yeah, MLK was such a weak, bromide-spouting appeaser, wasn't he?

That's probably why he achieved so little.

[Doctor_J]

26. To recognize the effect of non-violent protest, take the two recent examples

The anti-Iraq invasion mobs (at least 3 million), and OWS (similar). Both were massive, and accomplished absolutely nothing. OTOH, a tiny cadre of foam-at-the-mouth, gun-waving psychopaths, together with their sympatico media, basically took over the country in 6 months.

Fighting conventionally would be stupid. Waking them from their smug cocoons would be very effective.

[coalition_unwilling]

27. Historical note (that does not discredit your larger point): World War I

was not 'started' by an 'Anarchist assassination'. It was 'started' (if one can use that word) by a Serbian 'nationalist' group, the Black Flag, that was resisting Hapsburg dominance by the Austo-Hungarian Empire in Serbia. That group (and specifically one member Princip) assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife.

Actually, World War I 'started,' imo, when Imperial Wilhelmine Germany subsequently gave a blank check and a green light to the Austro-Hungarians to invade Serbia in response to that assassination which, in turn, triggered Russian guarantees of protection of Serbia.

[cthulu2016]

31. D'oh! I will probably not surprise you to know that

I knew that. But in the heat of writing about a bomb being lobbed into a passing car the visual of Archduke Ferdinand popped into my head.

And, of course, you are correct that WWI was not "started" by the assassination, though that's the popular version.

[Zalatix]

29. Civil disobedience.

We can bring the economy down with mass civil disobedience.

We need to do it soon, though, before we become a Plutonomy (where over 50% of economic activity is due entirely to 5% of the population).

[DinahMoeHum]

32. Or to paraphrase Al Capone: a kind word and the threat of a gun. . .

will get you better results than just a kind word.



Peter Gelderloos, an author/activist, has similar sentiments, and this interview with Utne magazine and reviews of his book How Nonviolence Protects The State is very enlightening:

http://www.utne.com/2007-05-01/Politics/Arms-and-the-Movement.aspx

(snip)
The U.S. civil rights movement is one of the most important episodes in pacifist history. Across the world, people see it as an example of nonviolent victory. In truth, it was neither nonviolent nor a victory.

On the contrary, though pacifist groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference had considerable power and influence, popular support, especially among poor black people, gravitated toward militant revolutionary groups such as the Black Panther Party. According to a 1970 Harris poll, 66 percent of African Americans said the activities of the Black Panther Party gave them pride, and 43 percent said the party represented their own views.

The nonviolent segments of the civil rights movement cannot be distilled and separated from its revolutionary parts. Pacifist, middle-class black activists, including King, got much of their power from the specter of black resistance and the presence of armed black revolutionaries. **
(snip)

(**boldface emphasis is mine - DMH)

Read more: http://www.utne.com/2007-05-01/Politics/Arms-and-the-Movement.aspx?page=2#ixzz1znRXZeAE

Also:
http://www.amazon.com/Nonviolence-Protects-State-Peter-Gelderloos/dp/0896087727/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341533056&sr=1-1&keywords=peter+gelderloos

[cthulu2016]

34. Pre-cisely! Check out reply #16 above

King was the acceptable alternative, a status that requires an unacceptable alternative.

Thanks for the excellent post and the quote.

[DCKit]

33. yer onto something.

I know a lot of have-nots

[GarroHorus]

36. "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

Resorting to violence represents a failure on multiple levels.

War is the result of massive diplomatic failure.

[AJTheMan]

39. "When the rich rob the poor, it's called business. When the poor fight back it's called violence."

Sometimes you have to take what's yours.

[apocalypsehow]

40. Putting aside all the rest of your historical inaccuracies & falsehoods in this laughable OP,

I choose to focus on this:

"But the period from which black Americans gained the most in legal rights and government money outside the deep south happened to be the same period that black Americans burned down large areas of many, many large non-southern American cities."

False.

Brown v. Board was decided in 1954; the first major Civil Rights act since the Civil War was passed in 1957. The single largest comprehensive advance for African-Americans in terms of enforceable legal tools and remedies for their oppression came with the Civil Rights act of 1964, and the Voting Rights act of 1965 - before nary a single city had "burned."

There were reasons of long-standing historical and economic injustice that led to the riots in the Black ghettos of the mid-to-late 1960s, but those came after the major Civil Rights laws had already been passed, not before.

The sad truth is that you really should study history, before you presume to post about it. Pro-tip.

[cthulu2016]

41. Gee, thanks. That's so awesome.

I had no idea when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. I'll make a note of it.

Thank you for your little elementary school book report on civil rights. You are the future of America.

Yes, Brown and the CRA of 1964 magically achieved racial equality in America and MLK rode off on a unicorn.

[BanTheGOP]

45. That's why the GOP needs to be destroyed

And that's why just attempting to vote them out is not enough; we must legally, and if necessarily, forcefully assert our progressive rights and turn capitalism on it's ear for a better world.