Revolutionary Nonviolence

Concepts, Cases and Controversies

Richard Jackson, Joseph Llewellyn, Griffin Manawaroa Leonard, Aidan Gnoth, Tonga Karena, Richard Jackson, Joseph Llewellyn, Griffin Manawaroa Leonard, Aidan Gnoth, Tonga Karena

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781786998255
• eBook ISBN: 9781786998224
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Revolutionary Nonviolence: Concepts, Cases and Controversies provides an advanced introduction to the central philosophy, ideas, themes, controversies and challenges of applying revolutionary nonviolence in political struggles today, with a particular emphasis on reframing nonviolence through a postcolonial lens. Bringing together an eminent group of researchers and activist-scholars, this collection focuses on a number of important questions: Is a commitment to radical nonviolence a necessity for generating revolutionary change in society? Should revolutionary movements abandon their reliance on political violence as a tool of change? What are some of the practical and theoretical challenges of adopting revolutionary nonviolence today? What can we learn from groups, actors and cases of people who have used revolutionary nonviolence to struggle against injustice? With a mix of theoretical and case study based chapters, the volume explores these and other important questions about how to generate necessary and lasting revolutionary change today.

1 | A DEFENCE OF REVOLUTIONARY NONVIOLENCE

Richard Jackson

This chapter subjects a number of commonly expressed claims about pacifism and nonviolence and the liberation of oppressed people to critical analysis to determine whether collective organised violence can form the foundation for revolutionary action towards emancipation. It concludes that intentional, organised physical violence cannot be revolutionary or progressive because it is dominatory, constitutive and reifies existing modalities of sovereign power. Instead, the chapter argues in defence of revolutionary nonviolence as a potentially more fruitful basis on which to build a new kind of transformative politics that exceeds the current social limits of resistance.

Keywords: Revolutionary Nonviolence; Pacifism; Fanon; Violence; Agency

Introduction

The primary aim of this chapter is to subject a series of commonly expressed claims about pacifism and nonviolence and the liberation of oppressed people to a critical analysis in order to assess whether such claims are sufficiently compelling to form the normative and strategic basis for a politics of revolution. Specifically, I examine the related claims that: (1) in a context of overwhelming repressive violence, organised violent resistance is the only realistic alternative for the defence and the liberation of oppressed people; (2) that in oppressive situations armed revolutionary violence is not only legitimate, but normative because it empowers the oppressed, reinvigorates their agency and liberates their subjectivity; (3) that pacifism and calls for nonviolent political action deny the rights of the oppressed to resist oppression and thus function as part of the apparatus of domination; and consequently (4) that organised violent resistance is a necessary tool or process for social transformation and revolution. These claims can be found in a variety of forms, including certain sections of the postcolonialism literature, and the anarchism and Marxism-inspired literatures, among others.

It is important to note from the outset that I use the term “violence” in this chapter to mean collectively organised physical violence that aims at the killing and injuring of groups of other human beings. Collectively organised violence requires the maintenance of systems for arms production and acquisition, military training and fighting strategy, processes for material and ideological support, and hierarchical forms of leadership. In other words, it refers to the decision to organise and launch an armed insurgency or war as a means of taking power, intimidating an opponent or protecting a group or territory. It does not refer to campaigns of property damage and sabotage (unless they are specifically intended to lead to major loss of life), nor to spontaneous, unorganised outbursts of violence such as riots and disorder. It also does not refer to other forms of violence, such as structural violence, cultural violence, psychological violence or epistemic violence. After all, it would seem obvious that a kind of epistemic violence or rebellion against the ideological and cultural structures of subjugation, and the violation of oppressive laws, norms and ways of thinking and being by the oppressed are essential to resistance, revolution and the empowerment of the oppressed (Meckfessel 2016).

However, the arguments deployed against pacifism and nonviolence typically tend to elide distinctions between different forms of violence, and imply or openly advocate for the use of collectively organised physical violence. In fact, the argument of this chapter could be reconciled with the arguments in favour of revolutionary violence if the term “violence” was restricted to the notion of epistemic or subjective agential violence against the ruling order (or perhaps to “coercion”) and excluded organised physical violence that results in the deliberate killings of human beings. After all, revolutionary nonviolence also aims to (violently or coercively or forcefully) tear down the material and ideological structures of violent oppression and build a new politics of positive peace. Meckfessel (2016) refers to this as “unarmed insurrection”. A key point of distinction here is that while the epistemically violent tearing down of systems of oppression is a form of reversible political action liable to experimentation and change of course (the search for truth, in Gandhian terms), the tearing apart of human bodies through organised armed violence is irreversible. This makes it a completely different kind of violence (and form of political action) which enacts a different kind of power and produces different kinds of political effects.

Overall, in exploring the claims made against pacifism and nonviolence, I find that they are problematic on the basis of both political and social theory, as well as empirical research on violence and nonviolence, and that they therefore provide a poor foundation for approaching revolutionary political action. Instead, I argue that revolutionising both the means and ends of liberation through the theory and practice of revolutionary nonviolence – as opposed to liberal forms of pacifism or pragmatic nonviolence (see Chabot and Sharifi 2013; Meckfessel 2016) – has potential for constituting a new kind of politics which does not simply reproduce forms of dominatory sovereign power and its associated direct, structural and cultural violence.

A final caveat is that this chapter attempts to contribute to current debates on the diversity of tactics in revolutionary action and the constitution of new kinds of politics which transcend the historic “power and resistance” cycle in which violent revolution produces a new form of elite domination requiring a new revolution (see Bloom 2017). The chapter certainly does not aim to provide a panacea or blueprint for revolution in every context or specific case; there can be no single infallible approach to overcoming oppression. Moreover, recognising the dangers of the white saviour complex and white privilege, it is not the intention of this chapter to pass judgement on historic cases where oppressed people have employed armed struggle against violent oppression, or to promote “respectability politics” by condemning activists who choose to use tactics which are forceful and disruptive (Meckfessel 2016). Rather, its modest aims are to try to ground ongoing discussions about revolutionary political action and the construction of radically progressive politics on a more realistic foundation, one which recognises the inadequacies of both liberal pacifism and the leftist call to violence.

Violence and realism

The first claim to consider is that in a context of overwhelming and totalising repressive violence, such as situations of colonial oppression, military occupation or institutionalised racism, organised violent resistance is the only realistic alternative for the liberation of oppressed people (see Brie 2008). The notion that in some circumstances organised violence is the only available response, or the only response which has a realistic chance of success, is so widely accepted as to be little more than commonsense. However, such a viewpoint is based on a common misunderstanding of the relationship between violence, power and coercion, and alternatively, the nature of nonviolent action and what it is capable of in this regard. The implicit assumption here is that in some circumstances, only the use of widespread collective violence can deter and coerce violent actors to make them halt their violent actions.

A first critical observation to make is that such a viewpoint is overly deterministic and reductionist in relation to human motivations, agency and subjectivity. People, groups and societies act out of a variety of complex motivations within shifting contexts, and they always retain the necessary agency to stop their actions, change course and act differently. Reducing the strategic choice of oppressed people to a simple binary between organised violent resistance or passive submission is a gross simplification of both the possibilities for action of the oppressed, and the potential for changing the mind of the oppressor. It functions to reduce both actors to moral caricatures locked into a kind of pre-ordained morality play.

As I have discussed elsewhere (see Jackson 2017a), from a theoretical perspective we can argue that the proponents of revolutionary violence (or the proponents of other forms of normatively oriented violence such as humanitarian intervention or national defence) misunderstand the relationship between violence, force and power. In particular, they misunderstand the relationship between brute force and coercion (see Holmes 2013: 185; May 2015: 49–52), failing to note how the effectiveness of violence to deter or compel depends entirely on how people respond to the violence, not the violence itself. Theoretically, the capacity to destroy bears no direct relation to the ability to coerce (Wallace 2016). Violent acts or threats can produce submission and deterrence or resistance and retaliation, despair or rage, action or inaction – as the proponents of violent revolution themselves accept when they assume that the oppressed can choose to resist the oppressive violence they are facing rather than simply submit to it. The point is that the desired response to violence can never be assured. This explains why advocates of organised violence so frequently mistake the reliability of violence as a political tool, even when it is employed for a normative good such as liberation from oppression (see Howes 2013: 436).

Related to this, power theorists know that there is no simple or linear relationship between violence and power. Arendt (1970: 56) for example, argued that “power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent … Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it”. Following Arendt, Vinthagen similarly explains how power and violence are analytically distinct, given that violence is a form of unilateral action, whereas power is by definition relational and operates through th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Opportunities and Challenges Of Revolutionary Nonviolence Today
• 1 A Defence Of Revolutionary Nonviolence
• 2 Listen, Leftist! Violence is Not Revolutionary
• 3 Symbolic Nonviolence and the Transformation Of Society Beyond Liberal Capitalism
• 4 Eradicating Warism: Our Most Dangerous Disease
• 5 Social Defence: A Revolutionary Agenda
• 6 One No Against Violence, Many Yeses Beyond Violence: Zapatista Dignity, Autonomy, Counter-Conduct
• 7 Nonviolence Within National Movements: Bds and the Formal Palestinian Political Process
• 8 “Media Jujutsu”: Resistance and the Media Power Of Opponents
• 9 Wiremu Patene and the Early Peace Movement at Karakariki
• 10 Reclaiming the Role Of Rongo: A Revolutionary and Radical Form Of Nonviolent Politics
• 11 Understanding Baxter’s “Dunedin Lawyer”: Alfred Richard Barclay and the Significance Of Boer War Opposition in New Zealand
• Index