Nonviolence and Pacifism

Nonviolence and pacifism are often pitted against one another, even though pacifism was once considered the activist term to distinguish it from nonresistance. Now, pacifism is thrown under the bus, even by vigorous advocates of nonviolence. For instance, Gene Sharp clarifies that nonviolent action is action that is nonviolent, as opposed to pacifism (Sharp, 2005, p. 41), some of whose proponents might see nonviolent action as much too coercive (Sharp, 1990, p. 149). In many definitions, pacifism is almost pejoratively defined as rejecting violence on moral grounds without a concern for sociopolitical conditions 1, while nonviolence focuses on political change without violence. Although, one might be nonviolent in one situation but not in another. Arab arguments for nonviolence have strongly differentiated it from pacifism, which is associated with abandoning “a concern with redressing social grievances, and a commitment to changing unjust social structures” (Crow & Grant, 2009, pp. 34-35).

Still others go further, equating pacifism and nonviolence but arguing that they are ineffective and impose patriarchal morals on the poor. Nonviolent advocates and pacifists, these critics say, ignore the vital role of violent militants in supposedly nonviolent movements, probably because nonviolence is usually proposed by privileged white people who expect poor people of color to suffer through injustice while waiting for the fabled critical mass (Gelderloos, 2007, p. 23).

Criticisms of nonviolence and pacifism are extremely important, and do indeed exist, especially of domesticated liberal nonviolence. In some ways American nonviolence hasn’t really evolved since the 1960s and remains predominantly symbolic: bumper-sticker signs, marching, and petitioning the powers for permits to petition the powers, etc. Symbolic acts are necessary, but they could simultaneously function as rituals and as subversive disruptions, such as when the Plowshares Movement burned draft cards with homemade napalm and hammered millions of dollars of damage into, and poured blood over, nuclear warheads while quoting biblical prophets.

Even so, taking some of the above criticisms seriously is a bit difficult 2. Nonviolence does sometimes support the state, but violence doesn’t fare any better. And, ironically, arguing that nonviolence is racist actually sounds a little racist. These arguments assume that Indian independence and American civil rights mainly worked because they faced Christian nations with moral consciences (Apsey, 1990, p. 27); they wouldn’t have succeeded if they opposed repressive dictators, presumably black or brown dictators. Setting aside ignorance about British massacres and American segregation, I wonder how critics explain the nonviolent ousting of Pinochet in Chile, cultural resistance against the Roman empire (ibid, p. 27), nonviolence among the revenge-oriented Pashtuns (Flinders, 1990, p. 190), and resistance to the Nazis in Norway, Holland (Schwarcz, 1990), Denmark, and the Rosenstraße protests in Berlin (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 20), just to name a very few. Not to mention that nonviolent campaigns are twice as successful as violent ones (ibid, p. 7) partly because they do motivate diverse mass participation (ibid, pp. 30, 39, 192). Maybe critical mass isn’t so fabled after all.

Furthermore, violent wings of nonviolent movements may actually prohibit success, with 50% leading to civil war within ten years, compared to 27% of movements that didn’t have armed campaigns (ibid, p. 218). Radical responses do sometimes coexist, and sometimes make easy distinction difficult (ibid, p. 12) such as in People Power in the Philippines, but it was only after the nonviolent mass movement emerged that major change occurred in overthrowing the U.S.-backed dictator (ibid, p. 169). Additionally, while the first Palestinian intifada didn’t end the Israeli occupation or halt settlement construction, the uprising “achieved more than had decades of armed attacks” (King, 2009, p. 146). Supposedly, extremist coalitions make modern oppositionists appear more attractive, but the opposite is historically more likely: armed groups cause regimes to violently unify against the threat without distinguishing between nonviolent and violent campaigns (ibid, p. 43). Dividing the regime’s support base contributes to success, and nonviolence has the strategic advantage, contra the belief that it’s tactically inferior. Violent campaigns are physically prohibitive and have a harder time recruiting women and the elderly (ibid, p. 35), making it inherently hierarchical. Nonviolent action has less physical, informational, and moral barriers (ibid, p. 34).

The moral barrier implies that hard and fast lines between nonviolence and pacifism might be fuzzier. One of the best parts of criticisms of pacifism and nonviolence (aside from surfacing latent discriminatory and ineffective tendencies within some modes) is showing that the two are not worlds apart. To be sure, pacifists can be haughty moralists who wouldn’t flick a fly, or blow up Danish railways to resist the Nazis, but nonviolent activists can also sound like world-weary martyrs who smugly lament their pragmatism, but such is life. The difference between the two is often implicitly framed around morality and empiricism: pacifism supposedly responds solely out of religious dogma while nonviolence pays attention to context. However, strategy can’t escape ethical judgments: arguing for nonviolent tactics puts a value-claim on effectiveness first, or on the possibility of violence at some point. Exclusively privileging faithfulness or effectiveness is a dangerous game, because one can result in pious inaction while the other can result in justifying the same tactics employed by the regime. Perhaps some pacifists are simply remaining faithful to effectiveness. After all, religion and morality are evolved parts of the human condition, with roots in ritual and empathy 3.

I’m not able to dispel all the divisions that exist between pacifism and nonviolence. I’m not really even interested in doing so. Both words have been used to refer to a moral ethos and to strategic resistance.

During the Nuremberg trials, Herman Göring explained that outlawing pacifism helped capture power for the Nazis, because if you denounce pacifists as unpatriotic and therefore a threat to security, more people flock to the leaders. I call myself a pacifist partly because I like the word better. Etymologically, pacifism is one who makes peace. At a certain time, I preferred nonviolence over pacifism, probably because of the overused complaint that it sounds like passivism. But now I resonate more with the word pacifism because it has a deeper cadence and rhythm, almost a complicated narrative flavor, and it speaks to what it is rather than what it is not. Still, I like the linguistic via negativa of the word nonviolence. Whichever word is used, I will reject both unless they are an embodied praxis engaging economic, social, and political life. Unless they refer to “an all-out war against poverty,” against the “spiritual and physical homicide” of racism, and a “true revolution of values” against “the spiritual death” of war. On this point, I am in solidarity with the critics.

At the very least we can say that both nonviolence and pacifism should attempt to understand and redirect violence. Maybe we should shelf the tired terms for a spell and speak of life-giving or death-dealing acts, which could hopefully reframe exhausting debates about property destruction. Purist definitions ignore the fact that it’s not possible to act and remain perfectly pure (Deming, 1990, p. 95). Pacifism is not at odds with physical force, with the force of physicality such as sit-ins, strikes, human chains, and roadblocks. Pacifism, or nonviolence, is the art of presence, which is collective action and organized movements that evade restrictive control by exploring potentiality and new open spaces (Bayat, 2009, pp. 48-49). We strategically place our political bodies in the body politic. “But what would you do if someone’s raping your sister or mother or girlfriend?” Apparently, one can insert any female at this point, pun intended. “Well, what would you do?” You pull the offender off her! Nonviolence is not a legalistic course of action implemented in moments of tension; it is a way of engaging with people and the world. Nonviolence, or pacifism, is relationship, and you can’t have a relationship with someone while they’re raping your best friend’s cousin’s boyfriend’s aunt.

If we shelf these cumbersome concepts, we could also talk about satyagraha and the commensurability of ends and mean. Satyagraha, or grappling with the force of truth, means that aggression and energy aren’t repressed but are instead converted and transfigured. Because we must come to grips with the anger and rage within ourselves. In this case, nonviolence is violence transformed; it is “transviolence, where the power of passions like anger, hatred, and fear is reshaped into a potent fighting force” (Flinders, 1990, p. 189). After all, violence is a form of communication; it intends to say something. However, violence may be the only communicative act that has predictable effects on the other party without any need to understand them (Graeber, 2011, p. 48). Anarchist David Graeber thinks this is violence’s most characteristic trait: “its capacity to impose very simple social relations that involve little or no imaginative identification” (ibid, p. 49). He suggests that violence is “the trump card of the stupid, since it is that form of stupidity to which it is most difficult to come up with an intelligent response” (Graeber, 2011, p. 49).

As far as I can tell, Graeber is mostly referring to the structural and repressive violence of state regimes than to the revolutionary violence of the poor, which often seems to be the main target of critique by liberal proponents of nonviolence (Myers, 1994, p. 243), who are actually few and far between. I empathize with some violent liberation movements, with Frantz Fanon’s anguished pleas to understand the “‘knowledge of the practice of action’” (Deming, 1990, p. 97). “First World” activists and peacebuilders run the risk of looking down our condescending noses at the violent actions of the oppressed without ever experiencing constant domination. However, militarized revolutions almost always reproduce the cycle which they sought to overthrow, because they are dependent on the same worldviewing and the same resources, like the international arms trade, in order to resist empire. The result is more deaths and another suppressive regime. As Audre Lorde said, “[T]he master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine transformation” (Lorde & Clarke, 2007, p. 112-3). For instance, the first Palestinian intifada was predominantly a concerted and mobilized nonviolent revolution, and it paved the way for the Oslo Peace Accords. However, in the aftermath of Oslo’s failure, the second violent intifada began, in which suicide bombings drastically increased. Ten years later, the situation on the ground is far worse with a massive concrete wall, intensified movement restrictions, and accelerated settlement construction. As Ched Myers reminds us: “The romantic myth of the guerilla fighter armed with only an AK-47 and a heart full of revolutionary love is just that—a romantic myth” (Myers, 1994, p. 243).

“First World” activists must tread carefully when suggesting strategic responses to oppression they do not suffer, especially if they can’t distinguish between Israeli soldiers with automatic guns and Palestinian kids with rocks. But polite silence is not solidarity (ibid, p. 239); imperialistic intervention and wholesale acquiescence are both dead-ends. However, once we know and have witnessed we are called by the event to respond, whether in action or feigned ignorance. In a way, we have a stake simply by now being present. Allies should offer insights, advice, and experience, which are all embedded in valuations of the world. But ultimately, we should balance voicing concerns and making suggestions with leaving the final decision to people whose lives are irrevocably intertwined with persecution, even if we disagree with the ultimate decision.

We also need to strike a life-saving balance between self-assertion and respect for others (Deming, 1990, p. 104). This evolved instinct bypasses the aforementioned domesticated nonviolence that mostly appeals to humanistic consciences, thus providing a lot of fodder for legitimate criticism. Radical action troubles conscience and resorts to power (ibid, p. 100). Nonviolence is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, or maybe a chimera of the two. Apparently, the only animals capable of love are those who maintain this equilibrium (ibid, p. 104). Maybe Jesus of Nazareth was right when he said we love others as we love ourselves, or as we assert our own lives. Radical action might encompass the love of neighbors and love of enemies.

Las Abejas exemplifies this equilibrium and also helps reconcile nonviolence and pacifism. Las Abejas is a Christian pacifist civil society of indigenous Maya in Chiapas, Mexico, committed to nonviolent resistance against neoliberalism, imperialism, and militarism. Much of their advocacy centers on agricultural work, threatened by Mexican and international economic policies (Kovic, 2003, p. 67). The land is intimately related to their identity as indigenous people: it is “our life and our freedom” (Tavanti, 2003, p. 61). Las Abejas means “the bees” in Spanish, because “like the bees we want to build our houses together, to collectively work and enjoy the fruit of our work . . . We want to produce 'honey' but also to share with anyone who needs it” (Tavanti, 2003, p. 5). One member noted that bees are small insects that can disturb a sleeping cow with one sting (ibid, p. 5). The queen of this hive is the kingdom of God (Kovic, 2003, p. 70), or the queendom of God. Las Abejas represents the need for liberatory interepretations of religious traditions (Bayat, 2009, p. 50), because religions aren’t fixed (ibid, p. 44): they are like rivers, cascading in tributaries and undercurrents. After all, Jesus was an indigenous Galilean craftsman who instigated the prophetic renewal of Israelite tribal confederacy, challenging both domestic elites and foreign imperialism.

Las Abejas began in 1992 in response to a land dispute in which one man was killed and several others injured (Kovic, 2003, pp. 62-64). Five men were arrested without warrant and wrongly accused of the attack (ibid, p. 64). Las Abejas, who promoted nonviolent resolution to the dispute, organized 200 indigenous Tzotzil to march 41 kilometers and sit in front of San Cristobal’s cathedral to protest the unjust arrests; by the time they arrived, 5,000 people had joined (ibid, pp. 65-66). The five men were soon released (ibid, p. 66) 4. Five years later, a paramilitary group killed 45 members of Las Abejas who were praying in a chapel in Acteal, even as police officers stood 600 feet away and government authorities took five hours to respond. But Las Abejas, as they called for justice, also called for forgiveness and reconciliation. They believed that commitment to all three constituted their nonviolence.

This is a delicate constitution. For a month or so, friends of mine and I slept a night or two a week in the home of a nonviolent protest leader outside of Bethlehem in case of military night raids. Soldiers were often in communication with this leader and obviously knew where he lived. They once suggested that they come to his house for tea and discuss alternatives to weekly protests against the wall. He replied that they were not welcome now, because they had the power to come whenever they wanted. When the conflict was over, he said, they were welcome for tea, ahlan wa sahlan, but until then he would see them at the demonstrations. I’ve been called an anti-Semite for work I’ve done in the occupied territories, and for even calling them “occupied territories.” At the same time, an activist friend severely questioned my concern for Palestinians because I worked for a reconciliation group. To her, all such groups are projects of normalization that care nothing for justice, for home demolitions or night raids or checkpoints or arrests or settlements. And yet she accused me as we drove to the home of the nonviolent protest leader.

Transformation may begin with covenanting ourselves to the wreckage and gift of the beautiful risk of life. The Realist, however, throws in the cards and says, “This world is what we have and we must accept it,” which isn’t really realism as much as it is elitism. To recognize the violence of the world, and to recognize that our current ways of living exacerbate this, and then to suggest that we must continue this currency, is the most unrealistic thing imaginable. Knowing something doesn’t work and yet continually expecting it to work borders not only on unrealism but on stupidity. I think Freud said this is the definition of insanity.


1: However, Jessie Wallace Hughan argues for the possibility of pacifist resistance to military invasion (Hughan, 1990, p. 169).
2: Especially with responses like George Lakey’s, who notes that a much higher proportion of people of color have engaged in nonviolent action than white people (see also Myers, 1994, p. 239).
3: Of course, ritual, and therefore religion, has roots in scapegoating violence and destructive mimesis. Compelling theological work has noted how the Christian narrative of crucifixion and resurrection exposes this violence through solidarity with the scapegoated victim. However, ritual also evolves from play, and beneficial mimesis also forms culture.
4: As far as I know, few white people were involved.

References

Apsey, L. S. (1990). How transforming power has been used in the past by early Christians. In R. L. Holmes (ed.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (pp. 27-28). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Bayat, A. (2009). No silence, no violence: A post-Islamist trajectory. In M. J. Stephan (ed.), Civilian jihad: Nonviolent struggle, democratization, and governance in the Middle East (pp. 43-63). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chenoweth, E. & Stephan, M. J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. New York: Columbia University Press.

Crow, R. E. & Grant, P. (2009). Questions and controversies about nonviolent political struggle in the Middle East. In M. J. Stephan (ed.), Civilian jihad: Nonviolent struggle, democratization, and governance in the Middle East (pp. 31-42). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Deming, B. (1990). On revolution and equilibrium. In R. L. Holmes (ed.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (pp. 94-104). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Flinders, T. (1990). The good fight—Badshah Khan, the frontier Gandhi. In R. L. Holmes (ed.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (pp. 187-191). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Gelderloos, P. (2007). How nonviolence supports the state. Boston: South End Press.

Graeber, D. (2011). Revolutions in reverse: Essays on politics, violence, art, and the imagination. New York: Autonomedia.

Hughan, J. W. (1990). Pacifism and invasion. In R. L. Holmes (ed.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (pp. 168-177). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

King, M. E. (2009). Palestinian civil resistance against the Israeli military occupation. In M. J. Stephan (ed.), Civilian jihad: Nonviolent struggle, democratization, and governance in the Middle East (pp. 131-155). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kovic, C. (2003). The struggle for liberation and reconciliation in Chiapas, Mexico: Las Abejas and the path of nonviolent resistance. Latin American Perspectives, 30, 58-79. Retrieved July 14th, 2012, from JSTOR.

Lorde, A. & Clarke, C (ed.). (2007). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Berkeley: Crossing Press.

Myers. C. (1994). Who will roll away the stone?: Discipleship queries for first world
christians. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

Schwarcz, E. (1990). Nonviolent resistance against the Nazis in Norway and Holland during World War II. In R. L. Holmes (ed.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (pp. 184-187). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Sharp, G. (1990). Nonviolent action: An active technique of struggle. In R. L. Holmes (ed.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (pp. 147-150). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

(2005) Waging nonviolent struggle: 20th century practice and 21st century potential. Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers.

Tavanti, M. (2003). Las Abejas: Pacifist resistance and syncretic identities in a globalizing Chiapas. New York: Routledge.

Nonviolence and Palestine

In 2008, I worked as a journalist and interim editor in Ramallah for the Palestine Monitor, a web-based news source committed to “exposing life under occupation.” I traveled throughout the West Bank, writing several articles about the village of Ni’lin, whose olive groves and roads are fractured due to the construction of the separation wall. I witnessed and engaged with villagers, as well as Israeli and international activists, nonviolently protesting the confiscation and devastation of their land. I attended the first demonstration at Ni’lin on the inaugural day of construction. Villages like Ni’lin have lost and are losing increasing amounts of land, including ancient and viable farmland, to the wall, mostly built deep into Palestinian territory.

We marched from the town center to the outskirts, where we could see three Israeli settlements reaching like white hands over the ashen hilltops. The military and police, accompanied by Caterpillar bulldozers, watched with finger-laden triggers as youth crawled in front of machinery and we gathered around as popular committee leaders spoke with soldiers.

The villagers assured the military that we were there nonviolently. But the squad commander barked an order and sound grenades began exploding at our feet and rubber-coated bullets spiraled through teargas clouds. Stone-throwing never seemed effective to me, but I struggled labeling it violence, especially as they bounced off tanks and kevlar. Either way, stones and M-16s are not easily comparable. Every protest I attended followed a similar chronology: the Israeli military always fired first, the crowd dispersed, and stones fell wildly.

Police and military repeatedly responded with teargas (including an apparatus that shot 16 at once), rubber-coated bullets, and live fire, most of which are supplied by the United States. At other demonstrations, the atmosphere was festive (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 36) with beating drums and cookware, whistles and chants. And yet each time we were disrupted by charging soldiers and sparks from sound grenades lighting ancient olive trees aflame.

I have heard some commentators praising Palestinians’ newfound application of nonviolence, almost surprised to see such a thing in the Middle East. This Orientalist view, often espoused by American political leaders, is not only hypocritical (because Israel and the U.S. are never encouraged to employ nonviolence) but is extremely ignorant of Palestinian history. Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived in the so-called Holy Land as neighbors for centuries. But European partitioning of the Middle East ruptured the land like tectonic plates and a massive influx of Jewish immigrants arrived on Mediterranean waves, many propelled by Zionism. This ideology espoused labor and land acquisition by replacing Arab workers with Jewish workers and by purchasing Arab land which could then no longer be sold to Arabs (King, 2009, p. 151) [Footnote]. However, Palestinians strove to protect their life and land, from both exclusive Zionist policies and British control, through nonviolent tactics such as organizing delegations, boycotts, resignations, and strikes (ibid, pp. 131-132). Around 97% of the First intifada’s tactics were nonviolent (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 119). And over 70% of Palestinian youth oppose violence in the conflict against Israel.

I’ve also heard criticisms that Palestinian nonviolence lacks a central leader like Gandhi or King who can rally the troops. But this obscures the fact that prominent leaders have existed (King, 2009, pp. 135-140), many of whom have been imprisoned or deported. During the First intifada, high-ranking Palestinian leaders lived in exile from the daily toil of occupation. Instead, popular committees cultivated a movement of leaders, some more visible than others. Interestingly, the Communist Party, often associated with a revolutionary vanguard capturing the state, publically advocated for nonviolent tactics and “popular organizing of small, locally-governed institutions,” believing that these could transform social structures as a prerequisite for national independence (ibid, p. 134). Decentralized power guaranteed the movement’s survival: as members were jailed new ones stepped in their shoes (ibid, p. 134). At one point, popular committees, often initiated and run by women (ibid, p. 140), numbered around 45,000, a groundswell that emerged into a concerted civil society from which the intifada forcefully streamed (ibid, pp. 133-134). Parallel institutions, a classic nonviolent tactic of intervention (Sharp, 2005, pp. 19, 460), made the occupied territories ungovernable as Palestinians governed themselves (ibid, p. 142). For instance, the small village of Beit Sahour, where I’ve spent most of my time in Palestine, organized some 12,000 people into 36 committees, diversified along class and gender lines (ibid, p. 140). Direct democracy and nonviolence are not an import to the Middle East.

I know someone who has hoped to make a career out of working in Palestine. During a conversation about the then-imminent Palestinian bid for statehood, he quipped that, if the request succeeded, he might be out of a job before he even gets started. He probably meant it sardonically, but the implication was that a Palestinian state is the answer, as if abject poverty, political infighting, Muslim-Christian hostility, ecological devastation, and IDF-mimicking police forces would suddenly vanish in the wake of a salvific state. So far, nation-state frameworks have resulted in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. After the PA’s institution, women were mostly excluded from decision-making even though they had been leaders of popular committees (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 137). Perhaps state-focused organizing is the best tactical option considering that all four nonviolent secessionist campaigns since 1900 have failed (ibid, p. 73). While Palestinian self-determination isn’t strictly secession, the West Bank is certainly contiguous with Israel through economic dependency, security collaboration, and Israel’s resource control. Land is continually pulled from beneath Palestinians’ feet like a carpet, and Israel’s monopolization of water sources may decide the conflict for everyone.

However, nonviolent resistance has an advantage in territorial campaigns like self-determination and anti-occupation (ibid, p. 7). The consensus on nonviolence during the First intifada fell apart in the third year after enough leaders were deported or imprisoned (ibid, p. 145), making a decentralized movement of leaders extremely urgent. Perhaps the greatest possibility lies in the resurrection and sustainability of popular committees. They already play an important role in the intifada against the wall (King, 2009, p. 149), and have been effective in Budrus, Bil’in, and initially in Ni’lin. Popular committees could connect with grassroots Israeli movements, like Israeli-Bedouin agricultural partnerships in the Negev, or movements like Arba Imahot (Hermann, 2009, p. 262). Maybe people would hear voices like Martin Buber who, instead of initially fighting for a Jewish state, called for an Arab-Jewish confederation in the land.

The section of the wall through Ni’lin is now complete, but the protests continue.

Footnote: In my mind, this makes Chenoweth and Stephan’s claim that Israel is a rare example of a democracy following a violent insurgency (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 219) highly problematic, especially because 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes during this period. These land acquisitions are still occurring.


References

Chenoweth, E. & Stephan, M. J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. New York: Columbia University Press.

Hermann, T. (2009). Winning the mainstream: Arba imahot, the four mothers movement in
Israel. In M. J. Stephan (ed.), Civilian jihad: Nonviolent struggle, democratization, and governance in the Middle East (pp. 253-264). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

King, M. E. (2009). Palestinian civil resistance against the Israeli military occupation. In M. J. Stephan (ed.), Civilian jihad: Nonviolent struggle, democratization, and governance in the Middle East (pp. 131-155). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sharp, G. (2005). Waging nonviolent struggle: 20th century practice and 21st century potential. Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers.

Nonviolence and Democracy

Apparently, nonviolence and democracy are strongly connected. In fact, nonviolent resistance campaigns are much more likely than violent ones to pave the way for “democratic regimes” (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 10). Even failed nonviolent campaigns are more likely than successful violent revolutions to establish something democratic (ibid, p. 202). Nonviolent campaigns are often successful because they elicit diverse mass participation (ibid, pp. 30, 61), an obvious condition for democratic governance. This is certainly evident in the Muslim Pashtun movement and nonviolent army (Raqib, 2009, pp. 109, 113), popular committees during the first Palestinian intifada (Stephan, 2009, p. 315), Golani Druze resistance against Israeli identity cards (Kennedy, 1990, p. 197), and Norwegian teachers and churches, as well as Dutch railway workers, against the Nazis (Schwarcz, 1990, pp. 185, 187).

But what in the world is democracy? The term resides in a restless spectrum, so perhaps the adjective democratic should be employed more than the noun. Even so, most conversations about democracy decline to define it. At the end of their book Why Civil Resistance Works, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan eventually explain democracy as a national institution in which leaders are voted for through competitive elections, citizens have enforceable civil liberties, and government is divided into checks and balances (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 203). This emphasis on checks, balances, and competitive elections might suggest why capitalism has followed democracy everywhere like Mary’s little lamb.

And this emphasis is one of the West’s greatest assembly-lined exports. Anthropologist David Graeber quips that the West certainly didn’t invent democracy, but they did spend “several hundred years invading and spreading democracy to people who were practicing democracy for thousands of years and were told to cut it out” (Graeber, 2004, p. 93). Because of this, defining democracy in many places leads to enraged debates because the word is associated with imperial models and with economic liberalization (VeneKlassen & Miller, 2007, p. 27).

Chenoweth and Stephan recognize that their definition falls under the category of liberal democracy (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 203), which is only one among many forms (VeneKlassen & Miller, 2007, p. 29). They further note that modernization theory assumes that democracy is only possible within liberal political societies (ibid, p. 203). Defining democracy this way smells suspiciously like Eurocentrism, especially because equating democracy with voting is a recent historical classification. Consensus decision-making was the necessary norm in many societies without an apparatus to enforce majoritarian decisions, but indigenous village councils aren’t often considered democratic because they don’t vote (Graeber, 2004, p. 88). The nonviolent egalitarian society of the Buid (Braun, 1990, pp. 182-184) and the consensus decision-making of the Druze (Kennedy, 1990, p. 201) trouble the notion that democracy, and nonviolence, is only found within modern liberalism.

Even so, liberal state democracy is usually presented as a social contract that prevents widespread violence. However, many historians now claim that state-making originated, not to protect people from violence, but to organize for the purpose of war (Cavanaugh, 2004, p. 250). European peasants staged major popular rebellions, causing some of the most tumultuous periods in European history, during the infancy of the nation-state when royal leaders consolidated power through uniform language, currency, and taxes over huge territories (ibid, pp. 248-249). State-making is historically a form of violence.

The transition method often predicts the outcome of the new state regime (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 204), but even democratic regimes are hard for “we the people” to handle, as is currently obvious in the United States. Chenoweth and Stephan argue that citizens’ circumventing normal political avenues highlights democratic weakness (ibid, p. 211), but it might instead expose some level of incompatibility between nonviolence and nation-states. The two don’t seem to go together easily. After all, a strong connection exists in resistance movements between hierarchy and violence (ibid, p. 35), which are the structure and function of the modern nation-state. Surely a representative democracy is theoretically better than a totalitarian dictatorship, or even a liberal democracy over an illiberal one. And perhaps a regime could be democratic, but is that the best we can imagine, or even witness, in the world?

The emphasis on liberalism and voting highlights a discrepancy between Chenoweth and Stephan’s definition and many movements that become democracies. Active participation in social movements increases the post-transition prospects for engaged citizenry, but interestingly popular disillusionment with government often follows nonviolent transitions (ibid, p. 207). This could be because the road to accountable governments is long (VeneKlassen & Miller, 2007, p. 25), but it could also be the inevitable result of replacing horizontal participatory movements with procedural systems of checks and balances, especially when the former seem marked by creativity and the latter by constraint. So why move from decentralized networks of direct democratic engagement to institutionalized modes of hierarchical democracies? Unfortunately, people often treat the former as an interim phase until the latter is achieved, but then after the new regime takes the reigns they longingly remember the good days of resistance. Quality of engagement is just as important as quantity (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, pp. 30, 39), but after the quality dilutes, the quantity dwindles.

Gene Sharp acknowledges that while nonviolent action is usually extra-constitutional because it doesn’t rely on established institutional procedures, he believes it could be incorporated into statist systems (Sharp, 1990, p. 149). Therefore, he argues, nonviolent action shouldn’t be confused with anarchism (which is indirectly what we’ve been discussing) because the latter hasn’t adequately thought about practically achieving their envisioned society, much less realistic means for social struggle that are substantially different from the state (ibid, p. 149). In a recent interview, Erica Chenoweth seems to agree with Sharp when she critiques nonviolent action’s over-reliance on inefficient leaderless movements. Both fine scholars do not appear to have encountered much of the long history of anarchist praxis and seem unaware of extensive anthropological research on anarchistic societies (Graeber, 2004, pp. 13, 39). And both, at least Chenoweth, make a mistake in equating leadership with hierarchy. Leadership could be hetrarchical, which implies distinction without rank, evident in Palestinian popular committees or Druze consensus processes.

Interestingly, despite Sharp’s and Chenoweth’s concerns, nonviolent social movements emphasize “civic organization and decentralized power,” which are the “bedrock of democratic development” (Stephan, 2009, pp. 314-315). So why not continue the popular committees? Local Palestinian communities organized village-level popular committees all across the West Bank (ibid, p. 315). From neighborhoods to regions, committees formed around education, medical-relief, agriculture, business, and social reform (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011, p. 124). These autonomous structures overcame social divisions by encouraging deep participation (ibid, p. 138). All of this sharply contrasts with the Palestinian Authority that followed the partially successful movement (Stephan, 2009, p. 315). In Pakistan, the Khudai Khidmatgar strove to reform not only political life but also social and economic life (Raqib, 2009, p. 109). Members cooperatively shared work to realize the goal of the country’s economic self-sufficiency from colonial power (ibid, p. 110).

Of course, alternative institutions should not be content to only carve out enclaves within the current order, but should also challenge it, as Palestinians and Pashtuns did, because the top-level Metonyms don’t voluntarily modify. Instead, the point of anarchism is direct democracy by building a new society in the shell of the old. Perhaps nonviolent social movements should view themselves as the harbinger of the impossible becoming possible.


References

Braun, S. (1990). Jungle nonviolence. In R. L. Holmes (ed.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (pp. 181-184). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Cavanaugh, W. (2004). Killing for the telephone company: Why the nation-state is not the keeper of the common good. Modern Theology, 20, 243-274.

Chenoweth, E. & Stephan, M. J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. New York: Columbia University Press.

Graeber, D. (2004). Fragments of an anarchist anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Kennedy, R. S. (1990). The Druze of the Golan: A case of nonviolent resistance. In R. L. Holmes (ed.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (pp. 193-203). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Raqib, M. (2009). The Muslim Pashtun movement of the north-west frontier of India, 1930-1934. In M. J. Stephan (ed.), Civilian jihad: Nonviolent struggle, democratization, and governance in the Middle East (pp. 107-118). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Schwarcz, E. (1990). Nonviolent resistance against the Nazis in Norway and Holland during World War II. In R. L. Holmes (ed.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (pp. 184-187). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Stephan, M. J. (2009). Civilian jihad: Nonviolent struggle, democratization, and governance in the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

VeneKlassen, L. & Miller, V. (2007). A new weave of power, people, and politics: The action guide for advocacy and citizen participation. Bourton on Dunsmore: Practical Action Publishing.