ISBN 0903517 19 1
3. Capitalism from the viewpoint of nonviolence strategy
4. Conventional anticapitalist strategies
5. Nonviolent alternatives to capitalism
12. Economic alternatives as strategies
Nonviolent action is the most promising method of moving beyond capitalism to a more humane social and economic system. How can this be achieved? Nonviolence versus Capitalism offers a systematic approach, starting with an analysis of capitalism from the viewpoint of nonviolence, outlining nonviolent economic alternatives and describing what is involved in a nonviolence strategy. A check list for activists is proposed and used to assess diverse campaigns, including workers' struggles, sabotage, environmental campaigns, social defence, global campaigns and economic alternatives.
Brian Martin is associate professor in Science, Technology & Society at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He has studied nonviolent action since the late 1970s, is the author of many books and articles, and has long been involved in activist groups.
Email: brian_martin@uow.edu.au
Web: http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/
This book is an outgrowth of an article with the same title published in Gandhi Marg, Vol. 21, No. 3, October-December 1999, pp. 283-312, with revisions, updates and the addition of much new material, especially on strategy (chapters 6 to12). I thank Mary Cawte, Ellen Elster, David Lewit, Joanne Sheehan, Wendy Varney, Carl Watner and Tom Weber for helpful comments on drafts.
Nonviolent action is the most promising method for moving beyond capitalism to a more humane social and economic system. Approaches based on using state power -- including state socialism and socialist electoralism -- have been tried and failed. Dramatic changes are definitely needed because capitalism, despite its undoubted strengths, continues to cause enormous suffering. Nonviolent action as an approach has the capacity to transform capitalism, though there are many obstacles involved.
With the collapse of most state socialist systems, there has been since 1990 much triumphal rhetoric about the superiority and inevitability of capitalism. But it is far from an ideal system -- very far. It is producing economic inequality on a massive scale, with the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. It is destroying traditional cultures, replacing them with a homogeneous consumer culture that lacks authentic community. It is causing enormous environmental damage, undermining biological diversity and depleting resources. It is making the lives of most workers bleak and meaningless, while denying work to those who do not fit the available slots.
But capitalism does produce a massive quantity of goods. It harnesses human acquisitive drives to the task of production unlike any other system. Within market parameters, it provides goods and services in a generally responsive fashion, and has dramatically raised material living standards in many countries. Capitalism does have strengths. Do the weaknesses really matter, if there is no alternative?
Actually, it is absurd to say that capitalism is inevitable. This is really just an excuse for doing nothing to examine and promote improvements and alternatives. The way society is organised is due to the actions of people, and these actions can change. History shows a tremendous range of possibilities for human patterns of interaction. Furthermore, technological development is creating new options for the structuring of work, communication and interaction. Considering that capitalism is only a few hundred years old and continues to change, and that there is nothing approaching agreement that the current system is ideal, the assumption of inevitability is very weak indeed.
Defenders of capitalism assume that there are only two basic options: either capitalism or some sort of system based on authoritarian government, either state socialism or some other sort of dictatorship. (Capitalism is assumed to go hand in hand with representative government, but this ignores those countries with capitalist economies and authoritarian politics, including fascism and military dictatorship.) But of course there are more than these two options. There are other ways of organising economic and social life. The challenge is to figure out which ones are worthwhile and worth pursuing.
Even setting aside options that are completely different, capitalism is by no means a fixed and final system. It will be transformed and will transform itself in coming decades. It could become better or it could become worse, depending on what people do about it.
The two most prominent strategies against capitalism pursued during the 1900s were state socialism and socialist electoralism. Both were attempts to use the power of the state to transform capitalist relations. State socialism -- as in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China -- relied on capture of state power by a revolutionary party which, in the name of the working class, eliminated private ownership and replaced it by state ownership. In practice the communist party became a new source of rule, in many cases highly repressive.
Socialist electoralism is an attempt to bring about socialism more gradually, gaining state power through the electoral system, increasing the level of state ownership and putting restraints on capitalists. It has been pursued in countries such as Sweden, France and Italy. In practice this strategy has failed by being watered down. Rather than bringing about a transition to socialism, left-wing parties have instead become managers of capitalism, fostering social democracy, in effect an enlightened reform of capitalism. In many cases they have eventually adopted the same policies as their political rivals.
It may seem that capitalism, state socialism and social democracy are very different, but they all rely on the power of the state and hence, ultimately, on violence for control of society. Capitalism relies on state power to protect private property, state socialism relies on state power to run both the economic and political system and social democracy relies on state power to manage the economy. So at a deep level -- the level of power for social control, and the ultimate reliance on violence -- these three approaches have much in common.
Nonviolent action offers another road, with the potential to be a radical challenge to capitalism without relying on state power. There are hundreds of methods of nonviolent action, including leafletting, strikes, boycotts, marches, sit-ins, refusals to obey and setting up alternative institutions. These methods have been used extensively in all sorts of settings. The most well known are the campaigns for Indian independence led by Gandhi. Here is a list of some of the most often cited highlights of nonviolent action from 1900 onwards.
These are all examples of major challenges to aggression, repression and oppression carried out largely or entirely without violence (though of course violence is often used against nonviolent activists). These events include resistance to military invasion, toppling of repressive regimes and challenges to oppressive social systems or hazardous practices. A number of social movements, notably the feminist and environmental movements, have made nonviolent action an integral part of their campaigning.
But what about nonviolent action against capitalism? A look down this list reveals that not a single one of these highly prominent actions is specifically targeted against capitalism.
Actually, there has been an enormous range of nonviolent action against aspects of capitalism -- just not usually at the dramatic level of the above examples. [1] For example:
As well as these initiatives that challenge aspects of capitalism, a close look at just about any aspect of capitalist society will reveal challenges using nonviolent action. Consider advertising, a crucial part of consumerism and the commodity-based culture. Responses have included rejection of advertising messages (as in "no junk mail" signs on mail boxes), campaigns against particular styles of advertising, and the creative defacing of billboards.
Nonviolent resistance to capitalism has occurred from the beginning of the industrial revolution through to the November-December 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation and subsequent protests in Washington DC, Prague, Melbourne and other cities against the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other global economic management forums. While there is ample nonviolent action within and against the capitalist system, this has not so often been conceived in terms of a nonviolence framework. Instead, the rhetoric and imagery of class struggle, including armed struggle, have had greater saliency in anticapitalist movements. Especially among Marxist organisers, there is neglect of or even antagonism to nonviolence.
The problem is compounded by a neglect of capitalism in writing and thinking on nonviolence. Gandhi's constructive programme of village democracy and self-reliance was certainly noncapitalist, although capitalism as a system was not widely seen as one of his main targets in campaigning. However, nonviolence writers since Gandhi have largely neglected capitalism, and indeed this neglect can be traced to the heart of the consent theory of power used by Gene Sharp as the theoretical foundation of nonviolence theory.[2] Sharp's model assumes a dichotomy between rulers and subjects: if subjects withdraw consent, the power of rulers dissolves. This model works best, as a foundation for practice, when rulers are obvious, as in a military dictatorship.
From the point of the view of the ruler-subject model, capitalism is a complex system. There used to be just a few owners at the top (and there still are a few such as Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch), but increasingly ownership is dispersed among shareholders and managerial power dispersed within corporate bureaucracies. "Withdrawing consent" sounds easy enough in principle but what does it mean in practice: boycotting all corporations or refusing the boss's orders? Most people participate in the market system in various ways that are not easily captured by the ruler-subject picture.
Capitalism is, in many ways, a more robust type of system than a dictatorial regime. Market relations draw people in, making them a part of the system, whereas a dictatorship has a more difficult time providing jobs and benefits to a large segment of the population. Injustice is experienced under both capitalism and a dictatorship, but with a dictatorship the source of injustice is easier to pinpoint. For nonviolence theory and practice, dictatorship is an "easy case": people know what needs to be challenged, and the primary questions are about how to mobilise support and maintain campaigning momentum in the face of repression. Something more sophisticated is needed to transform capitalism.
Many of the most powerful instances of nonviolent action have been largely spontaneous, with little planning or training. This is often the case in resistance to military coups, such as the 1920 Kapp Putsch in Germany, the 1961 Algerian Generals' Revolt and the 1991 coup in the Soviet Union. In each case the nonviolent resistance was improvised on the spot, partly because there was little or no warning that a coup would occur. Even in some of the longer campaigns, the level of planning and training has been low, such as the intifada in Palestine, which burst on the scene as a surprise to both Israelis and the Palestinian leadership and whose course over the years was more an organic development than a carefully calculated trajectory.
Spontaneous nonviolent action has a better chance of being successful when people have an intuitive grasp of what needs to be changed. In the case of a military coup, the coup must be defeated and the status quo (or better) restored. The intifada was a change of tactics -- it was mass unarmed action rather than terrorism, which had been used unsuccessfully by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation -- for a widely understood goal, namely ending the Israeli occupation. But if the goal is not so obvious to participants, then spontaneous nonviolent action -- or violence, for that matter -- is far less likely to be effective.
It was Gandhi who pioneered planning for nonviolent action. He saw overt action as part of a long-term strategy for social change, requiring great care in preparation, planning, discipline and training. His example has been taken to heart by a number of social movements, such as the US civil rights movement and antinuclear campaigners. Realising that an action may lack impact without sufficient preparation, if it is aimed at the wrong target or is ill-timed, campaigners have spent great effort in social analysis, community education and nonviolence training, in order to maximise effectiveness.
With planned nonviolent action, there is a much greater capacity to deal with complex systems of oppression, by working out targets that deal with the source of problems as well as tapping into popular concerns. A strike for higher pay can be valuable to exploited workers but does not challenge the relationship between employers and workers, whereas a work-in to demand a greater say in what is produced aims at a more fundamental change in the relationship.
It is worth noting that the strategies of Leninism and socialist electoralism are calculated, indirect and not "spontaneous." Workers are expected to support political parties claiming to operate on their behalf rather than acting directly against those they see as their exploiters, such as their immediate bosses. Many workers have been sufficiently convinced that they channel their efforts away from "obvious" targets such as prominent capitalists, instead aiming at party building or election campaigning. Anticapitalist activists pursuing a strategy based on nonviolence can learn from this experience: workers and others are quite capable of understanding a long-term strategy for change that initially might not seem as intuitive as tackling obvious targets. The challenge is to develop a suitable strategy that engages large numbers of people.
There is another important reason why nonviolence planning is needed to tackle capitalism: the ways that exploitation and damage under capitalism are disguised. This is nothing new or peculiar to capitalism, since every system of exploitation and inequality is justified by some rationale, whether it is the divine right of kings or the naturalness of the caste system. Yet the process of obfuscation is less transparent with capitalism. The exploitation involved in trade -- for example, selling bananas in exchange for computers -- is not so immediately obvious as is the source of repression when police beat and torture dissidents. The mystifications involved in the commodity form were described insightfully by Marx in the mid 1800s, yet it remains a challenge to expose the exploitation involved.
Information -- including records, computer programs, correspondence, and much else -- plays an ever larger role in capitalist economies. This causes additional factors to come into play that make exposure of capitalist oppression more difficult. Governments use "disinformation" -- intentional telling of lies and half-truths -- to advance their interests. Corporations and governments use public relations to give their messages the right "spin," both to boost favourable images and block damaging stories. Advertising fosters a mind-set in which it is natural to assume that commodities are the solution to problems, hindering critical thinking about the whole commodity system. Hollywood filmed entertainment creates attractive but deceptive images of what life can be like. The result is an information-rich environment that is immensely enticing. Contrary viewpoints, although sometimes censored, are often tolerated on the margins, giving the impression that there is a genuine marketplace of ideas.
This rich information environment provides new challenges for nonviolent activists. The traditional Gandhian philosophy of satyagraha involves seeking the truth through dialogue, with nonviolent action as a means of encouraging opponents to engage in the dialogue. That approach makes some sense when the facts of repression and oppression are reasonably obvious, where there is an obvious source of oppression and where there are opponents with whom activists can engage in dialogue, directly or via intermediaries. These conditions no longer apply. Much of the oppression in capitalism is built into the system of ownership and exchange: there are few obvious "opponents" who by their actions can change the system. Furthermore, the system for producing "unreality" has become so pervasive that straightforward dialogue seems ever more elusive. This is another reason why, for nonviolent action to be used effectively to transform capitalism, a deeper analysis is required, plus careful planning. A system built on a surfeit of information (with plenty of distortions and imbalances) requires a different sort of strategy than a system built primarily on censorship.
There is another reason why nonviolent action has not been seen as a strategy against capitalism: it has been mostly used as a method for promoting reform within capitalism. Strikes, boycotts, work-to-rule, rallies and many other methods have been used to improve workers' pay and conditions, oppose harmful products and block damaging developments. These are all quite valuable, but are seldom seen as challenges to capitalism as a system. As a result, nonviolent action is not recognised as a potentially revolutionary strategy.
"Revolution," namely a fundamental change in social relations, is of course the rhetoric of Marxism. "Reform" is seen as tepid and inadequate, even though a series of reforms may end up having a more lasting impact than a revolution that is quickly corrupted or reversed. Leninist strategy often relies on nonviolent action for early stages but on violence for "advanced" stages of overthrowing the ruling class. One result is that those who perceive themselves as revolutionaries seldom think of nonviolence as the primary means.
There are several ways to address this. One is to develop the model of nonviolent revolution, which has been espoused by Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan, Erik Dammann and others.[3] Another is to scrap the very image of revolution as too tainted by violent and masculine imagery, and to substitute an alternative, such as to think in terms of goals and methods of equality, justice, truth and participation. One challenge is that the vocabulary of "revolution" has been taken over by advertisers.[4] Any alternative vocabulary is similarly susceptible.
In any case, if nonviolent action is to become a strategy against capitalism, to replace it or transform it into something qualitatively different, then the strategy needs to go beyond reform. The key here is strategy. For nonviolence to be effective against capitalism, improved understanding is needed, both of capitalism and of nonviolence itself.
To undertake an effective campaign requires some level of investigation. For example, a campaign against genetically engineered crops needs information on environmental risks, likely impacts on farmers and organic alternatives, plus insight into government and corporate strategies and how they can be countered. Knowledge and insight are invaluable, especially in a field where advanced science and technology play such a major role.
The professionalisation of intellectual work, especially in universities and research laboratories, has led to incredible specialisation. This is most true of technical fields such as biochemistry and computer engineering. The only groups that can take advantage of most such research are those with large resources, especially governments and major corporations, which are able to hire researchers and set the agenda for much of the research. In contrast, protest groups have little money or capacity to hire researchers or to fund expensive investigations. With a budget even one tenth of that devoted to military research and development, enormous advances in nonviolent struggle could be made.[5]
Lacking the capacity to hire researchers or fund their own research, social movements rely heavily on investigations carried out by sympathisers, especially academics. There are many academics who study issues of interest to activists, but unfortunately most of them aim to communicate primarily to other academics. The academic system rewards scholars who publish in refereed journals, namely those relying on critical scrutiny of submissions by peers, which is a recipe for dealing only with what impresses scholars and not with what is beneficial to activists.
This has led to a way of thinking that affects even those scholars who are sympathetic to action. The basic approach is to get the theory right and then draw conclusions. The main orientation is to analysis and critique, with very little on alternatives or strategies. This sort of work can be quite valuable -- some of it is truly inspiring -- but it is not likely to be the foundation for participatory understanding.
What is needed is not theory from on high, developed by theoreticians and dispensed by movement gurus, but theory that can be used and refined daily by rank-and-file activists.[6] Within some social movements, this occurs routinely. Many feminist activists have some familiarity with ideas from feminist theories, including some conception of patriarchy, alternatives and strategies; for this sort of "practical feminism," much academic feminism is irrelevant.
Sometimes low-cost investigations can be carried out by participants. Investigations by activists are increasingly both possible and important. A search for information on the World Wide Web, plus sharing of information with other activists, can quickly lead to valuable material.
Within the nonviolence movement, there is a reasonable level of understanding of nonviolence theory, especially the methods and dynamics of nonviolent action. Nonviolence theory is an outgrowth of the practice of nonviolence and has not "gone academic" the same way as many other areas, perhaps because there are fewer careers to be made in the field. In order to apply nonviolence theory to capitalism, there needs to be a compatible analysis of capitalism, one that can be used by activists.
Analysing capitalism is a major enterprise. There are vast bodies of writing in various traditions, including neoclassical economics, Marxism and non-Marxist political economy. There are insights to be had for nonviolent activists, but to extract them is no easy task. Most of the writing is uncritical of capitalism, while most of the critical works give little attention to strategy for activists. There is a rich banquet for theorists, with only a few crumbs for activists.
Rather than sifting through analyses of capitalism, an alternative approach is to start with the alternative to capitalism and the method of obtaining it and build up activist-relevant theory from that. In the case of nonviolence, the alternative and the method are jointly specified: a nonviolent society created through nonviolent action.
That is the approach taken here. The starting point is nonviolence, which is both a method and a goal. "Nonviolence" is used in a broad sense, including participation and dialogue as well as lack of physical violence. Capitalism is analysed from the perspective of how it can be challenged and transformed using nonviolent action. Of course, it is useful to draw on some of the many insightful analyses of capitalism. But the key point is this: rather than develop a comprehensive analysis of capitalism first and then draw implications, instead critiques of capitalism are drawn on just to the extent that they are relevant for a nonviolent challenge. That means in addition that the analysis must be reasonably clear to activists. A high-level analysis understandable only to a few scholars is not much value except to the scholars themselves.
Needless to say, what I offer here is just one contribution to the process, which to be successful must involve many people grappling with ideas and using them in conjunction with practice.
In the spirit of activist-relevant analysis outlined above, chapter 2 deals with nonviolence, outlining methods, giving examples, presenting arguments for and against, and examining theory. For those who have been exposed to nonviolence theory and practice, this will be familiar ground.
Special attention is given to weaknesses of nonviolence, at a theoretical level, for challenging distributed systems of domination such as capitalism. The implication is that nonviolence theory must be supplemented by an appropriate analysis of the system being challenged. That may seem obvious, but in fact nonviolence theory relies on a very general theory of power and works reasonably well in practice only because many activists have a very good practical insight into local systems and dynamics of power. This combination works moderately well for obvious systems of domination, such as dictatorship, but for more dispersed systems of power such as capitalism, activists need deeper understandings.
With this background on nonviolence, chapter 3 looks at capitalism. Some of the obvious problems with capitalism are outlined, such as exploitation of workers, but only briefly.
The main part of the chapter describes three central aspects of capitalism that are specially relevant for developing a nonviolence strategy. The first is the most obvious: capitalism's link with systems of violence, including government, the military and police. Without the ultimate sanction of violence, capitalism would not survive. But this reliance on violence is hidden through the routine operation of the market and needs to be brought into brighter view. Nonviolent action is ideally designed to challenge and undermine systems based on violence, so the key here is to design nonviolent actions that tackle the violent underpinnings of capitalism.
But although capitalism depends ultimately on violence, for most of the time it is sustained by belief systems and everyday behaviours, including those associated with consumerism, property, entitlement, individualism and selfishness. Challenging such beliefs and behaviours is a difficult task. Nonviolent action offers one approach, but not just any action will serve. Careful examination of options and alternatives is needed. It is in the area of beliefs and behaviours that the most effort is needed, especially because capitalism has an unparalleled capacity to coopt ideological challenges.
A third central aspect of capitalism that is specially relevant for developing a nonviolence strategy is destruction of alternatives. In the rise of capitalism, prior systems and alternative practices, such as community-controlled production, cooperatives and collective provision, were destroyed or marginalised. One reason why capitalism seems like the only option is that alternatives have been eliminated. Nonviolence strategy in this area is reasonably straightforward: it is the building of alternatives, in the tradition of Gandhi's constructive programme. But this is not easy in the face of the power of capital to destroy and supplant alternatives.
Chapter 4 deals briefly with conventional anticapitalist strategies, especially Leninism and socialist electoralism, examining them through the lens of nonviolence theory. None of them has succeeded in permanently replacing capitalism with a better system, though it can be argued that social democracy has limited many of the worst capitalist excesses. From a nonviolence perspective, a central problem with these strategies is that they rely on the use of violence, namely the power of the state, for bringing about change. The existence of a system of violence means that it can be, and often is, used to support the powerful and repress challengers. Thus, these anticapitalist strategies have given only a limited amount of power to the people, retaining much power in the hands of a ruling group, whether it is communist party elites or politicians and bureaucrats in a social democratic government.
Taking note of these failed and flawed challenges to capitalism is especially relevant because some of the greatest hostility to nonviolent alternatives has come from socialists. It might be concluded that the collapse of communism has opened a tremendous opportunity. A nonviolent challenge to capitalism now has better prospects because the alternative socialist road, based on violence, is largely discredited.
Chapter 5 looks at nonviolent alternatives to capitalism, spelling out some possible principles for organising society without the capacity for organised violence. It turns out that there are not many comprehensive visions of society that are explicitly constructed on a nonviolent foundation. To illustrate possibilities, four models are outlined: sarvodaya, anarchism, voluntaryism and demarchy. By examining these, it becomes apparent how little of the current capitalist system is viable without the ultimate sanction of violence.
One of the features of nonviolence is that it is self-consistent: it incorporates its goals within its means. In other words, nonviolent methods are used to help attain a nonviolent society. Looking at models of a nonviolent society is part of the process of developing and refining this self-consistency.
With a background of method, critique and alternative, it is time to examine strategies. This is the task of chapters 6 to 12. Chapter 6 discusses principles for assessing strategies and proposes a short check list for assessing campaigns, including questions such as "Is the campaign resistant to cooption?" This check list is used in the following chapters to assess a range of actual and possible campaigns.
Chapter 7 examines workers' struggles, including campaigns for better wages and conditions, for jobs, workers' control, green bans and whistleblowing. Some campaigns, such as workers' control, provide a potent challenge to capitalism whereas others do not. It is noted here and later that even if a campaign does not challenge capitalism as a system, it may still be very worthwhile for other reasons.
Chapter 8 looks at sabotage, an approach on the border of nonviolent action. Chapter 9 probes environmental activism, in particular campaigns against pesticides, nuclear power and local developments. Chapter 10 analyses social defence, which is nonviolent community resistance as an alternative to military defence, as a means to undermine capitalism. Chapter 11 addresses three campaigns challenging corporate globalisation: the campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the campaign against genetically modified organisms and the development of free software. Chapter 12 assesses several economic alternatives -- community exchange schemes, local money systems and voluntary simplicity -- as strategies against capitalism.
Chapters 7 through 12 illustrate how to use a check list, developed through a nonviolence analysis, to assess strategies for their potential to challenge capitalism. The assessments given here are not definitive. What is important is for activists to decide on their own check lists and choose their campaigns and methods according to their own goals. Finally, chapter 13 discusses the relation between campaigning and the more subtle process of cultural change.
[1] Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Picador, 1999), gives an insightful survey of recent popular challenges to corporate power.
[2] Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action[ (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973), pp. 7-62. Sharp's ideas are discussed in more detail in chapter 2.
[3] Erik Dammann, Revolution in the Affluent Society (London: Heretic Books, 1984); Dave Dellinger, Revolutionary Nonviolence: Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971); George Lakey, Strategy for a Living Revolution (New York: Grossman, 1973); Brian Martin, Social Defence, Social Change (London: Freedom Press, 1993); Martin Oppenheimer, The Urban Guerilla (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1969); Geoffrey Ostergaard, Nonviolent Revolution in India (New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1985).
[4] The title of a new glossy magazine is Revolution: Business and Marketing in the Digital Economy. A billboard -- an ad for Adobe -- shows several men in suits with their neckties ablaze, with the web site address www.smashthestatusquo.com. Then there is the Apple Computer ad showing Gandhi and his spinning wheel, with the Apple slogan "Think different," flying in the fact of the fact that Gandhi was a trenchant critic of both capitalism and much modern technology.
[5] Brian Martin, Technology for Nonviolent Struggle (London: War Resisters' International, 2001).
[6] This view is developed in Brian Martin, "On the value of simple ideas," Information Liberation (London: Freedom Press, 1998), pp. 143-163.
For many purposes, nonviolence is easier to explain through examples than definitions or theory.[1] And what better example than Gandhi's famous march to Dandi in 1930? India was then under British rule and ruthlessly exploited. The British claimed a monopoly on the manufacture of salt, taxed it and arrested any Indians who made it. Gandhi decided illegal production of salt from sea water would be a good form of civil disobedience. To maximise the impact of this act, he marched with his followers for 24 days on the way to the small coastal village of Dandi, telling about the planned act along the way and picking up hundreds of adherents. By the time the march reached Dandi, it had already served as a powerful organising method. The salt-making and arrests then served to dramatise the injustice of British rule. Similar salt-making civil disobedience actions took place simultaneously across India.[2]
This sort of organising would not have been possible if the aim was a violent resistance. Openness would not have been possible, either in recruitment, training or action. Participation would have been limited. Finally, violent attacks often have the effect of unifying the opponents and alienating potential supporters. The march to Dandi, in contrast, did far more to undermine support for the British and win sympathy from observers.
The US civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s made excellent use of nonviolent action.[3] In the US South, slaves had been freed in the 1860s but blacks[4] continued to be oppressed by the practice of segregation, with denial of equal opportunity and retribution for those who bucked the system. In 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, civil rights activist Rosa Parks sat in the white section of a bus, in planned defiance of the segregation laws. After she was arrested, blacks in the city boycotted the buses, many of them walking long distances to work.
The civil rights movement picked up momentum, with additional boycotts, "freedom rides" (blacks and whites on buses together travelling through the South), sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters, marches through segregated cities, road blockades and rallies. The civil rights movement made enormous strides especially through the early 1960s.
The peace movement worldwide has made extensive use of nonviolent action. There is a long tradition of war resistance, namely men refusing to go to war or to be in the army. In war after war there have been men who have gone to prison for refusing military service; in some countries they are persecuted or even killed. Others claim exemption from military service as conscientious objectors or emigrate to avoid conscription.
Many creative actions are used by peace activists to protest against wars, arms production and export, weapons systems and military support for repressive regimes. At Greenham Common in the UK, women protested against the US military base in numerous ways. They maintained a presence for years, held rallies, repeatedly entered the camp (acts of civil disobedience) and sought to win over soldiers and observers.
Other types of peace protest have included marches (including some across continents), rallies, vigils, street theatre, human blockades of trains carrying weapons, trade union bans of arms shipments, sailing ships into nuclear test zones and pouring blood on military documents.
In recent decades, the environmental movement has made heavy use of nonviolent action. Forest activists, for example, have put themselves in the way of bulldozers and chain saws, sometimes locking themselves to equipment in order to hinder operations. Others have placed themselves in vulnerable positions in front of ships carrying rainforest products, using kayaks or even by swimming.
These sorts of dramatic actions are only the tip of the iceberg of activity by social movements. Behind effective actions there is usually a vast amount of work in analysing the situation, preparing for action, nonviolent action training, mobilising support and coordinating the action. For every individual on the "front line" in a dangerous or challenging action, there may be dozens behind the scenes arranging meetings, transport, food, child care, posters, public statements, media liaison, legal support, fund raising and much else. A few highlights of nonviolent action may be thrilling and dramatic, but there is lots of routine work necessary to support these visible actions. This is not so different from military operations: a fighter pilot's sortie is backed by the work of aircraft designers, builders, testers, maintenance workers, planners, accountants, cooks and many others.
Furthermore, the most visible and risky actions do not necessarily have more impact than other sorts of action. Sometimes the most effective methods may be quiet work in talking to neighbours, producing leaflets, holding small meetings and writing letters. Sometimes the most effective actions are personal behaviour in not using certain products, voicing disapproval of a popular policy or being friendly with a stigmatised person. Whether or not these methods are called nonviolent action, they are certainly part of the process of social change from the grassroots.
Nonviolent action has been used to thwart military coups, sometimes with dramatic success. In 1920 there was a military coup in Germany, led by Wolfgang Kapp. The putschists captured the capital, Berlin, and the elected government fled to Stuttgart, where it advocated nonviolent resistance. There was a general strike in Berlin and massive rallies. Noncooperation was an effective tool of resistance. Typists refused to type Kapp's proclamations and bank officials refused to cash his cheques without appropriate signatures, and all authorised signatories refused to sign. The coup collapsed after just four days.[5]
Algeria used to be a colony of France. From 1954 there was an armed struggle for independence, leading to huge loss of life. In August 1961, as the French government made moves towards granting independence, anti-independence French generals in Algeria staged a coup. There was even a possibility of invasion of France. Many French soldiers in Algeria, most of them conscripts, refused to cooperate, simply staying in their quarters. Many pilots took off but flew their planes elsewhere so they could not be used by the generals. As well, there were massive protests in France. The revolt collapsed after just a few days without a single person killed.[6]
There are numerous cases of repressive governments toppled by nonviolent action, especially in Central and South America.[7] In 1944, the repressive military regime in El Salvador was easily able to put down a military revolt. But soon after there was a nonviolent insurrection. University students began a strike, which was soon joined by high school students, then over a period of weeks by physicians and business people, until virtually the entire country was at a standstill. Police shot at some boys, killing one. This led to massive protest in the streets. The dictator, Martínez, did not risk using military troops against the crowds. The troops were reliable against the military revolt but were less so in the face of popular opposition. Martínez left the country just six weeks after the beginning of the nonviolent insurrection.[8]
Finally, there are a few cases where nonviolent resistance has had a degree of success against military invasion. In 1968 Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to put an end to the liberalisation of communist rule there, so-called "socialism with a human face." There was no military resistance, which the Czechoslovak military judged to be futile. Instead, there was a unified nonviolent resistance, from Czechoslovak political leaders to the citizens. One of the most effective forms of opposition was fraternisation: talking to the invading troops, telling them about what was really going on -- they had been told they were there to stop a capitalist restoration -- and encouraging them to support the resistance. The initial aim in the invasion was to set up a puppet government; this was not attained for eight months: leaders of the Czechoslovak Communist Party refused to cooperate with the invaders and no alternative leaders could be found. The invasion backfired badly on the Soviet Union, discrediting its policies worldwide and causing splits or policy switches in many foreign communist parties.[9]
Thus on numerous occasions nonviolent action has demonstrated its effectiveness when used by social movements and against military coups, dictatorships and invasions. But what about social revolution, seen by some as the ultimate goal? Perhaps the best example is the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979, which was largely carried out by nonviolent means.[10] The Shah's regime was a ruthless one, using imprisonment and torture against dissidents and even at random just to strike terror into opponents. It was highly armed and had diplomatic support from all major powers, including the US, Soviet Union, Israel and most Arab states.
As protest developed in 1978, police fired on a crowd, killing several people. In Islamic tradition, a mourning procession was held 40 days later. The procession turned into a political protest, and troops were used again. This process of killing, mourning and protest occurred at various locations around the country, causing an escalation in the resistance, with secular opponents joining the processions. Workers joined by going on strike and instituting go-slows in factories, until virtually the entire economy ground to a halt. As rallies became larger, more and people were shot dead in the streets. But eventually troops refused to fire and the Shah fled the country.
The death toll in Iran was horrific, a total in the tens of thousands. But this was small compared to many armed liberation struggles. For example, many hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the Algerian war for independence, out of a smaller population than Iran's.
It is important to note that not all uses of nonviolent action lead to long-lasting, worthwhile change. Nonviolent action is not guaranteed to succeed either in the short term or long term. The 1989 prodemocracy movement in China, after a short flowering, was crushed in the Beijing massacre. Perhaps more worrying are the dispiriting aftermaths following some short-term successes of nonviolent action. In El Salvador in 1944, the successful nonviolent insurrection against the Martínez dictatorship did not lead to long term improvement for the El Salvadorean people. There was a military coup later in 1944, and continued repression in following decades.
The aftermath of the Iranian revolution was equally disastrous. The new Islamic regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini was just as ruthless as its predecessor in stamping out dissent.
At this point it is valuable to point to the role of planning in nonviolent action. Nonviolent action in social movements, such as the Indian independence movement, the US civil rights movement, the peace movement and the environmental movement, is usually backed up by a fair amount of analysis, preparation, training and mobilisation. Activists think through what they are trying to achieve and pick their methods and opportunities carefully. By doing plenty of preparatory work and by careful planning, the odds are increased that outcomes will be positive and the movement can build strength and attain its goals.
In contrast, many of the dramatic actions against coups, dictatorships and invasions have been largely spontaneous. In the cases of the Kapp Putsch, the Algerian Generals' Revolt, the nonviolent insurrection in El Salvador, the Czechoslovak resistance to the Soviet invasion and the Iranian Revolution, there was little or no preparation, planning or training. In essence, nonviolent action in these cases was largely spontaneous.
Spontaneity is not a reliable basis for success or long-term change. An army could hardly be expected to be successful without recruitment, weapons, training and leadership. Why should nonviolent action be fundamentally different?
What this suggests is that the power of nonviolent action is yet to be fully realised. Military methods have been used systematically for centuries, with vast resources devoted to train soldiers, build weapons and develop strategies. Revolutionary violence has had far fewer resources, but even these have been substantial. By comparison, nonviolent action has had only minimal support and a low level of development.
Gene Sharp gives this description: "Nonviolent action is a generic term covering dozens of specific methods of protest, noncooperation and intervention, in all of which the actionists conduct the conflict by doing -- or refusing to do -- certain things without using physical violence."[11] In his classic work The Politics of Nonviolent Action he catalogued 198 different methods, and since then he has discovered hundreds more. Some methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion are public speeches, petitions, banners, picketing, wearing of symbols, fraternisation, skits, religious processions, homage at burial places, teach-ins and renouncing honours. Some methods of noncooperation are social boycott, student strike, providing sanctuary, hijrat (protest emigration), consumers' boycott, refusal to rent, traders' boycott, lockout, refusal to pay debts, international trade embargo, lightning strike, prisoners' strike, sympathy strike, working-to-rule strike, economic shutdown, boycott of elections, refusal to accept appointed officials, civil disobedience, deliberate inefficiency, mutiny, severance of diplomatic recognition and expulsion from international bodies. Methods of nonviolent intervention include fasting, sit-ins, nonviolent obstruction, guerrilla theatre, stay-in strike, seizure of assets, alternative markets, revealing identities of spies and alternative government.
Nonviolent action is just what its name suggests: it is action rather than nonaction, and it avoids physical violence. Nonviolent action can be coercive and can cause (nonphysical) harm. Strikes, boycotts and sit-ins can all cause economic harm to a business. Noncooperation with political officials and alternative systems for decision making can cause political harm to a government official. Ostracism can cause psychological distress to an individual. Nonviolent action is, after all, a method of waging conflict. If it is going to be effective, it has to make some impact.
Nonviolent action does not involve physical violence. That rules out beatings, imprisonment, torture and killing. Nonviolent action is for waging conflict, so it does not include routine activities such as attending a meeting, voting in an election, buying vegetables or reading a newspaper -- unless, due to circumstances, they are integral parts of a conflict. For example, if a government outlaws carrots, then growing, selling and buying carrots could be a form of nonviolent action.
A crucial issue is whether nonviolent action is used for a "good" purpose. Of course, what is considered good depends on who is judging. Cutting off funds, for example, can be used either to support or oppose racial segregation. In 1956, the legislature in the state of Virginia passed a law to cut off state funding for any school that racially integrated.[12] In contrast, the international campaign against apartheid in South Africa included withdrawal of investment. In the Gandhian approach, acting against repression or oppression are an essential part of the idea of nonviolent action, whereas in the pragmatic approach exemplified by Sharp, nonviolent action is simply a method which can be used for good or bad. Here, the term "satyagraha" is used for the Gandhian conception and "nonviolent action" for the pragmatic one. In practice, even those using the pragmatic conception usually refer to examples where nonviolent action is used to challenge oppression.
Just because nonviolent action can be used for good and bad purposes does not mean it is a neutral method. Weapons can be used for good and bad purposes, but they are not neutral because they are easier to use for harm than for social benefit. A guided missile is a tool with a built-in bias: it is easy to use to destroy and kill, though in principle it could be used to foster harmony, for example by being an object of worship! Nonviolent action is also a tool with a built-in bias: it is easier to use against oppression than for it. To understand why, it is useful to list some of the strengths of nonviolent action.
If these are some of the strengths of nonviolent action, what are the weaknesses? Of course, nonviolent action may not work, but then no method is guaranteed to work in every circumstance. Therefore it is useful to compare nonviolent action to two alternatives: violence (armed struggle) and official channels (such as operating through bureaucracies, courts and governments).
Nonviolent action thus has many strengths but also a number of weaknesses. Several of the strengths are important for challenging capitalism, especially self-consistency, participation and forging lasting change. It is also important for activists to be aware of and try to overcome the weaknesses, especially the reversal of changes made through nonviolent action and the need for a full-scale alternative to capitalism.
It might seem that there is a contradiction in saying that nonviolent action can lead to more lasting change and yet that many of the changes brought about are susceptible to reversal. The resolution is to note that nonviolent action can lead to more lasting change than violence or official channels, especially because it is through a participatory process, but even so reversal of this change is still a great risk. To bring about long-lasting change without using violence is bound to be difficult, and to use violence is to risk causing enormous suffering.
A common argument against nonviolent action is that it can't work against severe repression. What about ruthless invaders who just keep killing people at the least hint of resistance? What can be done to stop a programme of total extermination? How can nonviolent action possibly work against repressive regimes such as the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin?
It is worthwhile exploring various responses to these questions. Nonviolent resistance can be successful against very repressive regimes. As described earlier, the Iranian revolution occurred in the face of a ruthless military and torture apparatus. Against the Nazis, there was effective nonviolent resistance in several countries, including Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands.[15] However, nonviolence was not tried, in a big way, against the Nazis. Many Germans were ardent supporters of the Nazis, and many people in other countries were admirers as well. Supporters of military methods tended to be especially favourable to the Nazis.
There was no concerted attempt from outside Germany to undermine the Nazis using nonviolent methods. Stephen King-Hall gives a telling account of how he tried futilely as late as 1939 to drum up British government support for a campaign to undermine the German people's support for Hitler.[16] There has been no further study on this issue, so it must be considered a possibility that concerted nonviolent attack from around the world could have undermined or restrained the Nazi regime.
Throughout the rule of the Nazis, there was a German opposition to Hitler. This internal opposition was not fostered by the Allies, nor was it given sufficient credit by postwar writers.[17]
To take another example, consider the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein. Nonviolent resistance by the Kuwaiti people was probably not a possibility, since Kuwait was a grossly unequal and authoritarian society, so it would have been difficult to build a popular base for nonviolent resistance. The time to stop Saddam Hussein was much earlier, in the 1980s. Nonviolent opposition was required then against the governments of Iraq, Kuwait and others in the Gulf region that were repressive and undemocratic.
A principal reason why Saddam Hussein's Iraq became such a military power and threat was the support given by outside powers. The Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980 was supported by the governments of the US, Soviet Union and many other countries. Numerous companies sold Saddam Hussein arms and technologies of repression. Governments were silent about his use of chemical weapons against Iranians and against Kurds in Iraq and about his brutal repression of political opponents in Iraq. He was given diplomatic support right up until the invasion of Kuwait.
Since many governments gave Saddam Hussein support during the 1980s, a key role for nonviolent action should have been to expose and oppose the hypocritical foreign policies of Western governments. That is a lesson for the future. There are plenty of repressive regimes in the world today being given full support by Western governments.
Real-life dictatorships are not as all-powerful as might be imagined. Under the brutal military regimes in Argentina and Chile in the 1970s and 1980s, many individuals continued to openly express opposition in the workplace, in public protests and in the media. Student protests shook the harsh regimes in South Korea and Burma. If nonviolent resistance could be prepared for and expanded, then dictatorships would be difficult to sustain.
For example, consider the courageous stand of publisher Jacobo Timerman in Argentina, who maintained his newspaper's open resistance until he was arrested and tortured. An international campaign led to his release and he wrote about his experiences in a powerful book. His efforts were among those that contributed to the collapse of the generals' regime in the country.[18]
Ruthlessness -- namely, the psychology of the ruler -- may not be the key factor. Instead, the real issue is how to make the ruler dependent in some way on the nonviolent resisters. This might be economic dependence or it could be the influence of family members who know people in the resistance. If there is a dependency relationship, then the ruler will encounter great obstacles if severe repression is used, because pressure will increase on the ruler. But if there isn't some direct or indirect connection between the two sides, then even a fairly benevolent ruler may do really nasty things.[19]
The issue of severe repression highlights the issue of suffering. In the Gandhian tradition, suffering by nonviolent activists is a primary mechanism for the effectiveness of nonviolent action, since recognition of this suffering is supposed to "melt the hearts" of opponents. Acceptance of the inevitability of suffering has been criticised, especially by feminists, as perpetuating submissive and dependent orientations that have been imposed on subordinate groups for too long. A more pragmatic response is to note that suffering is seldom effective in converting those dispensing violence. In the case of the 1930 salt satyagraha, the police who brutally attacked protesters were not greatly deterred by the suffering they caused. However, the campaign was influential due to impact on people around the world who read about it through the reports of journalist Webb Miller.[20] So the key to winning over others was a chain of observers and communicators who passed on information about the campaign until it reached those who were ultimately responsible, in this case the British government. This process has been called the "great chain of nonviolence."[21]
Not all methods of nonviolent action open activists to physical attack. Boycotts, for example, are relatively safe compared to sit-ins. If repression is harsh, methods and tactics need to be specially chosen. More use can be made of quiet "mistakes" in carrying out tasks and "misunderstandings" of orders. Preparation in advance is crucial for things such as shutting down factories, protecting dissidents, providing food and shelter for survival, maintaining communications and exposing repression to the world. When support for the resistance becomes widespread, open defiance becomes possible.
In many countries, challenging capitalism is not as likely to lead to brutal physical attacks as would, for example, opposing a harsh dictatorship. In the normal operation of capitalism, suffering is imposed through economic mechanisms, such as job losses, destruction of livelihoods, injuries on the job and harm from dangerous products. As will be seen in later chapters, dealing with capitalist repression is less difficult than dealing with the attractions of the consumer society.
Nonviolent action is often thought of as just a set of methods, but it also is the basis for a way of life. There are several ways to approach this. One is the constructive programme, part of Gandhi's legacy. It involves taking positive measures to overcome poverty, discrimination, exploitation and other social ills by grassroots efforts to build supportive and vibrant communities. Nonviolent action is often a "negative" process: it is used against systems of domination. The essential complementary process is the building of systems without domination.
The constructive programme can be interpreted as a programme of service, namely support and aid for those in greatest need. Another dimension of creating a nonviolent society is the creation of social, political and economic arrangements that minimise oppression. This might be called the "institution building" side of the constructive programme. It includes, for example, workplaces in which workers and community members make decisions about what to produce and how work is done. There is more on this in chapter 5, which covers nonviolent alternatives to capitalism.
Yet another dimension to a nonviolent society is appropriate technology.[22] Technology, which includes everything from hoes, shoes, televisions and needles to jet aircraft and supercomputers, is both a product of society and a reflection of political and economic values. Some technologies are more supportive of a nonviolent society than others. For example, interactive communication media such as the post, telephone and email provide fewer opportunities for domination than do one-directional media such as newspapers and television. One way to help build a nonviolent society is by choosing and developing technologies that support self-reliance.[23]
This outline gives only the briefest introduction to possibilities for a nonviolent society. The point is that nonviolent action as a method is only one part of the picture. The method needs to be tied to an alternative.
Gandhi approached nonviolent action as a moral issue and, in practical terms, as a means for persuading opponents to change their minds as a result of their witnessing the commitment and willing sacrifice of nonviolent activists. While this approach explains some aspects of the power of nonviolent action, it is inadequate on its own. Moral persuasion sometimes works in face-to-face encounters, but has little chance when cause and effect are separated. Bomber pilots show little remorse for the agony caused by their weapons detonating far below,[24] while managers of large international banks have little inkling of the suffering caused by their lending policies in foreign countries.
For insight into both the strengths and weaknesses of nonviolent action, in particular for dealing with capitalism, it is useful to turn to the consent theory of power, proposed by Gene Sharp as the theoretical foundation for his study of the politics of nonviolent action.[25] Sharp is the world's foremost nonviolence scholar. Although his work has received little attention from other scholars, it is enormously influential in nonviolence circles. His theory of power is often presented as the theory component in nonviolent action training.
The essence of Sharp's theory of power is quite simple:
The two key concepts here are the ruler-subject classification and the idea of consent. The "ruler" includes "not only chief executives but also ruling groups and all bodies in command of the State structure."[26] Sharp focuses on the state,[27] spelling out the various structures involved, especially the state bureaucracy, police and military. All those besides the rulers are the subjects.
Sharp defines political power, which is one type of social power, as "the totality of means, influences, and pressures -- including authority, rewards, and sanctions -- available for use to achieve the objectives of the power-holder, especially the institutions of government, the State, and groups opposing either of them."[28] Sharp counterposes his analysis to the common idea that power is a monolithic entity residing in the person or position of a ruler or ruling body. He argues instead that power is pluralistic, residing with a variety of groups and in a diversity of locations, which he calls "loci of power." The loci of power provide a countervailing force against the power of the ruler, especially when the loci are numerous and widely distributed throughout society.
Accepting the argument that power is not intrinsic to rulers, then it must come from somewhere else. Sharp gives the following key sources of power: authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, intangible factors, material resources and sanctions. What is the basis for these sources of power? This is where the second key concept of Sharp's enters in. He says that "these sources of the ruler's power depend intimately upon the obedience and cooperation of the subjects."[29] Without the consent of the subjects -- either their active support or their passive acquiescence -- the ruler would have little power and little basis for rule.
Power for Sharp is always contingent and precarious, requiring cultivation of cooperation and manipulation of potentially antagonistic loci. His consideration of the sources of power thus leads him to obedience as the key: the "most important single quality of any government, without which it would not exist, must be the obedience and submission of its subjects. Obedience is at the heart of political power."[30]
Sharp's focus on obedience then leads him to ask why people obey. He suggests that there is no single answer, but that important are habit, fear of sanctions, moral obligation, self-interest, psychological identification with the ruler, zones of indifference and absence of self-confidence among subjects.
Nonviolent action constitutes a refusal by subjects to obey. The power of the ruler will collapse if consent is withdrawn in an active way. The "active" here is vital. The ruler will not be threatened by grumbling, alienation or critical analyses alone. Sharp is interested in activity, challenge and struggle, in particular with nonviolent methods of action.
The consent picture works best, as theory, when there is an obvious oppressor. Sharp refers regularly to Stalinism and Nazism, and his examples of challenges to authority mostly deal with situations widely perceived as oppressive by Western political judgement. Capitalism is not included. While Sharp gives numerous examples of nonviolent action by workers, he offers no examination of capitalism as a system of power.
One reason for this is that the ruler-subject model does not fit capitalism all that well. True, the traditional Marxist classifications of bourgeoisie and proletariat -- ruling class and working class -- seem to fit a ruler-subject picture. But classes, according to Marx, are defined by their relation to the means of production. Can withdrawal of consent be used to change relationships to means of production? It is not a matter of just withdrawing consent from a particular factory owner, but of withdrawing consent from ownership itself. How to achieve that is not so obvious.
Capitalism is a system of exchange, based on markets for goods, services and labour power. In all of these there is an element of reciprocity. In a retail shop, the exchange is money for goods. In employment, the exchange is money for labour. Oppression in capitalism is built into the exchange system, for example in the surplus extracted by owners, in the alienation of workers, in the degradation of the environment and in dependency of Third World economies. A boycott is a method for withdrawing consent, but can it be used to withdraw consent from the exchange system itself, or from its oppressive elements? Because exchange involves each party both giving and getting something, the idea of rulers and subjects does not fit all that well.
In some workplaces the owner-boss is like a ruler, directly ordering workers around. But in corporate bureaucracies of any size, domination is more diffuse and complex. Many workers both exercise power over subordinates and are subject to superiors. Furthermore, there may be cross-cutting systems of authority, so that formal power depends on the task.
Likewise, in the marketplace, individuals may be both buyers and sellers, with a different exchange and power relationship from situation to situation. The idea of withdrawing power from a ruler does not make a lot of sense in these circumstances.
Thus, because capitalism is a system of cross-cutting relationships, in which oppression is built into the system of exchange as well as exercised through direct domination, the consent theory is not so obviously applicable. The challenge is to modify or supplement consent theory to make it more relevant to capitalism.
Besides capitalism, other systems of power have similar complexities, including patriarchy,[31] bureaucracy and racism. Actually, even systems of domination that seem to fit the ruler-subject model are much more complex. Stalinism was not just a matter of Stalin himself wielding power by consent of the people. A fuller understanding of Stalinism would require analysing the mobilisation of support and suppression of dissent through the Communist Party, the process of industrialisation, the reconstitution of the hierarchical army in the 1918-1921 war against the Western attack on the revolution, the social inheritance of Tsarism and the international political environment.
One of the intriguing aspects of consent theory is that although it has considerable theoretical shortcomings, it is remarkably well suited for activists. Unlike Marxism, which is a theory built around collectivities, social relationships and large-scale processes (classes, base-superstructure, hegemony), consent theory is individualistic and voluntaristic. It immediately implies that individuals can make a difference: all they need to do is withdraw consent and the power of rulers is undermined. This can actually be quite effective, because experienced and perceptive activists often have a remarkably good grasp of power structures, especially local ones. Through their own understanding of complexities of power, they essentially provide the structural analysis that is missing from consent theory. In turn, consent theory provides activists with an easy way to grasp that their own actions can have an impact. The theory, of course, does not provide detailed guidance on what actions to take in particular circumstances, nor a guarantee of success. Therefore activists are seldom under illusions about the difficulty of their task: preparation, training and careful decision making are required.
This suggests that to develop a nonviolent challenge to capitalism, a key factor is for activists to have an understanding of how capitalism works, from the point of view of nonviolent intervention. That is the topic of the next chapter.
[1] For case studies, see Robert Cooney and Helen Michalowski (eds.), The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States (Philadelphia: New Society Press, 1987); Ralph E. Crow, Philip Grant and Saad E. Ibrahim (eds.), Arab Nonviolent Political Struggle in the Middle East (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1990); Souad R. Dajani, Eyes Without Country: Searching for a Palestinian Strategy of Liberation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); Pam McAllister, The River of Courage: Generations of Women's Resistance and Action (Philadelphia: New Society Press, 1991); Philip McManus and Gerald Schlabach (eds.), Relentless Persistence: Nonviolent Action in Latin America (Philadelphia: New Society Press, 1991); Andrew Rigby, Living the Intifada (London: Zed Books, 1991); Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain: The Story of Parihaka (Auckland: Heinemann Educational Books/Southern Cross Books, 1975); Stephen Zunes, "The role of non-violent action in the downfall of apartheid," Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1, 1999, pp. 137-169.
[2] Thomas Weber, On the Salt March: The Historiography of Gandhi's March to Dandi (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 1997). On Gandhi's approach to nonviolence more generally, see Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1927); Richard B. Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (New York: Schocken Books, [1935] 1966); Krishnalal Shridharani, War Without Violence: A Study of Gandhi's Method and its Accomplishments (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939).
On the practicalities of nonviolent action, see Howard Clark, Sheryl Crown, Angela McKee and Hugh MacPherson, Preparing for Nonviolent Direct Action (Nottingham: Peace News/CND, 1984); Virginia Coover, Ellen Deacon, Charles Esser and Christopher Moore, Resource Manual for a Living Revolution (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1981); Narayan Desai, Handbook for Satyagraphis: A Manual for Volunteers of Total Revolution (New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation; Philadelphia: Movement for a New Society, 1980); Per Herngren, Path of Resistance: The Practice of Civil Disobedience (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1993); Martin Jelfs, Manual for Action (London: Action Resources Group, 1982).
[3] Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988); David Halberstam, The Children (New York: Random House, 1998); Coretta Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969).
[4] Terminology has changed. "Negro" was the accepted term at the beginning of the civil rights movement, "black" became standard in the 1960s and more recently "African-American" has been used.
[5] D. J. Goodspeed, The Conspirators: A Study of the Coup d'État (London: Macmillan, 1962).
[6] Adam Roberts, "Civil resistance to military coups," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 12, 1975, pp. 19-36.
[7] Patricia Parkman, Insurrectionary Civic Strikes in Latin America 1931-1961 (Cambridge, MA: Albert Einstein Institution, 1990); Stephen Zunes, "Unarmed insurrections against authoritarian governments in the Third World: a new kind of revolution," Third World Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1994, pp. 403-426.
[8] Patricia Parkman, Nonviolent Insurrection in El Salvador: The Fall of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988).
[9] H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); Philip Windson and Adam Roberts, Czechoslovakia 1968: Reform, Repression and Resistance (London: Chatto and Windus, 1969).
[10] David H. Albert (ed.), Tell the American People: Perspectives on the Iranian Revolution (Philadelphia: Movement for a New Society, 1980); Fereydoun Hoveyda, The Fall of the Shah (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980).
[11] Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973), p. 64.
[13] This point is made forcefully by Gene Keyes, "Heavy casualties and nonviolent defense," Philosophy and Social Action, Vol. 17, Nos. 3-4, July-December 1991, pp. 75-88.
[14] This section is adapted from Brian Martin, "Social defence: arguments and actions," in Shelley Anderson and Janet Larmore (eds.), Nonviolent Struggle and Social Defence (London: War Resisters' International, 1991), pp. 81-141, at pp. 99-107.
[15] Jacques Semelin, Unarmed Against Hitler: Civilian Resistance in Europe 1939-1943 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993).
[16] Stephen King-Hall, Total Victory (London: Faber and Faber, 1941), appendix 3.
[17] Hans Rothfels, The German Opposition to Hitler (London: Oswald Wolff, 1961). See also Werner Rings, Life with the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler's Europe 1939-1945 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982).
[18] Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number (New York: Vintage, 1982).
[19] Ralph Summy, "Nonviolence and the case of the extremely ruthless opponent," Pacifica Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, May-June 1994, pp. 1-29.
[20] Thomas Weber, "'The marchers simply walked forward until struck down': nonviolent suffering and conversion," Peace & Change, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1993, pp. 267-289.
[21] Johan Galtung, "Principles of nonviolent action: the great chain of nonviolence hypothesis," in Nonviolence and Israel/Palestine (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Institute for Peace, 1989), pp. 13-33.
[22] Godfrey Boyle, Peter Harper and the editors of Undercurrents (eds.), Radical Technology (London: Wildwood House, 1976); Ken Darrow and Mike Saxenian (eds.), Appropriate Technology Sourcebook: A Guide to Practical Books for Village and Small Community Technology (Stanford, CA: Volunteers in Asia, 1986); Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (London: Calder & Boyars, 1973)
[23] Johan Galtung, Peter O'Brien and Roy Preiswerk (eds.), Self-Reliance: A Strategy for Development (London: Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1980).
[24] For an excellent treatment of the psychodynamics of killing, see Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995).
[25] See especially Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973), pp. 7-62 and Gene Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1980), pp. 21-67 and 309-378. The following analysis is drawn from, and includes extracts from, Brian Martin, "Gene Sharp's theory of power," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1989, pp. 213-222.
[26] Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom, p. 22.
[27] The term "the state" is used to refer to the system of government and government-run institutions, including the military, police, courts, government departments for taxation, welfare, education and so forth, and government-owned enterprises.
[28] Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom, p. 27.
[29] Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, p. 12.
[30] Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, p. 16.
[31] On patriarchy and consent theory, see Kate McGuinness, "Gene Sharp's theory of power: a feminist critique of consent," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 30, No. 1, 1993, pp. 101-115.
In order to develop a nonviolence strategy against capitalism, it is necessary to analyse capitalism, assessing its assumptions, problems, weaknesses, strengths and driving forces. This is potentially an enormous task. Innumerable scholars and activists have analysed capitalism from various viewpoints, and there is no agreement about the best way to proceed.
The approach here is a bit different since the starting point is nonviolence strategy. This means that the challenge to capitalism cannot use violence or rely on systems of violence and should lead toward an alternative that is not built on violence. In short, nonviolence is both the means and the end. The challenge needs to be a popular, grassroots challenge, since a nonviolent struggle by a small elite has little chance of success. A nonviolence-oriented analysis of capitalism needs to be geared to this strategy. Furthermore, the analysis needs to be one that can be readily understood and implemented by grassroots activists; it cannot be something that is the preserve of a small band of intellectuals.
Of course, it is sensible to draw on insights from various analyses of capitalism and its effects, including Marxism, political economy, environmentalism, feminism, and theories of underdevelopment and neocolonialism, among others. However, rather than starting with one or more of these theories and then developing a nonviolence strategy to implement a strategy based on the theory, the starting point here is nonviolence strategy, with theories of capitalism used to inform it and offer guidance about directions, opportunities, dangers and overlooked areas.
Given the size of this task, this can be only a preliminary assessment. To set the stage, a brief overview of problems with capitalism is given. Some of the strengths of capitalism are mentioned, followed by capitalism's links with other systems of domination. Finally, three crucial areas are presented: capitalism's links with systems of violence; belief systems; and the need for alternatives.
At the core of capitalism is private control of the means of production, including land, factories and knowledge. This is backed up, ultimately, by the coercive power of the state. Generally speaking, the system of ownership and control encourages individuals and groups to put special interests above general interests. This is responsible for many of the problems with capitalism.
What is called capitalism can be many things.[1] It is typically a system in which a small number of large corporations dominate in most sectors of the economy. This is commonly called "monopoly capitalism" though "oligopolistic capitalism" would be more accurate. Capitalism is never a pure or free-standing system but in practice is always intertwined with other systems of power, including the state, patriarchy and the domination of nature. Free-market libertarians advocate a totally free market, perhaps maintained by a "minimal" state, but such a system is, as yet, hypothetical. "Capitalism" as discussed here refers to "actually existing capitalism."[2]
Capitalism is not homogeneous. There are major differences between capitalist societies, with adaptations to local political, religious, cultural and other features. The use of the label "capitalism" can tend to obscure the variability in capitalist systems.
Capitalism has shown a remarkable capacity for regeneration in the face of crises. Some Marxist analysts have referred to today's system as "late capitalism,"[3] but it is possible that it will, centuries hence, be known as "early capitalism." As capitalist economies move from the industrial era to postindustrial society or information economy and move from national economies to a global economy, what people recognise as capitalism is transformed.
The word "capitalism" is used because the system is based on private control of capital, namely the means of production. To call this a free market system is a misleading euphemism. Markets are quite possible without private ownership. The "free" in "free market" implies freedom from state control, but actually it is the state that protects the conditions that make capitalist markets possible. So the term "capitalism" is used here, with the understanding that this refers to "actually existing capitalism" of the kind involving large corporations and state support rather than some libertarian ideal market system.
Since problems with capitalism are well known, only a summary is given here. This is the "case against capitalism"; the generalisations do not apply to every circumstance or individual.
If a person has a serious disability, they may be unable to produce as much as an able-bodied worker, or perhaps unable to obtain a job at all. In a society built around people, the person with a disability would be given support and training to become a productive member of society. Capitalism has no process for achieving this. Similarly, a country that is much poorer in natural resources or skills cannot compete with richer countries. Rather than helping that country, international capitalism keeps it in a dependent position.
As noted before, this is a stark presentation of the case against capitalism. Obviously not every generalisation applies universally. For example, though work is often unsatisfying, for some workers it is satisfying much or all of the time. The problem is that providing satisfying work is not a goal or design principle of capitalism. Similarly, some owners and managers make decisions for the public interest at the expense of profits. But although individuals can do good things, the capitalist system has no built-in method of encouraging this. The key problems with capitalism are predictable consequences of the way it is organised.
It is possible to get carried away with the problems of capitalism. Problems always need to be taken in context; especially important is comparison with alternatives. Capitalism may have problems but some other systems have worse ones.
As well as countering one-sided anticapitalist critiques, examination of capitalism's strengths is also important in order to formulate better strategy. By understanding what capitalism does well, it may be possible to avoid unrealistic hopes and plans -- such as the expectation that capitalism is on the verge of collapse.
Capitalism has repeatedly demonstrated the capacity to promote great increases in the productive capacities of societies, harnessing individual and social drives for improved living standards.[4] This is not guaranteed, as periodic recessions, depressions and collapses have demonstrated; also, increased economic productivity is possible in other systems such as state socialism. However, capitalism has an impressive record, with economic growth in numerous countries being far greater globally than in the days of feudalism. Comparisons between North and South Korea and between East and West Germany suggest that capitalism fosters economic growth far more effectively than state socialism. This can be attributed to the harnessing of self-interest, competition and the search for profits, compared to the bureaucratic constraints of state socialism. True, rampant capitalism growth is responsible for many problems, from inequality to environmental destruction, but the positive side is dramatically increased productivity.
Although capitalism is compatible with dictatorship, it also thrives in societies with representative government in which certain civil liberties are maintained, at least for most people most of the time. The "creative destruction" by which new products and new markets supersede old ones is facilitated by a moderately flexible society in which there is a degree of open dialogue and adaptation to new conditions. Furthermore, representative government provides social supports and opportunities for some citizen participation that can mitigate some of the worse excesses of capitalism, thus protecting the system against itself. For example, a free press and freedom of assembly together can operate to expose harmful products and damaging policies, thus protecting workers and consumers and ultimately ensuring a greater productive capacity.
Although many harmful and wasteful products are produced, capitalist markets are responsive enough to produce and distribute many largely beneficial products, such as vegetables, bricks, beds and recorded music. Indeed, the amazing range of consumer choice is one of the most enticing features of the capitalist system. In buying screws, breakfast cereals, travel packages or building materials, there are options for nearly every taste and requirement. Obviously there are limits to choice: taxpayers are de facto consumers of "defence services" but do not have a choice between military troops, conflict resolution services and peace brigades. But where choice is catered for by markets, even a small market segment can attract entrepreneurs, such as book publishers or cleaning services for tiny niche markets.
Any challenge to capitalism needs to have some alternative in mind. In chapter 5, some nonviolent alternatives to capitalism are assessed against five principles, which themselves can be viewed as features of an expansive interpretation of nonviolence. Here is an evaluation of how capitalism rates.
Contrary to this principle, capitalism is founded on competition between firms and between workers, and discourages cooperation, except for the purposes of competition. It appeals to people's worst impulses with the claim that pursuing self-interest serves the greater good. However, all available evidence from every field suggests that cooperation works better than competition.[5]
Capitalism does not operate according to this principle. Instead, the standard idea is that allocation of the economic product is through jobs: people get rewarded for doing the work to keep society going. This is a sort of meritocracy. However, although jobs do some of the allocation, there's far more to the story. What actually determines a large proportion of the allocation of goods and services are:
Within the framework of the regulated market, solutions to economic inequality include reducing working hours, increasing wages, reducing credential barriers, taxing wealth and paying for housework. However, none of these challenges the foundations of capitalism.
Philosophers who look at "just desert" find little justification for unequal rewards.[7] Why should someone receive more simply because they have rich parents or high natural ability?
There is plenty of production in the world today to satisfy everyone's needs but not, as the Gandhian saying goes, anyone's greed. The problem is distribution.[8]
Under capitalism, this principle is not fulfilled. People are expected to adapt to fill available jobs, rather than work being tailored to the needs of people.[9] A job is typically regarded as an unpleasant activity that is necessary to obtain income for a good life.
Compared to a society that distributes goods to those who most need them, under capitalism there is a great deal of inappropriate production, wasted effort and pointless activity, including advertising, planned obsolescence, military production, provision of luxuries for the rich and unnecessary work and jobs that serve only to help justify receiving a share of society's resources.[10] In contrast, there is a great deal of work that is needed but for which there is little or no pay, including child rearing, provision of goods and services for the poor, environmental improvements, and friendship and support for people who are lonely or have disabilities.
Contrary to this, capitalism is founded on control by those with the most money and power. Participation by the people is fostered only to the extent that it helps firms compete or maintains managerial control (as in limited forms of industrial democracy).
Contrary to this, capitalism is founded on the state's use of its police and military power to protect the system of ownership.
Thus, capitalism fails on all five of these principles. Every one of them is a challenge to the capitalist way of doing things.
With this brief background on problems with and strengths of capitalism, it is time to turn to key areas from the viewpoint of nonviolence strategy. Three are outlined here: systems of violence, belief systems and alternatives. These arise from central aspects of nonviolence strategy. First, since the strategy is based on nonviolence, it is obvious to focus on the violent foundations of capitalism. Second, since the consent theory of power underlies nonviolent action, it is valuable to look at how capitalism fosters consent. Third, the other side to nonviolent action's role in challenging oppressive systems is the constructive programme, namely the building of a nonviolent society. This leads to the issue of alternatives, in particular the way in which capitalism destroys or coopts alternatives.
From the point of view of nonviolence, a crucial feature of capitalism is its links with systems of violence, notably the military and police. For some capitalist countries, which are run as repressive states, this connection is obvious. But for capitalist countries with representative governments, the connections between the military, police and capitalist social relations are less overt.
For most of the time, overt state violence is not required to defend capitalism, since most people go along with the way things are. If the challenge to capitalism is violent, such as by a revolutionary party that uses bombings or assaults, then police and military forces are used to crush the challengers. But sometimes there are serious nonviolent challenges, especially when workers organise. Troops are typically called out when workers in a key sector (such as electricity or transport) go on strike, when workers take over running of a factory or business, or when there is a general strike. Spy agencies monitor and disrupt groups and movements that might be a threat to business or government. Police target groups that challenge property relations, such as workers and environmentalists taking direct action.
At the core of capitalism is private property.[11] Military and police power is needed to maintain and extend the system of ownership, but this is hidden behind the routine operation of the legal and regulatory system, which is seldom perceived as founded on violence. If a person or corporation believes that their money or property has been taken illegally -- for example through insider trading or patent violation -- they can go to court to seek redress. The court decision, if not obeyed voluntarily, can be enforced by police, for example confiscation of goods or even imprisonment. For most of the time, property rights, as interpreted by the courts and various other government agencies, are accepted by everyone concerned. That goes for billion-dollar share transactions as well as everyday purchases of goods.
Petty theft, big-time swindles and organised crime are not major challenges to the property system, since they accept the legitimacy of property and are simply attempts to change ownership in an illegal manner. Criminals are seldom happy for anyone to steal from them. Principled challenges to property, such as squatting and workers' control, are far more threatening.
Many people, especially in the United States, believe that government and corporations are antagonistic, with opposite goals. When governments set up regulations to control product quality or pollution, some corporate leaders complain loudly about government interference. But beyond the superficial frictions, at a deeper level the state operates to provide the conditions for capitalism. The state has its own interests, to be sure, especially in maintaining state authority and a monopoly on what it considers legitimate violence, but it depends on capitalist enterprises for its own survival, notably through taxation. In capitalist societies, states and market economies depend on and mutually reinforce each other.[12]
In recent decades there has been an enormous expansion of private policing. In the US, for example, there are now more security guards, private detectives and others privately paid to carry out policing duties than there are government-funded police. In the military arena, there are now private mercenary companies ready to intervene if the price is right. However, these developments do not change the basic point that capitalism is built on relationships between people, production and distribution ultimately protected by armed force.
As capitalism is increasingly globalised, international policing and military intervention become more important to protect and expand markets and market relationships. For example, economic blockades, backed by armed force, can be imposed on countries such as Cuba. Usually, though, the lure of the market for elites in weaker countries is more effective than military coercion.[13] Investment has done more to promote capitalism in Vietnam than decades of anticommunist warfare.
Although capitalism is backed up by violence, in day-to-day operation no coercion is required. Most people believe that the world works according to capitalist dynamics, and behave accordingly. Quite a few of them believe, in addition, that this is the way things should work, and exert pressure to bring nonconformists into line.
Here are a few common beliefs in capitalist societies, with comments in brackets.
Beliefs do not arise out of nothing: they are an adaptation to the situations in which people find themselves, sometimes challenging these situations. There are three main ways in which beliefs supportive of capitalism develop and are maintained: daily life, schooling and mass media.
First, most people adjust their beliefs to be compatible with their daily life. This is a process of reducing "cognitive dissonance," namely the difference between reality and thought. If daily life is filled with buying and selling, this makes market exchange seem more natural. If daily life involves working as an employee along with many others, this makes selling one's labour power seem more natural. If daily life involves noticing that some people are very rich and some very poor, this makes great economic inequality seem more natural.
But just because something seems natural does not necessarily make it positive or desirable. There is, though, a general tendency for people to believe that the world is just. When someone is poor, this is a potential challenge to the assumption that the world is just. One way to cope is to believe that the poor person is to blame.
Of course, for wealthy and privileged people, it is tempting to believe that they deserve their wealth and privilege, and that others deserve their misfortune. Beliefs in the virtues of capitalism are commonly stronger among its greatest beneficiaries.
Part of day-to-day experience is interacting with other people. If others share certain beliefs, it can be hard to express contrary views, and easier to keep quiet or adapt one's beliefs to standard ones.
A second source of beliefs is schooling. Children learn conventional views about society, learn that they are supposed to defer to authority and learn that they need to earn a living. Just as important as what is learned in the classroom is what is learned from the structure of the schooling experience: pupils are expected to follow the instructions of their teachers, a process that is good training for being an obedient employee.
A third source of beliefs about capitalism is the mass media, especially the commercial media, which "sell" capitalism incessantly through advertisements, through pictures of the "good life" in Hollywood movies and television shows, and in plot lines in which good guys always win. Due to global media coverage, basketball star Michael Jordan became a cult figure even in countries where basketball is not a big sport. Jordan is a symbol of competitive success. He embodies the assumption that someone can become rich and famous by being talented and that being rich and famous is a good thing, worth identifying with and emulating. Jordan thus is living testimony to the capitalist marketplace, even setting aside the products that he endorses. Sport generally is something that is sold through the mass media, especially television, and used to sell other products, such as Nike running shoes and McDonald's.[17]
As well as the beliefs listed above, there are others commonly found in capitalist societies, but of course not everyone subscribes to every one of these beliefs. Nevertheless, the passionate commitment to certain core beliefs by some people (especially those with the most power) and general acceptance by many others makes it possible for capitalism to carry on most of the time without the overt use of force to repress challenges. This process is commonly called hegemony.
There are quite a few contradictions within usual belief systems. Here are some examples.
A key group involved in shaping belief systems is intellectuals. Although universities are attacked by right-wing commentators as havens for left-wing radicals, in practice most academics, journalists, teachers, policy analysts and other knowledge workers support or accept the basic parameters of the capitalist system. Through advertising, public relations, policy development and public commentary, intellectuals give legitimacy to beliefs supportive of capitalism. Many of the most vehement intellectual disputes, for example over employment, public ownership and taxation, are about how best to manage capitalism, not how to transcend it.
For the past several centuries, alternatives to capitalism have been systematically destroyed or coopted. Sometimes this is through the direct efforts of owners and managers and sometimes it is accomplished by the state.
Alternatives to capitalism can provide both a material and symbolic challenge. For example, socialist governments provide a material challenge by preventing capitalist investment and reducing markets. The symbolic challenge is that an alternative is possible, and this can be a more far-reaching threat. This is why even small countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua, with little impact on the global economy, may be seen as such a dire threat by elites in dominant capitalist countries. To reduce this symbolic challenge, such governments have been attacked militarily and economically and by sustained disinformation campaigns designed to reduce their credibility. One way to defend against such attacks is through a more authoritarian socialist government, which then serves to discredit the alternative.
This was the scenario following the Russian Revolution, which occurred without much violence and had significant libertarian aspects. The invasion of the Soviet Union by eight western countries over the period 1918-1920 had the impact of militarising the revolution, helping set the stage for the repression under Stalin and making the Soviet Union a far less attractive model than it might have been otherwise. To this was added an unceasing campaign of anti-socialist propaganda that was only interrupted by the military alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany during World War II.
Attacking and discrediting alternatives is one approach. Another is cooption, n