WRL Homepage • WRL Programs • WRL Literature • WRL Actions • WRL Employment • About WRL
|
Homepages: | |
| With Courage & Planning By Carol Rank Waging
Nonviolent Struggle: AS A PEACE STUDIES academic, I have used Gene Sharp’s work for many years and welcome this new and major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of nonviolent struggle. Nearly 600 pages long, it presents the basic principles and methods of nonviolent struggle, gives a wide range of case studies, and provides an in-depth analysis of both the dynamics of nonviolent struggle and ways it can be made more effective. According to Sharp, this book builds on (but does not supplant) his earlier book, The Politics of Nonviolent Action. While some of the case studies in this book are familiar, many are new and include the 1989 student uprising in China that led to the Tiananmen Square massacre, and the struggle against and downfall of Milosevic in Serbia. The need for strategic planning is an ongoing theme throughout the book, wellillustrated both by case studies and the sections that follow them, which are written almost as a “how-to” manual for nonviolent activists. In fact, one of the quotes on the jacket cover from a founding member of the Serbian democracy movement, Otpor, describes the book as a “masterpiece … very useful not only to those who study nonviolent struggle but also to those in need, nonviolent activists of pro-democratic movements in the world’s great battlefields.” The military language of the quote is also reflected and reinforced throughout the book itself: Nonviolent struggle is a battle requiring courage and planning, just as in a military campaign. However I part with Gene Sharp in the way that he distances himself from the moral and spiritual basis of nonviolence as exemplified by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. In the preface, Sharp says that Gandhi’s thinking on power and strategy in relation to nonviolent action influenced him, but that equal or greater learning came to him from pragmatic examples, especially from Europe. Sharp places himself firmly in the “realist” camp of nonviolent action, and goes so far as to say that use of the term nonviolence is “unfortunate, because it confuses these forms of mass action with beliefs in ethical or religious nonviolence.” He says nonviolent struggle is what people do, not what they believe. What is empowering about Sharp’s approach is his strong case for ordinary people taking up nonviolent struggle without having to be a saint to do so. According to Sharp, nonviolent struggle is not based on “loving your enemies” but on the “undeniable capacity of human beings to be stubborn.” While I find this approach refreshing, I also feel it does an injustice to a deeper and more comprehensive view of nonviolence, which is that it is not only a method of waging conflict but also a way of life. Gandhi was a master at strategic planning but he also had a vision of constructing a nonviolent society. While this debate between the two schools of thought on nonviolent action—pragmatic vs. principled —is not new, the distinction between the two approaches appeared strong in this volume, and I still question it. For example, in the case study of the United Farm Workers, it is clear that Cesar Chavez and others in the movement were acting out of “stubbornness” and using nonviolent action strategically. However many were also acting out of moral and religious conviction, as evidenced in their prayer meetings and the fast that Cesar Chavez went on when the movement threatened to become violent. The fast was a very Gandhian thing to do; it was motivated by a deep spiritual commitment to nonviolence and was not just a tactic. The moral and ethical elements of nonviolence are not so easily separated out as seems to be argued by Sharp. Nevertheless, this is a book of great value and, because of its pragmatic approach can reach out to and convince a wider audience of the efficacy of nonviolent struggle and the need for it in the “battles” of the 21st century. Nonviolent activists, says Sharp, must “cast off fear, based on the confidence of their own power.” It is that understanding of and dedication to the great underused power of nonviolent struggle that is most compelling in Sharp’s work. Nonviolent struggle requires courage and strategy, and, as the 19th century opponent of slavery Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will.” Carol Rank is a professor at the Center for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University, Britain. |
WRL Homepage • WRL Programs • WRL Literature • WRL Actions • WRL Employment • About WRL
