A-Infos (en) Anarkismo.net, Revolution, Violence, and Nonviolence - Why I am Not a Pacifist, by Wayne Price, - NEFAC

Pacifists believe that a better world can be won without any use of 
popular violence. While nonviolent methods can be useful, they do not 
always work. Some conflicts have to be fought through. Revolutions may 
have to include violence. We anarchists want a world without war or any 
sort of violence. But to get it, there will have to be a social 
revolution to completely change society, overturning the ruling class 
and its state. We will try to keep revolutionary violence to a minimum, 
but the vicious, brutal, nature of the capitalist class will require at 
least the threat of mass violence.
While absolute pacifists are a small minority in the general population, 
they are a large proportion of anarchists. Pacifists are completely 
against war or any type of mass violence under any circumstances, even 
in defense from military invasion or to make a democratic revolution. 
Naturally many pacifists are also anarchists--being against armies, they 
also oppose the police. It has been said jokingly (with what truth I do 
not know) that during retreats of the pacifist War Resisters League, 
softball games are played between the anarchists and the Socialist Party 
members.

When I first became an anarchist, it was of the anarchist-pacifist 
tendency. I admired the pacifist Paul Goodman, who was perhaps the most 
influential anarchist of the sixties. I also admired leading radical 
pacifists, such as the great A.J. Muste, David Dellinger, David 
McReynolds, and Bayard Rustin. These people combined pacifism with a 
radical, even revolutionary, critique of capitalism and the war-waging 
state. I studied Gandhi, who was no anarchist (he led a movement for a 
national state for India) but was a decentralist.

It should not be surprising that many good radicals are attracted to 
pacifism and its nonviolent program. The history of war-making has come 
to its climax in the potential for nuclear war. Humanity has to find a 
way to end war, if it is to survive. The history of violent revolutions 
has produced gains, but still leaves humanity with societies ruled by 
minorities which exploit the workers and wage wars of extermination. 
"Terrorist" tactics of violence by small groups of would-be 
revolutionary heros have had little result except to let the state 
increase repression.

But eventually I was persuaded that pacifism (and the version of 
anarchism which went with it) was not sufficient to make the revolution 
which was needed--but I respect those who believe in it. I do not share 
the views of Ward Churchill (1998, Pacifism as Pathology, Winnipeg: 
Arbeiter Ring) that a political belief in pacifism is a mental illness.

Rejecting pacifism does not mean that I am “for” violence. Personally I 
hate violence, like most sane people. But like 99.999...% of humanity, I 
believe that sometimes violence is justified, particularly in defense 
against the violence of others. I believe that there are two basic 
programmatic weaknesses in pacifism: nonviolence does not always work 
and some conflicts are irreconcilable.
Nonviolence Does Not Always Work
Pacifists argue that if negotiations fail, it is possible to use 
techniques of mass nonviolence. This includes strikes, boycotts, 
sit-ins, pickets, demonstrations, and other forms of civil disobedience. 
In mass nonviolence, the activists permit themselves to be arrested or 
beaten by the police or army, but do not fight back in any way. “If 
blood be shed, let it be our blood.” Presumably this leads to winning 
over the opponent, to reaching out to the good that is within them. Less 
emphasized is that this includes a certain use of power: boycotts and 
strikes cause financial loss to businesspeople and pressure them to do 
what they do not want to do, to make a deal with the demonstrators. 
Similarly, brutality against peaceful demonstrators, if widely reported, 
can appeal to decent people elsewhere, embarrassing the government, and 
causing outside forces to put pressure on local powers to let up (when 
the local cops or vigilantes would just as soon massacre the people).

These techniques work part of the time. The problem is that they do not 
work all the time. Pacifists do not say, Let us consider how to use 
nonviolent tactics when we can, or as much as possible. Pacifists say, 
Only nonviolent tactics should be used. Violent self-defense should 
never be used. To refute pacifism it is not necessary to show that 
nonviolence never works, just to show that it does not work all the 
time, that sometimes armed struggle is necessary.

Nonviolent tactics will fail when faced with an absolutely ruthless 
enemy. Gandhi suggested that the Jews should have used nonviolence 
against the Nazis. This would have been pointless. The Holocaust could 
have only been prevented by a workers’ revolution in Germany. Instead, 
it was finally ended through the Allied military victory. Similarly, a 
Nazi occupation of India--or a Japanese invasion, which could have 
happened--would have killed Gandhi and the membership of the Congress 
Party. Also, successful nonviolent methods require publicity, so the 
rest of the world knows about it and can put pressure on the oppressors. 
The Nazis or Imperial Japanese would not have let nonviolent campaigns 
be reported. Gandhi and Nehru would have vanished without the world’s 
knowledge. The same can be said of nonviolence methods when used against 
other ruthless and secretive regimes.

The two most famous nonviolent campaigns are the independence struggle 
in India and the civil rights movement of African-Americans. In India, 
the movement succeeded due to the weakness of the British imperialists. 
In the past, they had been willing to simply massacre the Indians, as 
they did with the Amritsar massacre (shown in the movie “Gandhi”). But 
they were being replaced by the U.S. (and the Soviet Union) as the 
world’s greatest imperialists. They no longer had the power or wealth to 
hold down India. The Japanese army softened them up in World War II. Had 
they repressed Gandhi’s movement, they knew they would have faced an 
armed struggle instead (after all, the Chinese revolution was happening 
next door). Finally, they knew that the issue was not all-or-nothing for 
British capitalism; after independence they had more investments in 
India than before.

Nonviolence worked in the African-American civil rights struggle because 
the South was part of the larger U.S. The national capitalists, while 
not supporters of Black people, had no essential need for Southern 
racial segregation. National politicians were embarrassed 
internationally as they competed with the Communists. Internationally 
and domestically their pretense of “democracy” and “freedom” were being 
given the lie. So they put pressure on the Southern racists to clean up 
their act and end overt Jim Crow. African-Americans remained on the 
bottom of U.S. society but were freed from legal segregation.

But if the Southern racists had been left to themselves, uncontrolled by 
national forces, they would have drowned the nonviolent movement in blood.

Nonviolence was always limited. Nonviolent demonstrators were often 
protected at night by local Black people patrolling their neighborhoods 
with rifles. As mentioned, boycotts and strikes were also means of 
coercion against the local power structure, not just means of appealing 
to their consciences. Efforts to use courts and to get laws passed are 
only seen as nonviolent because we are taught to ignore the violence of 
the state. Actually, court rulings for integration and laws against 
discrimination only work if they are backed by the armed power of the 
state. This became clear when the federal government had to call up the 
National Guard to integrate colleges and schools.

A test case came in South Africa after World War II. As parts of Africa 
won independence, the Afrikaners imposed a system of apartheid on South 
African Blacks. The Blacks organized a mass nonviolent movement. The 
apartheid regime brutally repressed the movement, shooting down 
demonstrators in cold blood at Sharpesville and elsewhere. The movement 
was disorganized and driven underground. Nelson Mandela and others had 
to give up nonviolence in favor of armed struggle. The system lasted for 
decades more, until economic weakness, combined with a violent rebellion 
forced the rulers to give up apartheid (although they kept the 
capitalist system under which Black workers remain oppressed and 
exploited). South Africa demonstrated that a ruthless enough power 
structure can defeat nonviolent methods.
Some Struggles Have to be Fought Through
Some social conflicts are simply irreconcilable. The two sides cannot 
come to an agreement. The enemy cannot be won over, except as isolated 
individuals here and there.
In India and the U.S. South, there were political changes but capitalism 
was not challenged. This was even true of South Africa. It was also true 
of the changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The rich 
mostly kept their wealth and power (Communist bureaucrats became private 
capitalists). They were willing, when it was necessary, to make changes 
which did not take away their control and ownership of the economy.

A socialist revolution would be quite different. The workers would take 
away the total wealth, power, and position of the ruling class. The 
capitalist class has educated itself that it stands for God and 
civilization. It believes it stands for law and order, against chaos and 
barbarism. It will not permit itself to be easily overturned. It will 
fight with the fiercest of barbaric brutality. Right now the U.S. ruling 
class supports dictatorships all over the world and wages cruel warfare 
against the people of several countries. It would not do less inside 
North America if it felt it was necessary. Like the rise of German 
Nazism or of Pinochet’s coup in Chile, the capitalist class is capable 
of overturning even its limited democracy and replacing it with the most 
horrific repression. We must not underestimate the vileness of the 
capitalist class of the big imperial states.

Such repression cannot be avoided by any attempt at humanistic or 
Christian reconciliation. I do not advocate any sort of premature or 
minority violence. But eventually there will be a confrontation between 
the working people and oppressed and the capitalists and their 
hangers-on and agents.

In my country, the United States of America (and in similar countries), 
I foresee one of two outcomes for a revolution. One is that a revolution 
may be a particularly bloody conflict, a vicious civil war. After all, 
the U.S. has a large middle class and a well-off layer of workers, with 
traditions of patriotism, religious superstition, racism and sexism, as 
well as the already-mentioned reactionary ruling class. Such forces may 
oppose a working class rebellion to the bitter end. It may be necessary 
for U.S. rebels to bring in a revolutionary army from Mexico.

On the other hand, it is possible that a U.S. revolution could be fairly 
peaceful and almost nonviolent. Unlike many other countries, the big 
majority of U.S. people are working class (perhaps 80%). Most of the 
military ranks are from the working class. Unity among the workers, as 
well as other oppressed groups, could prevent much violence. Especially 
if revolutions have been successful in other countries, the ruling class 
and its agents could be demoralized and easier to overthrow.

But even in the preferred case, violence will be kept to a minimum 
precisely if we are prepared, organized, and unified. The more prepared 
our class is to defend itself, the more likely the enemy is to be 
demoralized and to give up easily. And if an armed conflict becomes 
inevitable, as per the first possibility, then obviously it will be 
better to have been prepared. So either way, it is better for workers 
and the oppressed not to have illusions in the peaceful nature of the 
capitalist enemy.

Revolutions always use elements of what is otherwise regarded as 
“nonviolence.” Revolutionary struggles often include strikes and other 
mass actions which are often unarmed, at least at first. Also, 
revolutions always try to win over the troops on the other side (and no 
future revolution will succeed without winning over the troops of the 
empire’s army), as well as to raise the morale of the troops in any 
revolutionary army. Revolutions seek to win over the population behind 
the troops on the counterrevolutionary side as well as to encourage the 
population on the revolutionary side. Revolutions try to demoralize the 
core of hardened counterrevolutionary forces. These effects are done by 
propaganda but more than that, by politics. Revolutionaries raised 
demands for land, freedom, an end to poverty and oppression, and peace, 
and implement these ideas in whatever territory they control.

Strikes, propaganda, and political moves are all part of any 
revolutionary struggle--but they are not enough. For example, troops 
will not lightly come over to the workers’ side. After all, it is a very 
serious matter for soldiers to disobey their officers--they can be shot. 
Rebellious troops must believe that the people are prepared to go all 
the way, to protect them through a successful revolution. Nonviolent 
methods may be used, but are not sufficient.

We anarchists want a world without war or any sort of violence. But to 
get it, there will have to be a social revolution to completely change 
society, overturning the ruling class and its state. We will try to keep 
revolutionary violence to a minimum, but the vicious, brutal, nature of 
the capitalist class will require at least the threat of mass violence.
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*Written for http://www.anarkismo.net *
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