[lbo-talk] non-violence is the most powerful weapon we have

[Carrol Cox]

A retired sociology professor hee worked on voter registration in Georgia
back in the early '60s. An ex-legislator accosted him and with some others
started beating him badly enough to do some permanent damage. A black man
pulled him away from the mob and took him to his house, where he had a
shotgun. Bill says now, I was glad he had not read my stuff abut
non-violence. Without a reasonable scattering of such violence or threat of
violence the non-violent movement would never have succeeded. Non-violent
civil disobedience is an extremely powerful tactic, one of the most powerful
up to a point. But by itself it ends up powerless.

But in a way that argument is unnecessary because willy-nilly in periods of
social disruption there are going to be groups that turn to violence,
including groups as bad as Lou thinks the Black Bloc is. THEY HAPPEN, and
all of Lou's vitriol will not reduce their number by a single one. So the
problem is how the movement is to absorb and or ignore and in any case
operate in a terrain marked by left violence, some o f it really stupid,
some of it useful. It happens. Get used to it. 

If a left can't flourish in a context marked by both sensible and senseless
violence, then we might as well give up to barbarism. It has triumphed. Does
anyone seriously think that Lou's polemics will persuade anyone to quit the
Black Bloc?

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of // ravi
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2011 4:15 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] non-violence is the most powerful weapon we have

On Nov 9, 2011, at 3:41 PM, c b wrote:
>> If police assaulted a mass picket, or a demonstration, people would
>> have every right to defend themselves if they could. Invoking
>> 'non-violence' in such circumstances would be absurd. One should not
>> to turn a valid, but provisional, tactical calculation into a spurious
>> categorical imperative.
>> 
> ^^^^^
> CB: Followers of ML King did not respond with violence to violent
> police attacks. In general, it is considered that the Civil Rights
> Movement won its struggle with the segregationists with these tactics.
> Similarly, Ghandi had a significant impact in forwarding the Indian
> national liberation movement. So, responding to violence by invoking
> 'non-violence' is not absurd.

Exactly. The invocation, even in such a case (where one is facing police
assault), is still not a "categorical imperative", but continues to be a
tactical calculation. Gandhi advocated violence in self-defence over
becoming a victim (one, but not the only case he outlined is rape). But
faced with an array of well armed police there are likely few
circumstances(*), it seems to me, in which violence will either advance the
cause or protect oneself (or others). Violence in such circumstances seems
to be well-described by what Carrol wrote, an act of elevating violence to a
principle. Tactics here apply to both to the immediate need of self-defence
and the larger goal of winning support and obtaining sought after results.

In all of the above, I do not mean to muddy the distinction that has been
drawn (correctly, IMHO) between property damage and violence to people (even
while acknowledging Jordan's post which questions the distinction between
physical harm and material harm) i.e., I continue to be ambivalent about the
BB actions, but I see some of the arguments of the side "defending" them.

	-ravi

(*) Issues of complexity might make it difficult to calculate ad hoc
real-time the success or fallout of violent action. So, one might use a
provisional principle that unless there is a threat to life, violence should
be avoided. But still, not a categorical imperative.

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