On 06/02/2014, at 5:46 PM, Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
>
> Far be it from me to argue with Ho Chi Minh. And of course strategy vs. tactics
> is not at all a clear-cut distinction. But I'm not quite sure what 'nonviolence as
> strategy' might mean, unless it's the eschewal of violence. I don't think Ho
> Chi Minh would have signed up for that; at any rate, he didn't.
>
> But no doubt I've missed Bill's point. I'd like to hear more specifics about
> what it means to embrace nonviolence as a strategy.
>
> Of course I can't resist the observation that one can have neither strategy
> nor tactics unless one commands forces. But perhaps that's ill-natured.
Ho Chi Minh's strategy was not strategic non-violence. His strategy seems to have been rather simpler - deny the enemy any legitimacy and survive until they quit.
Everyone is familiar with the strategic non-violence adopted by people such as Ghandi and MLK, so I'm not sure which part you don't understand.
As to what it means, well its the strategy for winning the political battle. I'll give you a couple of examples from nearer to me, here in Tasmania. The first example that comes to mind was the campaign to stop the building of a hydro-elecric dam on the Franklin Dam in the south-west wilderness of the state. The problem was to pressure the federal government to intervene to block the construction.
The climax of the campaign was a blockade of the construction site, though of course that was preceded by years of public mobilisation and public relations campaigns on a local, national and international level. The blockade was run along strict strategic nom-violence lines, because of course the objective of the blockade was never to stop construction by sheer physical force. But by mobilising public opinion, which would create political pressure to force the federal government to intervene and stop the construction.
To cut a long story short, everything went according to plan and the dam was blocked by the incoming Hawke Labor government, in what was one of its first acts. But the crux of the issue was that non-violence was strategic in the sense that the strategy of the campaigners was to mobilise public opinion. Violence would have run counter to that, without there being any possibility of it assisting in any other way or contributing to ultimate success. So non-violence was strategic.
Another example that springs to mind was a union campaign in the north-west of the state a few years later to fight the de-unionisation of a workplace, the Burnie pulp and paper mill. Again, there was a lot of argy-bargy leading up to the climax of the campaign, a big picket line to prevent the employer from operating the paper mill using scab labour while the workers were on strike. That picket too was run along strategic non-violence lines, because once again the political battle was recognised as being a vital aspect for the workers to win, if they were to be victorious.
One difference here from the Franklin Dam campaign though was that effectively blockading the factory was an important objective of the picket, but it was recognised that it was ultimately of lesser importance than achieving and retaining public support. The campaign was successful (though it proved to be a temporary victory, but that's another story) because the union won the political battle so overwhelmingly that the owners of the factory were unable to even get the police to enforce the letter of the law. Not only that, but the local community were so outraged by the bosses actions they began to join the picket line. In those circumstances, the bosses just had to give up.
This BTW picket served as an important lesson for the union movement and a template for the later, much bigger and more internationally famous "War on the Waterfront" dispute between Patrick's Stevedoring and the Waterside Workers Federation. The wharfies picket line used the same strategy to win the political battle and retain public support for their campaign.
The crucial thing to grasp out of all this is that, as your early socialist thinker Daniel De Leon realised over 100 years ago, there are two aspects to these battles. It is not just a matter of applying sheer physical force to prevail against the enemy, when the enemy is the employing class and/or the state. Public opinion and public support can be crucial in different ways. In pressuring governments to implement the policies we want, or simply in pressuring the state and its organs, such as the police, not to intervene on the side of the employer class.
The implications are that tactics like possible use of violence, must be subservient to strategy. So, as Ho Chi Minh observed, tactics must always be subservient to strategy and if a tactic would undermine strategy then it is better to lose the battle in order to win the war. Violence may appear to be a useful tactic, but if you need to win the public opinion and violence would interfere with that, then is has to be avoided in the interests of keeping to the overall strategy.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas