Michael Albert

How

do we evaluate movement tactics and particularly property-damaging or truly

aggressive or violent tactics?

Pacifism

comes from a religious, philosophical stance and says violence or even property

damage is a bad personal choice that brooks no exceptions. Many pacifists-for

example, Dave Dellinger–argue publicly on behalf of political nonviolence using

evidence, values, and experience of the sorts we’ll address below. They respect

and interact positively with those holding different opinions. There are some

other pacifists, however, who don’t primarily use evidence, logic, and

experience to argue for nonviolence, but instead assert that to reject

nonviolence is immoral. Their morality/religion trumps political debate.

When

adherents of a political view assert that all other actors must agree or be

irrelevant, it is often called sectarianism. Agree with me or you are a

political infidel. In philosophy or religion similar rigidity is often called

fundamentalism. Agree with me or you are a moral infidel. Here’s the hard part:

When a pacifist says that everyone must be pacifist because all other options

are immoral, it is fundamentalism. Lifestyle, philosophical, or religious

pacifists have every right to argue that the movement should always be

nonviolent, of course. But if they do it by proclaiming greater morality they

can’t expect to be taken seriously–and the same goes for those who assert the

limits of nonviolence from atop a high moral horse. So we are back where we

started. What’s characterizes obstruction, property damage, or aggressive or

violent options, and how might folks reasonably argue their preferences?

With

any tactic we can usefully ask:

• What

  are its effects on those who utilize it

• What

  are its effects on those it seeks to pressure

• What

  are its effects on the those protestors wish to organize, and

• What

  are its effects on enduring movement organization and culture?

One

side claims that tactics "exceeding" nonviolence tend to be good in

that they delegitimate authority, reduce tendencies to obedience, uproot

accomodationist habits and culture, inspire participation among working people

and minorities, graphically pinpoint protestor’s anger, promote increased media

coverage that communicates the movement message more widely, and also raise high

social costs for elites, pressuring them to relent.

The

other side claims that tactics "exceeding" nonviolence tend to be bad

in that they help authority rationalize its lack of legitimacy, increase

tendencies to thoughtless individualism, amorality, and paranoia, put off

unorganized working people and minorities (not to mention those unable to

participate in violent settings), curtail open discussion and democratic

decision-making, obscure the focus of protestor’s anger, distort media coverage

disrupting communication to broader audiences, and also give elites means to

change the rules of engagement to their advantage.

The

point by point contrast highlights the complexity of judging tactics. Is having

teach-ins, marching, rallying, doing civil disobedience, obstructing large

numbers of people, or destroying draft card files, a missile nose cone, a

war-making facility, or targeted windows, or trespassing, rioting, resisting

arrest, or even escalating to pro-active aggression against police, scabs, or

other sectors, a good choice? To know, we have to decide which claims are true

and which false, and how we regard the overall tally.

But

why do we have to consider each case on its own merits? Why can’t we have an

across-the-board always binding judgment? In some situations aggressive tactics

yield all the positive affects their advocates expect. Yet in other situations

aggressive tactics fail to deliver any potential benefits. Likewise, in some

situations aggressive tactics yield all the debits their critics anticipate. Yet

other times aggressive tactics minimize or even eliminate the debits. Thus there

are no universal rules about specific tactics and the best we can do is assess

each tactic in each situation, seeking to maximize potential benefits and

minimize potential ills.

For

example, proponents and critics of aggressive tactics need to pay very special

and priority attention to not providing authorities a rationalization to obscure

the government’s wrong-doing. Proponents and critics must be sympathetic to

those disagreeing with them and work hard to increase democratic participation

and reduce tendencies to anti-social individualism, paranoia, or passivity. They

must try to find ways to increase possibilities of wide participation and open

discussion and decision-making, and particularly to prevent their tactics from

alienating sought-after constituencies. They must put a high onus of evidence on

themselves on behalf of avoiding adventurism or endangering others or otherwise

weakening the balance of power between the movement and elites, whether by

action or inaction. They must raise social costs today consistently with being

able to do better tomorrow. It is also important to undertake or refrain from

actions in ways that don’t fracture the movement and that don’t reduce sympathy

for the movement or obscure its message among constituencies it seeks to reach.

And both advocates and opponents of any particular tactic must avoid pressuring

movement participants into hostile stances toward one another, rather than

battling only opposed elites.

Pursuing

non-nonviolent tactics by disdaining participation and democracy or by

wildly imagining non-existent conditions looks like macho play-acting rather

than seriously seeking maximal impact. Opposing non-nonviolent tactics by

equating minuscule disruption or destruction with the unimaginably inhumane and

catastrophic violence of elites or otherwise worsening movement communication

looks like fundamentalism rather than seriously seeking maximal positive impact.

On

the upside, when groups who either advocate or oppose aggressive tactics pay

serious attention to strategic concerns so that others are aware of their

motives, logic, and attentiveness, and of how they take into account the views

and agendas of their protest partners, then while folks may still sharply

disagree about choices, the dialog can be one of respect and substantive debate.

Surely

we can all ratify that respect and substantive debate are worthy goals. Then

doesn’t it also follow that having protest norms that facilitate opposed groups

communicating usefully is much better than having protest norms which pit

opposed groups against one another in ideological death matches? "Different

strokes for different folks" is a good slogan, as long as we add that they

need to also pursue mutual concern, understanding, and empathy.