Violence is very effective. The authorities use it to subjugate the population and the American military uses the threat of violence and the action of actual violence to keep the United States the way it is. Except when it is used by governments, it is often called defense and when it is used by the police it is often called 'keeping the peace'. Violence as a tool for revolution is quite effective -- only pacifism is strongly ingrained in us to make us "good citizens".
>Recent research suggests that nonviolent civil resistance is far more successful in creating broad-based change than violent campaigns are, a somewhat surprising finding with a story behind it.
Chenoweth's own subsequent research indicates the issue is far more nuanced, and that states have to some extended adapted to/exploited the strategic challenges posed by nonviolent resistance.
>in many respects it tells a certain class of people what they want to hear.
I'm no health plutocrat. In fact, I've been unemployed for the past several years due to a chronic health condition. I'm currently getting private health coverage through Medicaid.
Recall that Chenoweth started out believing that violence was more effective, then changed her mind after looking at the data.
The internet's response to the CEO shooting has revealed that there is a huge appetite for violence. People with an appetite for violence appear to vastly outnumber those without on sites such as reddit. I'm seeing a lot of arguments in favor of violence, and nearly all of them strike me as quite shoddy. I wish I had the time and energy to respond to all of the bad arguments, but I don't have it.
I started reading your roarmag article (found through the internet archive), and it doesn't seem very compelling.
* The author starts from the premise that BLM succeeded through violence, which seems dubious.
* He seems to assume that "a counterhegemonic and politically radical viewpoint became perplexingly commonsensical overnight" due to violence, and doesn't seem to understand that correlation isn't the same as causation.
* He points out various issues with the study, which weaken the strength of its conclusion, but also seem sort of inescapable when doing this kind of research.
I stopped reading when it became clear to me the author was "telling the audience what they wanted to hear", to use your phrasing. ("ROAR was an online journal of the radical imagination...")
As long as we're going to assume that correlation is causation, I notice that your second link states that
"the success rate of nonviolent resistance campaigns has declined since 2001"
and also
"incidental violence by dissidents has become a more common feature of contemporary nonviolent campaigns compared with earlier cases"
Wonder if those facts are related? Nonviolence isn't what it used to be, and also it's now become less effective?
>states have to some extended adapted to/exploited the strategic challenges posed by nonviolent resistance.
Sure -- and they've adapted to the strategic challenges posed by violent resistance as well, I'd argue.
>The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites. Security forces are important because they ultimately are the agents of repression, and their actions largely decide how violent the confrontation with — and reaction to — the nonviolent campaign is going to be in the end. But there are other security elites, economic and business elites, state media.
Get the violent ones on your side to ultinately win. Got it.
I don't think she's making the point she thinks she's making. And yes, I read the rest of the article. It focused primarily on events taking place in places where, lets face it, there's not quite the ah... oomph in gen pop that exists in the U.S. It's ulitimately a nice thought. It's absolutely accurate in that things like generalized striking and boycotts are great preambles as well. They're also considered illegal in the U.S. to coordinate btw, because of previous run ins with said efficacy during wartime in WWII. Secondary striking was outlawed. So formal unions can't use that as a tactic. You can thank the Taft-Hartley act for that.
So... Yeah. Might want to meditate on that one a bit harder.
1) The changes there are changes _within_ the system. That narrative only covers changes that are compatible with the industrial capitalist system. Indeed, the author focuses only on "transition to democracy". But I'd argue that nonviolent push for capitalism already has capitalism as a foregone conclusion because it is also more efficient, so even "doing nothing" can often bring it about.
2) Therefore, one could say that nonviolent action is most effective and bringing about the current corporate-controlled system.
Of course, that makes sense. But let's say you want to take down a corporate-controlled system. Then violence is likely to be much more effective.
The change to democracy doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's the most likely system to come about due to an advance in technology. So people advocating for it are already swimming with the tide. Also, if a large majority want democracy, then it's more likely to happen, especially due to pressure from other countries who are also democratic and have a vested interest in democracy.
If you want to make a change where the majority (or at list the rich majority) don't want, then violence will be much more effective. For example, I think it's likely that this one killing will do more to cause a renewed vigor in revamping America's health care than any nonviolent protest, because the richest capitalists and shareowners are against it.
>If you want to make a change where the majority (or at list the rich majority) don't want, then violence will be much more effective.
So you're saying violence is a morally acceptable way for a minority to force its will on a majority? This just sounds like an argument for dictatorship.
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I think whatever argument you make in favor of violence, you should anticipate that your political opponents will make the exact same argument to excuse their violence. So whatever argument you make -- be sure it's an argument you are OK with your political opponents using.
A social contract regarding the times and places where it's acceptable to use violence is actually a really valuable thing. Confucius was actually on to something.
Violence creates a lot of problems, but it does solve some issues. Morals is a totally different topic, and whether "political opponents" will resort to violence is yet another topic.
Heck, even the mere fact that the suspect was arrested was based on state-sanctioned "violence". If the police didn't have guns and weren't allowed to use force to arrest people, no amount of non-violent actions would convince a murder suspect to voluntarily present themselves and subject themselves to trial in court.
Violence is probably generally bad overall, but the original statement that "Violence never solved anything" is just plainly false and a lie. It's not a defensible position.
> A social contract regarding the times and places where it's acceptable to use violence is actually a really valuable thing.
Right, this statement itself shows violence does work in a particular context and situation. Far from "violence never solved anything".
>Violence creates a lot of problems, but it does solve some issues. Morals is a totally different topic, and whether "political opponents" will resort to violence is yet another topic.
Degradation of the social contract and the response of those who disagree are potential problems with violence. That makes them on-topic.
>Heck, even the mere fact that the suspect was arrested was based on state-sanctioned "violence". If the police didn't have guns and weren't allowed to use force to arrest people, no amount of non-violent actions would convince a murder suspect to voluntarily present themselves and subject themselves to trial in court.
Indeed. I'm arguing that lawful violence should not, in general, be considered morally equivalent to unlawful violence.
When the state punishes a violent robber, that's not morally equivalent to me randomly punishing someone because I don't like their face. If people are able to successfully argue that these two situations are morally equivalent, expect your society to become a miserable place rather quickly.
I'm not sure why you're hung up on the specific phrase "violence never solved anything", given that it doesn't seem to appear in this comment's grandparent chain.
> So you're saying violence is a morally acceptable way for a minority to force its will on a majority? This just sounds like an argument for dictatorship.
No, I think it's a much more subtle concept than just giving a binary yes or no. Definitely willing to discuss away from this forum though.
> I think whatever argument you make in favor of violence, you should anticipate that your political opponents will make the exact same argument to excuse their violence.
They (capitalists) already use violence to enforce their society.
It's quite effective at causing _something_ to happen, but what that something is isn't controllable; the volatility in outcome can be sculpted via a lot of different approaches, but smaller actors have fewer tools to sculpt the outcome. And it's very easy to enter a state of total commitment from both sides no matter the other costs, essentially forcing other systems to be sacrificed toward what is now a "totally committed conflict." This happens on the small scale (person to person) and on the large scale (state to state). Violence forces shifts in every facet and system at every scale, shifts towards total commitments to more violence. Violence is the final means of trying to enact social change; there's nowhere else to go.
Those who've lived total commitment to violence are it's loudest opponents. I hope we can continue to listen to their stories.
Depends how you define betterment. I'd say putting society under global capitalism was worse for society (especially native tribes, but everyone I'd argue).
Colonialism predated global capitalism, and there's always been various forms of trade routes and wars over the course of civilization, and likely going back far before then. Global capitalism has raised the standard of living over the past century.
Violence certainly can be effective, but also not. Everything is situational. See the Black Panthers vs. peaceful protesting during the civil rights movement. See also the American Revolution. Whether or not violence makes sense likely depends on how strong you and your friends are.
This is also why the state apparatus like it incite violence in the opposition, this gives them authority to respond with violence.
Nonviolent protest and organizing is more dangerous because it could quickly become a populist movement. A small group of people incited into violence, is already fringe and can be quickly suppressed.
I wasn't suggesting that violence is ineffective. The French Revolution is an obvious example. I'm thinking about the "Reign of Terror" that followed though.
The French revolution was extremely ineffective. It turned a short term food crisis due to drought and hailstorms into a long term food crisis that lasted decades. It was a complete failure at addressing the suffering of the people, which only got better after they abandoned their revolutionary ideals, embraced an emperor, and raped and looted the rest of Europe.
In my post, I thought it was clear that I blamed the Napoleonic wars on the French revolution, carrying the resulting damage and suffering longer than that. An estimated 2 million French (more than 5% of France's population) died during the Napoleonic wars, and that obviously doesn't include the maimed, injured, or otherwise harmed.
Then I'm genuinely confused. The meaning of that sentence, to me, was that pillaging has helped with the famine. It would have been a sentence that was consistent with your previous one, except for the "decades" rounding error. Isn't it not what you meant?
yes, pillaging the rest of Europe helped with famine and other economic issues at home. This is consistent with claim of decades because we are looking at 1789-1815(ish) although I think the end is a blur, not line. The Consequences of actions cascade throughout the future, even to today, and just become more dilute as time passes on.
The number of years is really besides the point, which was to call out the consequences were long lasted, not just limited to the terror, and and included the wars.
I deeply appreciate the sentiments of the French revolutionary philosophers, and think we should strive for many of their ideals.
I just dont think mobs parading around the heads of bakers helps advance those ideals, let alone get the bread that doesn't exist for their hungry children.
Am I arguing? I didn't notice. I like Napoleon too and I'm intrigued that someone blames the casualties of the Napoleonic wars on the Revolution rather than, you know, Napoleon.
Events can have an unlimited number of necessary causes or preconditions.
Great men of History can have huge impacts, but usually ride massive tides of population level phenomenon, like economics, culture, and public sentiment.
Of course, it goes without saying. But at some point, I think one has to keep a certain restraint on that blame game. I think blaming the Revolution for Napoleonic wars causalities is crossing the threshold of acceptability.
The Zionist movement had a certain role to play in the Holocaust, didn't it? But most people would consider it a grave error in judgment to attribute blame to this movement for a certain part of Holocaust victims.
Yeah, I see what you mean but just take a much stronger approach. I think that France rampaging around the world was locked in with the French revolution and this is a bigger Factor than Napoleon himself.
One of the big problems with the King was that he was trying to implement tax reform to pay down France's foreign debt. The revolution simultaneously aborted this effort and worsened the situation.
I think an analogous situation that is often taught in textbooks is the impact of the treaty of Versailles on Germany. One could compare the relative impact of the treaty and Hitler on the course of history. I think most historians would argue that the rise of fascism and some war would have happened with or without Hitler as a result of the treaty terms. I think Hitler's personality shaped the scope and detail of that war, and the specific intensity of internal policy. However, without him awar would still have broken out, just with a different individual at the helm.
Moving even further afield you can look at characters like Cortez or Christopher Columbus. I think it's safe to say that Discovery and colonization of the Americas by Europe would have happened 99.9% of the time without them, and in a pretty similar manner. They're essentially replaceable and colonial events were determined almost entirely by the technological differences between continents, and the prevailing social doctrine in Europe. Europeans were bound to discover the Americas, and had spent the prior several hundred years in a cage match practicing the technologies and social structures for warfare and conquest against each other.
I'm not going to argue further on this line, I think we could see approximately where we'd end up agreeing. However, on this:
> Moving even further afield you can look at characters like Cortez or Christopher Columbus. I think it's safe to say that Discovery and colonization of the Americas by Europe would have happened 99.9% of the time without them, and in a pretty similar manner.
I heartily recommend "Civilizations" by Laurent Binet. It's fiction, but oh so delicious. On this very subject.
You don't know beforehand what bold collective actions lead to. Abolishing slavery lead to a pretty ugly civil war in the US. Does it mean it wasn't worth it?
