On the Concept of "Non-Violent Revolution": Reply to Evan Hackett

"We are talking about a non-violent revolution." Is a total revision of the political constitution non-violent? Is that what Eisel Mazard's book "No More Manifestos" says? Does it say the laws of Darwinian evolution work just fine without the violent process of elimination?

Have you heard the phrase "revolution from above"? It's what Stalin did from 1928 onwards. You know, in some cases, in the provinces, people at the bottom, even, headed the show trials. They wanted to root out bureaucrats who had become "enemies of the people" by abusing the absolute power they had been given. In the case of revolution from above, Stalin recreated the system he inherited, filling it with new people. You can imagine an alternative history of total revision in which Stalin failed and the bureaucracy and its bad apples were eaten up from within by a majority of people willing to die for democracy.

Overhauling bureaucracy to create a new system, implementing new forms and processes of statecraft, this requires violence in most cases, whether in the university or in the hospital. Swapping out the people within is easier than making the system anew. (This may be true for France, but will only be slightly less true for Switzerland despite its article 193 in the Federal Constitution, see the side bar within my blog.)

We can now talk about which rôle you and I want to play. I desire to play a creative non-violent and cautionary rôle, culturally preparing society to think the unthinkable. I would prefer the democratic revolution to go like it went in Mongolia after 1989 or after Franco in Spain. But just imagine how much greater the birth-pangs are for direct democracy and Aristotle's "principle of rotation" on the level of every multinational company or local police department. Human nature is brutal and brutalising. Would even the meek university professors simply let go of their strangle-hold of the institution and recede into oblivion, if asked politely enough? Total revision steers toward unforgiving confrontation with the aristocracy.

To ask a question using Karl Marx' image, how can you and I lessen those birth pangs? (Marx used the image differently, I hastily add: he said it in the context of an inexorable class war, which makes those who oppose revolution into de facto criminals and idiots, since communism is destined to succeed. And thus one can only shorten the birth pangs, but they will be a necessary burden.) I suggest we use the non-barbaric methods of cultural production. Even so, is this the "inevitable" way to a non-violent revolution, or a non-violent forgiving system?

I was once at a birthday party (the last time I was ever at a birthday party) at 16 or 15, having been the only one reading about the Russian and Chinese revolutions, I was nevertheless shocked to hear someone I had known since primary school to have cultivated such ignorance on the matter of revolution. She said that many political revolutions are non-violent (I don't know what examples she had in mind, maybe the Arab spring, maybe Gandhi, maybe the usual bullshit), and that therefore she calls for such a non-violent revolution and would be a part of it if it were to happen (she went on to take part in climate strikes). I just told her the facts that "No, revolutions usually involve people with guns in the street shooting at both the guilty and the innocent. Historically, what you are saying is false." She went on to simply deny that being the case.

Eisel's book provides enough evidence to come to the opposite conclusion: that, no, a democratic revolution of the sort described will involve at least some level of pervasive coercion or violence. Let me quote Machiavelli: "The cruel deeds of the multitude are directed at those whom it fears will endanger the common good; those of a monarch are directed at those whom he fears will endanger his own interests." He thinks we should be more afraid of the king and the potential for a king coming to power than of the masses, yet subtracting the king doesn't lead to the disappearance of cruel deeds in the fearful struggle for freedom. In his own time there was the build-up to the 1525 revolutions in what he calls "the German republics" (including Switzerland, Swabia and Austria), in which one of the claims was for abolishing serfdom and have rotating executives and regular assemblies (like the central Swiss communal governments). The praises that Machiavelli heaps onto the Germans is not for their non-violence or the "softness" that christianity, in his opinion, had imbued Italy with; but for their readiness to fight and die for freedom, for the same reason the Thais currently look up to the Burmese.

How do you think rotation politics were established in ancient Athens? There are two primary sources that mention it: Aristotle and Herodotus. A: “After the Fall of the tyranny [in 510BC], there was a struggle between Isagoras the son of Teisander, who was a supporter of the tyrants, and Cleisthenes, who was of the family of the Alcmeonids. When Cleisthenes lost power in the political clubs, he won the support of the people by promising them control of the state.” 

H: “Cleomenes [the Lacedaemonian], … on his arrival sent into banishment seven hundred Athenian families, which were pointed out to him by Isagoras. Succeeding here, he next endeavoured to dissolve the council, and to put the government into the hands of three hundred of the partisans of that leader. But the council resisted, and refused to obey his orders; whereupon Cleomenes, Isagoras, and their followers took possession of the citadel. Here they were attacked by the rest of the Athenians, who unanimously took the side of the council, and were besieged for the space of two days; on the third day they accepted terms, being allowed—at least such of them as were Lacedaemonians—to quit the country.”

I have a quote from the Athenian politician Hyperides for you (which I translated from ancient Greek): [under democratic sovereignty in Athens] "(mere) individuals, appropriately, I believe, had to fear lest (collective) vengeance be meted out (on them) by the people". Now you get a sense of both the 508 revolution and the democratic system (by a pro-democracy figure looking back on the good old times).

"Non-violent revolution" is a bandied-about catchphrase that doesn't reflect historical, political or human reality, it is nothing more than a catchphrase. If there should be "No More Manifestos", that's precisely because there should be no more non-violent revolutionary rhetoric that turn into acceptance of violence (the same way equality justifies the worst power abuses or compassion justifies the worst cruelty) as soon as the bleak counter-revolutionary reality hits the believers' faces, realising the system cannot change without violence. Violence becomes the true side effect of a non-violent "placebo" that we thought could do no harm to preach as revolutionary.

We need to create democracy from below in an ideal environment to stay non-violent; even so, a majority of participants could be putting their lives at risk and will have to be willing to do that for the success of the experiment; yet that doesn't guarantee a revolution solving society's problem (a lack of democracy on all levels). That's why no revolutionary manifestos can solve this problem non-violently.

I suggest we are, indeed tragically, overall, not talking about non-violent revolution.