The Sinn Fein Policy. (1907)

From the September 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Policy Foreshadowed.

“I had come to the conclusion that the whole system ought to be met with resistance at every point; and the means for this would be extremely simple: a combination amongst the people to obstruct and render impossible the transport and shipment of Irish provisions; to refuse all aid in its removal; to destroy the highways; to prevent everyone, by intimidation, from daring to bid for grain or cattle if brought to auction under distress (a method of obstruction that had put an end to church tithes before); in short, to offer a passive resistance universally, but occasionally, when opportunity served, to try the steel.”

The above lines were written by John Mitchel in 1847 when the Irish Confederation refused to endorse his policy of immediate resistance to the collection of rents, rates, and taxes. The portion relating to the transport and shipment of Irish goods referred to the exportation of Irish produce in a time when the country was devastated by famine and thousands were dying of starvation.

Parnell’s proposition to the Nationalist members, “to withdraw from the British House of Commons and organise the people in Ireland to resist English rule at every point” was defeated on a vote of the party. The idea of carrying on a campaign of passive resistance to British rule in Ireland is therefore not by any means new, but the Sinn Fein Party is the first party that has attempted to organise the people for this object. It has already succeeded in winning over the youngest and most ardent of the Irish race; it has converted four of the official Nationalist members of Parliament including one of their whips, Sir T. G. Esmonde. At a meeting of the Nationalist Party in the House of Commons it was proposed and seconded that the Party adopt the Sinn Fein policy and withdraw from Westminster. In North Leitrim the member, Mr. Dolan, having embraced the new doctrine, is about to contest the seat against the official Nationalist candidate.

The Movement Realised.

The Sinn Fein Party claim to have a majority in favour of their policy in the County and District Councils in the country, and Mr. Sweetman, chairman of the Meath County Council, at the meeting of councillors from various counties proposed and caused to be discussed at length a resolution to this effect: “that we refuse to collect any more rates or taxes”. Thus we see that the Sinn Fein policy will probably in the future be the method adopted throughout Ireland to resist and if possible destroy the domination of “the thrice accursed British Empire”.

What is the nature and origin of the Sinn Fein movement? The words Sinn Fein mean “ourselves alone”, and those who are acquainted with Ireland know that within the last ten years a movement was set on foot for the restoration of the Irish language, customs, industries, music and art; started and organised  by the Gaelic League it was at first strictly non-political and non-sectarian, its ultimate object was an Irish Ireland, everything in language, clothing, manner and sport which was not originally Irish was banned and ridiculed, and the offenders were termed “Shoneens”, “Flunkeys”, and “West Britons”. The Gaelic League was a decided success and it did not exist long before it had a political party formed independent of all others and having for its object “Ireland a Nation”, not in the sense of a British colony, but independent of all external authority. This party was formed on the same basis as Wolfe Tone a century ago formed the “United Irishmen”, and like Tone it wanted “to unite Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter under the common name of Irishman”. “Our independence must be had at all hazards; if the men of property will not support us they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, the men of no property”. Thus we see the Sinn Fein Party is the child of the Irish education movement, and is alluded to by the Parliamentarians as the “crowd of intellectuals”, “armchair agitators”, etc.

It sees the Futility of Compromise…

The Sinn Fein Party is now possessed of several weekly journals that voice its views. It has also published a large number of pamphlets that have aided considerably in bringing the Party to its present position. In their weekly journals the Sinn Feiners riddle the arguments of the Parliamentarians, they point to the fact that in 1847 the population of Ireland was 9 millions, while today it is about 4 millions after over half a century of labour on the “flure of the House”. That the Land Acts were fraudulent and did not even touch the question of the poverty problem, that a Liberal Government is now in office but not officially pledged to Home Rule; in short, that the Nationalist Party is ineffective as a weapon against British misrule in Ireland.

The Sinn Fein Party propose the immediate withdrawal from Westminster of the 82 Irish members and that the £30,000 now annually spent in maintaining this useless weapon be spent in sending consuls to foreign countries to open up markets for Irish goods. That all monies invested in the banks of Ireland at the present time be withdrawn and a People’s Bank be formed to lend money and transact all business at interest to cover only the cost of management. That a National Stock Exchange be formed in Dublin. That the people refuse to pay rent, rates, or taxes, and that the County Councils and other such bodies responsible refuse to collect same. That, if possible, no articles from which the British Government derives a revenue be consumed by the people. That the money saved in rent, rates, and administration be used in fixing machinery and starting the disused mills and factories, to revive dying industries and introduce new ones. That, in short, by common consent, by means of duly elected members or a general council of the County and District Councils the people of Ireland will refuse to recognise English law, authorities, or customs, and that henceforth Ireland shall be ruled only by the will of the people of Ireland.

Some of the chief spokesmen of this movement are large land owners and capitalists. Mr. John Sweetman owns a large tract of land in C. Meath, is a county councillor, railway director, etc. Edward Martyn is a landowner of County Galway, a J. P. and the exact reflex of the English capitalist. Sir T. G. Esmonde, Bart, M.P., is a bank director, railway director, and landlord. These and many other connected with the Sinn Fein movement give as their principal reason for supporting it the insecurity of their stock, the railways are not making any profit worth speaking of, the canals are idle, and so on.

… But is itself Futile.

From this it is quite evident that if the Sinn Fein movement succeeds profits are intended to rise at the expense of the Irish worker. The Irish capitalist class is still to remain the proud possessor of the land, factories, mills, railways, etc., and readers of this journal know what that means for the poor wretches employed.

The proud boast of the Sinn Fein Party is that Hungary was placed in much the same position as under Austria as Ireland is under England, and that when Hungary established her independence in exactly the same manner as the Sinn Fein movement proposes Ireland should, her trade increased by leaps and bounds, her population increased and new industries were developed, yet we know that today the Magyar is as much a slave as ever, and that there are in Hungary workhouses, prisons, asylums, unemployed, and all the other characteristics of the capitalist system. We know that the trade of Great Britain was greater last year than ever before, and that last year was nevertheless for the workers a year of great unemployment, poverty and privation. Even regarding the present success of the Sinn Fein movement it may be pointed out that the prospect differs vitally from that of Hungary in the important fact that Hungary was almost the equal in population and strength of Austria, and so was able to command political success. Hungary was also helped by the important tactical position it occupied as a barrier against Russian and Turkish advance. But as far as the condition of the people is concerned the Hungarian worker is not one whit better off than the Irish worker, whilst emigrants from Hungary may be counted by the hundred thousand, by whom, it is evident, the foreign exploiters are found at least no worse than the Hungarian masters from whom they flee.

For only Socialism can help the Workers.

In view of these facts it is our duty to warn our fellow-workers in Ireland of the futility of the Sinn Fein policy as far as they are concerned. There can be no relief for the oppressed Irishman in changing an English robber for an Irish one. The person of the robber does not matter—it is the fact of the robbery that spells misery. National divisions are a hindrance to working-class unity and action, and national jealousies and differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends.

The crowd of hungry “intellectuals” clamouring for jobs both within and without the Irish parliamentary party do not represent the interests of the working class in Ireland. They do not, indeed, profess to favour other than capitalist interests, provided that the landlord or capitalist be Irish, but the Irish capitalist is in no wise more merciful than the English exploiter. The national sentiment and perennial enthusiasm of the Irishmen are being exploited by the so-called leaders in the interests of Irish capitalism, and the workers are being used to fight the battles of their oppressors. The Irish capitalist rebels against the English capitalist only because the latter stands in the way of a more thorough exploitation of the Irish workers by Irish capital. Let the thieves fight their own battles! For the worker in Ireland there is but one hope. It is to join the Irish wing of the international Socialist working class and to make common cause with the Socialist workers of all countries for the end of all forms of exploitation; saying to both English and Irish capitalists: “A plague on both your houses”. For the true battle-cry of the working class in broader, more significant and more inspiring than mere nationalism, and that rally cry is: THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!

J. McManus

Just stop being manipulative (2022)

From the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blocking roads, throwing paint at buildings, gluing themselves to paintings, what’s it all about? It’s all in the title. Just Stop Oil. In other words, keep capitalism but just stop extracting and using oil. In itself, it’s a completely unrealistic proposition. Even socialist society would have to use some oil for some purposes, even if not to burn on a massive scale to generate electricity or to power trains and planes and cars, vans and lorries. It is essential as a lubricant and can be used to make other products such as plastics, paints and ointments. But under capitalism, taken literally the demand to stop extracting it is way off the scale of unachievable demands.

Capitalist production is not production with the rational aim of meeting human needs. It is uncontrollable production by separate, competing enterprises for sale with a view to profit. The battle of competition is won by those which can keep their costs the lowest, not lastingly by cutting corners but by using the cheapest suitable materials and by installing new machines or adopting new methods of production that reduce the cost per unit of what the enterprise is selling.

At the moment oil is the cheapest practical source of energy, when burned, for powering transport, whether by land, air or sea, and transport is essential for getting goods to market and workers to work. If oil was stopped today from being used for transport, society would literally grind to a halt; millions would die. Nor is any government going to adopt this on its own as currently available alternatives are either not scaled up sufficiently, nor reliable, or would increase costs massively and render enterprises operating in and from its territory completely uncompetitive.

It could be that those behind Just Stop Oil are demanding the maximum in order to get something less such as a more rapid transition to alternatives. That might well be why some look on their campaign with some sympathy. On the other hand, it could just be a tactic to get people to demand something that the campaign’s initiators know to be unrealistic and that when their followers realise this they will turn to demanding something more radical than just stopping the extraction of oil. This wouldn’t be the end of capitalism since those behind the campaign have explicitly rejected such talk. It is more likely to be questioning ‘industrial civilisation’ and returning to a ‘simpler’ way of life, to an imagined earlier stage of production for the market when this was to meet local needs.

But we know that the leaders of the campaign are more manipulative than this. The campaign was planned before the war in Ukraine when there was an expectation that no more licences would be granted to drill for oil in the North Sea. The leaders’ declared aim was to demand something they thought was going to be achieved anyway and to pass this off as a victory for the campaign, so as to build up the confidence of its activist foot soldiers and gain more of them and reach the figure they consider enough to bring about a change that will stop and reverse global warming.

They have declared that figure to be around 3 percent of the population engaging in non-violent civil disobedience. Roger Hallam, the group’s chief strategist if not leader, has been quoted as saying: ‘You can basically save the next generation with 2 per cent of the American population mobilised, engaged in an intense intra-relationship between high-level disruption and intense mobilisation… If you don’t upset people enough, then nothing happens’ (Times, 24 October).

Something has happened. The government has brought in a new law to deal with Just Stop Oil’s tactics, adding to the state’s arsenal of repressive laws. But this, too, will be part of the group’s leaders’ strategy to attract more activist followers, this time from those who object to non-violent protestors being jailed. Grist for the mill to reach the 2 or 3 percent. As if such a small number could impose its will on the majority or even win majority sympathy. Not even minority insurrectionists believe that.

Adam Buick

Letter: Socialists and War (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists and War

Dear Editors,

The anti-war stance of the Socialist Party is well-known, also its long-term view of how to remove the causes of war, but what would be its short-term strategy in a situation of international aggression? To put it, bluntly, what should socialists do if their country is invaded.

The vast majority of people in the world think that faced with the threat of invasion there are only two alternatives, to resist by military means or simply give in. There is, however, a third alternative, non-violent resistance, but while billions of pounds are spent annually on military methods, not even one penny is spent on research into the theory and practice of this third way.

Non-violent resistance could not prevent an invasion. It would operate from the beginning of the occupation and would include the following tactics: complete non-collaboration, the setting-up of parallel government (this would have been planned before the invasion, making use of the network of existing local structures such as trade unions, sports clubs, professional and cultural associations, etc), underground newspapers, strikes, boycotts, sit-ins and civil disobedience. All this would be accompanied by constant appeals to individual members of the occupying forces to question why they are there and why it would not be better for all concerned if they went home.

Those of us who were affected by the period of conscription had to think hard about tough questions. What do you “youngsters” think?

Bryan Fair, 

Dorchester, Dorset.

Reply: 

We are not quite sure why you think we’re all youngsters as some of our members are old enough to have known the period of conscription, which didn’t end till 1960. They, too, had to face the same tough questions as you. Those who were Socialist Party members opted not to be trained as killers for British capitalism and so were conscientious objectors (those who, for personal reasons, were unable to take this option resigned from the party). Having said this, members of the armed forces, being overwhelmingly recruited from the wage and salary working class, are also open to socialist ideas, and in fact a few of our younger members are former (volunteer) members of the armed forces.

While we are not absolute pacifists (we would be prepared to countenance counter-violence as a last resort to deal with any pro-capitalist minority that might have recourse to violence to try to prevent the implementation of the democratically-expressed will of a majority for socialism), some of the non-violent tactics you mention might be useful in the other hypothetical event of the last capitalist government trying to abolish political democracy when faced with a growing or majority movement for socialism. But we do have a serious problem with your particular proposal for “non-violent resistance”: it is put forward as an alternative to military action to deal with an invasion of “the country”. But “the country” is just another name for the established ruling class there; the workers have no country and it is not up to socialists to advise the ruling class how to defend itself in the face of an attempt by the ruling class of some other “country” to dislodge or replace them.—Editors.

Non-violent Revolution: A Contradiction in Terms? (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many assume that bringing capitalism to an end will require violence. But workers can paralyze the capitalist class without firing a shot.

Revolution is often equated with violence. William Morris addressed this misconception nicely in ‘How We Live, and How We Might Live’, where he explained that:

‘The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment’.

And 130 years later most still assume that revolution necessarily is accompanied by violence, and that a ‘nonviolent revolution’ is a contradiction in terms.

The Ted offensive

In an article published last year, the radical political cartoonist Ted Rall puts forth the basic argument so often used to defend violent revolution:

‘The privileged classes won’t relinquish their privileges, power or wealth voluntarily. They will use their control over the police and the military . . . in order to crush any meaningful opposition. They are violent. Their system is violence. Defeating them requires greater violence. Nothing less results in revolution’ (‘Not a Revolution, Just an Old-fashioned Coup’).

Rall insists that nonviolence is ineffective for a revolutionary movement and historically unprecedented, as he notes in his criticism of the Occupy movement in the same article:

 ‘At the height of the Occupy movement during the fall of 2011, many knee-jerk pacifists, besotted with the post-1960s religion of militant nonviolence (in spite of its repeatedly proven ineffectiveness), agreed that radical transformation — revolution — was necessary in the United States. Yet these liberals also argued that (even though there was no historical precedent) the triumph of the mass of ordinary American workers over the corrupt bankers and their pet politicians could result from purely nonviolent protest’.

Rall actually makes a number of good points in his article, arguing against ‘Western analysts, liberals and even leftists’ who have ‘cheapened the word “revolution”, attaching it to developments that . . . are nothing of the kind’; whereas a true revolution is ‘a vast set of radical transformations in the way that ordinary people live’. ‘You can’t make a revolution without revolutionizing society’, he writes, ‘which requires the complete violent overthrow of the ruling class’.

But is it necessary for him to insist so strongly on the violent nature of this transformation? Is it true that violence is an essential aspect of revolution? Is the use of nonviolent tactics among revolutionaries ineffective and historically unprecedented?

The power of nonviolence?

Non-violent tactics would seem particularly ill-suited for any movement facing an authoritarian regime armed to the teeth. Here, at least, the arguments in favour of violent revolution would seem persuasive. But an article published in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, titled ‘Drop Your Weapons: When and Why Civil Resistance Works’, argues that even in such situations collective nonviolent resistance can be very effective.

The authors of the article, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan,are hardly revolutionaries: Chenoweth is an academic and Stephan a ‘strategic planner’ for the State Department. And the magazine is pure ‘establishment’; published by the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization that seeks to ‘promote understanding of foreign policy and America’s role in the world’.

Not surprisingly, then, many of the examples of violent and nonviolent movements that the authors examine concern ‘regimes’ that the US government has sought to topple. Far from objecting to this meddling foreign policy, Chenoweth and Stephan simply think that supporting nonviolent movements can be more effective in many cases than backing armed conflict.

In any case, their article begins with some statistics about how ‘campaigns of nonviolent resistance’ have been much more successful against authoritarian regimes than violent movements. They examined ‘323 campaigns’ in the period from 1919 to 2006 – covering ‘all known nonviolent and violent campaigns (each featuring at least 1,000 observed participants) for self-determination, the removal of an incumbent leader, or the expulsion of a foreign occupation’.

The authors found that the ‘campaigns of nonviolent resistance against authoritarian regimes were twice as likely to succeed as violent movements’; and that ‘almost half’ of the nonviolent campaigns examined succeeded in achieving their goals, compared to just 20 percent of the violent ones.

These statistics, as you can see, are vague and the category ‘campaign’ includes every sort of social movement, whether its participants saw themselves as revolutionaries or reformists. But the interesting point to note is that authoritarian regimes often found it difficult to stamp out movements of mass nonviolent resistance despite the armed power of the state.

‘Contrary to conventional wisdom, no social, economic, or political structures have systematically prevented nonviolent campaigns from emerging or succeeding’, the authors argue, adding that, ‘movements that opt for violence often unleash terrible destruction and bloodshed . . . usually without realizing the goals they set out to achieve’.

Disarming a police state

The effectiveness of nonviolence, in the view of the authors, has nothing to do with moral suasion:

‘Civil resistance does not succeed because it melts the hearts of dictators and secret police.  It succeeds because it is more likely than armed struggle to attract a large and more diverse base of participants and impose unsustainable costs on a regime’.

Chenoweth and Stephan list a number of reasons why nonviolent tactics can be so effective.

First of all, nonviolence is a tactic that allows a movement to mobilize a greater number of participants and supporters. In other words, there are fewer ‘barriers to participation’ than in an armed conflict, so a wider stratum of society is more likely to take part. And, needless to say, the larger the movement, the more difficult it is for a government to violently suppress it.

Another factor cited by the authors in favour of nonviolent movements is that they can employ a wider variety of tactics than is possible in an armed movement; not only demonstrations and strikes but other forms of noncooperation that make it clear that the legitimacy of the rulers has dissolved.

The authors point to the example of the Shah of Iran, who ‘had little difficulty neutralizing the Islamist and Marxist-inspired [sic!] guerilla groups’ but when ‘large numbers of oil workers, bazaar merchants, and students engaged in acts of collective nonviolent resistance . . .the regime’s repressive apparatus became overstretched’ and soon thereafter the Shah fled the country.

In other words, what was necessary to defeat a police state is not ‘greater violence’, as Rall seems to think, but the mass power of workers to effectively disarm that apparatus of violence: overwhelming it with numbers, dissolving its legitimacy, and winning over fellow workers ordered to pull the trigger.

Even the most repressive regime relies upon a degree of cooperation and consent from the population. When that legitimacy among the citizenry has dissolved, the state’s use of violence becomes increasingly difficult or even counterproductive. There are numerous examples in recent history alone of seemingly powerful regimes that have collapsed suddenly in the face of mass protest.

This essential point was made by Erica Chenoweth in the 21 August interview with the two authors on National Public Radio: ‘When very large and diverse sectors of society withdraw their cooperation from the opponent government, it's extremely difficult for that government to maintain its hold on control. And the reason is because every power holder is 100 percent reliant on the cooperation, obedience and help of people that reside in its pillars of support - the security forces, the state media, religious authorities, educational elites, business and economic elites and civilian bureaucrats’.

Clearly, Chenoweth is imagining a conflict within the ruling class, where the outcome depends on which side the bulk of the elites decide to back. But a similar dynamic would be at play in a socialist revolution as well. That is, when the majority of the working class withdraws its cooperation from the capitalist class, it would be extremely difficult for that class to maintain its hold on power and its pillars of support will begin to crumble.

The problem for the capitalist class in such a situation would hardly be a lack of military firepower; they would always outgun the workers. But unleashing that force against a rebellious working class could backfire, adding fuel to the fire; or the police and soldiers (workers themselves) might refuse to carry out the orders or turn their guns against the rulers.

Tactics are secondary

As advocates of nonviolence, Chenoweth and Stephan may be nothing more than useful idiots in the eyes of the military-industrial complex that actually runs US foreign policy out of the Pentagon, but they do make some good points about how nonviolent tactics can work against authoritarian regimes as a sort of ‘asymmetric’ conflict.

But, to return to the question of revolution, the debate over violence versus nonviolence, however interesting, is not the primary issue for socialists. We are convinced that the success of a revolution depends on a majority of the working class coming to have an understanding of and desire for socialism. This is the key issue; much more important than the specific tactics socialists employ to surmount this or that obstacle along the way.

Ted Rall seems to suggest that the Occupy movement fell apart as a result of sticking religiously to ineffective nonviolent tactics. But the central problem of that movement had less to do with its nonviolent tactics (which were actually remarkably effective), than its lack of a clear vision of what could replace the unequal capitalist society against which they were protesting. It is hard to see how the use of violent tactics would have compensated for that lack of strategy.

Or, perhaps Rall was trying to say that the Occupy movement failed because it did not set itself the goal of sweeping aside the ruling class (which he says requires violence). But even if that is his argument, it only reveals that Rall is focused exclusively on the ‘negative’ or destructive side of revolution, rather than the new society that replaces the old. In other words, like the Occupy movement he criticizes, Rall doesn’t really have a basic goal or strategy for what is to replace capitalism. It is that absence of a goal that accounts for why movements like Occupy fall apart, not their preference for nonviolence.

Our own goal is clearly the creation of a new classless, borderless, moneyless society of common ownership; a society we call ‘socialism’. And our strategy for achieving this goal is for more and more of our fellow workers to understand and consciously aim for this new form of society, until the point of critical mass is reached where replacing capitalism with socialism is a real, concrete task for the working class. At that point, the question becomes how best to take that final step. And we believe that, once socialism has majority backing, a nonviolent, democratic transformation is possible and preferable.

Violence is an effective means for a minority to hold on to power, or for another minority group to topple them and become the new rulers. But the workers make up the vast majority of society– if not ‘the 99%’, pretty close to it. When the majority of workers are moving steadfastly toward socialism, the violence of the minority ruling class would be unable to stem the tide, at least not for long.

Michael Schauerte

Defying dictatorships (2012)

Book Review from the March 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. By Gene Sharp. Serpent’s Tail, 2011.

Gene Sharp is an American scholar who has already published several works about non-violent popular action or – the term he now prefers – “political defiance” as a strategy to weaken and eventually “disintegrate” dictatorial regimes or as a civilian-based defence against military occupation. This latest book, written at the request of an exiled Burmese dissident, summarises the conclusions he has reached over forty years of research. It has appeared in over thirty languages and is said to have influenced many of the recent anti-dictatorship movements throughout the world.

Sharp does not play down the enormous difficulties facing any non-violent movement that takes on a well-entrenched dictatorship. Those who start such a movement must be prepared for a long struggle, with setbacks and numerous casualties (after all, only one side is committed to non-violence). Nor is there any guarantee of success, even in the long run.

All the same, he argues, violent resistance (other things being equal) entails even larger casualties and has even poorer prospects of success. That is because it strikes at the strongest point of a dictatorship – its capacity for violent coercion. Non-violent defiance aims at a dictatorship’s weakest point or Achilles heel – its need for the cooperation of the people it rules.

A dictatorship can manage without broad active support, but its functioning does depend on a certain minimum of passive toleration and compliance with its demands. Beyond some point, the withdrawal of cooperation undermines the effectiveness and cohesion of a regime and the reliability of its armed forces to such an extent that it just falls apart.

Much of the book consists of advice about how to design and implement a strategic plan of political defiance. On the whole, the advice seems sensible enough. For instance, Sharp urges activists to develop a campaign by gradual stages, maintaining non-violent discipline and avoiding premature mass protests that expose protestors to wholesale slaughter.

In practice, however, the scope for such careful strategising is limited. Popular protest tends to spread spontaneously, influenced less by rational calculation than by emotion, including a desire to copy movements in other countries where conditions may be very different. Thus, imitation of the successful non-violent movements in Tunisia and Egypt led to massacre and civil war in Libya and now Syria.

Sharp points out that the disintegration of a dictatorial regime does not necessarily lead to democracy. Another possible outcome is a military coup. However, he does not face the fact that far from all anti-dictatorship activists merit the label of “democrat”. In quite a few places – not only Moslem countries but also Russia, for instance – many of those protesting against an existing dictatorship merely seek to replace it with a dictatorship of a different type, one they hope will be less corrupt and have stronger nationalist or religious credentials.

This brings us to a problem that Sharp mentions but never tackles head on. What attitude should anti-dictatorship movements take toward possible assistance from foreign governments, whether financial, diplomatic or military (e.g., no-fly zones)? Sharp encourages movements to seek such assistance, on the principle that they need to mobilise whatever resources they can. Yet he also suggests, though without explaining why, that it is best to rely on foreign governments as little as possible.

When the American government (to take the most important case) promotes “regime change” abroad, it does so for strategic and economic reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with democracy. Perhaps Sharp knows this. If so, why would he be so coy? One thing is for sure: an honest analysis of U.S. foreign policy would hardly have earned his book the rave reviews it received in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Despite these criticisms, I recognise the importance of Sharp’s basic argument about the potential of non-violent political defiance and its advantages over armed struggle. Indeed, it is relevant in a much broader context than that of the struggle against dictatorship.

Although there is a significant difference between democratic and dictatorial regimes, political democracy under capitalism is bound to be limited and unstable because capitalism is inherently anti-democratic as an economic system. In recent years, democratic rights have been seriously undermined in Western countries under the pretext of the “war against terror”. So non-violent action is needed not only to establish democracy where it does not exist, but also to preserve it where it is at risk. 

The class struggle has mostly taken forms consistent with Sharp’s concept of “defiance” – expanded to include defiance of employers as well as the state. This applies to strikes and picketing, which Sharp includes in his list of “methods of non-violent action”, as well as to the methods used, for instance, to resist house foreclosures.

Non-violent popular action can also play an important role in moving forward from limited political democracy to full social democracy, which is what we mean by socialism. Not as a substitute for electoral and constitutional action, but as an additional guarantee that the socialist majority will achieve its goal under any conceivable circumstances.

Stefan