How Nonviolence Protects the State [Paperback]

"Not believing in violence," Leon Trotsky famously said, "is like not believing in gravity." Trotsky's observation could also be the thesis statement of Peter Gelderloos' book, How Non-Violence Protects the State, as well.

If there is one feature of modern radical political thought that seems to transcend all the various radical movements it is that violence is immoral, impractical, and counterproductive in nearly every case, and most certainly in liberal democracies where political activity to effect change, however restricted or rigged in favor of the ruling elites, is possible.

What caused Gelderloos to renounce non-violence in favor of "a diversity of tactics" [page 3] was his experience with the School of the Americas Watch group and his frustration at the group's failure to obtain the closure of this facility as well as his subsequent arrest, trial, and six-month long imprisonment for participation in actions against the the SOA. Gelderloos refers to this continually throughout his book.

Advocates of exclusively non-violent tactics are usually privileged whites, say Gelderloos, who have the temerity to tell those those under assault (i.e., at war with state) to tough it out and try to make do with appeals to the consciences of the immoral and sociopathetic elites who benefit from this condition of war. [page 134] Gelderloos also condemns "reformism" as being too easy for the powers-that-be to crush, co-opt, discredit or repress.[page 96]

Gelderloos uses an example of what he recommends for direct action against the state rather than non-violence. First, Gelderloos condemns a non-violent action by a pacifist nun who infiltrated a missile factory and hit the missiles with a hammer but causing them no damage. Why not use a bomb instead of a hand tool asks Gelderloos?

"A bomb," say Gelderloos, "ensure that a factory will not be able to produce missiles far better than a hammer does, and missiles in the possession of imperialist states kill far more people than bombs (or hammers) in the possession of urban guerrilla groups. But this consideration is so far from minds of pacifists that the nuns to whom I allude based much of their trial defense on the contention that they had not caused any real damage, only symbolic damage, to the missile factory..." [page 124]

I am not entirely sure what he would propose as a effective alternative though; Gelderloos never comprehensively addresses the issue of specific tactics. But isn't going head-to-head with a violent and ruthless state in effect committing suicide? People who have tried what Gelderloos suggests in his book have not really changed conditions for the better and have usually come to a bad end themselves. Ruby Ridge, the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, and the Waco Massacre all come to mind here.

However, Gelderloos' scholarship is very credible, his writing style is very easy to absorb and understand, and his views on the failure of the current menu of tactics for societal change are quite refreshing and necessary for militants to read and discuss. I recommend this book.

Do anti-war protests really stop the United States from invading another country? Do pro-choice marches affect legislation on abortion? Did sit-ins during the Civil Rights movement help to end racism? These are the questions that Peter Gelderloos asks in his new book How Nonviolence Protects the State. With a wealth of experience in anti-prison work, prisoner support organizations,and the anti-war and anti-globalization movements, Gelderloos brings his seasoned perspective to these important issues.

Drawing on large historical events, such as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, Gelderloos shows how pacifists and nonviolent protests have not achieved the same results that active resistance has. At a time when everyone in the world, except for the US government, is realizing that US troops need to leave Iraq now, Gelderloos' book argues how ineffective the current peace movement has been at stopping the war and creating any sort of political change. Before the war broke out over four years ago, "[s]ome groups, like United for Peace and Justice, suggested the protests might avert the war. Of course, they were totally wrong, and the protests totally ineffective. The invasion occurred as planned, despite the millions of people nominally, peacefully, and powerlessly opposed to it." So how do we switch our peace movement from marching in the streets to actually resisting our government and creating change?

It is this question that Gelderloos has a difficult time answering. How Nonviolence Protects the State is not meant to change any minds. Instead, it reads as a reassurance for those who already know the ineffectiveness of peace movements. Gelderloos' language is aggressive at times, as he conflates peace activists with "good sheep." But perhaps this is his point. Maybe if we started to realize that marches and nonviolent protests were ultimately tools of society to make people feel as if they are creating change, then we would actually find a way to resist our government and create the change we want on our own terms. Covering a diverse range of topics, from how nonviolence is racist to how nonviolence is patriarchal, How Nonviolence Protects the State is an important book to read for anyone who recognizes the ineffectiveness of peace activism today. And while the text doesn't provide many answers, it does inspire the reader to reconsider her notions of "activism" and "change."

Revolutionary movements have toiled for generations around a variety of issues. And since the 1999 World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, Washington, where activists using a range of tactics succeeded in thwarting WTO meetings, debates over approach have been central to the dialogue.

In his book, Gelderloos makes a fearless though at points flawed argument against not simply pacifism, but the philosophy of nonviolence in the context of social change. Many are likely to find such a position to be an implicit advocacy of violent action, and thus marginal, at best. But a careful read of the philosophical construct is certain to get you pondering.

Utilizing a constellation of historical references, judicious citations and old-fashioned polemic, the author lays a variety of crimes at the feet of nonviolent philosophy. The blemish to this construct, aside from the rhetoric which Gelderloos acknowledges is a forceful, even vitriolic, criticism of nonviolence, is that it doesn't seem to acknowledge nonviolence's role as one of a diversity of tactics. While some of Gelderloos' claims have merit, some examples and painting of interests engaged in modern politics seem oversimplified to prove a point, rather than stated to dissect the real complexities of human interaction and history. And, though he gives many reasons why the philosophy of nonviolence may be racist or sexist, he doesn't adequately refute longstanding critiques of rambunctious factions being mostly composed of young, white men without a real grasp of gender or racial justice politics either.

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