What Do You Think?

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centers of democratic power
One characteristic of a democratic society is that there exist independent
of the state a multitude of nongovernmental groups and
9 John Austin, Lectures on Jurisprudence or the Philosophy of Positive Law (Fifth edition,
revised and edited by Robert Campbell, 2 vol., London: John Murray, 1911 [1861]),
Vol. I, p. 296.
10 Niccolo Machiavelli, “The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy,” in The
Discourses of Niccolo Machiavelli (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950), Vol.
I, p. 254.
11 See Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973), p.
75 and passim for other historical examples.

organizations,
cultural associations, sports clubs, economic institutions, trade
unions, student associations, political parties, villages, neighborhood
associations, gardening clubs, human rights organizations, musical
groups, literary societies, and others. These bodies are important
in serving their own objectives and also in helping to meet social
needs.
Additionally, these bodies have great political significance.
They provide group and institutional bases by which people can exert
influence over the direction of their society and resist other groups
or the government when they are seen to impinge unjustly on their
interests, activities, or purposes. Isolated individuals, not members
of such groups, usually are unable to make a significant impact on
the rest of the society, much less a government, and certainly not a
dictatorship.
Consequently, if the autonomy and freedom of such bodies
can be taken away by the dictators, the population will be relatively
helpless. Also, if these institutions can themselves be dictatorially
controlled by the central regime or replaced by new controlled ones,
they can be used to dominate both the individual members and also
those areas of the society.
However, if the autonomy and freedom of these independent
civil institutions (outside of government control) can be maintained
or regained they are highly important for the application of political
defiance. The common feature of the cited examples in which
dictatorships have been disintegrated or weakened has been the
courageous mass application of political defiance by the population
and its institutions.
As stated, these centers of power provide the institutional bases
from which the population can exert pressure or can resist dictatorial
controls. In the future, they will be part of the indispensable
structural base for a free society. Their continued independence
and growth therefore is often a prerequisite for the success of the
liberation struggle.
If the dictatorship has been largely successful in destroying or
controlling the society’s independent bodies, it will be important for
the resisters to create new independent social groups and institutions,
or to reassert democratic control over surviving or partially
controlled bodies. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956-1957
a multitude of direct democracy councils emerged, even joining
together to establish for some weeks a whole federated system of
institutions and governance. In Poland during the late 1980s workers
maintained illegal Solidarity unions and, in some cases, took
over control of the official, Communist-dominated, trade unions.
Such institutional developments can have very important political
consequences.
Of course, none of this means that weakening and destroying
dictatorships is easy, nor that every attempt will succeed. It certainly
does not mean that the struggle will be free of casualties, for those
still serving the dictators are likely to fight back in an effort to force
the populace to resume cooperation and obedience.
The above insight into power does mean, however, that the deliberate
disintegration of dictatorships is possible. Dictatorships in particular
have specific characteristics that render them highly vulnerable
to skillfully implemented political defiance. Let us examine these
characteristics in more detail.

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Four
Dictatorships have weaknesses
Dictatorships often appear invulnerable. Intelligence agencies,
police, military forces, prisons, concentration camps, and execution
squads are controlled by a powerful few. A country’s finances,
natural resources, and production capacities are often arbitrarily
plundered by dictators and used to support the dictators’ will.
In comparison, democratic opposition forces often appear
extremely weak, ineffective, and powerless. That perception of
invulnerability against powerlessness makes effective opposition
unlikely.
That is not the whole story, however.
identifying the achilles’ heel
A myth from Classical Greece illustrates well the vulnerability of
the supposedly invulnerable. Against the warrior Achilles, no blow
would injure and no sword would penetrate his skin. When still a
baby, Achilles’ mother had supposedly dipped him into the waters
of the magical river Styx, resulting in the protection of his body from
all dangers. There was, however, a problem. Since the baby was
held by his heel so that he would not be washed away, the magical
water had not covered that small part of his body. When Achilles
was a grown man he appeared to all to be invulnerable to the enemies’
weapons. However, in the battle against Troy, instructed by
one who knew the weakness, an enemy soldier aimed his arrow at
Achilles’ unprotected heel, the one spot where he could be injured.
The strike proved fatal. Still today, the phrase “Achilles’ heel” refers
to the vulnerable part of a person, a plan, or an institution at which
if attacked there is no protection.
The same principle applies to ruthless dictatorships. They, too,
can be conquered, but most quickly and with least cost if their weaknesses
can be identified and the attack concentrated on them.
Among the weaknesses of dictatorships are the following:
1. The cooperation of a multitude of people, groups, and institutions
needed to operate the system may be restricted or
withdrawn.
2. The requirements and effects of the regime’s past policies
will somewhat limit its present ability to adopt and implement
conflicting policies.
3. The system may become routine in its operation, less able to
adjust quickly to new situations.
4. Personnel and resources already allocated for existing tasks
will not be easily available for new needs.
5. Subordinates fearful of displeasing their superiors may not
report accurate or complete information needed by the dictators
to make decisions.
6. The ideology may erode, and myths and symbols of the system
may become unstable.
7. If a strong ideology is present that influences one’s view of
reality, firm adherence to it may cause inattention to actual
conditions and needs.
8. Deteriorating efficiency and competency of the bureaucracy,
or excessive controls and regulations, may make the system’s
policies and operation ineffective.
9. Internal institutional conflicts and personal rivalries and hostilities
may harm, and even disrupt, the operation of the dictatorship.
10. Intellectuals and students may become restless in response
to conditions, restrictions, doctrinalism, and repression.
11. The general public may over time become apathetic, skeptical,
and even hostile to the regime.
12. Regional, class, cultural, or national differences may become
acute.
13. The power hierarchy of the dictatorship is always unstable
to some degree, and at times extremely so. Individuals do
not only remain in the same position in the ranking, but may
rise or fall to other ranks or be removed entirely and replaced
by new persons.
14. Sections of the police or military forces may act to achieve
their own objectives, even against the will of established dictators,
including by coup d’état.
15. If the dictatorship is new, time is required for it to become
well established.
16. With so many decisions made by so few people in the dictatorship,
mistakes of judgment, policy, and action are likely
to occur.
17. If the regime seeks to avoid these dangers and decentralizes
controls and decision making, its control over the central
levers of power may be further eroded.

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attacking weaknesses of dictatorships
With knowledge of such inherent weaknesses, the democratic opposition
can seek to aggravate these “Achilles’ heels” deliberately
in order to alter the system drastically or to disintegrate it.
The conclusion is then clear: despite the appearances of stren
all dictatorships have weaknesses, internal inefficiencies, personal
rivalries, institutional inefficiencies, and conflicts between organizations
and departments. These weaknesses, over time, tend to make
the regime less effective and more vulnerable to changing conditions
and deliberate resistance. Not everything the regime sets out to accomplish
will get completed. At times, for example, even Hitler’s
direct orders were never implemented because those beneath him in
the hierarchy refused to carry them out. The dictatorial regime may
at times even fall apart quickly, as we have already observed.
This does not mean dictatorships can be destroyed without risks
and casualties. Every possible course of action for liberation will
involve risks and potential suffering, and will take time to operate.
And, of course, no means of action can ensure rapid success in every
situation. However, types of struggle that target the dictatorship’s
identifiable weaknesses have greater chance of success than those
that seek to fight the dictatorship where it is clearly strongest. The
question is how this struggle is to be waged.

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Five
exercising power
In Chapter One we noted that military resistance against dictatorships
does not strike them where they are weakest, but rather where
they are strongest. By choosing to compete in the areas of military
forces, supplies of ammunition, weapons technology, and the like,
resistance movements tend to put themselves at a distinct disadvantage.
Dictatorships will almost always be able to muster superior
resources in these areas. The dangers of relying on foreign powers
for salvation were also outlined. In Chapter Two we examined the
problems of relying on negotiations as a means to remove dictatorships.
What means are then available that will offer the democratic
resistance distinct advantages and will tend to aggravate the identified
weaknesses of dictatorships? What technique of action will
capitalize on the theory of political power discussed in Chapter
Three? The alternative of choice is political defiance.
Political defiance has the following characteristics:
• It does not accept that the outcome will be decided by the
means of fighting chosen by the dictatorship.
• It is difficult for the regime to combat.
• It can uniquely aggravate weaknesses of the dictatorship and
can sever its sources of power.
• It can in action be widely dispersed but can also be concentrated
on a specific objective.
• It leads to errors of judgment and action by the dictators.
• It can effectively utilize the population as a whole and the
society’s groups and institutions in the struggle to end the
brutal domination of the few.
• It helps to spread the distribution of effective power in the
society, making the establishment and maintenance of a
democratic society more possible.
the workings of nonviolent struggle
Like military capabilities, political defiance can be employed for a
variety of purposes, ranging from efforts to influence the opponents
to take different actions, to create conditions for a peaceful resolution
of conflict, or to disintegrate the opponents’ regime. However,
political defiance operates in quite different ways from violence.
Although both techniques are means to wage struggle, they do so
with very different means and with different consequences. The
ways and results of violent conflict are well known. Physical weapons
are used to intimidate, injure, kill, and destroy.
Nonviolent struggle is a much more complex and varied
means of struggle than is violence. Instead, the struggle is fought
by psychological, social, economic, and political weapons applied
by the population and the institutions of the society. These have
been known under various names of protests, strikes, noncooperation,
boycotts, disaffection, and people power. As noted earlier, all
governments can rule only as long as they receive replenishment of
the needed sources of their power from the cooperation, submission,
and obedience of the population and the institutions of the society.
Political defiance, unlike violence, is uniquely suited to severing
those sources of power.
nonviolent weapons and discipline
The common error of past improvised political defiance campaigns
is the reliance on only one or two methods, such as strikes and mass
demonstrations. In fact, a multitude of methods exist that allow
resistance strategists to concentrate and disperse resistance as required.
About two hundred specific methods of nonviolent action have
been identified, and there are certainly scores more. These methods
are classified under three broad categories: protest and persuasion,
noncooperation, and intervention. Methods of nonviolent protest
and persuasion are largely symbolic demonstrations, including parades,
marches, and vigils (54 methods). Noncooperation is divided
into three sub-categories: (a) social noncooperation (16 methods),
(b) economic noncooperation, including boycotts (26 methods) and
strikes (23 methods), and (c) political noncooperation (38 methods).
Nonviolent intervention, by psychological, physical, social, economic,
or political means, such as the fast, nonviolent occupation, and
parallel government (41 methods), is the final group. A list of 198 of
these methods is included as the Appendix to this publication.
The use of a considerable number of these methods — carefully
chosen, applied persistently and on a large scale, wielded in the
context of a wise strategy and appropriate tactics, by trained civilians
— is likely to cause any illegitimate regime severe problems.
This applies to all dictatorships.
In contrast to military means, the methods of nonviolent struggle
can be focused directly on the issues at stake. For example, since
the issue of dictatorship is primarily political, then political forms of
nonviolent struggle would be crucial. These would include denial
of legitimacy to the dictators and noncooperation with their regime.
Noncooperation would also be applied against specific policies. At
times stalling and procrastination may be quietly and even secretly
practiced, while at other times open disobedience and defiant public
demonstrations and strikes may be visible to all.
On the other hand, if the dictatorship is vulnerable to economic
pressures or if many of the popular grievances against it are economic,
then economic action, such as boycotts or strikes, may be
appropriate resistance methods. The dictators’ efforts to exploit the
economic system might be met with limited general strikes, slowdowns,
and refusal of assistance by (or disappearance of) indispens
able experts. Selective use of various types of strikes may be conducted
at key points in manufacturing, in transport, in the supply
of raw materials, and in the distribution of products.
Some methods of nonviolent struggle require people to perform
acts unrelated to their normal lives, such as distributing leaflets,
operating an underground press, going on hunger strike, or sitting
down in the streets. These methods may be difficult for some people
to undertake except in very extreme situations.
Other methods of nonviolent struggle instead require people
to continue approximately their normal lives, though in somewhat
different ways. For example, people may report for work, instead
of striking, but then deliberately work more slowly or inefficiently
than usual. “Mistakes” may be consciously made more frequently.
One may become “sick” and “unable” to work at certain times. Or,
one may simply refuse to work. One might go to religious services
when the act expresses not only religious but also political convictions.
One may act to protect children from the attackers’ propaganda
by education at home or in illegal classes. One might refuse to join
certain “recommended” or required organizations that one would
not have joined freely in earlier times. The similarity of such types
of action to people’s usual activities and the limited degree of departure
from their normal lives may make participation in the national
liberation struggle much easier for many people.
Since nonviolent struggle and violence operate in fundamentally
different ways, even limited resistance violence during a political
defiance campaign will be counterproductive, for it will shift
the struggle to one in which the dictators have an overwhelming
advantage (military warfare). Nonviolent discipline is a key to success
and must be maintained despite provocations and brutalities
by the dictators and their agents.
The maintenance of nonviolent discipline against violent opponents
facilitates the workings of the four mechanisms of change
in nonviolent struggle (discussed below). Nonviolent discipline is
also extremely important in the process of political jiu-jitsu. In this
process the stark brutality of the regime against the clearly nonviolent
actionists politically rebounds against the dictators’ position,
causing dissention in their own ranks as well as fomenting support
for the resisters among the general population, the regime’s usual
supporters, and third parties.
In some cases, however, limited violence against the dictatorship
may be inevitable. Frustration and hatred of the regime may
explode into violence. Or, certain groups may be unwilling to abandon
violent means even though they recognize the important role of
nonviolent struggle. In these cases, political defiance does not need to
be abandoned. However, it will be necessary to separate the violent
action as far as possible from the nonviolent action. This should be
done in terms of geography, population groups, timing, and issues.
Otherwise the violence could have a disastrous effect on the potentially
much more powerful and successful use of political defiance.
The historical record indicates that while casualties in dead
and wounded must be expected in political defiance, they will be
far fewer than the casualties in military warfare. Furthermore, this
type of struggle does not contribute to the endless cycle of killing
and brutality.
Nonviolent struggle both requires and tends to produce a loss
(or greater control) of fear of the government and its violent repression.
That abandonment or control of fear is a key element in destroying
the power of the dictators over the general population.