Graham Andrews is a gentleman and a scholar, and I was gonna write a long facebook comment but just decided to make it a blog post of my own in response to his rather thoughtful post, "John Brown's Body."
So, here's my thoughts: violent revolutions and wars to correct injustice have been happening since as long as we could figure out that if Urg stole our goat, we could take a rock to his head (unsurprisingly, we all learn this behavior without much guidance around age 2.) They are usually unsuccessful in achieving their desired aim. I know you're obsessed with the glory of violent revolution to the point that you have to change your pants when you spend too time thinking about it, but I don't think that violent revolution has an awful lot of show for itself. Most violent revolutions create societies that are not particularly more just than their predecessors (America 1776, France 1793, Cuba 1959, Iran 1979, etc.)
Even the Civil War, which, as you noted at the beginning, was in some senses just retribution for the horrors of slavery and crucial turning point in achieving justice, was still not particularly effective in actually changing the economic or social situation for a lot of African-Americans. That took the Civil Rights Movement, which was a militant, fire-breathing, Bible-thumping group of preachers & political agitators who wouldn't take no shit from nobody. And they also wouldn't fight back. I'm sure there's some pithy quote from Martin Luther King Jr. about nonviolence and justice that's appropriate to squeeze in here, but I think it's fair to say that the most lasting change for justice tends to come from the long, slow, hard work of sacrificing yourself and the needs of your community for the needs of another whilst defiantly and militantly defaming the lies of the overlords who try to keep you in line.
In a world where every ideologue is waving guns and money and power around trying to prove that their dick is bigger, laying all of those things down for the good of others (in a way that actually disadvantages yourself) is the only truly radical thing left to do. It may be loving, every now and then, to kill someone else in order to save a few people (John Brown is a particularly controversial example.) What is definitely loving, though, is spending your whole life dying for other people. It takes a lot of people doing this to change a society, but it has happened. I see it in Sandtown every day, and I think that sort of ethic has done far more for folks in my neighborhood than years of people doing good from a distance. John M Perkins is another great example, as is this dude, who is pretty hilarious to listen to even if you totally disagree with him.
There's obviously a lot of human failure and selfishness that stands in the way of this. You and I both know the dismal record that people have with helping others or sacrificing anything for anyone else. That's why Jesus is important-- He suffered the greatest injustice so that those of us who act unjustly could be called just, and those of us who suffer injustice can be restored and reconciled. As Tim Keller says, "So the gospel has got enormous social justice ramifications. It’s there, in Luke 1: 'He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble.'" And that sort of change-- not forced by some revolutionary gun, but by a tremendous, deep inner transformation-- lasts and endures, even to death. You mentioned in your post about how John Brown loved black people enough to kill some slaveowners. But "greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." The greatest revolution in history took place when a peasant king got lynched-- and then lived to tell about it.
If you're ever curious to see this in action, I'd invite you to come visit New Song, where people are doing the slow, humble, militant work of loving people every day. Come on the first Sunday of the month so even if it's a total drag and you can't even write an incisive blog post about it later, you can at least get some good fried chicken and curry.
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4 comments:
When talking about large-scale political revolutions, it's difficult to say which ones "worked" and which ones didn't. This is due to divergent aims among the revolutionary subjects, and also in part to what things were like prior to the revolution. If you look at Cuba, they don't have any political freedom, but standards of living are considerably better than what you see in other "free" countries in the region...Personally, I'd rather be fed and unfree than starving and free, but I can't really say for certain (speaking from the position of having both needs more or less satisfied). American independence is interesting because at ~30% of the population didn't care, another 30% were loyalists with everyone else "supporting" the revolution in some way. Sometimes I wonder what America would be like if we stayed loyal to the British, but it's hard to say because history would be so drastically different.
When looking at civil disobedience as a means of transforming society, it's pretty clear to me that this should be the privileged form: people don't get hurt and they stand a good chance (if they're organized and brave) of getting what they want. It's important to remember, tho, that part of what made modern, large-scale pacific movements (Indian independence, Civil Rights, anti-Apartheid struggle) successful was the real possibility that things would get out of control if progress wasn't made...people (in America) don't remember the violent Indian nationalists, but they were there and served to keep the "clock moving."
To talk specifically about John Brown, I'm reminded of an oft-cited JFK quote: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable"...that's always the sense I get when reading about pro-slaveholders in America (they always come off as massive, entitled pricks, as well). Not only were they actively trying to expand slavery into other territories through violence and intimidation (that's how they kept the poor whites invested in the system: "some day you'll be a slaveholder out West"), but they also attempted to make free states complicit in the system through the Fugitive Slave Act. When Northern abolitionists didn't retaliate after pro-slaveholding provocations (the murder of Rev Lovejoy, the assault of Charles Sumner, etc.), Southerners started prating on about how they were aristocratic cavaliers and how Northerners were too soft to be taken seriously (they're tones changed significantly after Brown murdered 7 slave-owners in Kansas and personally assisted in helping the slaves that were freed as a result move to Canada). What you had with slavery was a legally enforced, massive, systemic subjugation of human persons, the oppressors of whom showed that they were willing and eager to use violence to protect said system. These were not good or nice or decent people (by the standards of the day or any standard), and I think John Brown was convinced that only violence would push the slavery question to its resolution. I agree with his analysis. It would have been nice if things could have been different, but I sincerely doubt that was in the cards.
I'll have to take you up some time on visiting New Song. I need to get out more and see what people who are far more committed than myself are doing on the ground.
Oh, while I was outside mowing the lawn I had a few more thoughts: I remember hearing about a group of British Socialists going over the case for the ANC (Mandela's party) to renew armed struggle against Apartheid in the 60s. With great thoroughness, one of the speakers in the group (I think his name was Foot) went over every attempt the ANC had made to use civil society to achieve their ends, and how every time they did that, the NP would enact more draconian and repressive measures w/o any indication that they intended to become more lenient over time. The reason I bring this up is that armed resistance is not something a group should enter into lightly, but if it's excluded then you put yourself completely at the mercy of whoever the elites happen to be. Some elites are OK. Many are not. Without extensive international pressure and the possibility of a full-blown insurrection, the Afrikaners never would have given up apartheid (they came pretty close to a military coup even as Mandela and more moderate Afrikaners were close to finalizing the plan for a transition of power). Many white S Africans today don't really see "what the big deal was."
I see a lot of parallels between that and Southern slaveholders (although most white S Africans knew deep down that Apartheid was going to end; it was just a question of when and how)--slavery was so essential to their way of life, they would have done anything to preserve it (and many of them still resent it having been taken from them).
It seems that you are agreeing that there may be a difference in the short term. But disagree over how things play out in the long term. Maybe not.
Also, it’s helpful to consider how different actions affect different groups. Violent revolution may empower the oppressed with confidence to cause pain and disruption and inspire fear in elites. While peaceful revolution can give a more inner self-esteem to the oppressed and cause the elites to questions their own power. See this for an example: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/29/1011562/-Most-of-you-have-no-idea-what-Martin-Luther-King-actually-did
Thanks for responding, Graham! I appreciate your insights, as I really don't know much about South African history. I get the impression that we probably agree more than we disagree on the issue of nonviolent social change; clearly it ought to be everyone's first choice. I think that the threat of violence behind a nonviolent movement is certainly part of what makes nonviolent movements work sometimes (e.g. your JFK quote), but even then, that reduces the effectiveness of the movement in the long run because now people are changing because they have to, not because they want to. Furthermore, responding to violence with violence is usually not a good prescription for reduced violence overall. I think this is sort of along the lines of the point that Ryan's making. That being said, there are clearly some regimes that will not respond to peaceable agitation and I think it is wholly appropriate that armed movements (with a legitimate set of leaders, not random acts of terrorism that rarely cause meaningful change) rise up to deal with them. Libya & Sudan are two examples where I think this has played out in a way that is roughly successful; the jury is still out on whether or not the new leaders will do anything better for their people than the old ones. In the John Brown example, I agree with you that Brown's analysis was right: it was going to take bloodshed to wrest justice out of the South. However, I would say that from an ethical/moral standpoint, when it comes to intentionally committing violence for the purposes of bringing about justice/righteousness, there has to be some sort of authority/accountability structure in place in order to (hopefully) prevent vigilantism from becoming tyranny itself-- practically speaking, that's gonna look different for every situation. If John Brown had just waited a few years he might have gotten a chance to gleefully kill a whole lot more slaveholders.
I think the big point I wanted to make is that violent social change is ultimately inferior to nonviolent social change mostly because people change more meaningful when they want to change, not when they are forced to or they're scared of the consequences. This is why I tell my patients who smoke, "You'll feel better, save money, have healthier family members, and live longer if you quit smoking" instead of "You think you're stressed now? Just wait until you're on dialysis, idiot." When you have large groups of privileged people disadvantaging themselves for non-privileged people and sticking out their own necks (economically, socially, politically) because they think God likes it and it's good for them, it's a lot better than large groups of privileged people getting dragged by the neck because men with guns told them to. The hard part is convincing the privileged that (a) they are very privileged and (b) the Gospel, properly applied, is going to make the way you treat non-privileged people very differently than you otherwise would feel like you deserve. I've been working on it for a long time and I'm glad to live at a time when some of the more popular evangelicals are pounding this message pretty hard (Keller, Piper, Platt, etc.)
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