So when does civil disobedience work?

Great Debates
1

So Tunisia has changed rulers after 23 years. What struck me as odd while reading up on it, the whole thing started with a single act of civil disobedience. The police confiscated a mans street cart for selling without a permit. In protest, he poured gasoline on himself and set himself on fire. A month later the leader for decades is running for his life from the screaming mobs.

On the other hand, Iranian students took to the street to protest a fraudulent election result. The man they were protesting against is still in power. For all the rage in protesting, objectively speaking it was pretty ineffectual.

Which made me think of previous anti-government protests. I’m not talking things like strikes that are for some specific goal such as wage increases, I mean protests attempting to change their very government. Authoritarian China is still here, those who protested in Tienanmen square had to be scraped off tank treads. OTOH Protesters brought down the Berlin Wall, as well as several other major victories in the breakup of the USSR. The US is still here, but the Weathermen aren’t. OTOH, because of what started as protests, British new world colonies aren’t here either. Similarly India is free because of protesters, while Burma/Myanmar right next door just has a bunch of dead monks.

So what accounts for these differences?

It’s not how violent the government puts down the protests, although that does have some effect. However, almost every successful revolution starts as protesting.

Nor is it how strong the government is, the US was formed by protesting, fighting, and winning against a one of the largest world powers of the time.

I doubt dedication to the cause has much to do with it. The guy who stood in front of a tank in China was very dedicated. And eventually, was probably very dead too.

So what factors is it that means Tunisia has a new government after protests while the Saffron Revolution was such a failure that some probably have to google it just to even know what I’m referring to?

2

Excellent question. I’m almost tempted to just say “luck”.

The first thing I would advise against is looking for a single cause. One thing that does seem to be important, though, is that the government (or the head of government) values having the rest of the world see it as legitimate. And it probably also has to do with whether or not the government officials actually fear for their lives. (Don’t forget those “second amendment remedies”.)

One of the best case studies is probably how the USSR and its satellite states fell. I can remember when East Germany was dissolving, how many commentators predicted that Czechoslovakia would never succumb the same way. A month or so later, that government fell, too.

3

This kind of distinction makes me wonder if Tunisia had clamped down and forbade all public demonstrations, while Iran tacitly permitted them (with their agents sprinkled in the crowd) as a safety valve. Certainly the act of public protest is standard in Iran, though it’s usually orchestrated “spontaneous” impotent demos against Israel and/or the U.S. Allowing the target to be changed, even to Iran itself, is fine, because the protesters are used to achieving nothing anyway.

4

Something I learned in world history, back in college: There was never a successful revolution by the lower classes. Never.

All the successful revolutions to date either had the support of the middle or upper classes.

In order for civil disobedience to work, it has to make the middle class unhappy. This is usually difficult because middle class people like being middle class, and don’t want to do anything to risk that (like getting arrested for political revolt). They usually take to the streets only when they feel that their middle class status is threatened.

The American revolution was an upper class revolution. America was left alone by the British about 100 years until the British decided to tax them for the French and Indian War. That made a lot of rich American business men unhappy (we never did like higher taxes), who then got the middle class on board by convincing them that the King of England was behaving like a tyrant. Which sounds suspiciously like what some rich Republicans are doing today.

The French revolution also started because the King of France decided to tax his noblemen.

Oppression 101 - Don’t raise taxes on rich people if you want to maintain your tyrannical reign.

I can’t speak for the middle class in Iran, but in China and Belarus (where I’m from, and where a recent rebellion was just suppressed) the middle class is doing pretty well. While there are few political freedoms in China, there is a good deal of economic freedom. The result is that middle class families have seen their incomes rise and don’t want to rock the boat.

The same thing in Belarus. The incomes of middle class Belarussians have been rising ever since Lukashenko (“President” of Belarus) took office. Compared to American incomes, their earning are pathetic, but all people see is that their lives have been improving.

Overthrowing Your Government 101 - Your main goal is to get the middle class on your side. If you just highlight the plight of the poor, no one will care enough to take to the streets. The upper classes will only get upset if the government does something stupid enough to piss them off. Your best shot is to convince the middle class that the government will soon do something that will destroy their middle class status.

Re: Weathermen: A revolt by the working class against capitalism? The capitalist system that created the richest middle class in the history of civilization? Good luck with that.

5

I don’t think that the slaves who started the Haitian Revolution were middle or upper class.

However, on the larger issue you have a certain idea that’s worth something, though it’s not an absolute rule. Generally people who are truly at the bottom of the social ladder do not have the resources to organize a revolt, put together a large number of protesters, and keep up their activities for years on end. However there are exceptions. Gandhi’s movement in India, the civil rights movement in the South during the 50’s and 60’s, and the liberation movement in South Africa would have to be textbook examples of successful civil disobedience in the twentieth century. Going back to ancient history, the early Christians also succeeded against the Roman Empire and they were mainly lower class.

Obviously having a wide base of support, good organization, and effective tactics is one part of the equation. However, in the end what really matters is which side is willing to fight longer and harder.

6

I’m not saying that the lower classes never started a revolution, but the middle class would easily be able to suppress any lower class revolution. The civil rights act of 1965 would have never passed without the support of the middle class. The poor in America do not get anything unless it’s supported by the middle class. It’s not like they can lobby congress to secretly pass legislation in their favor.

The middle class not only has the resources, but it also has the numbers. Numbers + resources gives you a perfect storm for sustaining a revolution. There’s no stopping that kind of mobilization.

It would be interesting to know if there was ever a time where the lower and upper classes teamed up against the middle class.

7

I agree that it is the middle class that ultimately keeps most dictators in power. This is why, in every case that I can think of (China is a good example), authoritarian states work hard to make sure food and other basic needs are cheap in the cities. The urban elites are the power base for most regimes.

Oddly, I think the current rise in the price of food may be a good thing for democracy. The one thing that is guaranteed to get everyone pissed off is when they cannot afford food. That is exactly the point where societies begin to look for some real change- anything less than that people figure it’s better to stay put than to risk the chaos that change could bring.

Another factor, I think, is France’s fairly recent commitment to be less involved in the affairs of their former colonies. Previously, France would generally support all but the worst leaders against coups, under the theory that any government was better than no government. Now that France has reformulated their Africa policy, the dinosaur dictators can’t rest quite as easy. I find it interesting that the former leader of Tunisia just fled like that. He knew his name was called and nobody was going to save him this time- he must have figured it’d be better to cut his losses.

8

I’ve been thinking about this. The Civil Rights movement was not a “lower class” rebellion, per se, because it was largely spearheaded by middle class, “respectable” black people. Yes, poor blacks were instrumental in its success as foot “soldiers”, but if Martin Luther King hadn’t had a “Dr.” in front of his name…if he hadn’t been so eloquent and “clean”…well, I don’t know. Also, folks weren’t just protesting and singing freedom songs. Battles were going on in the Supreme Court simultaneously. There was an intellectual as well as emotional front to the struggle.

Cameras helped too. If the scenes of little kids getting washed down the streets of Selma hadn’t been broadcast across the country and the world, maybe the majority of Americans would have chalked up the “negro problem” in the South as a whole bunch of nothing.

I also wonder about the influence of Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman’s deaths. Many people, including the SO of either Goodman or Schwerner (sorry, can’t remember which, but I remember she was rocking the best jewfro I’ve ever seen!), said that it was a shame it took the deaths of white people for the country to realize the horribleness of Jim Crow.

We also have to remember that America was touting itself as the leader of the Free World at the time. It’s kind of hard to do that seriously while allowing blatant apartheid and racial discrimination. The country had a glossy image to uphold and all those peacefully protesting people were ruining it.

So all that said, I think you need three major ingredients for civil disobedience to make a difference:

  1. A charismatic leader of impeccable morals able to speak for the people without being too accusatory or scary to the Establishment.

  2. Media exposure to touch the hearts of the apathetic. It helps if an event happens that touches “home” (such as the death of Schwerner and Goodman, or perhaps even the assassination of MLK).

  3. A government that recognizes its own hypocrisy and doesn’t want bad press, and has a history of changing its mind (through constitutional amendments and the like).

I would argue that the Palestinians would be able to gain more sympathy if they could at least get number one.

9

I think one of two requirements have to exist:

  1. The people have to have the power to actually overwhelm the govermnent.
    or,
  2. The government has to have a core of decency that prevents them from putting down the revolution harshly.

Civil disobedience worked for Gandhi because the British were basically good people, and there was a limit to how far they would go to stop it. Protests near the end of the Soviet Union were carried out in public, at a time when the Soviets were trying to present a gentle face to the world. When the Czechs tried the same thing in 1968, the Soviets simply rolled the tanks in and crushed the protests with force. China did the same thing to its protestors, and so did Iran last year.

Brutal dictatorships can go farther than that. Stalin had a habit of simply shooting anyone who refused to work, or who tried to engage in work slowdowns or other means of refusing to be ordered around. The Nazis had a solution to partisan activity in occupied territory - they’d simply shoot the partisans, their families, then for good measure they might kill everyone in the village or town and raze it to the ground. Couple that with bribes to informants or threats to informants that you’ll kill their entire family if they don’t tell you what’s going on, and you create a climate where no one can be trusted, so organization becomes extremely hard.

Stalin even went further - the Ukranians as a people weren’t that thrilled with the whole Soviet program, so he simply starved millions of them by shipping all their food elsewhere. It’s hard to revolt when you don’t have the energy to walk.

10

OK, you have to be middle or upper class, or you have to be 90% of the population.

monstro’s point 3, and Sam Stone’s point 2 are very similar, and good points. I don’t believe either are applicable to Tunisia though; the new president is hardly a member of the opposition. It’s your basic internal coup: If you leave the country now, we’ll continue to direct deposit your pension into your Swiss bank account.

11

That is an interesting concept. Was there any theory behind it or empirical method of validating it? It sounds interesting that a revolution cannot be done solely by the lower class.

As a counterpoint, the regime in Iran is deeply unpopular among the educated middle class (but popular among the more rural, poor voters), and I’m pretty sure Iraq’s regime was too. But neither has seen a revolution. And as ITR said, Haiti was a slave rebellion. I don’t know enough about world history to know if there are a litany of stricly poor/slave/lower class rebellions that have worked.

If the middle or upper classes are necessary, has anyone decided why? Does the role of skill and personal responsibility play a role?

I was reading an article several years ago about protests in China. It was talking about how the upper middle class professionals in China were protesting certain environmental and infrastructure abuses. Then the article basically said ‘when poor people in China protest, the military and police just bully them into submission. The professional class are not as easy to intimidate’. Meaning that the upper class know how to file lawsuits, keep meetings secret, get abusive police officers fired, cover their tracks online, complain to the right people, get the media involved, etc. A cop who bullies an illiterate poor person probably gets away with it. One who does that to an upper class professional will be sued and legally pursued until he is fired. Or if not fired, it will create enough headache to make other cops think twice.

So if the middle class is necessary is it because they are the bulk of the society, or because you need a certain minimum of life skill to become middle class and those life skills can help you successfully resist abuse?

As an example in the US, if you are being abused by creditors (as an example) you have a variety of rights and opportunities to sue. I think people who go through the trouble to get an education, study politics, be responsible enough to hold a job long term, etc. are more likely to look up those rights and fight back. People with less education, less self worth, fewer financial resources, etc may not fight back as effectively or hard.

12

It came up when we were discussing Karl Marx. One student asked why Marx was calling for a lower class revolution when such a thing has never been done before. The professor replied that while there never was a successful revolution by the lower classes, Marx thought that the working class revolution would be the first one.

I took his word for it since all the revolutions I’ve studied seemed to be caused by pissed off rich people who convinced the middle class to join their cause.

13

Someone else mentioned Haiti, let me toss in the Russian revolution. It had a core of educated intellectuals like Lenin, Trotsky, etc and the lower class. The middle class was, mostly, not for the Bolsheviks. Although that was following a long period of instability, some of which was supported by the middle class.

Which, after thinking about it and reading the other responses here, may be the single biggest factor. Good leadership seems to matter a lot more than anything else. Although, as John Mace pointed out, looking for a single universal factor is probably not the way to go.

So far, it seems that a revolutionary 101 would be to have a good leader, which usually means someone from the educated class but not always. Work on getting the middle class on your side. Work the media, put the establishment in a position that they have to either limit their response or look like total monsters.

14

There seem to be a number of factors that some successful rebellions have in common; none of them is a necessity, but they might lead to a calculus of sorts:

  1. Many successful rebellions have been against absentee rulers – that is to say that decisions are made by distant governments. Such governments are prone to respond clumsily or unrealistically to events in far-off colonies, and are relatively likely to write off the whole mess when it starts causing problems at home. Home-grown tyranny is more tenacious, because home-grown tyrants have nowhere else to go; sure, they can loot the national treasury and retire to the French Riviera, but that’s no fun – they’ll never rule the Riviera, never again have generals tremble before them, never order another self-aggrandizing military parade, never have their custom uniforms taken seriously again, never have enormous posters of themselves on every street…

  1. As many have said, the context of a civil society matters. It’s hard to maintain your dictatorship when your minions feel bad about terrorizing the populace, or when your cronies keep expressing their disapproval of your repressive policies. Historically repressed populations, OTOH, don’t talk back.

  2. Leadership. This one might be essential – I can’t think of a single successful rebellion, revolution, or uprising that didn’t have good leaders. Of course, “good” is a matter of perspective; a rebel leader can be a charismatic speaker, a brilliant organizer, or just a smarter thug than his opponents. Some of the finest were actually dead, exiled, or imprisoned, as a key requisite for leading a movement is not to let too many people see your warts. And let’s not forget that leading a mob is not the same as leading a country.

  3. Finally, you need to have the numbers on your side. Numbers of what, and how much, vary. In Haiti, the sheer number of slaves who rose up outweighed the superior training and technical advantages of the relative few French who opposed them. In the U.S., the colonists willing to take up arms outnumbered not only the British soldiers who could be spared from other wars, but the loyalists who were willing to fight with them. Too, the revolt had a base of sympathizers that was at least equal to the loyalist base. In other rebellions, it was money, not bodies, that turned the tide.

There are more, perhaps, and there is much here that was said before, and certainly my analysis may contain misconceptions or naïveté that others will reveal, but I think I’ve got something here.