A good day in Iraq yesterday, I'd say. Hope it goes forward. Jonathan Schell's book The Unconquerable World provides some interesting historical context. I think perhaps somebody in the Bush administration has been reading it, though the particular mixture of violence, realpolitik & popular will there is not exactly like any of the historical examples (Vietnam, the US civil rights movement, Soviet Eastern Europe, etc.) Schell studies.
The Iraq "occupation" and "insurgency" seem to display Schell's panorama in a reverse mirror : here the occupation is aligned with the majority; here the army, rather than the insurgency, loses every battle, but wins the war.
Schell, of course, looks beyond the arms market and the security state - seeing popular nonviolent democracy movements as the hope of the future. His keynote theme is the paradoxical power of mass nonviolence. Something of that was visible yesterday, in the photos of Iraqis bravely holding up their ink-stained voting fingers. Power to the people.
Showing posts with label Unconquerable World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unconquerable World. Show all posts
1.31.2005
1.13.2004
I haven't nearly done justice to the nuances of The Unconquerable World - questions of cooperative vs. coercive power, love & fear - the quotes from Hannah Arendt are wonderful in their own right -
"While violence can destroy power, it can never become a substitute for it. From this results the by no means infrequent political combination of force and powerlessness, an array of impotent forces that spend themselves often spectacularly and vehemently but in utter futility."
in 1969 she wrote: "the head-on clash between Russian tanks and the entirely nonviolent resistance of the Czechoslovak people is a textbook case of the confrontation between violence and power. . . To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power."
"Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities."
Curious to read about how the parallel-culture philosophy & concrete local activities of the Polish, Czech, Hungarian activists against Soviet domination in the 70s, paralleled the early-70s turn to grassroots neighborhood organizing by the left in the US.
Of course, constructive projects to address injustice, poverty & inequality through local organizing is what civil society is or should be all about. . . today. . . acting not to complain or condemn but to address suffering directly. . .
"While violence can destroy power, it can never become a substitute for it. From this results the by no means infrequent political combination of force and powerlessness, an array of impotent forces that spend themselves often spectacularly and vehemently but in utter futility."
in 1969 she wrote: "the head-on clash between Russian tanks and the entirely nonviolent resistance of the Czechoslovak people is a textbook case of the confrontation between violence and power. . . To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power."
"Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities."
Curious to read about how the parallel-culture philosophy & concrete local activities of the Polish, Czech, Hungarian activists against Soviet domination in the 70s, paralleled the early-70s turn to grassroots neighborhood organizing by the left in the US.
Of course, constructive projects to address injustice, poverty & inequality through local organizing is what civil society is or should be all about. . . today. . . acting not to complain or condemn but to address suffering directly. . .
1.12.2004
Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World is extremely powerful. One of the best books I've read in decades.
If you want to know how nonviolent political mass action based on consent has been at the root of even supposedly violent revolutions through history, etc. If you want to know how Gandhi relates to (& differs from) Clausewitz & Mao etc. If you want to understand the nature of & relations between political movements, violence, nonviolence, satyagraha, insurgency, war, weapons of mass terror, etc. This book is superb, profound, superlative, great. It will enlighten & turn your head around.
If you want to know how nonviolent political mass action based on consent has been at the root of even supposedly violent revolutions through history, etc. If you want to know how Gandhi relates to (& differs from) Clausewitz & Mao etc. If you want to understand the nature of & relations between political movements, violence, nonviolence, satyagraha, insurgency, war, weapons of mass terror, etc. This book is superb, profound, superlative, great. It will enlighten & turn your head around.
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