Civil Disobedience: (Un)Common Sense in Mass Democracies

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Civil Disobedience (Un)Common Sense in Mass Democracies

Lawrence Quill

Civil Disobedience

Also by Lawrence Quill LIBERTY AFTER LIBERALISM Civic Republicanism in a Global Age

Civil Disobedience (Un)Common Sense in Mass Democracies Lawrence Quill Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science San José State University, USA

© Lawrence Quill 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–55505–1 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–55505–5 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Quill, Lawrence, 1971– Civil disobedience : (un)common sense in mass democracies / Lawrence Quill. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–55505–1 1. Civil disobedience. I. Title. JC328.3.Q55 2009 303.6′1–dc22 2008052858 10 18

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Haleema-Jazmin … for she alone knows.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

1

What Civil Disobedience is (and is not) 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Civil disobedience in the new century 1.3 A contested concept 1.4 Dimensions of disobedience 1.5 Why (un)common sense? 1.6 Overview

1 2 3 7 19 21 23

2

Obedience: Ancient and Modern 2.1 In the beginning… 2.2 After ‘the beginning’: the case of Socrates 2.3 A life of one’s own? 2.4 A ‘matter of fact’ world 2.5 Conclusion

25 26 31 38 43 49

3

Appealing to Heaven 3.1 The pirate and the emperor 3.2 Old wine in new bottles 3.3 A natural duty to obey 3.4 ‘Resistance makes us what we are’ 3.5 Conclusion

52 52 56 62 68 76

4

The 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

5

Civil Disobedience, Alienation, Political Rupture 5.1 The end of revolutions? 5.2 Life in one dimension 5.3 The view from elsewhere 5.4 Disobedience in our liquid world? 5.5 Deviating from the script

Politics of Perception The collective imagination Theatrum mundi Contr’Un The political construction of contemporary reality Government interrupted Conclusion

vii

78 78 81 87 93 98 103 106 106 109 116 123 131

viii Contents

6

Disobedience: International or Cosmopolitan? 6.1 When patriotism is not enough 6.2 No externalities without representation 6.3 ‘People power’ or superpower? 6.4 Institutionalizing resistance? 6.5 Terra incognita

134 134 137 146 154 161

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Conclusion

164

Notes

167

Bibliography

178

Index

193

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the editors at Palgrave Macmillan, particularly Alison Howson, Gemma d’Arcy Hughes, and Amy Lankester-Owen for their support and encouragement during the writing and editorial process. I would also like to thank Shirley Tan for her expert assistance with the manuscript. Thanks must also go to my home department of political science at San José State University, CA. All of my colleagues deserve credit, in particular Professor James Brent for his support during the two years it took to complete the project, and Professor Kenneth Peter, an outstanding colleague and scholar who read an early version of the manuscript and provided wonderful insight and advice. Thanks also go to those students at San José State, especially in the classes Modern Political Thought and Contemporary Political Thought during 2006–8, in particular: Andrew Siegler, Stacy Remer, Mollie Downs, and Alen Kalta. Finally, I would like to acknowledge those who have remained constant throughout and without whom life would be all the poorer: Barry Clarke, Hasmet Uluorta, Mark Gonnerman, John Pollard, Matthew Sterling, Lee Phillips, Neil Philbrick, and Debra L. Klein. To them, and to many others who provided the gift of conversation, along with frequent outbreaks of hilarity, I say ‘Thank You!’ Lawrence Quill Palo Alto, CA and Salzburg, Austria 2008

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1 What Civil Disobedience is (and is not)

In 2003, the Countryside Alliance, a collection of organizations with an interest in promoting ‘the rural way of life’ in Great Britain, threatened to engage in civil disobedience should a ban on hunting with hounds come into effect in the UK. Alliance representatives defended the breaking of a proposed law; the Hunting Act of 2004, which came into effect in February 2005; and offered to support offenders at the time of their trial. The law banning hunting could be broken, it was argued, if it was considered unjust or was a matter of conscience for an individual offender. Alliance officials cited Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and legal theorist Ronald Dworkin in support of proposed acts of civil disobedience, justifying illegal actions in dispute of unjust laws. Officials of the organization added that they would also pursue the matter in the courts and that those who chose to employ civil disobedience should not inconvenience the public and must, as part of the strategy, submit themselves to trial and punishment.1 In April 2006, 18 ‘grannies’ stood trial in New York City for disorderly conduct. The women, aged between 59 and 91, who called themselves the ‘Granny Peace Brigade’, had attempted to enlist in the armed services at a recruitment center in Times Square. After six days, during which time the women testified at length about their anti-war sentiments and commitment to free speech, the women were acquitted. The judge in the case ruled that there was evidence to suggest that they had left room for others to enlist and had been wrongly arrested. The defendants’ attorney after hearing the verdict added that the judge’s decision upheld his clients’ Constitutional First Amendment Rights to protest peacefully.2 In August 2007, a ‘Climate Camp’ was established at London’s Heathrow Airport with the express intention of disrupting commercial and private 1

2 Civil Disobedience

passenger flights. The activists organizing the camp coordinated similar examples of direct action in cities across the UK over a nine-day period resulting in over seventy arrests. Despite an injunction brought against the activists by the British Airports Authority (BAA) in the High Court, the protests went ahead attracting widespread media attention. According to Mrs. Justice Swift who granted the injunction, the protests deflected police from their ordinary duties ‘including protecting the public from terrorist attack. There is a risk’ she added, ‘that a terrorist group might use the disruption by protestors to carry out an attack.’3

1.1

Introduction

Since the momentous events of the 1960s, civil disobedience has become an acceptable part of the culture in advanced, liberal-democratic states with groups from across the political spectrum employing strategies of principled law breaking as part of broader campaigns to alter policy. Advocacy groups employ civil disobedience as an extra-institutional tactic, one that has become a familiar – perhaps too familiar – part of the political landscape. As Meyers notes, where it is used and tolerated, the ‘ritualization of civil disobedience practices make protest safer, easier, and more prevalent, [yet] they also make it less effective’ (Meyers, 2007, p. 122). As the recent examples of civil disobedience at the beginning of this chapter illustrate, however, the practice and purpose of civil disobedience differs widely. While it can be used to express moral concern or outrage, it is also part of the strategy that groups use to express their interests and make claims upon a state. Yet, in addition, in the contemporary context it can also be used to appeal to an audience beyond the state’s boundaries, to a ‘global’ audience and media who is always watching. The extraordinary civil protests in Ukraine in 2004, for example, and the recent, albeit short-lived protest movements in Myanmar in September 2007 show how important and influential a western audience can be for civil disobedience to work. These examples, and others like them, are often taken to indicate that non-Western, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or civil society groups may effectively employ civil disobedience to overthrow undemocratic, authoritarian regimes. The interest in ‘People Power’ movements is a case in point (see Ackerman and Duvall, 1998). Yet, it is also true, that people in extraordinary numbers across the globe have turned to alternative institutions (e.g. The World Social Forum, European Social Forum) and to the practice of nonviolent civil disobedience

What Civil Disobedience is (and is not) 3

as a way to express their dissent against their own democratic states, multinational corporations, and international organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) particularly when these global institutions are seen as unrepresentative, unresponsive, and unaccountable (see Wainright, 2003). Examples like these call for a reappraisal of civil disobedience. What role, if any, might civil disobedience play in the politics of representative democracies as traditional forms of political affiliation diminish, and power ‘leaks’ from the nation state to international institutions? What role is there for civil disobedience as the state’s authority is challenged by the rise of global corporations and societies come to terms with a world dominated by global threats, anxiety, and ‘risk’ (Beck, 1999)? If traditional politics, conducted via party machines has surrendered innovation and vision to the interests of economic citizens – the transnational corporation (Sassen, 1996) – what are the consequences for political life? What are the consequences for political freedom? In an attempt to address some of these questions, in this book I will explore the connection between disobedience and democracy. What this requires is a reappraisal of the role of both civil disobedience and obedience within liberal-democratic states. Ultimately, I wish to defend a particular understanding of civil disobedience and consider it fundamental to the democratic credentials of advanced mass societies. Yet, the significance of this statement (what does it mean to say that one supports the notion of civil disobedience?) cannot be appreciated without also understanding the central role of obedience to liberal democracy in particular, to the practice of government generally, and by considering the challenges and opportunities facing government and citizens in the new century.

1.2

Civil disobedience in the new century

The trajectory of civil disobedience in the late modern period may be traced back to the momentous reform movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when politicians once again found themselves facing a major challenge to their established authority.4 The inclusion of large portions of the population within the democratic process posed a threat, not simply to existing parties, but to the nature of governance and hence ‘democracy’ itself. In the early nineteenth century, limits to the franchise were


accepted as necessary because representative democracy, though highly restrictive, was thought to adequately ‘represent’ the interests of those not given the vote. Political reformers like James Mill noted that: ‘all those individuals whose interests are indisputably included in those of other individuals may be struck off without inconvenience.’ As Eley notes in a recent analysis: ‘only the mildest degrees of democracy were attained in political system anywhere before 1914…it was only after 1918 that democracy acquired any general currency in Europe as a normal type of polity, and then only very uncertainly and provisionally, as the 1920s and 1930s abundantly confirmed’ (2007, p. 182). By the third decade of the twentieth century societies in Great Britain and the United States had undergone a period of profound political, social, and economic upheaval. What emerged to accommodate the introduction of large numbers of individuals into the political system was an elite theory of governance intended to preserve stability and order. Combined with the growth of advertising and the new emerging ‘science’ of public relations, the outcome of political elections relied upon an electorate choosing between candidates much as they might choose between products. Political science, indeed the social sciences more broadly, addressed themselves to ‘perception management’ while street protest and public demonstrations were often characterized as a form of pathology or ‘mob rule’ (see Ewen, 1996; Reiss, 2007). The consequence of these trends was to transform the practice of politics into a particular kind of theater or spectacle, which, above all, was intended to reduce disorder and disobedience within a polity. The extraordinary achievements of the social movements of the 1960s notwithstanding, civil disobedience retains an ambiguous position within liberal democracies. In Democracy and Disobedience, Peter Singer (1974) described three abstract models of political community and considered to what extent disobedience could be justified in each. In the first model ‘the Leader’ who had seized power and now ruled ‘in the interests of all’ took important decisions. The Leader did not accept challenges to his authority and was protected by a group of associates who were not unwilling to use violence to defend his authority. In the second model, a ‘Senior Member’ ruled based upon a custom that said that the person who had been a member of the association for the longest duration would make all the decisions for the group as a whole. Finally, in the third association, all decisions are taken by majority vote.


The following table summarizes Singer’s main points: Table 1.1 Model One Benign Dictatorship

Model Two Senior Member

Model Three Majority Decision

A single person has acquired power and has promised to rule in the interests of the community.

Tradition dictates that the person who has been a member for the longest duration will take decisions for the whole group.

All decisions are taken by majority vote.

In the first two cases, justifying disobedience was a relatively simple task. The arbitrary nature of the acquisition of power and the decisionmaking process lent itself to challenge. The question Singer wanted to consider, however, was whether a justification for disobedience could be offered in the third scenario. Singer suggested that finding a justification, while possible, would be difficult. In fact, he noted at the outset of his analysis that while it was often said that disobedience to some kinds of government were justified it was almost never so in a democracy of the kind that existed in the United States or Britain. That would explain why civil disobedience was not part of the package of ideas that was exported around the globe along with the idea of the free market and constitutional government. And yet, towards the end of his analysis, Singer also noted the following: ‘I remind the reader that we have yet to consider whether any existing systems of government conform sufficiently to the democratic model for the democratic reasons to hold’ (1974, p. 63). The meaning of civil disobedience today is unclear, much as the meaning of politics, perhaps even democracy itself is unclear. In the face of an obvious injustice (e.g. racial segregation) civil disobedience might be applauded, at least in hindsight. But what status does the disobedient acquire when he/she breaks domestic law in order to protest against human rights abuses in China, or in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions? Moreover, where might protestors focus their attention in order to ‘raise awareness’ about a particular issue: their national government? A corporation? The European Union? Earlier protests typically involved the citizens of one country addressing their state or national government about a single issue. In the new century, however, the nature of political power has changed. Politicians are seen less as visionaries and more as managers whose task


it is to govern in a manner that advances individual liberty by simultaneously freeing markets from state interference. Yet control over those markets has largely passed away to institutions that operate above the reach of the state. Consequently, citizens find themselves twice removed from power with their representatives no longer fully in charge of a nation’s destiny. Civil disobedience, then, needs to be placed within this new context. In part, this will require a reassessment of the theoretical resources available that lend support to principled law breaking. In the chapters that follow, I will draw upon a number of different traditions within western political thought that do just that. It may also be the case, however, given this new ‘global’ context, that the archetypal models of civil disobedience in the twentieth century, the movements associated with M. K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., are less relevant for citizens living in advanced democracies today. Some authors have rightly pointed out that in contemporary liberal democratic societies civil disobedience has come to be regarded as an accepted and acceptable part of the political culture. Dworkin (1985) notes, for example, that ‘Americans accept that civil disobedience has a legitimate if informal place in the political culture of their community…Civil disobedience is no longer a frightening idea in the United States’ (p. 105). To remain effective, then, civil disobedience has had to adapt as states have become far more accommodating to this type of protest. Vinthagen (2007) cites one such example of successful adaptation: the ‘Critical Mass’ phenomenon in San Francisco, CA. The protest, a yearly event, ‘merges the traditional demonstration and the road blockade into a huge mass of cycling non-organised individuals that fill the roads on a “bicycling tour” at a certain time and place. Since there is no law against bicycling when there is a lot of other people doing the same, this explicitly declared “tour” is a non-demonstration which at the same time is a de facto demonstration or blockade’ (fn., p. 5).5 Disobedience has also moved into the virtual environment, with protestors now organizing into ‘smart’ or ‘flashmobs’ via the Internet, or by using the relatively cheap phenomenon of text messaging to organize (Danitz et al, 1999; Rheingold, 2002).6 There are even computer simulations that employ algorithmic strategies for activists to learn about civil disobedience.7 Increasingly, protestors are looking to other sources of inspiration than the life histories and struggles of some of the twentieth centuries most iconic figures of civil disobedience.


1.3

A contested concept

What role, if any, might civil disobedience play in modern, representative democracies? Where does civil disobedience fall in the narrative of mass democracy? Is it a ‘leverage point’ (Klein, 1998), one that may alter a political system? Or does civil disobedience, because it is tolerated by the ‘system’ merely confirm and support business as usual (Zizek, 2008b)? In 1967, the New York Times gathered a representative sample of advocates and detractors together to discuss the issue of civil disobedience, then such a prominent feature of political life in the United States.8 The following table illustrates the wide array of views expressed on the subject. Table 1.2 For • Civil disobedience produces creative tension within societies. • After Dachau and Auschwitz, no person of conscience can believe that authority must always be obeyed. • To fail to exercise one’s moral conscience is to endorse civil idolatry, placing state laws above moral laws. • Civil Disobedience is patriotic and forces societies to reconsider their purposes. • Civil Disobedience is necessary because there are no procedures available to citizens who wish to avoid complicity in the illegitimate actions of their government.

Against • Civil Disobedience is absurd because it encourages hyper-responsiveness from government. • A citizen whose disagreements with his country are organic and apparently irreconcilable should seek out more compatible countries. • An attack on the government cannot be safely permitted as it threatens national interests in a time of conflict. • Civil disobedience shows disrespect for the law and the democratic community. • Purely strategic civil disobedience is nothing more than a ‘highly organized and artfully contrived species of riot.’

The majority of the writing on civil disobedience emerged from the United States during the same period. This is hardly surprising given the history of principled disobedience to legitimate authority that can be traced at least as far back as the resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The latter, which made it illegal for those in the North to assist escaped slaves was resisted by thinkers such as Henry David


Thoreau, whose contributions to the discussion of civil disobedience continue to exercise considerable influence over the subject. By contrast, some have suggested that the apparent lack of writing on the subject of civil disobedience in Great Britain has been due in large part to a tradition of good laws and a unique degree of consensus (Sissons, 2003). However, it is possible to trace the history of civil disobedience back to the radical political groups of mid-seventeenth century England, the Chartists in the eighteenth century, and in modern times to the Suffragette movement, the protests of the early Labor movement (important in enacting the Reform Bill of 1867), and to the writings of the philosopher and activist Bertrand Russell after the Second World War. A renewed interest in civil disobedience also arose in the 1980s as a result of the resistance to the deployment of American nuclear missiles on English soil at the Greenham Common Air Base. As the views advanced in Table 1.1 illustrate, however, attitudes towards civil disobedience reflect profound disagreements over the nature of government, the responsibilities of citizens, not to mention the political sympathies of the analyst. Part of the problem is interpretive. As Bedau (1969, 1991) notes, definitions vary so widely and are, in many cases, so broad as to obscure rather than illuminate our understanding of the subject. If, for example, civil disobedience is defined as ‘any civil breach of unmoral statutory enactments’ (Gandhi) then ‘unjustified’ civil disobedience becomes all but inconceivable. If, instead, it is defined as, ‘the breaking of any law that an individual considers unjust’ (W. H. Auden), then anyone wishing to purchase alcohol under the age of 21 in the United States is committing an act of civil disobedience. Free speech Other attempts to define civil disobedience do so negatively, by distinguishing it from what it is not. Equating civil disobedience with a free speech defense, for example, has been rejected on the grounds that acts of civil disobedience lose their moral force if justified on legal grounds. Civil disobedience as free speech tangles philosophical justifications for breaking the law with legal protections to so do. On this view, those who engage the law in their defense may be charged with ethical inconsistency by attempting to avoid justifiable punishment. At the very least, the symbolic act of disobedience is undermined, or so it is argued, when protestors attempt to use the law as protection against their own illegal actions. Accordingly, civil disobedience entails the


acceptance of punishment and guilt and the personal suffering incurred from a non-linguistic form of persuasion.9 Cohen (1969) argued forcefully against the free speech defense. He suggested that claiming sanctuary under first amendment protections of the US Constitution not only undermined the strength of the moral case in the eyes of the public, but carried free speech to the point of absurdity. ‘[A]ny person’ he noted, ‘protesting any laws or policies he happens to think unjust might then deliberately break the laws he thinks wrongful, or some other unrelated laws, and then go on to argue that his unlawful conduct is protected by the First Amendment’ (Cohen, 1969, p. 166). Courts are generally suspicious of this sort of defense, but this has not stopped individuals from using legal counsel to advance their claims and obtain a forum for their particular grievance. Symbolically, it might be argued, even if a jury rejects the civil disobedient’s case, the message has been conveyed that benefits society at large. Taking civil disobedience to be a form of free speech also, it might be argued, empowers juries, traditionally the most democratic of political institutions, permitting them a say in the shaping of policy. Citizens who are frustrated at the lack of alternatives to air their side of a policy issue, can use the courts to: ‘assault the unresponsiveness of those in power in dealing with the problem and prod them to action…in presenting evidence of a causal relationships, they can argue the importance of individual action in reforming society’ (Bauer and Eckerstrom, 1987, p. 1176). The necessity defense The related argument from ‘legal necessity’ suggests that in wishing to avoid a greater harm, civil disobedience is justified when no alternative course of action is available to an individual or individuals. Pleading necessity permits a disobedient to deny guilt while providing a means to discuss (political) issues in a courtroom.10 It is often argued in response that orthodox political channels always provide a reasonable opportunity to change the government. But this is not always the case. Much depends on whether what one considers reasonable is dedicated to the maintenance of the status quo or the removal of injustice. For individuals who are frustrated with orthodox channels of political responsiveness, a courtroom provides precisely the kind of public forum, which is normally unavailable. This approach is similar to Bertrand Russell’s justification for law breaking in England after the Second World War: If the government wishes some fact to remain unknown, almost all major organs of publicity will assist in concealment. In such cases it


often happens that the truth can only be made known, if at all, by persistent and self-sacrificing efforts involving obloquy and perhaps disgrace. Sometime, if the matter rouses sufficient passion, the truth comes to be known in the end. This happened, for example, in the Dreyfus Case. But where the matter is less sensational the ordinary voter is likely to be left permanently in ignorance. (Russell, 1969, p. 156) For Russell this was hardly the stuff of conspiracy theories and more properly an accurate assessment of the political facts in the modern world. Citizens, by and large, remained ignorant of the actions of government either by choice or by design. In part, this was a result of the increasing expertise required to understand the technicalities of complex bureaucratic procedures; a result of ‘modernity.’ It was also due to a contrived ignorance on the part of the organs of the state, and an unending series of distractions provided by the major media outlets.11 Theorists have long bemoaned the relative passivity of contemporary citizenship, what C. Wright Mills called the ‘administration from above, and …political vacuum below’ (1956, pp. 308–9). Yet, by claiming necessity, it is argued, social reformers who might otherwise have no public outlet to express their views obtain one in their attempts to convince a jury through reasoned and lengthy argument about the validity of their case. And as the state is one of the parties, sound bites will not do. Nonetheless, the use of the law for this purpose is not without its problems. Individual citizens might feel responsible for the actions taken by governments ‘in their name’, but most acquiesce in those decisions. They are not ‘acting under superior orders’ and cannot be implicated legally in a ‘crime’, even though there may be issues of complicity, or they may be willfully or genuinely ignorant of their government’s activities. However, as Cohen argues: ‘If obedience to some law (or order) would somehow involve him in a crime against international law or against humanity, or would in some way clearly indicate even approval or acceptance of that criminal conduct, one might plausibly claim that, forced to choose, he is obliged to disobey the state in obedience to an international and moral law of higher authority. Indirect civil disobedience, however, does not arise under circumstances of this kind’ (Cohen, 1971, p. 207). Claiming that civil disobedience occurred because of a ‘vital social purpose’ is equally problematic (see Zinn, 1968, p. 119). Defendants


who use the ‘necessity’ argument must establish, in addition to the obvious rejoinder that reasonable, legal alternatives exist that could direct their grievances in an orthodox direction, a direct causal relationship between the act of disobedience and the imminent harm. This is especially difficult when experts disagree over the nature of a ‘potential’ threat. The case of the installation of nuclear weapons at Greenham Common, England in the 1980s, is a case in point. Many eminent scientists considered nuclear weapons a threat to the existence of the species. The production of atomic weapons during and after the Second World War, noted Robert Oppenheimer, ‘force[s] us to re-consider the relations between science and common sense’ (Kimball-Smith, 1980, p. 346). The creation and successful detonation of a nuclear weapon altered political reality and the language that had hitherto been used to describe it. Yet, at the same time, others argued and continue to argue that the possession of the weapons acted as a safeguard against catastrophic mutual annihilation. Nuclear weapons, because of their terrifying capabilities, were a deterrent. What we can conclude from this example is that the direct causal relation between civil disobedience and the harm it seeks to avoid is not always clear. The precise connection between blocking the entrance to a military base and persuading the government to alter its policy on nuclear deterrence or the withdrawal of troops from overseas is dubious at best. International law Some legal scholars and philosophers have advanced the related argument that under the Nuremberg Principles citizens have a moral duty to oppose violations of international law through acts of civil disobedience. In the military trials that followed the Second World War, the prosecution argued that individuals had a duty to violate domestic law to prevent their government from violating international norms. The suggestion at work is that individuals may be held liable under international law as their guilt differs only in degree from their government. Critics of civil disobedience sometimes assert that breaking the law illustrates a general disrespect for life in a civilized community. Such disrespect, it is suggested, makes living together impossible. However, in the case of those who refer to international law as the ultimate source of authority, that argument misses the point. At issue is not respect or disrespect for law per se. The state is not being asked to act as a neutral judge between disputants. What makes the appeal to


international law attractive for disobedients and uncomfortable for states, is that in this instance the state is one of the disputants. The formation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 and the high profile attempts to extradite the late General Augusto Pinochet from the United Kingdom to a court in Spain merely served to highlight the fact that international norms at the end of the 1990s had teeth. The ICC was, according to one commentator, an example of ‘legal globalization’: ‘Spain would not have had a legal interest to which the English courts were able to accede,’ without the Statute of the ICC (Sands, 2006, p. 14). The forerunners of this court were the tribunals set up after the end of hostilities in 1945. The very essence of those principles was that individuals had duties that transcended the national obligation of obedience. The UN General Assembly adopted the Tribunal Charter as international law. Consequently, Boyle (1987) argues that when political administrations engage in activities that are ‘illegal’ by international standards, citizens may invoke international law against their own governments. Hence, a person is entitled to commit an ordinary crime in order to prevent a greater public harm. This approach is not without force. It reflects now, more than at any other time in the past, the transformation of public perceptions of international law. However, it is questionable whether international law can persuasively serve as a basis for civil disobedient acts within the nation. For one thing, citizens of nations have very little say in the development of new international laws or trade agreements that affect their nation’s political and economic life. The discussions that take place in Geneva or Doha are neither open to the public or the press, and reflect the interests of national delegates and their corporate representatives who bring expertise and technical capacity to the negotiations. Admittedly, just as corporations have discovered that they may bring influence to bear on national governments, so too have citizens though admittedly in a much smaller capacity. As ‘[t]he legal fiction of the sovereign state crumbles in the face of natural realities and economic impulses’ one advocate notes, citizens are discovering that they have the possibility of influencing the actions of their governments in ways that were inconceivable a generation ago (Sands, 2006, p. 16). Conscientious objection In 2005, Ben Griffin, a former SAS officer who had served in Iraq, refused to be redeployed on the grounds that the war was both immoral and


illegal. Specifically, he expressed disquiet at the actions of US soldiers in their treatment of civilians. In March of that year he informed his commanding officer that he had no intention of returning to Iraq. Expecting to be placed under arrest and court-martialed, instead Mr. Griffin was discharged with his military record intact and with a testimonial from his superior officer that described him as a, ‘balanced and honest soldier who possesses the strength and character to genuinely have the courage of his convictions’ (Rayment, 2006). Civil disobedience is generally regarded as distinct from the practice of conscientious objection, however.12 The latter accepts that a government may have a legitimate claim on a citizen to perform an action, but personal beliefs preclude obedience to the law in a particular instance. In most instances, the distinguishing characteristic of conscientious objection is that an individual performs it, rather than a group. Many societies accept the claims of conscience upon an individual, making an allowance for objectors in their conscription laws or in the harshness of their disciplinary actions (Moskos and Chambers, 1993). Indeed, the call of conscience is perhaps the most widely recognized source of alternative authority. Those examples of disobedience from the ancient world – among them Socrates, Philoctetes, and Antigone – and from the writings of Thoreau, speak clearly to the various ideologies of individualism that permeate modern societies.13 The individual disobedient is seen as a troubled hero (or heroine), standing up for principle when the ‘time is out of joint’, whereas the dictates of pragmatism and acquiescence would grant them a more peaceful civil existence. What is at stake in each instance is attention to and care for the self. As Thoreau noted in On Civil Disobedience: It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even those most enormous wrong; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. (Thoreau, 1983, p. 34) The critique that is sometimes made of this form of disobedience to authority is that it is personal and private rather than political and public. Matters of conscience are suitable subjects of study for moral philosophy but not for political analysis. In addition, conscience is


often invoked as if it were unchallengeable, the end result rather than the beginning of a discussion; a problematic state of affairs as people’s consciences tend to vary as to the causes they feel passionate about. Many unethical acts, as Billington (2003) notes, have been committed with a clear conscience. It is partly for this reason that the legacy bequeathed by writers like Thoreau is said to be part of an ongoing problem, privileging individual moral judgment over governmental authority, answering disagreement over government policy by disassociating one’s self from society rather than attempting to change it. Whatever moral weight the conscience might have it has little to say about strategies for changing policy. That is left for others to do.14 Yet conscience can be both personal and political, freeing the individual from political authority so that she may speak out against it and in the service of social reform. A troubled conscience can lead to a shift in political consciousness, where the self is ‘fundamentally and jointly personal and public’ (McCready, 1996).15 At issue is just how critical one’s conscience can be. Coupled with the principle of reflective judgment, perhaps, a critical conscience might arise after careful inner deliberations about relevant moral and political factors. Yet, the distinctive feature of even this variety of conscience is that, often enough, ‘it is neither an attempt to force the majority to alter its decision, nor an attempt to gain publicity, or to ask the majority to reconsider its decision.’ Fundamentally, it remains an apolitical act (Singer, 1974, p. 97).16 Reform or revolution? If a distinguishing feature of civil disobedience is that it occurs in the public realm, then it is also: a) Reformist in outlook rather than revolutionary and b) Nonviolent. The civil disobedient, according to recent theory, is ‘no revolutionary or militant’ (Bauer and Eckerstrom, 1987). John Rawls’ influential definition of civil disobedience reflects these basic assumptions. Civil disobedience is, ‘disobedience to law within the limits of fidelity to law, although it is at the outer limits thereof.’ He adds further: ‘[it is] a public nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law, usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government’ (1971, pp. 364, 366).


Civil disobedience differs from mere criminality, does not generally wish to undermine the political system but reform a part of it, a law or policy, and usually (though not always) is nonviolent in its attempt to sway or appeal to the conscience of a political community. As Rawls adds: The problem of civil disobedience…arises only within a more or less just democratic state for those citizens who recognize and accept the legitimacy of the constitution. The difficulty is one of conflict of duties. At what point does the duty to comply with laws enacted by a legislative majority (or with executive acts supported by such a majority) cease to be binding in view of the right to defend one’s liberties and the duty to oppose injustice? (Rawls, 1971, p. 363) The notion that the act of civil disobedience is an act of reform is central to many recent definitions. Pech (1969) notes that, ‘…the criteria in terms of which acts of civil disobedience may be justified turn upon the assumption that the role of civil disobedience is the promotion of justice and reform within just such an existing structure of legitimate legal and political institutions’ (p. 263; see also Lang, 1970). As a consequence, and as an act of good faith, protestors ought willingly accept their punishment, the symbolism of which can only increase the moral weight of their arguments – they are shown to be sincere – and the public’s attention to their cause. Theorists of political obligation within the liberal tradition have tended to argue that citizens have special obligations or duties to obey the law. For Rawls, this is a ‘natural duty’ tempered by the ‘duty to oppose injustice.’ One is obliged to obey the laws within a system in which one has benefited in some fashion. Yet, as we shall see in a later chapter, one of the major problems with arguments from obligation – and there are several – is that they rely upon an assumption about the fairness of a political system, and the distribution of benefits and burdens within that system. Like medieval theologians who began with the assumption that God existed and all other arguments were built upon this foundation, liberal theorists attempt to accommodate protest within a system that is assumed to be ‘reasonable,’ and where obligations arise when a system is ‘nearly just.’ The obvious rejoinder to this line of reasoning is that if the system itself could somehow be shown to be unjust, then the defense of disobedience would be far easier to make. Indeed, one might argue that


there are occasions when there exists a duty to disobey an unjust system. To not do so might be considered moral laziness or complicity with a system that provides some individuals with liberties and benefits while others suffer. Yet, how does one convince those in a relative position of power and privilege, that a ‘nearly just’ system could be more ‘just’?17 It is also worth remembering that the archetypal advocates of civil disobedience, Thoreau, Gandhi, and King, while they used civil disobedience as part of a moral program of ‘self-purification’, also saw it as part of a concerted campaign not merely to reform the system, but to transform it. They all thought that a higher law compelled them to resist state law. King referred to the ‘system’ as ‘unjust’ and ‘evil’ while reminding Americans of their commitments to the principles of the Founders. ‘The thing to do’ he noted in a speech delivered in 1961, ‘is to get rid of the system’ (King, 1961/1986, p. 47). Gandhi, writing in Hind Swaraj, was even clearer: My notion of loyalty does not involve acceptance of current rule or government irrespective of its righteousness or otherwise…I must frankly confess that I am not so much concerned about the stability of the Empire as I am about that of the ancient civilization of India which, in my opinion, represents the best the world has ever seen. The British Government in India constitutes a struggle between the Modern Civilization, which is the Kingdom of Satan, and the Ancient civilization, which is the Kingdom of God. (1910/1997, p. 7) On closer examination, then, some forms of civil disobedience appear to contain a revolutionary element. Indeed, our paradigm cases may be considered quite uncivil in their strategies of disobedience to authority. This complicates the view of civil disobedience as a quintessentially moral (hence apolitical act), though much, of course, depends upon what one takes to be politics or ‘the political’ or indeed ‘the ethical’ (see Mouffe, 1992). Nonviolence and violence This brings us to the second element of civil disobedience said to distinguish it from other forms of illegality – a commitment to nonviolence. Indeed, it is this element that has been emphasized in much of the recent writing concerning civil disobedience; the terms civil disobedience and non-violence are often used interchangeably; and forms


the basis of a considerable and ongoing body of research in the social sciences.18 While states are legitimately entitled to use violence on a massive scale there are cultural and political norms that prohibit nonstate actors from using violence; a position supported by the paradigm cases of civil disobedience and a great deal of political theory.19 A commitment to non-violence is widely regarded as a central feature of contemporary civil disobedience. However, the precise relation between civil disobedience and violence is complicated by several factors. The success of civil disobedience, as Sharp noted in his study of non-violent movements, depends in some instances upon the deliberate provocation of violence. ‘As cruelties to nonviolent people increase the opponent’s regime may appear still more despicable, and sympathy and support for the nonviolent side may increase. The general population may become more alienated from the opponent and more likely to join the resistance’ (1973a, p. 113). In so doing, the broader public’s insensitivity to the plight of others is brought into question. Nonviolent tactics may only be effective provided that a third party employs a violent response. Failure to do so may undermine the effectiveness of the disobedience in question (see Branch, 1989). Indeed, as David Garrow (1978) notes, Martin Luther King’s choice of locations for protest during the Civil Rights Movement was often deliberately chosen to prompt violent responses from local authorities. The intention was to generate public sympathy as the media focused attention on violence against peaceful demonstrators. How else might an individual, reading their newspaper in London or New York or watching images of violence against unarmed demonstrators be moved themselves to outrage and action (see Hobsbawm, 1998)? Nonetheless, the prohibition against the use of violence against the state is taken as given. To suggest otherwise overturns a deep cultural and political norm.20 Yet as Daube (1972) suggests in his analysis of disobedience in the ancient world, this prohibition can reveal much about those who wish to defend the system against challenge. There was, he suggests, an obvious advantage to those in power recounting the story of how a secession or revolution was brought about by peaceful means. ‘To concentrate on the civil features is desirable’ Daube adds, ‘because it was hoped the masses would accept the peaceful method as an ideal, a model’ (p. 145). Vinthagen (2007) similarly points out in his analysis that what is generally regarded as ‘normal or everyday politics’ now, and what is considered unacceptable political activity, is the result of historical struggle and uneven power relationships. What counts as civil disobedience and


what counts as disturbance, riot, or even theft, according to Vinthagen, will reflect the bias of the ruling elites. More importantly, one must recall that uncivilized behavior such as unlawful strikes or protests in the past have often proven to be the catalyst for social change transforming uncivil norm-breaking behavior into civil norm-creating behavior (2007, p. 1). During the nineteenth century, the campaign for suffrage moved from a non-violent version of civil disobedience to increasingly more desperate and violent actions. As van Weingarten (1999) notes in her study, after years (1870–1884) of ‘emphatically nonviolent’ protest and concerted political campaigning, the following 19 years (1885–1904) marked a decline of momentum in the campaign for women’s suffrage. The subject of women’s suffrage was only voted on twice during this period. This led to increasingly desperate actions on the part of campaigners including hunger strikes and forced feeding, the breaking of windows, pouring ink into letterboxes, and eventually martyrdom. Emily Wilding Davison tried to rein down the King’s horse at Epsom Downs on Derby Day 1913, an action that resulted in her eventual death. ‘In 1903, she would have been roundly dismissed as a lunatic; by 1913, Davison could be hailed by her comrades as one more martyr to the cause of votes for women’ (1999, p. 70) As van Weingarten notes: A pattern of lawbreaking, arrest, and trial developed. The suffragettes would insist on seeing a politician or marching to Parliament, be denied access, but refuse to leave. Violence would erupt when the police began to use physical force to break up the crowds. After each incident, dozens of women would be brought up in police court and charged with breaches of the law such as obstructing the police in the execution of their duty. (van Weingarten, 1999, p. 79) The relation between protest and violence is problematic. Civil disobedience since the 1960s has been equated with the philosophy of non-violence. Yet this relationship should not be taken for granted. Hondereich (1976) noted famously in a discussion about social and economic inequality and its effects within society, that there might well be occasion, after serious reflection upon the empirical realities of modern societies, for change to occur – even violent change. If the extent of inequality is taken into account, the distress it causes, the facts of deprivation, and the economic fact that it need not be so, then


we might be less inclined to reject the use of violence out of hand in order to defend things as they are; this lead to an important qualification with respect to inequality and political violence.21 Speaking, as many theorists do, from a relative position of privilege, Hondereich suggested that, for many, a lack of awareness about the evils of inequality (a structural violence) clouded one’s perception concerning a justification of political violence that might be made in order to reduce it. In the end, when the work of inquiry and reflection has been done, it may be that the strongest arguments against political violence will indeed be those having to do with the probabilities of success…It may also become evident in the end, less comfortingly, that violence would be justified in these situations if it worked. That is, it may become evident that in these situations, as in others, violence which did secure change in inequalities would be preferable to no violence and no change. (Hondereich, 1976, p. 37)22 The point of this diversion has less to do with a discussion about the growing inequalities within advanced democracies and their effects, or a justification for political violence; a topic that would deserve a far more complete treatment. It is intended merely to problematize the equation between civil disobedience and non-violence, a point to be developed in later chapters (see also Reiss, 2007).

1.4

Dimensions of disobedience

From the previous set of discussions it is possible to identify a number of different conceptual relationships that fall under the umbrella concept of civil disobedience.23 Rather than attempting, therefore, to advance a ‘catch-all’ definition, it is better to think about civil disobedience in terms of different dimensions. What may begin as a matter of personal conscience or integrity can, given the proper circumstances, become a form of collective action directed at the reform of a particular policy. This is not an exclusively modern phenomenon. Wink has recently demonstrated, for example, that even Jesus’ advocacy of nonviolent disobedience, ‘turning the other cheek,’ was not merely an invitation to accept punishment from an oppressor in the hope of moving their conscience. It was part of a complex political exchange that directly challenged the status of an attacker and the symbolic order of Roman society. ‘[F]ar from


counseling an unattainable otherworldly perfection, [nonviolent disobedience] is a practical, strategic measure for empowering the oppressed’ (1998, p. 105). Conceptual divisions between different kinds of civil disobedience (e.g. individual vs. collective; justice-based vs. policy-based) aid understanding up to a point. Yet, even the most ‘obvious’ differentiating features (reform vs. revolution and nonviolence vs. violence) are open to contestation. Indeed, these categories are not distinct but rely upon one another. In practice, this is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in those forms of protest that take place within nations but are inspired by transnational issues, the recognition that global problems (global warming, the unrepresentative nature of many national and international institutions etc.) are also national and local problems. Indeed, sometimes the best way to affect national policy can be to engage in transnational forms of protest, applying pressure to corporations, for example, that then influence the direction of government policy (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). With this ‘fluid’ model of disobedience in mind we may begin to appraise civil disobedience and its place within a political theory of representative government. As we shall see in later chapters, in modern times the theoretical backdrop for civil disobedience was the political theory of liberalism. Yet, while there is room for such action within the theories grouped under that constellation of political concepts, it is also the case that the Rawlsian paradigm that has come to dominate liberalism over the past generation makes almost no room for civil disobedience. The aim of this book, by contrast, is to establish just what resources are available within liberalism and other theoretical approaches that not only make room for civil disobedience but also actively support it. The challenge of finding such a theory has a long history. Hampshire (1970) once noted in a relevant discussion that, ‘[civil disobedience] still has no sufficiently precise social theory which can be made the basis of predictions…what form will its political action most naturally and reasonably take?’ Disobedience to authority occurred, added Hampshire, because of the loss of faith by a generation disappointed by their political leaders. The result, at that time, was a ‘new kind of moral individualism, one that does not imagine continuity from the past to the future, but sees [the] immediate environment in terms of rupture with the past, and fearfulness at the effects of waste and environmental degradation on their future.’ Above all, what civil disobedience en masse expressed, thought Hampshire, was the need for a new social and political theory.


1.5

Why (un)common sense?

To perform an act of civil disobedience under present circumstances is to exercise a form of uncommon sense. ‘[W]e are living in a topsyturvy world,’ noted Hannah Arendt, ‘a world where we cannot find our way by abiding to the rules of what was once common sense’ (Arendt, 1953, p. 384). Arendt’s diagnosis of life in modernity after the holocaust was a grim one, characterized by a loss of meaning and profound disorientation as the old categories of political thought provided little help in understanding a world after totalitarianism. ‘Since the beginning of this century, the growth of meaninglessness has been accompanied by loss of common sense…We know of no civilization before ours in which people were gullible enough to form their buying habits in accordance with the maxim that “self-praise is the highest recommendation,” the assumption of all advertising’ (p. 383). For Arendt, this loss of a ‘common’ or ‘shared sense’ of the world about us had a profound effect on political life. The result was a turning away from those human values that mattered most. These common concerns had been all but replaced by the pursuit of ‘rationality’ and the elevation of private passions and desires over public goods. Politics, which for Arendt was the realm of human freedom, was reduced to administration as the effects of mass society overwhelmed individuals. Nonetheless, however much the state tried to reduce the unpredictable and spontaneous features of human life, the features Arendt associated most with human freedom, political reality retained a degree of paradox and contradiction. This upset the self-image of government requiring constant attention and effort in order to maintain the facade of order through, in some cases, systematized lying. Yet even this would ultimately prove to be an unsustainable policy (Arendt, 1972). According to Gramsci (1971), what counted as political reality required a choice from the agent concerned, the individual, as to whether or not they would continue to believe in the ‘order of things.’ This sense of agency, however, also made it possible to produce uncommon, critical, or ‘good sense,’ and with it competing views of ‘reality.’ Political reform for Gramsci, therefore, required both a moral and intellectual challenge to ‘the real conception of the world’ one that was implicit in the choices that emerged from the activity of individuals themselves. Critiquing the dominant political order was a task for philosophy: [Common sense’s] most fundamental characteristic is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary,


incoherent and inconsequential, in conformity with the social and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it is. At those times when a homogeneous social group is brought into being, there comes into being also, in opposition to common sense, a homogeneous – in other words coherent and systematic – philosophy. (Gramsci, 1971, p. 419) It took a constant effort, an act of collective hallucination, to keep the fabric of political reality together. Once this was recognized, alternative visions of the future might be advanced.24 It seems appropriate to consider civil disobedience and common sense together in the light of these remarks. Political reality at the end of the first decade of the new century is, in an important sense, up for grabs. Wainright has argued, for example, that the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, far from being over, need to be completed. The value of existing mass democracies needs to be judged not by how well political elites may manage domestic populations but how well they encourage and develop the capacities of individual members of a polity (2003, p. 1). The new global movements, ones that employ non-violent disobedient tactics as they advance their claims, are consequently said to represent a reawakening of the democratic hopes of the social movements of the 1960s. ‘Millions have witnessed for themselves what it is like to be powerless even when in the majority. And the experience has got them thinking – grappling with the problem of how to build a new power for genuine democracy in the face of the military and corporate interests of the United States. A mass of sense, it seems, is truly being awakened’ (2003, p. 181). Perhaps. It is also the case that the political climate in the many advanced, liberal democratic states has changed markedly since the events of September 11, 2001. Scholars and policy-makers in the light of new anxieties have reconsidered their commitments to human rights and the prohibitions against formerly unthinkable acts such as torture. Political psychologists have been able to identify a correlation between electoral success and those candidates who can most usefully articulate and remind people of their fears (Rosenblatt et al, 1989). Legal scholars have noted identifiable trends towards security and against liberty in times of crisis. Oren Gross (2003) and David Cole (2002) both argue that during times of crisis there is a ‘race to the bottom’ in democratic nations with liberty sacrificed for security. When the foundations of western civilization are supposedly at stake


attitudes towards those who would challenge the political authorities from without and within tend to harden (Gray, 2003). The proper purpose of civil disobedience within the context of globalization(s) and the ongoing war on terror is yet to be determined. For civil disobedience to occur at all requires a conscious act, an act of imagination. Indeed, what civil disobedience achieved in the past, or so I shall argue, was the rupture of the fabric of social and political reality, thereby opening a space for new political possibilities. This, indeed, was the very nature of politics for thinkers like Arendt and Gramsci. In the light of these comments, the aim of the present work will be to consider what role civil disobedience may have in the context of late modernity, or what some have termed ‘risk society’ (Beck, 1999). My goal here is to take a first step towards the creation of the new social and political theory that Hampshire identified nearly 40 years ago, what Critchley (2007) has recently called the need for a ‘new language of civil disobedience’, one that pushes against the limiting effects of common sense.

1.6

Overview

The next chapter will consider the role of obedience within the history of political thought. Beginning with earliest descriptions of relationships of authority and obedience as these appear in poetry, the analysis will proceed to one of the earliest (supposed) examples of disobedience: the case of Socrates. I will then expand the discussion to consider the function of obedience in modern democratic states to consider its relevance within the social and political realm. Finally, I will draw upon relevant analyses from the social sciences in an attempt to recast obedience as a problem rather than the default end or final goal of government. The remaining chapters will explore the contributions of particular theoretical traditions to our understanding and appreciation of civil disobedience. Chapter 3 will consider disobedience within the political tradition of liberalism with particular reference to the notions of consent, obligation, and what John Rawls once described as the ‘natural duty to obey.’ While liberalism has been reluctant to accommodate disobedience within its theoretical schema, it is possible to find the resources available. It will be to John Stuart Mill and his notion of ‘progress’ that I will turn for one potential justification of civil disobedience within the liberal state. Chapter 4 considers the contribution of the civic-republican tradition to civil disobedience within the context of modernity and post-


or late-modernity. Specifically, this chapter analyses the contributions of republicans/humanists to our understanding of the political world as theater. The little discussed, yet I would argue highly significant, approach of the French author Étienne de la Boétie will form the core of this analysis. Significantly, it is Boétie’s (and others) phenomenal interpretation of political life that was developed later by the philosopher Hannah Arendt. Arendt’s analysis of the significance of the civil disobedience or student movements are examined here within the context of her broader theoretical approach to politics, freedom, and government. Building on this analysis, Chapter 5 proceeds by taking civil disobedience to be a kind of rupture, a form of ‘alienation’ deliberately upsetting and contorting the construction of political reality. I draw heavily on the contributions of Herbert Marcuse’s work, particularly his appropriation of the early Marx and his subsequent development of the concept of estrangement. While the first half of the chapter explores in some detail precisely how Marcuse appropriated this concept and applied it to the student movements of the 1960s (identified by Marcuse as the agent of social change for the period), left there the analysis would be incomplete. Consequently, the final sections consider the limits of the analysis and the particular challenges that practice of civil disobedience now faces in late or ‘liquid’ modernity. Chapter 6 completes the analysis of the major theoretical tradition by focusing upon civil disobedience within the cosmopolitan-democratic tradition. Here, then, I consider the status of civil disobedience under conditions of globalization. The analysis is complicated by the competing conceptions of globalization on offer and the role of civil disobedience as either supporter of a neo-liberal political agenda, or critic of the same. Ultimately, I consider Beck’s (2006) distinction between cosmopolitan and international to be most helpful in differentiating between our understandings of protest in what he terms ‘risk society.’ After considering the competing interpretations of civil disobedience qua nonviolence I ask, whether the future for civil disobedience lies within political institutions or whether it is, by definition, something that can only be understood as external to it, an ephemeral form of protest, yet a necessary democratic feature, in mass democracies. The final chapter reconsiders some of the more salient points of the previous chapters, bringing the analysis full circle by considering the contested nature of the concept of civil disobedience.

2 Obedience: Ancient and Modern

What is to be done on the one hand with rulers who will not give any reason for their orders, and on the other with people who cannot understand the reasons when they are given? The government of the world, political, industrial, and domestic, has to be carried on mostly by the giving and obeying of orders under just these conditions…Such obediences are as necessary to the continual operation of our social system as the revolution of the earth to the succession of night and day. But they are not so spontaneous as they seem: they have to be very carefully arranged and maintained…The more obedient a man is to accredited authority the more jealous he is of allowing any unauthorized person to order him about. Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.’ Matthew, 12:25 [T]he kind of character produced in American democratic society can not be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority Knowing when to disobey legitimate authority is an acute problem for those who live in modernity’s wake. The political and social requirement 25


to obey government must be weighed against the knowledge that this fundamental requirement of civilized societies can lead, indeed has lead, to some of the worst crimes committed against human beings. While the chapters that follow will consider the theoretical resources available for disobeying authority and justifying disobedience, here we will examine the dilemma of obedience. The reasons for disobeying government are as ancient as the reasons for civic obedience. This chapter explores the nature of civic behavior and misbehavior in the ancient and modern world in an attempt to provide competing narratives concerning the relation between subject and master, citizen and government. What emerges from the analysis provided here is the notion that, unsurprisingly, the nature of the requirements of civic obedience has changed. While earlier models required a self to examine what it was doing when political and divine commands came into conflict, the structure of modernity is such that the political, economic and social environment is structured towards the ‘hyperconformism’ of individuals (Hogan, 2001).

2.1

In the beginning…

The very first act of civilization began with an act of disobedience – the stealing of fire from the Gods. When Prometheus stole the forbidden object from heaven and brought it to earth, Zeus could not undo what had been done. A mortal action succeeded in disempowering divine rule. This might be regarded as the very first, at least in mythic form, act of disobedience to authority. In the Hebrew Bible, a similar act of disobedience is repeated in the story of ‘The Fall’ when the acquisition of knowledge, something that also cannot be undone (though we can, of course, pretend not to know) resulted in the banishment of the first couple from their idyllic paradise. God had threatened Adam with death if he ate from the tree of knowledge. Yet, the serpent, a being half way between God and man, informed them that the threat was empty. After eating the forbidden fruit, it turned out that the serpent was right: they did not die. Instead, they became reflexive beings, and were able to discriminate between good and evil (Daube, 1972, p. 61). Much of the world’s mythic literature tells stories of the perils of disobedience, the consequences of man overstepping the bounds and the nature of divine providence. The Story of Job is perhaps the archetypal story of obedience to authority, one that also provides suffering with meaning. As a result of a wager between God and Satan, Job loses his

Obedience: Ancient and Modern 27

money, property and status, is tortured with physical infirmities then mocked by his peers. After a week of silence, when Job does begin to eventually question his faith he is charged by God with the ‘sin of rebellion’ (see Booker, 2006, pp. 396–7). In another early myth, The Story of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh himself two-thirds god and one-third man, with the help of his ‘wild-man’ friend Enkidu, challenges the authority of gods and nature. They are proclaimed as great heroes by their people and embark on a quest to ‘rid the world of evil.’ When they slay the giant Humbaba and cut down his forest, they enrage the gods. Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven, decides to seduce Gilgamesh. But when her advances are rejected, the goddess is enraged and sends the Bull of Heaven to punish them both. When the bull is killed after an epic battle, Ishtar persuades the other gods to kill Enkidu. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is overcome with grief. His lamentations are pitiful: he tears out his hair, fasts for seven days and seven nights, and finally issues a proclamation that a statue be created in his friend’s honor. The death of his friend has robbed Gilgamesh of his ‘second self’ and reminds him of his own mortality. Gilgamesh spends the rest of the journey in search of everlasting life, which eludes him (see Larue, 1993). The disobedience of men, and the jealousy of the gods in this story of human companionship, is repeated again in what is perhaps the most politically significant Biblical story: The Tower of Babel. The inhabitants of earth decide to build a city where they can all live together. But God destroys it and disperses the inhabitants across the earth thereby creating a state of permanent disunion. Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’ And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad


from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. (Genesis, 11, 1–9) Intimidated by what the human race might achieve, God introduces discord and confusion. Although there are positive examples of disobedience in the Hebraic tradition1 it is in the Greek myths, retold in the tragedies and comedies of the fifth century dramatists, that a literary space opened to explore the sources of tension within the new democracy. The origins of drama and democracy coincided around 500 B.C.E. at a time when Athenians felt particularly buoyant after their defeat of the Persians. Perhaps it is not surprising that at this moment an exploration of loyalty and obedience, particularly those occasions when such loyalties might be challenged, should be explored so deeply. In writing about the division of loyalties, dramatists would have been describing the close connection and division between personal and private worlds in classical Athens. In Sophocles’s play Philoctetes, for example, ideas of justice compete with those of patriotism. Philoctetes, a cursed sailor who has been marooned on the island of Lemnos for ten years, because of an affliction that has left him physically repugnant to his former Greek comrades, is in possession of a magical bow. Under orders from Odysseus, a young soldier in the Greek army, Neoptolemus, is commanded to retrieve the bow in Philoctetes’ possession. Odysseus convinces Neoptolemus to gain Philoctetes’ confidence, and to do whatever it takes to obtain such a weapon for the Greeks. To do so would end the war against the Trojans early. Though lying might be wrong, says Odysseus, the greater good – the end of hostilities – is justified: ‘Let honesty go hang, only for a day.’ Neoptolemus initially agrees. He tricks Philoctetes and obtains the weapon but then repents. He claims that obeying Odysseus’s orders was wrong: Odysseus: Why have you hurried back like this? Neoptolemus: To undo the wrong that I have already done. Odysseus: I don’t understand. What wrong are you talking about? Neoptolemus: In obeying your orders and those of the army –


Odysseus:

What! Heavens! You mean you’ve got some crazy scheme – Neoptolemus: No crazy scheme; but a debt to the son of Poeas. (Sophocles, 1953, p. 169) Instead, Neoptolemus says that in order for justice to be served, the bow must be returned. It is in Antigone, however, that Sophocles considers the conflict between private and public loyalties most deeply through an examination of the loyalties one owes to family compared to those one owes to the state.2 This, indeed, was the dilemma for a community like Athens that understood itself as a community of families. Antigone is caught in a dilemma because her brother, Polynices who died in a battle against the state of Thebes, has been denied an honorable burial. His brother, Eteocles, who died fighting against him and defending the city, has been so honored. Creon, the undisputed ruler of the city, and Antigone’s uncle, orders that Polynices’s body should be left unburied – ‘his corpse carrion for the birds and dogs to tear, an obscenity for the citizens to behold!’ (Sophocles, 2000, p. 230). Anyone who attempts to disobey the order will be put to death. Creon insists, in fact, that this must be obeyed if Thebes is to recover from civil strife. What counts most under the current turbulent circumstances is obedience to order, law, and the common good. The defiled body of the traitor Polynices serves as a symbolic reminder of what happens to those who betray the city and what, indeed, can happen to cities that are divided. What is revealed in Antigone, in fact, is a profound opposition between family loyalty (represented by the female) and loyalty to the state (represented by the male). As Creon notes early in the play: There is no more deadly peril than disobedience; States are devoured by it, homes laid in ruins, Armies defeated, victory turned to rout. While simple obedience saves the lives of hundreds Of honest folk. Therefore I hold to the law And never will betray it – least of all for a woman. When Creon discovers that Polynices’ body has been covered with soil, he explodes into rage. His first thought is that someone must have been paid to do so. When he eventually discovers that Antigone deliberately disobeyed his edict, she tells him that his orders could be overridden as they were man’s laws, not the gods’. Antigone insists that no


shame can come from honoring her brother. Losing patience, Creon sentences her to death. However, her case is appealed by Ismene, her sister, Creon’s son Haemon and Antigone’s intended, and finally by Tiresias, an old sage. Ismene’s entreaties are rejected by Creon and Antigone who charges her sister with obeying the state from fear rather than genuine loyalty. Haemon’s attempts at persuasion meet a similar fate, though he manages to inform his father that the people of Thebes are appalled at his decision to execute Antigone. Creon’s response is instructive: ‘I am king and only responsible to myself.’ When Tiresias urges Creon to reconsider, however, we see clearly how for all of Creon’s supposed appeal to the common good he is in fact driven by his own ambition to rule. His demand that obedience to the city be upheld, which sounded so reasonable initially, now rings hollow as the opinion of the people, his son, even his own wife, turn against him. Creon realizes too late that whatever obligations the state may demand from its citizens, there are other loyalties that are equally powerful, if not more so. When Antigone is found hung, a suicide, Haemon spits in Creon’s face then plunges a sword into his own chest, dying over Antigone’s body. When Creon’s wife, Eurydice learns the news, she abandons him. We discover later that she has committed suicide. Finally, when Creon discovers what has happened, he requests to be led away. ‘There is no man can bear this guilt but I…I am nothing. Lead me away…I know not where to turn…’ With no family left, the power of his office provides little solace. If Tragedy was unafraid to challenge social convention and the question of divided loyalties as a form of catharsis, then Comedy (from komos meaning banquet, revel, or riot) did so through anagnorisis or recognition of the dilemma. The ‘old comedy’ of Aristophanes (425–388 B.C.E), for example, exploited the familiar life of ordinary people in Athens in politically savage and subversive ways, with the comedic pattern of recognizing that one’s former life was an illusion repeated again and again.3 In The Archanians, social conventions are turned upside down as the hero of the piece opts out of battle while the other citizens follow the call to arms. In The Wasps, a son locks up his father in order to wean him away from his overly litigious lifestyle as member of the Athenian jury. The father is finally persuaded to stay at home if he can sit in judgment over the family pet for stealing a cheese. Eventually, he gradually comes to realize that his obsession with passing judgment on his peers had resulted in a kind of imprisonment from which he is only now gaining release. Yet it is in Lysistrata of all the ‘Peace’ plays that we find


both recognition (on the part of the men who are denied their ‘conjugal rights’ which forces them to realize where their ‘real’ interests lie) and another exploration of the opposition between the male qualities of order and discipline and the female qualities of disobedience. The women of Athens and neighboring Sparta are disenfranchised members of the political community, their particular form of disobedience an expression of those outside of state institutions who had no ready means to reshape the system. Unlike Antigone, who acts out of conscience against the decrees of Creon, the Lysistrata is an example of a form of civil disobedience that is at once both collective and instrumental. Women from different cities come together (transnationally, as it were), and employ a form of disobedience that has a particular purpose in mind – cessation of hostilities. Consequently, conscience has little to do with their form of disobedience. In Lysistrata, the women appeal to no higher laws but their collective, shared experience as women. Of course, we cannot know for sure what people thought about these plays or how they reacted to them.4 Yet, the Lysistrata would probably have struck a real nerve with the Athenians. Two years before its performance, an entire generation of men had died in the ill fated Sicilian campaign, an Athenian imperial mission that attempted to secure grain supplies from Sicily yet resulted in catastrophe. A large population of women, widowed or alone, was left behind in Athens. For a comedy, this play is full of pathos. Drama, in its tragic and comedic forms expressed the egalitarian spirit of Athens along with its competitive nature. The agon or conflict, in politics or in athletic achievement, was also woven into art. The theater was fundamentally an agon between characters, a space in which people could actually explore those aspects of personality that threatened the wellbeing of society. The theater served, then, as a place of transgression, where issues such as incest, matricide, patricide, and murder might be explored in a controlled setting. Outside of the agon, in the realm of truth, there would be much less room for exploring disobedience.

2.2

After ‘the beginning’: the case of Socrates

A major source of concern for classical theorists was that some loyalties, which are numerous in human beings, might challenge the authority of the state. Strong prohibitions against non-state loyalties, loyalty to one’s friends and foreigners (xenophilia) for example, were discussed in great detail and strongly discouraged (see Konstan, 1997).


When Cicero, for example, considered the subject of friendship he did so by thinking about the humanizing aspects of a love among equals. Friendship is that which is fully human, uniquely so. Neither animals nor gods can possess it and if friendship came to an end, the world itself would end, as ‘the sun would be taken from the heavens.’ Friendship is something more than an opportunity to advance virtue or justice. It is, said Cicero, the most important relationship between humans and an expression of one’s existence to another human being based on trust, goodwill, affection, the absence of hypocrisy, and unanimity of opinion. Cicero states: He [Scipio Africanus] and I stood side by side in our concern for affairs of state and for personal matters; we shared a citizen’s home and a soldier’s tent; we shared the one element indispensable to friendship, a complete agreement in aims, ambitions, and attitudes. (Cicero, 1991, p. 85) Yet, at the same time Cicero was acutely aware that friendship could turn things sour. Writing his own treatise on the subject the year his own friendship with Marc Antony came to an end, he noted: ‘Wrongdoing, then, is not excused if it is committed for the sake of a friend; after all, the thing that bring friends together is their conviction of each other’s virtue; it is hard to keep up a friendship, if one has deserted virtue’s camp’ (1991, p. 94). While Plato was puzzled by the nature of friendship,5 in one of his early dialogues he explored the tension between one’s inner life or conscience and the duties of citizenship. The trial and execution of his mentor Socrates has subsequently come to be heralded as a classic defense of civil disobedience, with Socrates cast a new kind of postmythic hero, a man who died for his principles by challenging the existing political order (Perkins, 1995). It is precisely this view of Socrates that Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed. ‘We go back’ he noted in a speech delivered in 1961, ‘and read the Apology and Crito, and you see Socrates practicing civil disobedience’ (1986, p. 50). King went further in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, suggesting that academic freedom in the twentieth century owed much to Socrates’ heroic stand and that his example of disobedience provided a useful model for the contemporary disobedient. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and


half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. (1986, p. 290) In the record of Socrates’ trial by Plato we find a political examination of the conflict between the individual’s inner voice and duty to the laws of the state. It is as a ‘hero’ that Socrates is identified, a source of conscience and the historic example of the inner power of the subject (see Velkley, 2006). Yet, the trial also reflects the excessively litigious nature of Athenian society and symbolizes a society in transition, one recovering from overwhelming military defeat against the Spartans while struggling to cope with perceived internal challenges to its authority. It is not difficult to see the connection between the case for principled disobedience supposedly offered by Socrates and the turbulent events of the 1960s when Dr. King and others conducted their campaigns of civil disobedience in the United States (see Congleton, 1974; Woozley, 1979). Yet, as critics note, this interpretation is not without its problems. Socrates did disobey unjust authority. In the Apology he cites two occasions when he dissented from the actions of the state. The first, when he served on the Council of Athens and ten Athenian naval commanders were tried for failing to rescue their fellows after the battle at Arguinusae. Trying the men en bloc, argued Socrates, was unconstitutional and therefore he dissented, opposing the illegal use of the laws. The second occasion occurred when the Thirty Tyrants wanted to drag a man, Leon of Salamis, from his home and execute him. Socrates refused to be a party to such a crime and so simply went home. In the first instance, Socrates did not disobey the laws of Athens but tried to uphold them. In the second instance, though Socrates readily admits that his actions ought to have resulted in his execution, the corrupt oligarchy was clearly unjust, abusing power and attempting to implicate citizens in their crimes. When a majority decision is taken to end his own life, however, ostensibly for corrupting the young and bringing the state’s gods into disrepute – charges that Socrates’ vigorously disputes – Socrates, nonetheless defends the democratic majority’s decision to punish him despite his commitment to friends, family, and the pursuit of wisdom. It is this tension between just and unjust authority, legitimate disobedience and


civic obedience, that continues to prompt puzzlement and debate (see Bentley, 1996; Colson, 1989; Guthrie, 1972; Marchevsky, 2004). In Apology, Socrates avoids discussion of the charges brought against him and considers instead his evident unpopularity in the city of Athens.6 Already the subject of a largely unsuccessful comedy by Aristophanes in 421 B.C.E., The Clouds, where he is lampooned as a teacher of new rhetoric, atheism, and scientific inquiry, Socrates complains that the task before him is very difficult. He is going to have to disabuse the jury of the misconceptions they have about him. Nonetheless, he pledges to obey the law, whatever decision is reached: ‘I must obey the law and make my defence.’ In a series of verbal assaults upon his accusers, he dismisses the charges of corrupting the youth by claiming that such a notion was impossible. Socrates reminds the jury that he does not charge people money for his expertise because he does not feel as though he has any. He cannot claim to teach virtue to the young, as sophists claim to do, because he is not sure what virtue actually is. Socrates then accuses one of his accusers, Meletus, of misunderstanding the nature of the charges he has brought against him. If he is guilty of corrupting the young, surely his accusers have some notion of what the opposite would be, providing young people with an experience considered good. Meletus responds by claiming that the laws are good. Further the jury as representatives of the law have the ability to make the young good. Yet Socrates questions whether this can in fact be the case on the grounds that expertise is required if we are to determine whether something is good or not, and expertise cannot be the property of everyone, least of all the jury.7 Socrates continues the assault on Meletus by making the jury aware of its own fragile power base, further disempowering them by talking about how he is not afraid of death, linking this with past service, his loyalty to the state that now accuses him of wrongdoing, and finally by saying that he owes more obedience to God than the state. Where a man has once taken up his stand, either because it seems best to him or in obedience to his orders, there I believe he is bound to remain and face the danger, taking no account of death or anything else before dishonor. (Plato, 1993, 28d, p. 52) For those who see Socrates as the archetypal disobedient, this is the kernel of the dialogue. The root cause of his misfortune in Athens can


be traced to the divine mission sanctioned by the Delphic Oracle. The god Apollo appointed him to lead the philosophical life. Although the end result of this quest was his upsetting the professional classes in Athens whose claim to wisdom turned out to be ‘entirely deficient’, it would be a fundamental disobedience to the authority of Apollo to give up this pursuit (38a, p. 63). If Socrates is guilty of anything, it is of pointing out the hubris of his fellow citizens with the result that official authority is no longer taken quite so seriously (33c, p. 57) His commitment to a higher power and his open declaration to accept punishment from Athens, thus make him appear the disobedient par excellence, a man who places the highest value in the life of the mind (Luban, 1989). …to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living… (38a, p. 63) In Crito, however, we are told a somewhat different story: that it is better to die in prison than to disobey the laws of the state. The dialogue is different, too, in that it is shorter and there is a noticeable absence of either direct argument or Socrates’ famous irony. There is no mention of his daimon, the voice of conscience that told him to do no wrong. Instead the defense of political obligation occurs in a simply structured dialogue between two people, a distraught Crito, Socrates’ friend, trying to arrange his escape, and a lengthy speech by Socrates who recounts a dream where the Laws of Athens visit him in human form and remind him that it would be unjust to disobey the laws of the state simply because he happens not to agree with the outcome of the trial. The personification of the laws was designed to emphasize the sense of obligation that one felt to other human beings; not necessarily to laws or constitutions. You may obey the latter, but do not feel obligated to them. Plato, in fact, seems quite aware of the problem of competing obligations in the state, a reason, perhaps, why he chose not merely to make them human but also to resemble one’s parents. In terms of the obligation one feels to others, the parental bond is, for many, the strongest feeling, evoking a primary allegiance. As a technique, it adds weight to the idea that by residing within a state, by choosing to stay there and live one’s life there, you have made an agreement with it and


owe the state obedience because it has enabled you to become who you are. In fact, in the mouth of Socrates, the state is owed more loyalty than the loyalty to parents, which absolutely prohibits any disobedience against it as that would constitute an unholy crime. Because of this primary obligation, one should never commit an act of injustice under any circumstance. Fleeing from the state, according to Socrates, even if a decision reached by a majority in an Athenian jury might be considered unjust, would be wrong. The burden falls upon the individual to ‘persuade’ the state of the justness of the action an individual intends before doing it, even if one’s life is at stake. To do otherwise would be to threaten the very fabric of the state itself, to turn it ‘upside down’. Can you deny that by this act which you are contemplating you intend, so far as you have the power, to destroy us, the Laws, and the whole State as well? Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgements which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and destroyed by private persons? (Plato, 50b, p. 86) Plato then changes tack slightly and argues against disobedience from the notion of public goods. Obligations from citizens are due because the state provides those things: education, safety, the pleasures of citizenship, and to disregard these through an act of disobedience would be to misunderstand the nature of the ‘contract’ undertaken by all adults in Athens. On reaching the age of maturity, a citizen could choose to stay within the state and abide by its laws or remove himself and his property elsewhere. Yet if he decides to stay, says Socrates, then the state can rightly assume that it can tell you to do anything (51e, p. 88). Anyone who disobeys is justifiably punished because i) they owe their life to the state ii) they were raised by it, and iii) by remaining within its territory they have thereby promised obedience. In the case of Socrates’ own life – a life that in 70 years saw him barely travel, never leave the city to attend a festival except once; the only other time was for military service; never travel abroad to visit another country, and actually choose to father and raise children, it is obvious that he made a choice to abide by the laws. Finally, Plato adds, one must remember that though the laws are sacred their implementation can be erroneous. Even if a decision is unjust, it is the jurors who were unjust, not the laws (54c, p. 91). The latter are always just and


must never be injured. After all this, Socrates says that the arguments of the state rang so loudly in his head he could not hear any opposing points of view. It was precisely the ambiguity between obedience to the state and to other sources of authority that Plato sought to remove in his subsequent writings. In The Republic he not only suggested that a properly ordered city was a clearer expression of the human psyche, one’s inner life, than anything discernible by human beings, he also famously introduced in Book 10 of Republic, the myth of the afterlife with appropriate rewards and punishment – the ‘Myth of Er’ – thereby effectively aligning the political and the divine.8 On reflection, Plato’s argument in Crito looks heavy-handed compared to the repartee of the Apology. The idea that permitting disobedience in some instances will inevitably lead to a general state of disorder and anarchy seems to overstate the case for obedience. Indeed, some modern scholars have suggested that that it is a mark of a civilized society to tolerate some form of principled disobedience.9 Nonetheless, Plato’s dialogue contains many recognizably modern arguments against law breaking. The argument from consent to some form of social contract persists (as we shall see in the next chapter) drawing upon an express or tacit form of consent given by autonomous individuals to government, or through their physical membership within a state. The argument concerning the obligations that arise when an individual benefits from the state’s provision of public goods, which an individual receives, either knowingly or otherwise, is also widely debated within the contemporary literature.10 Similarly, arguments against disobedience are advanced because it is claimed such actions threaten the fabric of society, display contempt for contractual obligations, or overlook one’s ‘natural duties’ to obey just regimes. Finally, arguments about the obligations one owes to democratic as opposed to authoritarian regimes, which permit and protect certain liberties, continue to be advanced with varying degrees of sophistication. If Socrates is the archetypal disobedient, he is an ambiguous one. Playwrights like Aristophanes and philosophers from Plato onwards noted that the new capacity for moral agency that he exhibited, what Kierkegaard called ‘irony’ or the ability to stand apart from the values of the polis, offered a fundamental challenge to that structure, a challenge moreover that had to be answered (Kierkegaard, 1965). Indeed, it would be tempting to see nearly all the subsequent writing on the nature of political authority as an attempt to align or sublimate the different loyalties of human beings to the state.


Reflection on the nature and problem of disobedience continued to surface in times of social crisis and transformation. Whether disobedience could ever be justified lay at the heart of Saint Augustine’s criticism of secular authority in the fifth century; a debate that rumbled through the Middle Ages between the regnum (civil authority) and sacerdotium (ecclesiastical authority); and provided, as we shall see in the following chapter, the theoretical resources employed by early forms of contract theory as this emerged in the eleventh century. From the Renaissance and into the modern period, theorists continued to consider how disobedience might be removed or contained. Indeed, for many the task became an exercise in combining different elements to ensure obedience to the state. These included, alone or in combination, morality, patriotism, fear (of anarchy/’the other’), charismatic leadership, divine powers, the natural/scientific order of the universe or, as we shall see in the next section, ‘knowing one’s place.’11

2.3

A life of one’s own?

Few thinkers better captured the transformation that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century to advanced western societies, and the individuals who lived in them, than Max Weber.12 Indeed, it is arguable that despite the remarkable changes in politics and economics over the past generation most of us are still living in the world he described. Writing in an age after metaphysics, Weber noted that a key problem for modern societies was obedience to legitimate authority. Traditional liberalism had defended its philosophical presuppositions by appeal to natural law and natural right. It was on the basis of natural right that, according to Locke, an individual could own property; hence the need for civil society and in rare conditions, its dissolution. For Weber, however, liberalism could be justified only on procedural not substantive grounds. In Science as a Vocation, Weber described this feature of life in the modern world as a result of disenchantment. There was no authority to which one might appeal beyond individual choice. It was therefore the responsibility of individuals to judge and decide for themselves. This was the fate of an epoch ‘which has eaten of the tree of knowledge.’ Though metaphysical illusions would retain their usefulness for those in authority (as the extraordinary researches of Stuart Ewen (1996) and Marina Warner (2006) have made clear) in Weber’s view people obeyed the state because of the authority carried by law, not simply because of habit or custom. Of course, the management of ‘public opinion’ would


remain essential to modern governance, as theorists from the time of David Hume onwards had noted. Yet obedience occurred, argued Weber, by virtue of a belief in the validity of legal statute and competence based on rationally created rules. Officials of the state claimed obedience from citizens because of the office they held, which gave them authority. These officials performed a function as part of an administration. The times in which Weber was living, he noted, were unusual in that they had ushered in a new form of state apparatus: organizational structures, often hierarchical in nature, that followed impersonal written rules of procedure with strictly defined limits of authority where obedient conduct was a professional virtue. While there were historical precedents for the growth of ‘administration’; traceable in some instances to the time of the Egyptian pharaohs; the office or bureau was a feature of modern corporate capitalism. The legal directives that enshrined equality in the law, the modern mass democracy that had emerged in the nineteenth century coupled with astonishing developments in technology including railroads and the telegraph, together with the development of public finance associated with the creation of professional standing armies all contributed to the creation of a decidedly new political environment (1946, pp. 196–244).13 Developments in military organization, civilian institutions in the public and private sphere, and the growth of private enterprise emerged at the same time and had a profound effect on one another and the nature of government. Capitalism and administration in public and private spheres developed rational, objective, unemotional standards by which to conduct business ‘according to “calculable rules” and “without regard for persons”’ (1946, p. 215). [the] military model began to be applied to businesses and to the institutions of civil society, principally…for the sake of peace and the prevention of revolution. No matter how poor he may be, the worker who knows he has an established position is less likely to revolt than the worker who can’t make any sense of his or her position in society. (Sennett, 2006, p. 21) In fact, within the ‘machinery’ of a modern government, a highly suggestive metaphor used by Weber to describe the operations of government, revolution was considered an absurdity (see Mirowski, 2002). From the perspective of the citizen-worker, however, ‘knowing one’s place’ was a good thing providing an assured income along with ‘the


gift of organized time’ (Sennett, 2006, p. 36). Although the functionary was ‘conditioned’ into compliance within the system, ‘chained to his activity by his entire material and ideal existence’, rendering him ‘a single cog in an ever-moving mechanism’ and thereby ‘forging’ him to the community of which he was a part, this was a species of loyalty that assured stability, order, and the proper social, economic, and political functioning (Weber, 1946, p. 229). It was compliance with rational, objective rules and procedure on the part of administrators, to the processes of government and its institutions, that gave government its legitimacy in the eyes of political leaders and the public. In Politics as a Vocation and Profession, Weber (1919/1994) noted that this concept of loyalty or what he called ‘social honor’ was essential for the survival of modern constitutional or ‘plebiscitary leadership democracy.’ The proper functioning of bureaucracy required persons of technical expertise, professional integrity and ethical commitment. The administrator’s loyalty complemented the skills and ethical outlook that political leaders required if they were to fulfill the demands of their office. Weber simply could not imagine how elections could be arranged without party-machines or how modern states might function, given the increasing capacity for collecting and analyzing information together with new social and economic demands placed upon them, without a permanent administration staffed by professional and expert administrators. What this entailed was an ethical division of labor. Without it, Weber argued: ‘it would be our fate to have hovering over us the permanent threat of terrible corruption and base philistinism. This would also threaten the purely technical performance of the state apparatus which has grown steadily in its importance for the economy, and will continue to grow, especially with increasing socialization’ (1919/1994, p. 322). The ethics of leadership were distinct from those of party followers and public servants. A successful politician or leader would exhibit those features – charisma, rhetorical skill, and ideally membership of the legal profession – that enabled him to secure his position, first with the party, then with his parliamentary colleagues. In a new age of mass democracy that was transforming politicians into celebrities what was required of a leader was an ability to balance judgment, passion, and a sense of personal responsibility for the, often unpredictable, results of political decisions. Acutely aware of the relation between ethics and politics, Weber argued that for politicians an important distinction needed to be


drawn between an ‘ethic of responsibility’ and an ‘ethic of conviction.’ The defining difference for Weber was that a politician who followed an ethic of conviction, a belief that peace, justice, or God’s will on earth was the ultimate end of politics, was utterly unsuited to the complexity and compromise inherent within the political process. The person who pursued an ethic of conviction felt responsible for their actions only insofar as they progressed towards the final result. An ethic of responsibility by contrast, focused on the consequences of one’s actions and the fact that one must answer for them. Weber cast his ideal political leader as a ‘tragic hero’ (Walzer, 1973), committed to flexibility and compromise, possessed with the knowledge that one could not govern innocently, and that there could be too much principle in politics. Weber’s leader found himself burdened with the responsibilities of leadership, fully conscious that by using the terrifying force of the state he had entered into a bargain with diabolical powers that were ultimately corrupting of the self (1919/1994, p. 362). As a consequence, Weber thought that few would be capable and/or willing to undertaken the burdens of leadership. The honor and ethic of the administrator was quite different, however. For Weber, this honor consisted in being able to follow instructions given him by his political masters and to do so ‘conscientiously and precisely in the same way as if it corresponded to his own convictions. Without this supremely ethical discipline and self-denial the whole apparatus would disintegrate’ (p. 331). Ultimately, the ethic informing the behavior of the public servant was one of high commitment to the organization and unquestioned obedience to legitimate political authority. Modern loyalty is devoted to impersonal and functional purposes… ideas such as ‘state,’ ‘church,’ ‘community,’ ‘party,’ or ‘enterprise’ are thought of as being realized in a community; they provide an ideological halo for the master. (Weber, 1946, p. 199) Nonetheless, Weber recognized that there were necessary limits to the influence of rationalization. There was, in his view, a qualitative distinction between decisions made by political leaders, those made by administrators, and those made by citizens. Political decisions, made in the legislature appealed to compromise, which might not always be the most technically efficient solution to a problem. Politicians were motivated by concerns other than efficiency appealing to the electorate in


order to secure success. In this way, thought Weber, the legislature was an essential mechanism for the preservation of competing values and avoided the very real danger of a society being totally organized along rational lines. Indeed, left to bureaucratic devices, the state would become an authoritarian structure in which the citizens ‘are administered like a herd of cattle’ (1994, p. 129). While rule by officials was not inevitable, considerable power was granted to bureaucrats through their expertise and their access to secret information. Politicians could find themselves overly dependent upon administration. So a central question for Weber was how it could be checked before officials began running an organization for their own private interests.14 The third component of this political configuration, the electorate, performed a restricted function. Weber argued that the extension of the franchise had fundamentally altered the dynamics of political life, placing the party at the center of political business. Extending the franchise meant the spread of political associations whose sole task was to organize the electorate into manageable groups. In order to do this, parties would become centers of loyalty, demanding in most instance a similar loyalty even from the elected representatives who were nothing better than ‘well-disciplined yes men or well-disciplined lobby fodder’ (1994, p. 343). The function of the electorate, whose interest in political matters waned outside of periods of crisis, was simply to choose leaders. The citizenry lacked both technical expertise, necessary for the tasks of administration, and was guilty of strong emotions, which did not make for good judgment. The task for leaders was to discover what appealed to the masses, while the task for ordinary voters, then, was to make a choice between different candidates, something that Weber thought they were capable of, although they were not capable of discriminating among complex policy options. To consider a greater role for the mass of citizens would be to fall guilty to what a similar elite theorist, José Ortega y Gasset, termed ‘hyperdemocracy’ (1930/1994). The relevance of this line of thought to an understanding of the contemporary political world is so startlingly obvious that it requires little explanation (see Bobbio, 1998). Elite theorists since Weber have repeated and refined his analysis of the role of political and economic elites, professional administrators, the role of the media, universities, and the electorate (see Dahl, 1972; Posner, 2003; Schumpeter, 1962). Like Weber, the concern of elite theorists of democracy is to find ways of ensuring


an effective balance between political authority, skilled leadership, efficient administration, and political accountability. Yet like Weber, the role of the electorate is severely restricted to a form of political participation that begins and ends at the voting booth. In describing the necessity of this condition, Weber provided not only the theoretical framework for much of the accepted wisdom about politics today, but provided support for those who did not, and do not, believe in the possibility or desirability of a radical reorganization of society (see Held, 2006). Instead of the raison d’être of democracy being the development of all citizens, as it had been for progressive liberals like J. S. Mill in the nineteenth century, democracy was understood as the ‘machine’ or mechanism that ensured ‘effective’ national leadership which in turn was dependent upon an obedient and compliant citizenry.

2.4

A ‘matter of fact’ world

There is something deeply disturbing about the nature of obedience that emerges from Weber’s analysis, sociologically and philosophically. His examination of the configuration of modern constitutional democracies exposed a deep problem with the culture and discipline of the organizations that made them possible. The rationality of bureaucratic life deliberately ‘dehumanized’ the policy implementation process. As Weber noted approvingly, ‘the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation’ the better modern government would function (1946, p. 216). Furthermore, the ends of the policy process, provided they did not undermine the continued existence of the bureaucracy, were largely irrelevant to its continued functioning (p. 229). In Modernity and the Holocaust Zygmunt Bauman (1989) critiqued just this approach to modern governance by arguing that the growth of advanced societies together with large-scale bureaucracies, coupled with the development of specialized disciplines and professions demanding expertise and organizational obedience had led inexorably to some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century. The Final Solution did not clash at any stage with the rational pursuit of efficient, optimal goal implementation. On the contrary, it arose out of a genuinely rational concern, and it was generated by bureaucracy true to its form and purpose. The Holocaust…was a


legitimate resident in the house of modernity; indeed, one who would not be at home in any other house. (Bauman, 1989, p. 17) Kelman and Hamilton’s (1990) analysis of uncritical obedience within organizations corroborates this view. Their work identifies four related factors that incline individuals to override moral considerations within ‘modern’ organizations. The authorization of tasks by superiors; the routinization of tasks that narrowed one’s moral perspective shrinking the universe of one’s moral concerns; the subsequent dehumanization of victims through moral disengagement (often accompanied by the adoption of ‘neutral’ terms or euphemisms to describe unpleasant results) with the ends or outcomes of a policy process; and the presumption of legitimacy which inclined subordinates to automatically accept the legitimacy of decisions made in the ‘national interest’ disinclining them against making waves. Recent historiography has lent further support to this view of ‘organizational mentality’ and its ability to explain the endorsement of abhorrent policies during the years of Nazi rule in Germany. The debate among historians over the ‘willingness’ of ordinary citizens to ‘do evil’ continues (Adams and Balfour, 2004; Browning, 2001; Gellately, 2002; Goldhagen, 1997). It was precisely because the policies that resulted in the mass killings were perceived as legitimate that enabled public servants to perform their duties with few moral qualms. Indeed, one of the first pieces of legislation passed under the National Socialists after 1933 was the ‘Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.’ This act obligated civil servants to perform their duties and reassured them that their actions were legally justifiable. As Hilberg (1989) notes, civil servants were an integral part of the new regime: ‘They were career professionals who valued competence, efficiency, and their ability to overcome obstacles and adverse conditions, and they often knew what to do without asking for direction’ (pp. 132–3). Adams and Balfour (2004) add in their analysis of ‘administrative evil’ (the tendency for modern organizations to mask the harmful effects of their actions) that solving the ‘Jewish Problem’ would not have been possible without a highly trained, competent staff of engineers, doctors, accountants, and lawyers. ‘By following proper procedures, the German public administrator could feel satisfied that his actions were appropriate and legal.’ The Holocaust ‘was accomplished in large part by the public service carrying out routine functions as if virtually nothing was out of the ordinary’ (p. 66).


It was precisely the ‘ordinary’ nature of this ‘evil’ that prompted philosophers and psychologists in the period following the end of the Second World War to examine the nature of bureaucratic authority or ‘rule by nobody.’ While authors like Adorno (1969) and Erich Fromm (1965) focused their analyses on the mesmerizing power of political personality, Hannah Arendt’s (1963) examination of the character of Adolf Eichmann as he stood trial in Jerusalem, illustrated the very ordinary nature of this particular war criminal. His motives were not monstrous or demonic. Nor was he a mindless automaton. Eichmann was ‘a competitive entrepreneurial bureaucrat in a very competitive bureaucracy’ (Breton and Wintrobe, 1986, p. 924). Superiors and subordinates competed and traded with one another within the bureaucratic system. Subordinates showed initiative and were rewarded for their efforts. Loyalty to a particular unit within the organization was encouraged along with competition through the vagueness and imprecision of policy ideas generated by leadership. Eichmann did not lack judgment. What he lacked, Arendt concluded, was the capacity for reflexive thought. The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were and still are terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied – as had been said at Nuremburg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels – that this new type of criminal…commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or feel that he is doing wrong. (Arendt, 1963, p. 276) Eichmann’s defense, which used organizational flow charts, ‘officialese’ and a perverse form of Kant’s categorical imperative, was based upon the fact that he was simply doing his job: ‘Ich sass am Schreibtisch und machte meine Sachen’ (I sat at my desk and did my business) (cited in Clarke, 1980). Arendt’s controversial judgment of Eichmann, that he was ‘banal’, prompted scholars in other fields to consider the degree to which ordinary citizens might obey legitimate authority after it has begun to issue morally dubious commands. Stanley Milgram’s original set of experiments in 1954 has been described as ‘a powerful modern morality


play’ (Mixon, 1989, p. 42), a turning point in our ability to understand the nature of uncritical obedience in modern societies and organizational settings. As Milgram noted in a preface he wrote for the reissue of the book in 1974, he was originally compelled, as were so many other thinkers in the social sciences at the time, to determine why so many ordinary individuals seemed to be capable of terrible crimes against their fellows. As one recent biographer notes, ‘[w]e did not need Milgram to tell us that we have a deeply ingrained propensity to obey authority. What his findings revealed is the surprising strength of this tendency – strong enough to override a moral principle we have been taught since childhood – that it is wrong to hurt another person against his will’ (Blass, 2002, p. 94). Milgram’s experiment was designed to test the limits of obedience to authority when set against, it was assumed, a widely held belief among participants that ‘one should not inflict suffering on a helpless person who is neither harmful nor threatening to oneself’ (1974, p. 30). Officially, the series of experiments that Milgram conducted were designed to test the ability to memorize a series of word pairs. Under instruction from a laboratory technician, a ‘teacher’ would punish the ‘learner’, located in an adjacent room or sometimes in a closer proximity, whenever the latter made a mistake through delivery of electric shocks of increasing voltage. In fact, what was at issue was a conflict internal to the ‘teacher’; the ‘learner’ was a trained actor who was never harmed; ‘a conflict…between the deeply ingrained disposition not to harm others and the equally compelling tendency to obey others who are in authority’ (p. 59). The experimental results remain significant, in part, because of the unexpected nature of the findings. Milgram noted that of 110 respondents prior to the experiment, comprising psychiatrists, college students and middle class adults, not one predicted that a single person would administer the highest shock. Yet, as Milgram notes, most people made their prediction by focusing on the character of the autonomous individual, weighing appropriate and inappropriate behaviors together rather than taking into account the impact of the situation upon the individual. In the 18 variations on the experiment, responses varied from 2% obedience up to 65%, and from 5% of individuals willing to administer a maximum electric shock to 92.5%. Particularly disquieting finds included those who were willing to administer a maximum shock when the choice of voltage was left up to them, those who were willing to administer a shock when, in order to do so, physical contact with the ‘victim’ was required so that his hand had to be forced onto a


metal shock plate, and those who simply went along with the rest of a group’s decision to shock the victim – in Experiment 18 the subject was a subsidiary to the act of shocking the victim not the person who actually administered the shock. In fact, only three out of 40 people tested actually resisted going to the end of the voltage scale (pp. 115, 140). Interestingly, Milgram also noted that when the authority figure’s role was redefined so that he became a subject or ‘learner,’ he fared no better than the other ‘learners’ and was punished accordingly (p. 128). Milgram concluded that the person who took pleasure in making another person suffer was highly unusual. A soldier kills, he suggested, because he has been told to not necessarily because he likes to. Similarly, subjects who shocked their peers did not display ‘destructive urges.’ They did so because they were involved in a social structure from which they could not easily free themselves (p. 184; see also Goffman, 1991 esp. pp. 267–80). There were, Milgram noted, ‘binding factors’ that made it difficult for a person to remove themselves from the situation. In the case of the obedience experiments, these factors included: a) receipt of the cash payment received for participation in the study (in essence, a ‘contract’), b) a desire to be part of something important – the scientific study itself, c) absorption in a technical task, d) the aura or halo that surrounds science as a discipline, e) the binding power of the technology, the voltage panel, that was used in the experiment, f) the ‘power’ of the laboratory setting within another conceptually powerful institution, the university, and g) the perception of the authority figure – complete with grey technician’s coat, and sensible, impersonal delivery of his technical instructions and commands. Milgram suggested that a key component for continued obedience within the context of the experiment was the issue of responsibility. Some subjects relied on the idea of a social contract to explain their obedience in the experiment. They had contracted or consented with the experimenter to relinquish some of their freedom. And the other person, the ‘learner’ had contracted with the experimenter too which meant that he was not free to renounce his obligations. However much he protested, therefore, he should honor his contract with the university. So frequently was this claim made that Milgram devised a particular experiment where a waiver was signed. In this variation, the learner stated in front of the experimenter and teacher that he would sign only if his heart condition was acknowledged and that if he wished to remove himself from the situation at any time he should be allowed. In this instance, 16 out of a total of 40 persons proceeded to deliver the maximum electric shock, prompting Milgram to conclude that


the social contract in actuality offers little protection when internal controls against harmful actions are so weak (pp. 81–4) …there is a fragmentation of the total human act; no one man decided to carry out the evil act and is confronted with its consequences. The person who assumes full responsibility for the act has evaporated. Perhaps this is the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society. (Milgram, 1974, p. 29) People perform tasks, suggested Milgram, that come to be dominated by bureaucratic/technical rather than moral standards (see Sennett, 2006). Individual values, or what the individual deems relevant or important, are derived from the needs of the hierarchy, from the organization with a subsequent loss of agency (see Thompson, 1985). Euphemisms are employed as a means of guarding individuals from the moral implications of their actions – e.g. ‘aggressive interrogation techniques,’ ‘collateral damage’ – and responsibility shifts forever upward in the chain of command making it easier to perform those actions (Gambino, 1973). Ends are justified, in terms of some overarching imperative or goal and, above all, personal efficacy is based on feelings of competency as defined by the organization. In short, the danger for ‘man’ is not, as Hobbes thought, natural aggressive or selfish tendencies but the capacity for rule following and adaptive behavior that excuses unconscionable acts. In fact, such behaviors are inevitable, Milgram thought, whenever we merge our personality into larger institutional structures (1974, p. 205). Though not without critics, subsequent psychological studies of situational controls and organizational pressures have added weight to these conclusions and, in some instances, refined them (Zajonc, 2002; Zimbardo, 2007). Bandura has argued recently, for example, that while situational influences upon individual decision-making remain important, individuals often tend to compartmentalize their behaviors into morally differentiated categories, thereby permitting moral disengagement from any sense of personal or professional responsibility for ethical wrongdoing (see also Jackall, 1989). After their self reproof has been diminished through repeated enactments, the level of ruthlessness increases, until eventually acts originally regarded as abhorrent can be performed with little anguish or self-censure. Inhuman practices become thoroughly routinised.


The continuing interplay between moral thought, affect, action and its social reception is personally transformative. People may not even recognize the changes they have undergone as a moral self. (Bandura, 2002, p. 110) The upshot of this philosophically, as Clarke (1980) has pointed out, is a kind of widespread elective heteronomy; a feature that is central to the organization of representative democracies. If a heteronymous action is one that is conditioned, where a person is subject to a law external to the self, elective heteronomy is distinct from mere heteronomy in being a chosen condition. The former may arise through conditions of deprivation where one is unable to exercise autonomy. The latter, however, requires that an individual choose not to make further choices. Clarke argues that this deferral of choice and responsibility leaves intact the faculties of understanding, judgment, reason, and will. Judgment, in particular, is still required to follow procedure and interpret rules with respect to a particular case. Organizational life supports this kind of minimally reflective judgment, or what Kateb (2002) has called an, ‘inactive imagination’, where rule-following and role-playing go together. What this kind of judgment does not require, however, is consideration of the rules themselves or their effects. It is precisely this feature of life in modernity that has so alarmed scholars who point to the devastating consequences of the absence of such reflection. The ability to exercise autonomy, to think from the position of everyone else, to exercise at a minimum a ‘thoughtful conformity’, has not yet found a home in modernity. As Clarke notes: A distinctive feature of modern governments is that their activities depend on the heteronomy of their citizens. Elective heteronomy is doubly indispensable for representative democracy where, firstly, ‘citizens’ elect others to judge in their place and secondly, decisions are implemented through bureaucracies whose normal functioning depends on the deferral of judgment. In modern societies democracy is not so much rule by the people as the rule of an electively heteronomous people. (Clarke, 1980, p. 437)

2.5

Conclusion

This chapter has considered the nature of obedience, its deep roots in myth and religious traditions, and the responses of early political


communities to the phenomenon of divided loyalties and unruly individuals. Finally, I considered the function of obedience within the modern state and attempted to highlight some of the dilemmas of life for ‘citizen-workers’ in modernity. Without states and their enormous administrative organizations many features of contemporary life would be impossible. Members of modern societies while living within societies that promote individualism find themselves subject to detailed administrative control as the ‘state’ gathers an ever-increasing amount of information about their lives (Dandeker, 1990). Modern states, understood as unique entities, appeared in Europe from the early fourteenth century and struggled for much of that time to control subject populations who were intent on moving around across borders (Mann, 1986, p. 77). Only with the rise of permanent armed forces which required elaborate bureaucracies to manage their training and supply lines, did the tools of bureaucratic surveillance emerge and, along with them, the means to better discipline and control captive civilian populations. What was then required, as Van Creveld notes, was the development of a commitment to the nation: Rising to the challenge, the state, embracing nationalism, deliberately sought to turn the situation to its own advantage and began to sing its praises by every means at its disposal. Gone were the days when such things as national food, national costume, and national habits could be left to the care of mere patriotic societies; by means of its education system…the state sought to harness not only them but also “culture” in the form of history, painting, sculpture, literature, drama, and music. All these ceased to be a matter for lone individuals or part of the common human enterprise. Instead they became compartmentalized into English, French, German or Russian, as the case might be; often coming under the auspices of some ministry of culture. (1999, p. 62; see also Hobsbawm, 1998) Yet, as this chapter has sought to make clear, the state and the loyalty it encourages have come at a terrible cost. The century of the modern state, the twentieth century, was more violent than any that preceded it mobilizing entire populations and economies for devastating wars. Yet, it remains the basic unit of political analysis and representative or elite ‘democracy’ that system of governance by which other societies


have come to be judged (see Crozier et al, 1975). These democracies, where deference to experts who judge and act in our name, offer few safeguards against an ancient problem: the dilemma of obedience. It is precisely this dilemma that arises when legitimate authority turns malevolent and decides to issue (morally) illegitimate commands.

3 Appealing to Heaven

What is interesting is that no other single theme has so engaged western political theory as the attempt to show…that people cannot rule themselves, that ruling in politics and management in industry are necessarily the specialised functions of minority elites, and that inequality is a political and social necessity. Alasdair Macintyre, 1969 There is nothing patriotic about pretending that you can love your country but despise your government. William Jefferson Clinton, 1995 We must conclude that citizens generally have no special political bonds which require that they obey and support their government of their countries of residence. John Simmons, 1979

3.1

The pirate and the emperor

It was a pertinent and true answer which was made to Alexander the Great by a pirate whom he had seized. When the king asked him what he meant by infesting the sea, the pirate defiantly replied: ‘The same as you do when you infest the whole world; but because I do it with a little ship, I am called a robber, and because you do it with a great fleet, you are an emperor.’ (Augustine, 1998, p. 148) The story of the pirate and the emperor, already famous by the time that Saint Augustine cited it in his City of God was designed to illustrate 52

Appealing to Heaven 53

a defining, qualitative distinction between different kinds of human organization. What this meant was that although there might be a presumptive duty to obey civil authorities, it was necessary to judge between the worth of kingdoms concerned with justice and those organizations that were not. Though Augustine advocated obedience to civil authorities on theological and pragmatic grounds he also thought that civilization was both inherently flawed and hence also susceptible to moral improvement. The government of Spartacus, which ruled Rome briefly in 73 B.C.E. was, for Augustine, an exception to the rule of civil obedience because of the disorder that Spartacus and his rebels brought to government. Augustine considered Roman rule compatible with devotion to God, more so than the incoherent rule of the rebels. Consequently, as Burnell (1993) notes, for Augustine this made room for a form of justified disobedience: ‘Exceptions to rules show the supersession of one principle to another that more rarely applies. The principle usually applying is obedience to the powers that be; the superseding one, the duty of trying to ensure that civil power is in the hands of the least unjust persons or groups possible…this may involve overturning a regime’ (p. 186). The most common view of the relationship between ruler and ruled during the Medieval Period was that the temporal authority was put in place by God and could not be resisted by his subjects under any conditions. In Paul’s Epistle to the Romans we find the following: ‘[l]et every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement.’(Romans, 13: 1–2).1 Yet the distinction between just and unjust rule remained remarkably consistent across the centuries. By the eleventh century, Manegold of Lautenbach, who wrote about contracts as a form of opposition to the German Emperor, argued that an unjust ruler was one that had broken his agreement or pactum with the populus. It was the populus who elevated him and gave him power in order that they might be protected from evil. Having betrayed their good faith, however, they were freed from their allegiance to him. This was not, however, an early declaration of popular sovereignty so much as a threat of the removal of aristocratic support for the person of the king. The populus were the great and the good of the kingdom, not ‘the people’ in the modern sense of the term (Canning, 2006,


p. 105). Medieval Catholics made additional room for resistance to authority by drawing an additional distinction between the office and the office holder. It became possible to judge the actions of the Pope and not the Papacy, for example, to exercise a right of resistance to a ruler turned tyrant; an idea that was subsequently adopted and developed by those protesting against the English monarch in 1642–4 (see Hill, 1991; Rueger, 1964). During the period of Reformation, political obedience and the possibility of legitimate disobedience also became a significant subject in Tudor England. After his break with Rome, Henry VIII tried to use the Church of England to instill a sense of loyalty to the throne within the population. In the frontispiece of the Great Bible of 1540, for example, Henry invoked the divine by representing himself as being whispered to by the Almighty. This image spoke directly to people’s instincts about the nature of political authority as a descending theory of government, from God to King, thereby permitting a Protestant country to have access to God without going through the Pope. ‘The standard doctrine of political obedience’ that emerged and was espoused by the Church of England during this period was as follows: ‘No matter how severe the tyranny, resistance was strictly prohibited’ (Greaves, 1982, p. 25). Increasingly, however, after Mary Tudor took the throne and returned England to Catholicism, new treatises were proposed advocating disobedience to what was perceived as Catholic tyranny. As Greaves notes: Elizabethan Protestants thus had three distinctive positions on political obedience from which to choose. They could embrace the older view with its emphasis on submission to the divinely ordained powers and its admonition to suffer rather than rebel, or they could accept the Calvinist theory which gave the lesser magistrates the right to depose a tyrant. They could also accept…the responsibility for an activist role in assessing and if necessary removing tyrannical or idolatrous rulers. (Greaves, 1982, p. 26) A number of trends emerge through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that illustrate this changing relationship. On the one hand, the tradition of the ‘handbook to princes’ or vade mecum, perhaps best exemplified by Erasmus, attempted to tutor Christian rulers in pagan virtues like temperance and wisdom. The Education of a Christian Prince, published in 1516, was a study in statecraft. Erasmus hoped to convince


the ruler that a true understanding in human affairs could be gained by studying historical example or how, in fact, it was better to rule by principle than expediency. Adapting the Classical notion of the philosopher king, Erasmus argued that a true prince sought justice through the exercise of moderation and became an ideal model for his people as a result. Excesses of appetite were thereby put under control. True government, and ethical leadership, pointed to heaven. The other clear trend to emerge took a literary rather than a philosophical form. Playwrights and poets explored the possibility of unjust rulers and what might be done about them. Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (1592) portrayed the king as a homosexual given over to excess. More importantly, perhaps, Marlowe’s Edward was the first king ever to be killed on stage. Shakespeare’s Richard II (1597) was presented as weak and effeminate, incapable of ruling authoritatively, a leader who abdicated all responsibility to his advisors. It was this play that the Earl of Essex asked Shakespeare to perform at the Globe, resulting in Shakespeare’s arrest, the night before the attempt by Essex to overthrow Elizabeth I in 1601. Both Marlowe and Shakespeare were using the stage to question publicly when a king could be overthrown not whether they could. Both kings were presented as giving in to excessive appetite. Both plays invited an audience to consider whether the sin of ‘excess’ was enough reason to oppose them. Perhaps, however, the most striking example of the new image of monarchy emerging from this period comes from the poetry of John Milton and Andrew Marvell. Both considered the problem of monarchical excess and the failure of the nation as a result. Milton’s Eikonoclastes (destroy the icon) was a direct attack on Charles I’s, Eikon Basilike, his posthumously published meditations before his execution wherein he compared himself to Christ wearing a crown of thorns. In Paradise Lost, the idea of the false icon was repeated. Milton suggested that monarchs could be diabolical and that one way to recognize falsity was by excess and by placing private interest above the interests of the populace. Finally, in the satirical poem Last Instructions to a Painter, Marvell laid the responsibility for the failure of the nation at the king’s feet. In this poem, England is depicted as a naked and disheveled woman approaching the monarch in the dead of night seeking help. The king, seeing England distressed, rapes her. In fact, the king positively enjoys her condition finding her suffering sexually provocative. As is evident from these examples, by the time Hobbes and Locke begin writing in the seventeenth century, traditional arguments about


the unchallengeable nature of rulers were no longer widely accepted. Yet, for these liberal political theorists and those that followed, dilemmas remained about the nature of government and the proper limits of obedience and disobedience to authority. The rest of this chapter will examine the theoretical resources available within liberalism that may be used to justify resistance, providing theoretical resources for contemporary civil disobedience. As we shall see, those resources are extensive as liberalism speaks in different languages. Until relatively recently, the most widely adopted justification for citizens’ obligations to government were derived from the active ‘consent of the governed.’ In recent years, however, given the inherent problems with consent arguments, as we shall see, focus has shifted from consent to special obligations, particularly those owed to one’s fellow citizens, to democratic political arrangements, and to arguments based on duty and fairness. The division between these approaches is not trivial. But those differences permit a space, I suggest, wherein civil disobedience may reside.

3.2

Old wine in new bottles

Liberal theoretical explanations for political obligation that rely on consent theory draw their inspiration from the writing of John Locke, specifically his Second Treatise on Government. However, Locke was not alone among social contract theorists in offering a defense of political obligation based on express and tacit forms of consent. In the eighteenth century, as he struggled with the insoluble problem of eliminating the discrepancy between natural and civil freedoms amid repeated attempts to reaffirm popular sovereignty, Jean-Jacques Rousseau allowed that the consent of the people might be taken for their lack of opposition to the commands of government. ‘Universal silence’ he noted in his Social Contract, ‘is taken to imply the consent of the people.’ Earlier in the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes developed a peculiarly authoritarian version of consent through his analysis of representation, the first of its kind in English, relying upon his view of the will as the dominant appetite and his reduction of liberty to ‘matter in motion.’ This approach seemed to effectively eliminate the possibility of disobedience. Hobbes noted: because every subject is by this institution [the social contract] the author of all the actions, and judgements of the sovereign instituted, it follows that whatsoever he doth, it can be no injury to any


of his subjects; nor ought he to be by any of them accused of injustice. For he that doth any things by authority of another, doth therein no injury to him by whose authority he acteth. So, by the institution of a common wealth, every particular man is author of all the sovereign does and consequently he that complains of that whereof he himself is author ought not to accuse any man but himself of injury… (Hobbes, 1991) Hobbes’ attempt to provide quasi-geometrical proofs for his theory supported the notion that the mechanism of the social contract made every subject the author of all the actions and judgments of his sovereign. Because every citizen consented to the social contract to form the sovereign, every citizen also consented to every action of the sovereign. In that sense, every citizen was the author – the cause – of every decision taken by the sovereign. Further, any action was considered free if the agent had ‘chosen’ to perform it. An action was considered voluntary if it aimed at acquiring something the subject desired. Accordingly faced with two terrible alternatives, the person who chose the ‘least bad’ option had chosen voluntarily. ‘Fear and liberty’ Hobbes noted, ‘are consistent; as when a man throweth his goods into the sea for fear the ship would sink, he doth it nevertheless very willingly, and may refuse to do it if he will. It is therefore the action of one that was free’ (1991, p. 146).2 The same principle extended to contracts that were ordinarily viewed as coerced. The crucial difference between this form of contract and those that came after Hobbes was that the contract in question for Hobbes was not between the political authority and the people. The ‘people’ was a group or collection of individuals who were united only in the form in which they were ruled. In the theoretical pre-political state of nature they were individuals, distinct and separate. They became a people only as a result of the social contract, which created government. Hence: ‘A multitude of men are made one person when they are by one man or one person represented…For it is the unity of the representer, not the unity of the represented that maketh the person one…and unity cannot otherwise be understood in multitude’ (1991, p. 114). The people was ‘a people’ only insofar as the ruler existed, in the artificial person of that ‘Mortall God.’ As long as the collection of individuals was viewed as just that, a collection of separate persons, the common sense objection to Hobbes’ Leviathan was defused. Hence, there was no contract between people and ruler. It was impossible to


have such a contract because there was no ‘people’ before the series of covenants took place through which the ruler was created. Hence, there could be no legitimate form of disobedience (what Hobbes termed ‘civil death’) to authority. In the figure of John Locke, however, we find the theoretical tools that made disobedience to government and revolution possible.3 Indeed, he provided the main arguments for consent theorists by suggesting that consent ought to be understood in the form of a promise between the government and the people. Civil society was different from the theoretical, pre-civil state of nature in having a single accepted interpretation of the Natural Law, embodied in the laws of the community. In entering civil society, each person agreed to follow these civil laws, and thereby substituted the community’s interpretation of the Natural Law for their own. The core of a citizen’s obligation to the state was to act according to its point of view rather than their own. For a promise to be binding, the person making it had to do so voluntarily and be aware of what they were doing. Yet, it was a simple fact of political life at the time that Locke was writing that the majority of people did not consent to their governments in this way. In this respect, Robert Filmer’s contention; Locke’s target in the First Treatise on Government; that people do not choose their societies but are born into them was absolutely correct. In order to account for the clear need for people to obey the law, however, Locke argued that it was sufficient for consent to be granted to the government of the day if one chose to live within the borders of a particular territory. By taking this step, Locke, and those who came after him suggested that citizens were automatically obligated to obey government. This was a necessary theoretical move if Locke was to avoid the awkward scenario of someone not agreeing to contract with his fellows while remaining within a given territory. Of course, as critics have pointed out, with tacit consent doing the major theoretical heavy lifting there seems little need for an expressly chosen form of social contract. The reason for the conceptual shift, with Locke moving from express to tacit forms of consent, can be explained in large part by the ends he had in mind when writing about the topic. Locke wanted to deny the theological claim that men incurred binding political obligations simply as a result of the accident of birth. If this were so, then political obligation would be fixed by birth and could not be undone. The location of one’s birthplace would, then, became crucial. Locke wanted to stress instead that we were morally responsible for our own obligations and that they were ultimately limited and


contractual. Furthermore, and most crucially, such consent, given that it was voluntary, could be withdrawn if certain limits were transgressed. For Locke, consent primarily served a negative function rather than a positive one. It was a means to explain the justified withdrawal of support for a regime; as one might expect from someone writing in defense of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But as a concept that was designed to justify the creation of a political society it was far more problematic. On this reading, consent arguments like Locke’s deliberately left a large amount of room for the withdrawal of consent or justified disobedience to occur. The emphasis on personal judgment or autonomy within Locke’s text makes it ideal as a basis for personal decision making about the actions of government. The emphasis upon Natural Law provides a standard against which positive law might be measured. And finally, Locke provides a theoretical justification for a right to rebellion or, as he puts it an ‘appeal to heaven,’ if certain conditions of tyrannical leadership are met and no alternative form of protest is possible. It should be noted, however, that although Locke is wary of the arbitrary use of governmental authority, particularly executive power, he spends a considerable amount of time defending the prerogative of governments to take decisions in the common interest even when they run contrary to the law. In emergency circumstances, for example, Locke argues that governments must be free to take measures in accordance with what he calls ‘the fundamental law of nature and of government’ something that allows government to act ‘according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the Law, and sometimes, even against it’ (1990, p. 375). For the most part, Locke is convinced that he has found an institutional solution to the problem of the abuse of political power. The separation of powers into legislative and executive branches in a properly constituted government provides a safeguard against tyranny. Nonetheless, self-interest persists and what is in the best or common interests of the nation is not always obvious. Although individuals cede their rights to interpret, judge and enforce the law of nature on entering civil society, they retain an individual right to make sure it is exercised properly. They have a law antecedent and paramount to all positive Laws of men, reserved for that ultimate determination to themselves, which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth…they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven. And this judgment


they cannot part with, it being out of man’s power so to submit himself to another as to give him liberty to destroy him, God and Nature never allowing a man to so abandon himself as to neglect his own preservation. (Locke, 1990, p. 379) For Locke, each person has a right to judge the performance of public officials and to take action when they believe that they are misusing that power. In fact, if only one individual disagrees with government believing that he has been treated unjustly, he retains the right to take up arms against the government. ‘Where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, there they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment’ (1990, p. 379). When rulers behave unjustly they put themselves, suggests Locke, back into a state of nature with their subjects. However, in a manner reminiscent of those defenders of civil disobedience that point out that such actions, though justified, must also have a chance of success before they are attempted, Locke argues that for a single individual to revolt against the state would be futile. A state is a powerful institution that would attempt to ‘engage them in a contest wherein they are sure to perish’ (1990, p. 404). For that reason, resistance to government would be unlikely until the problems had grown so large and generally perceived in a given community – ‘a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices all tending the same way’ (1990 p. 415) – and the crimes of the rulers so obvious that resistance is unavoidable. In short, rebellion against political authority was justified, said Locke, only when it was ‘worth the trouble and cost (1990, p. 386). And because people are ‘long suffering’ and tend to fear upheaval within a society, this is unlikely to happen on a regular basis. The question ‘When is a government acting illegitimately?’ does not have the same answer as the question ‘When may a people rightfully resist their government?’ There are ‘practical’ and ‘sensible’ limitations, then, on the right to resistance. Those who have followed Locke’s theoretical lead have repeated and refined his theoretical struggle with consent and the right to resist unjust authority. For modern thinkers, civic participation in some form is the key to understanding modern political obligations. Indeed, some have suggested that these obligations are similar to those we assume when agreeing to participate in games.4 ‘The fact is,’ suggests one


defender of this variation of consent theory, ‘that going to the polls and casting a vote in an election is analogous to sitting down at the poker table. It is a kind of engagement that signals a prima facie belief in the legitimacy of the electoral process and a willingness to accept its outcomes…My decision to participate implies my belief in the essential fairness of the institution’ (Steinberger, 2002, p. 460). Leaving aside, for the moment, the somewhat perplexing comparison between liberal democracy and poker, the point surely is that every time an individual uses a public institution, a library, a hospital or school, this may be interpreted as an expression of certain beliefs we have about those institutions and the professionals who inhabit them. The authority of a particular regime, as Weber noted in his essay Politics as a Vocation and Profession, relies on its perceived legitimacy. Legitimate authority relies on adherence to procedures, rules, and can claim obedience from people because of a belief in the validity of the legal statute. A failure to recognize the significance of this authority and the obligation to the state that arises from our benefiting from personal participation in those political and social institutions reflects a profound misunderstanding of government and, according to advocates of this position, a failure of civic personality. ‘If, then, I refuse to consent to the authority of the state even though I have a primary duty to do so, I may be guilty of sociopathy, or of compromising my own moral personality as a naturally political creature, or of failing to acknowledge and embrace the justice of the regime in question’ (Steinberger, 2002, p. 454). Nonetheless, there is a difference between being a ‘naturally political creature’ and owing obligations to the state. As Plato knew only too well, we often feel more strongly towards people than we do towards constitutions, which is why he personified the Laws of Athens in his dialogue Crito. Developing this point, Walzer (2005) has argued that within the modern, plural, liberal state, the foundation for obligation arises not from the loyalty one feels to political or legal structures but to one’s fellow citizens. In fact, the more alienated people feel from the law for structural reasons of inequality, bureaucratic rationalization, accessibility to the legal system, or distance from their representatives – features of political life that Locke did not and could not take into account – the more likely people are to obey the law blindly and with minimal reflection. For Walzer, this is unsatisfactory. Instead, the proper bases of obligation are those communal relationships that might, occasionally, trump obligations to the political community.


Although Walzer’s analysis goes some way to making the notion of liberal consent more complex, critics have not hesitated to point out that even if obligations are derived from what one owes to one’s fellow citizens (horizontal obligations) in contrast to those obligations owed to the state (vertical obligations) this still does not solve the problematic relation between the two kinds of obligation. Noting this, critics argue that Walzer’s reconstruction of consent theory merely points to the anachronism of consent theory in the modern world when the original historical context for its development is nearly 400 years out of date. Euben noted, for example, that the discussions surrounding Martin Luther King’s demonstrations against an unjust political regime in the 1960s were often framed in a theoretical language that persisted in ignoring those ‘structural developments’ such as growing bureaucracies and professional expertise that had fundamentally ‘altered the context of citizenship, political action, and consent’ (1972, p. 438).5 Consequently, ‘the information and knowledge necessary for consent are unobtainable, and – given the values, commitments, institutions, and scope of our society – unobtainable in principle; and that therefore, even in terms of consent itself, our state is not legitimate’ (Euben, 1972, p. 444). Much as Locke himself developed consent theory to alter the theoretical imaginary of the seventeenth century so that it might be possible to consider individuals capable of free choice, we should now realize that consent theory needs revision. As it stands, it cannot accommodate those changes in political life that have resulted in the growth of administrative expertise, nor the impact of news media, that would enable a people to knowingly consent to government and its actions.

3.3

A natural duty to obey

A separate approach to grounding obligation uses the principle of ‘fairness’ as the moral basis for obedience, drawing upon John Rawls’s notion of ‘presumptive goods.’6 Here, obligation is said to arise because we benefit in important ways from membership within a given community. Klosko (2004) has suggested that the fact that we receive these goods, and are not forced to receive them, solves the difficulty of consenting to receive them. We find ourselves obligated to a community that provides goods that we could not otherwise enjoy and this enables us to pursue our own life goals. The provisions of law and order, public health, and national security, for example, are all presumptive or basic goods without which other choices would be extremely difficult. Consequently, we are obligated to the state that provides them.


These goods are so fundamental that they would be acknowledged by everyone as necessary. Consequently, the objection proposed by Nozick (2001), that there might be occasions when individuals can reject obligations to the state or other communities when public goods are forcibly given, is defused.7 Presumptive goods are considered essential for civilized existence so that no one could dispute their necessity. Once this is established, the issue becomes one of costs and benefits: how the costs of these goods ought to be shared throughout the community and how individuals might be obliged to support such a state that provides these goods. Even though citizens might disagree with a particular provision the argument from presumptive goods and fairness is said to trump individual disagreement about those provisions. Although the assumption of obligations based on fairness avoids some of the thornier conceptual problems of consent difficulties remain nonetheless. Indeed, beyond the most general agreement about our obligations to political communities, as soon as one begins to inquire into the nature of these basic goods significant disagreement arises about what constitutes, for example ‘national security’ (see Wellman, 2001). One way around this dilemma might be to say that as long as the process determining what constitutes these goods was reached in a ‘fair and reasonable manner’ we have an obligation to support that outcome of that process. Yet this just deepens the problem. If we are, as Klosko suggests, to consider this theory in the light of ‘political realities’ then we would have to examine the process by which decisions are reached very closely indeed. The fact that most citizens cannot do so, either for reasons of time, opportunity, or for reasons of government secrecy (Bok 1978, 1989) problematizes what is ‘reasonable’ and fair or what a ‘reasonable person’ would agree to from the outset (see Moran, 2003). Klosko suggests that any theory of political obligation ought to explain why we have such a strong intuition about why there ought to be political obligations at all. He suggests that: ‘[t]heories that offend against our general intuition…are suspect and should be accepted only after the most careful scrutiny’ (2004, p. 126). Few would argue against the notion that some obligation is required for societies to function. Yet what is palpably absent from discussions of basic goods and our ‘intuitions’ to obey government is consideration of what we should do when the government that provides those basic goods becomes unreasonable or unfair. As Pitkin noted in a relevant context: …if normally law and authority oblige and resistance requires justification, and if normally judgment is to some extent subordinated to


that of the authorities, and if revolutionary situations are precisely the ones that are not normal in these respects, then the crucial question seems to be: who is to say? Who is to say what times are normal and what times are not, when resistance is justified or even obligatory? (Pitkin, 1966, p. 52) The argument from intuition has its appeal. Yet, this does little to assist us with appraising the particular nature of those intuitions or why, indeed, they appear to change over time (Billington, 2003). Indeed, Lyons makes just this point about the untrustworthy nature of our political intuitions in his consideration of political obligation, justified disobedience, and the Civil Rights Movement: ‘The judgment of those of us who took political obligation for granted’ he notes, ‘despite the obvious existence of intolerable, deeply entrenched, systematic injustice against clearly identified groups within our society – was distorted by inadequate sensitivity to the palpable impact of the oppression, especially on those of color’ (1998, p. 48). Even if one could establish a duty to the state based on the principle of fairness, because of the manifest inequalities within society this still leaves what Pateman (1979) described as a distribution problem. Where social inequalities persist in a given society the question arises as to what extent political obligation ought to require compliance from those who are denied rights to citizenship or from those who, while enjoying formal rights, cannot be said to have the capacity to exercise them. ‘In such a case’ suggested Pateman, ‘it might be argued that the minority have no obligation at all’ (1979, p. 9). That social inequalities persist and, in some cases, are actually increasing is no longer a matter of empirical debate.8 One might argue, therefore, that in a situation of gross social inequality obligations become proportional – the less one benefits, the less obliged one is to comply with the state’s commands. At some point, a tipping point would be reached where the costs of obedience outweigh the benefits. Indeed, provided that civil disobedience promises a fair chance of success and one is able to show that the laws of the state perpetuate injustice, the principle of fairness in such a scenario might support such activity. In defense of such a view, Clarke (2003) points out that: ‘[a]s a general rule, we can say that whatever economic, social, and legal rights that oppressed people have secured have thus far been obtained through social resistance that disrupted the status quo to the point of generating crises. Such activity was rarely conducted with


official sanction, and it often occurred despite legalized efforts to destroy any uprising’ (p. 495). Having recognized the challenge to political obligation, in The Theory of Justice John Rawls introduced a little discussed but important distinction between political obligation and what he termed a natural duty to obey. This primary or foundational duty, according to Rawls, was owed to a ‘reasonably or nearly just’ political regime and its institutions. Rawls assumed that there ought to be a liberal state, in the ideal sense, and that its authority should be an accepted and necessary feature of the contemporary world; or, as one commentator noted, ‘an imaginary foundation which Rawls wishe[d] to insert beneath the real edifice of liberal society in order to justify that society’ (Bloom, 1975, p. 656). While noting that: ‘the better-placed members of society are more likely to have political obligations as distinct from political duties’, Rawls added that only some citizens, ‘the better placed members of society’, those who are ‘best able to gain political office and to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the constitutional system’ were bound by a relationship of political obligation (1971, p. 302). The rest of the population, by contrast, was bound by a natural and unconditional duty of obedience; which Rawls also called the natural duty of justice. The reason for this move, Rawls explained, was simple. In order to maintain a stable society, political ties cannot be based upon voluntary, autonomous actions; even though his ‘original position’ relied upon the notion that the imaginary citizens who inhabited that realm were autonomous. If that were the case, ‘[c]itizens would not be bound to even a just constitution unless they [had] accepted and intend[ed] to continue to accept its benefits’ (p. 296). Practically that was impossible. Therefore, the concept of a natural duty was required in order to take the place of voluntary assent to government. This simple theoretical move avoided the persistent problems that beset consent theories derived from Locke and the threat of proportional obligations that might be derived from a principle of fairness. ‘Thus even though the principles of natural duty are derived from a contractarian point of view, they do not presuppose and act of consent, express or tacit, or indeed any voluntary act, in order to apply’ (p. 99). For Rawls, the issue was not whether citizens had consented to government, but in a significant sense, whether they could have so consented in a rational or hypothetical sense. As Kant noted in similar fashion: …if a law is so framed that a whole people could not possibly give it their consent…the law is unjust; but if it is at all possible that a


people might agree on it, then the people’s duty is to look on the law as just, even assuming that their present way of thinking were such that, if consulted, they would probably refuse to agree. (Kant, 1991a, p. 79) If the basic arrangements of society are just then it would be a mistake to fail to comply with even unjust laws. Hence: ‘When laws and policies deviate from publicly recognized standards, an appeal to the society’s sense of justice is presumably possible to some extent…this condition is presupposed in undertaking civil disobedience. If, however, the prevailing conception of justice is not violated, then the situation is very different.’ (Rawls, 1971, p. 310). Rawls’ Kantian heritage should not be overlooked here. Kant’s reliance upon abstract reasoning, a division within society between those who are better placed (citizens) and those who have no effective voice (subjects), along with the edict to ‘[a]rgue as much as you like and about whatever you like but obey!’ (Kant, 1991b, p. 59) provide a more explicit analysis of the nature of obedience within the modern state and help explain Rawls’ skepticism towards civil disobedience. In the second section of the Metaphysic of Morals, for example, Kant (1991c) discussed the notion of public right or law by which he meant the laws of a people. We have laws, he suggested, because people need a constitution in order to be able to exercise their legitimate freedoms. Kant’s theory of the social contract was based upon the premise that human beings were ‘violent and malevolent’ because they each chose what seemed right and good for them, independently of others, with the result that they fought among themselves until a coercive authority intervened. The pre-political state of nature was not properly a ‘state of injustice’ because in the absence of a legal authority there was no justice. Fundamentally, it was a state of insecurity where property could not be adequately protected. For Kant, preservation of property was absolutely central to his argument: ‘Anyone may thus use force to impel others to abandon this state for a state of right.’ (1991c, p. 137). Once instituted, Kant argued that the people could not and must not ‘pass judgement’ on the head of state. In fact, any speculation as to the legitimacy of the state or its origin was absurd. In Kant’s opinion you could only form such an opinion under a constitution, which already found you subject to the law. As such, those who continued to speculate were ‘a menace to the state’ (p. 143). In fact, persistence with this line of reasoning could result in punishment, elimination or


banishment as an outlaw (pp. 143, 161). Indeed, if disagreement with the government proved so intractable it would be advisable for you to quit the state, with the proviso that an individual was not permitted to take anything with them, including the money received from the sale of your property (p. 160). In fact, Kant claimed that as a practical principle of reason, ‘requiring men to obey the legislative authority now in power, irrespective of its origin’ was a law that was sacred (p. 143). Further, ‘[i]f the ruler, does anything against the laws (e.g. if he infringes the law of equal distribution of political burdens in taxation, recruiting of the like) you can lodge complaints about this injustice, but [you] may not offer resistance’ (p. 143). There could be no right to rebellion even when the executive power violated the constitutional law because it would be a contradiction. A supreme power could not claim supremacy if it could be challenged. The reason why it is the duty of the people to tolerate even what is apparently the most intolerable misuse of supreme power is that it is impossible ever to conceive of their resistance to the supreme legislation as being anything other than unlawful and liable to nullify the entire legal constitution. (Kant, 1991c, p. 145) Kant’s theory is a defense of constitutional representative government based upon the notion that when people contract together they abandon their natural freedom in order to assume a state of ‘lawful dependence.’ Indeed, Kant’s description of individuals within the constitutional order is one of degrees of dependence or obedience. Ideally, he noted, a simplified political order would be best (by which he means monarchical rule) ‘so long as the people are passive and obedient to a single individual above them – but this would mean that no subjects could be citizens. Perhaps, however, the people are supposed to content themselves with the consolation that monarchy (in this case autocracy) is the best political constitution if the monarch is a good one…’ (p. 162). For Kant, once a civil constitution has been instituted obedience to government is paramount. He says, for example, that in the event of an internal rebellion and a power struggle within a state, something that he considers unlawful, the first priority for citizens is that they obey the new political power. But the threat that this rebellion has posed, not just to internal authority but to the political order


external to this state warrants, Kant suggests, punishment by other states. It must…be left to international right to decide whether other powers have the right to join in an association for the benefit of this fallen monarch simply in order that the people’s crime should not go unpunished or remain as a scandal in the eyes of other states, and whether they are entitled or called upon to overthrow a constitution established in any other state by revolution, and to restore the old one by forcible means. (Kant, 1991c, p. 147) Like Kant, Rawls’ discussion of obligation and duty is motivated by a concern with stability, the defense of just (or nearly just) institutions, and, ultimately, obedience to the law. Consequently, objections to the order of things in Rawls’ political universe are tightly circumscribed. Critics have pointed out that this reduces civil disobedience within liberal theory to a form of protest that is really no protest at all, where ‘there is much protest, screaming, and foot stomping, but no real harm done’ (Barry, 1973, p. 153). Questions concerning when a state is unjust, and what might be done about it, are largely left to one side. As Pateman notes: The concept of a legitimate government necessarily implies that citizens ought to consent or ought to obey…Rawls’ argument could be formulated as: a just state is one that citizens ought (have a natural duty) to obey…to claim that one ought to obey a legitimate or just state leaves entirely open the vital question of how it is known that the state is indeed just; what are the criteria of justice? (1979, p. 118)

3.4

‘Resistance makes us what we are’

The trouble with theories grounded on duty is that they tend to lead to a too ready acceptance of, and obedience to, authority (see Billington, 1991; McCloskey, 1980). The trouble with theories based on the notion of a hypothetical contract or consent is, as David Hume noted, that no such contract ever existed nor can we really say that we have consented to government. If promising or ‘contracting together’ exists then it exists by convention. The political situation that exists is


largely due to happenstance, force, and inheritance. Consequently, as one forthright critic notes: We use consent theory not as a map, not realizing that like any other map it’s simpler than reality, but as a set of blinders or rosecolored glasses that make the world look clearer, less problematic, than it really is…It’s satisfying to retreat to the formulaic account, to pretend that the framework of consent theory, with its free agents taking up their roles by choice, is the whole story. But when we do, we become happy slaves ourselves, caught by an ironic twist in the clutches of our own theory, proudly celebrating a freedom not so unconditionally ours. (Herzog, 1989, p. 247) What critics such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell noted, writing in the seventeenth century, was that these theories tended to make the assumption that the social contract affected only free and equal property owning males. For Locke, this kind of equality existed alongside natural domination and subordination – of parents over children and husbands over their wives. The social contract was a rhetorical device to justify the order of things, a defense of a particular belief system or ideology (Gauthier, 1977; Macpherson, 1979). Why should a woman who had not given her consent to government obey the laws? Why should any woman? Mary Astell asked in the preface to Some Reflections on Marriage, that if all men are born free how is it that women are born slaves? The social contract and the marriage contract she noted were remarkably similar, subordinating women almost completely; a point that would be developed nearly a century later by Mary Wollstonecraft in her remarkable Vindication of the Rights of Woman. When David Hume published his critical essay Of The Original Contract, he pointed out that the fact that most of us have not explicitly consented to government does not mean the government is illegitimate. The most important criterion was, for him, utilitarian – does government deliver justice, peace, and prosperity for its people? Even the authoritarian Hobbes knew that the people should not grow ‘weary’ of government and provide the conditions necessary to support a decent standard of living (Leviathan, Chapter 14). For Hume, the notion of the social contract was not a helpful way of thinking about society. The proper criterion upon which to judge government was utility.


Yet, where was the utility in excluding the majority of the population from active membership of that society? It was precisely this question that the most famous public intellectual of the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill, intended to answer. For Mill, there was a general form of obedience owed to the state in which one lived but it was not founded on the idea of an original contract. Mill noted in On Liberty: ‘though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest’ (1985, p. 141). Government’s purpose for Mill was to facilitate human progress and flourishing through the defense of individual liberty. Mill believed, much as his father James Mill, that an intellectual elite, a ‘middling sort’, or even those rare individual geniuses within society ought to be given enough latitude to ‘point the way’ towards social progress even, and perhaps especially, if their ideas might be considered unconventional. In fact, this was precisely why freedom of conscience and expression ought to be protected in law. Consequently, Mill’s defense of individual liberty for those in the ‘maturity of their faculties’ was intended to promote social advancement amidst a rising tide of mediocrity and increasing degrees of incursion by the state into everyday life. ‘The majority,’ he noted, ‘being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are…cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers in their own judgement, think would be best for mankind’ (1985, pp. 120–1). The distinctiveness of Mill’s position is thrown into sharper relief when set against the threat of despotic power and the expansion of state bureaucracies. In Considerations on Representative Government, Mill criticized the expanding state which he thought undesirable because it would entail that government would have to collect increasing amounts of detailed information about individual citizens in order to perform its functions effectively. As the modern apparatus of government expanded so Mill worried that greater numbers of individuals would become dependent upon it for their livelihood, thereby decreasing the possibilities of social change. The more efficient the scientific machinery of government became the more individual freedom would


be threatened by the desires of administrations to collect greater quantities of information and because the public would fail to understand the workings of an increasingly complex government machinery. Mill noted that policy initiatives from below would not be taken seriously by an increasingly professional caste of government administrators. Moreover, governors who lacked the requisite expertise would themselves discover too late how dependent they were on the power of the bureaucracy. His concluding sentence to On Liberty neatly summarizes his point: ‘a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished…’ (1985, p. 187). From what has been said thus far it might be possible to construct an argument defending civil disobedience upon Mill’s notion of genius or ‘eccentricity’ thus: If great advances in society generally come about through the efforts of exceptional, creative individuals… and If there will always be the need for persons to discover new truths, and to start new practices, and set new standards for a more enlightened, more sensible way of life… then In the absence of the opportunities to express such spontaneity and innovation one might reasonably argue that a constructive form of civil disobedience, one that forces open a space for deliberation so that unpopular opinions might be heard would, indeed, be justified. Of course, even geniuses (or eccentrics) make mistakes. But even if we are not persuaded by the form of benign, intellectual elitism that Mill advanced, his commitment to free discussion and to the perpetual and critical examination of society’s basic assumptions might justify disobedient action if the ends were expected to be constructive and progressive. There are at least two further areas of Mill’s thought that lend support to this argument. The first occurs in Mill’s discussion of oppression in The Subjection of Women; his last published work that he wrote


with his stepdaughter, Helen Taylor, and which provoked the ire of the political establishment. The second is the related notion of what Waldron (1987) has termed ‘the value of moral distress.’ In his Autobiography, Mill noted that within modern societies oppression took economic, political, and psychological forms, perpetuated by the corrupt and self-serving actions of elites from above, and from indirect psychological forces at work from below. Mill argued strongly against what he saw as the demoralizing effects of aristocratic classes who chose a political career in order to further their own private interests over what was in the public interest. The situation was made worse as the respect of the vast majority of the population tended to fall on these ignoble aristocratic heads simply because riches and the conspicuous display of wealth were worshipped by people. The situation was self-perpetuating noted Mill, because as long as a corrupt elite held power within society, it would simply not be in their interests to change a system that ensured their privileged position (Mill, 1969, p. 103). Unaware of the possibility of any alternative social arrangements, the population would obediently follow their rulers. As Cudd notes in a relevant analysis of oppression: The oppressed respond rationally by choosing within the constraints they are offered by the oppressors, and they gradually accommodate their beliefs and desires to the oppressive conditions that they find through both rational and nonrational psychological processes… Direct forces may become less visible as time wears on and generations adopt the coping mechanisms of their parents; the privileged come to believe that their superiority is natural; the oppressed come to believe in their own inferiority, and become dependent on the dominant social groups for material support and moral leadership. (2006, p. 227) Mill turned his attention to what he considered the most glaring, yet least discussed, example of inequity in The Subjection. Published in 1869, though written in 1861, it was almost the last public statement Mill would make on the issue of the inequality and mistreatment of women sanctioned by English Common Law. As a young man of 17, Mill had been sentenced for handing out pamphlets advocating contraception. Later, as an independent member of parliament for Westminster, he made an unsuccessful attempt to extend suffrage to women by introducing an amendment to the Reform Act of 1867, and introduced a Women’s Property Bill in 1868. Mill asserted that men and


women should be seen as equal before the law, that ‘marital slavery’ should be replaced with ‘marital friendship’ and that the marriage contract had to be grounded on legal equality. It was for this reason that he wrote out a formal protest against the existing marriage contract in 1851 before he married Harriet Taylor.9 Mill’s analysis of liberal individualism was grounded on the perspective that the life of an individual was constituted by the private as well as public worlds. Although the division between private and public had played an important part in the development of his earlier theory; notably in On Liberty; Mill’s individualism was tempered by a fundamental recognition that individuals were social creatures who were constituted by their relationships with one another. Yet because of this fact of social and personal existence, coupled with their legal subordination, women were subject to oppression at home and in the wider society. Mill’s point was simple: convention had been mistaken for nature and relations of domination and exploitation had become enshrined in law so that women had no recourse other than conformity to men’s wills. As a consequence, modern societies suffered from a moral and political scotoma, distorting the imbalance of relationships between the genders into what was considered natural or normal. As he pointed out: If the authority of men over women, when first established, had been the result of a conscientious comparison between different modes of constituting the government of society; if after trying various other modes of social organization – the government of women over men, equality between the two, and such mixed and divided modes of government as might be invented…its general adoption might then be fairly thought to be some evidence that, at the time when it was adopted, it was the best: though even then the considerations which recommended it may, like so many other primeval social facts of the greatest importance, have subsequently, in the course of ages, ceased to exist. (1991, p. 475)10 The fact is, Mill added, that there never was any conversation about this system of inequality, and no thought had ever been given as to whether this arrangement was best for society overall. On the contrary, the laws of society reflected the current state of affairs, converting ‘physical fact’ into ‘legal right.’ The result was the perpetuation of a


system of inequality, supported by law, and ‘clung to’ by those who had an interest in retaining it. ‘The yoke’ he added, ‘is naturally and necessarily humiliating to all persons, except the one who is on the throne, together with the one who expects to succeed it’ (p. 481). Mill thought that injustice was supported by a system that regarded itself as just. More importantly, those who enjoyed the benefits of oppression refused to even consider the idea that the privileges they enjoyed yet denied to others might be wrong. In such a situation, what could be done? Mill’s strategy in The Subjection was to rely on rational argument and persuasion coupled with a reexamination of historical assumptions about marriage and the capacities of women. In the modern world, Mill noted, we were not doomed to follow the path dictated by birth and status but were free to make our own way in the world. Exercising such freedoms was not only best for individual happiness but social progress as well. Mill’s claim was that society as a whole must suffer if the skills and contributions of over half the population – and the census of 1851 had established for the first time that there were more women than men in English society – were not being used. Men’s resistance to equality in politics and in marriage was a direct expression of their domination and fear of equality. As a result, society as a whole had suffered. Jeremy Bentham had advanced a similar argument in his discussion of opportunity in A Fragment of Government. The ordinary members of modern democracies were said to be unwise because of their poverty. Yet their mental faculties lay undeveloped because they were ‘nailed to the work board’ and had no leisure time to act or to think (1998, p. 78). Yet, according to Bentham, this was precisely what needed to be changed otherwise they would continue to be exploited and oppressed. What separated these two bodies of individuals – the rich and the poor – was not some intrinsic metaphysical quality but opportunity, which came from circumstance. If the latter could be changed, then greater opportunities for developing one’s mind and abilities would follow. That was the key to freedom, where power was distributed among the people, where there were frequent ‘changes of condition’ between governed and governors, where ‘the interests of one class are blended with those of others, where governors act responsibly, where the press is free, where opinions may be expressed in community with others and where you can practice every mode of opposition short of actual revolt’ (my italics, 1998, pp. 97–8).


Mill acknowledged that reform within his own society was likely to be slow. He provided an alternative vision of a society in which men and women could be equals, and described the positive effects that would result for the culture at large and marriage in particular. A liberal regime should, he thought, ‘promote the conditions under which friendship, not only in marriage but in other associations as well, will take root and flourish’ (p. 419). His relationship with Harriet Taylor embodied the possibility of a different kind of relationship between men and women. Yet, this still left the problem of attitudinal change, persuading women to throw off their chains and for men to recognize that women wore them. There would likely be deep-seated opposition to women taking up their cause. ‘A woman who joins in any movement which her husband disapproves, makes herself a martyr, without even being able to be an apostle, for the husband can legally put a stop to her apostleship’ (Mill, 1991, p. 556). Men would, therefore, have to recognize that this was not a woman’s issue but one that concerned them as well. Yet how might they do this if, as Mill contended, they had become corrupted by their assumed natural dominance over women, something, he thought, that occurred in early childhood, and was reinforced throughout the life of the male? Mill concluded The Subjection by noting: ‘resistance has made us what we are, and will yet make us what we are to be.’ Yet, what form of resistance might that legitimately take? Included within what has come to be known as Mill’s ‘harm principle’ is a positive element, an element of creative tension that makes room for a form of civil disobedience. In On Liberty, Mill had noted that a positive value could be attached to making majorities uncomfortable. As examples, Mill discussed Muslims who were disgusted at the sight of a Christian eating pork; Spaniards who were uneasy with anybody practicing a religion other than Catholicism; and New England Puritans who objected to public amusement, dancing, music and theater. Mill believed that these examples showed that the feelings of the offended majority should not count. One should be able to eat pork, practice a religion other than Catholicism, and dance the night away. For Mill, the ‘moral distress’ that such encounters might cause did not outweigh the importance of ethical confrontation in a deliberative setting. As Waldron notes, Mill was convinced that people and society at large benefited from such an encounter: ‘the fact that one’s conduct harms another is, on Mill’s account, only a necessary not a sufficient justification for intervention; once harm is established, everything


then depends on a calculation of the costs and benefits of preventing it. The point of the Harm Principle is to establish a threshold which must be crossed before utilitarian calculations of that sort are even in order, not to elevate every little incident of harm into a pretext for legitimate prohibition’ (1987, p. 412). Naturally, there are risks involved in discussions about difficult subjects. The threat of philosophical and religious sectarianism, even violence, cannot be excluded. For Mill, however, conceiving of individuals as ‘progressive beings’, creatures capable of changing their minds, required them to test their own theories and beliefs against others who hold different, even opposing views. If society at large refused to listen, then perhaps a degree of justified moral distress – in the form of civil disobedience – might be required. Indeed, from Mill’s point of view, it may even be morally necessary if an individual is to retain her integrity as a moral individual, and society is to progress.11

3.5

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the most salient approaches to understanding obedience and disobedience from within the liberal tradition. While each view of obligation and obedience based on consent, duty, or utilitarian concerns contain important elements to consider, it is probably fairly obvious where my sympathies lie. Mill’s approach combines both respect for the moral integrity of the person through a particularly vigorous defense of individual liberty and acknowledges that societies, like persons, can be improved. Working from the fact of political life that there will be occasions when governments are guilty of folly, where policies reached through democratic procedures are unjust nonetheless (see Tuchman, 1984), Mill’s focus on the albeit controversial notion of the citizen as a ‘progressive being’ pushes beyond the simple utilitarian argument requiring us to weigh the relative harm of an unjust policy against the chances of overturning that policy.12 Nonetheless, Mill’s position is not without critics. His is a substantive view of liberal morality and an unashamedly optimistic view of political life at odds with the dominant fashion among contemporary liberal political theorists. Rawls’ legacy continues to preoccupy the thoughts of scholars as they struggle to accommodate the demands of multicultural democracies (see Kymlicka, 1996). Where discussion concerning civil disobedience has occurred the overwhelming conclusion has been negative. ‘The general tenor of these writings’ noted one commentator in a review of the literature, ‘is that


disobedience of the law based on a belief that the law ought to be disobeyed is never, or only rarely, and then only when grave grounds so dictate, justified, that there is always not simply a presumption in favor of obeying the law, but an intrinsic, real, albeit prima facie duty to obey the law’ (McCloskey, 1980, p. 536). Perhaps what is at issue, and what would need to be explored more fully elsewhere, is whether the state ought to provide citizens with the requisite information, motivators, and skills, so that they might determine whether there are occasions when disobedience to law would be justified (see Brighouse, 2006). If, following Mill, citizenship could come to mean something more meaningful than the pursuit of a mindless form of patriotism or consumerism it might be possible to find a place for civil disobedience. The thoughtful creation of moral distress among the citizenry might then serve a greater good. In the meantime, however, civil disobedience will likely remain a nuisance. Thanks to recent changes in the law in the United Kingdom, even causing distress now may legitimately be regarded as a punishable offence.13 It is often suggested that civil disobedience can only function within societies that are willing to ‘tolerate’ such law-breaking activities. Under conditions of dictatorship or authoritarian regimes, such action will meet with the full force of the state often with devastating consequences.14 However, there is another equally important distinction, a defining difference, in fact, between those liberal theories that seek to defend society against actions which threaten to upset the political order and those who would seek to hold the state accountable for promoting the wellbeing of citizens. This chapter has attempted to show that those who hold the latter view are, under some circumstances, more likely to favor civil disobedience.

4 The Politics of Perception

The right to express our thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own… Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, 1965 The fact remains that ordinary people are susceptible to a kind of enchantment that lies over the bedrock of their intellectual indifference. They can be aroused for a while and enlisted in causes. Their imagination can be gratified and captured. George Kateb, 2002 With belief everything becomes sweeter and easier. St. Augustine, Confessions

4.1

The collective imagination

On the second floor of the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, in a room dedicated to the city’s ruling council of nine (Sala dei Nove) there are three frescos painted between 1338–1340 by the Italian master Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The first is an image of the city in a state of corruption. The horned, cross-eyed figure of Tyranny presides over a state where it is unsafe to travel, people hide in their homes, murder and civil strife are common, the countryside burns, and the army commits war crimes against civilians. The court in this ‘City-state under Tyranny’ is populated by other figures, the sins of bad government including cruelty, treason, fraud, furor, division, and war. Underneath the court, the female figure of justice (Justicia) is bound, a reminder of what can happen when the common good has been forgotten. 78

The Politics of Perception 79

Turning north, the second image that you see represents ‘The Virtues of Good Government.’ This time Justicia sits with her scales in balance while an angel (Wisdom) reads from a book directly above her. In the Court of the Common Good the theological virtues (Faith, Hope, Charity) sit alongside secular ones: peace, fortitude, prudence, magnanimity, temperance, justice – all of them women. Finally, there is Harmony (Concordia), sitting at the feet of Justicia. In her hands she holds one end of a braided cord that descends from each of Justicia’s scales. A row of 24 citizens/councilors stands alongside her, each holding a length of the rope. They are bound together literally and metaphorically for the common good. As the inscription provided by the artist on the West Wall reads: ‘where Justice is bound, no one is ever in accord for the Common Good, nor pulls the cord straight.’ Yet here they do. The final fresco is an image of the city in safety: ‘The Good City Republic,’ a counterpart to the court of tyranny. In the absence of fear, Security, a winged female, hovers over the city and the countryside where farmers bring in crops from a bountiful harvest and men embark on a hunt. In this ideal republic, citizens sing and dance in the streets, a bride on a white horse leads a wedding procession, and merchants and craftsman ensure there will be plenty for all. These frescos were designed to serve different purposes. On the one hand, they expressed civic pride. The citizen-rulers of the city would have considered such displays an expression of ‘the beauty, harmony, and honor of the republic.’ Yet, in the political nerve center of the city, the town hall, these images were also a reminder of the mission of republican self-government. The artist had to make the images reflect the meaning of free republican politics in contrast to the dominant political image of the period: the monarch presiding over the nation. In addition to any propaganda value, the frescos were also a form of political therapy. They served to remind the ruling council, through image and inscription, of their republican duties, a selfless dedication to impersonal principle rather than personal attachment to the person of the king. Together, they comprised a ‘pictorial bible of a republican tradition’ (Starn, 1994, p. 16). The images that Lorenzetti used to portray civic pride and patriotism in his frescos served to inspire both individual and collective imaginations. The individual citizen was reminded of the appropriate behavior associated with life in the city, and the consequences of noncompliance; the ruling elite of the dangers of allowing private interests


to subvert the public good. The actual city, then, sits between a dystopian vision of chaos and murder and a utopian view of a just and peaceful polity. It is up to the city’s republican rulers to determine which course they will take. This chapter will examine two contributions from the civic-republican tradition that add to our comprehension of political reality; one that occurs at the beginning of the modern period, the other at its end in the twentieth century. Both theoretical approaches explore the phenomenology of politics, the role of the political imaginary and its limits and relate directly to the theory and practice of civil disobedience. The central argument developed here, one that I explore in detail in the remainder of the book, is that political power and authority owe much to the interplay between the individual and collective imagination. All nations are imaginary to a degree, ‘manufactured’ through word and image in order to create ties that bind people together (see Anderson, 1993). Civil disobedience, where it does occur, threatens to disrupt this political imaginary, the collective hallucination in which we all participate as citizen-spectators. Green (1988) suggests that what is at issue when we refer to the authority of the state or political authority more broadly, is the ‘selfimage’ of the state and the degree to which citizens accept or support this image (p. 87). In upsetting this image, something that Wolin (1996) has described as the simulacra of democracy, the ‘[political] management of collective desires, resentments, anger, fantasies, [and] fears’ (p. 33), civil disobedience transgresses or subverts what is considered normal and acceptable. As Bordieu suggests, in so doing such subversive activity: …exploits the possibility of changing the social world by changing the representation of this world which contributes to its reality or, more precisely, by counterposing a paradoxical pre vision, a utopia, a project or programme, to the ordinary vision which apprehends the social world as a natural world. (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 128) When the symbolic field is ‘ruptured’ by individuals or groups who refuse to conform their behaviors to accepted norms, civil disobedience becomes a particularly powerful form of protest. If, as some argue, political power makes men blind as well as deaf (see Tuchman, 1984) then civil disobedience may be regarded as an attempt to restore our political senses.


4.2

Theatrum mundi

The distinction between the phenomenal world and the realm of truth is a foundational division within political philosophy. Prior to the revolution in Greek philosophy in the fifth century B.C.E., Vernant notes for example that ‘statues of gods…were understood not simply as illusionistic depictions of a deity but an actual revelation of a divinity that would otherwise be invisible’ (Vernant, 1991, p. 155). Yet with Plato the proper relation between being and appearance and the ethical and political dimensions of mimesis changes. In The Republic, the equivalence between divinity and man made objects came under direct challenge. While some forms of imitation could be used in the proper education of children, Plato was certain that artists mocked reality passively reflecting the world much as a mirror reflected the world, producing mere phantoms in the process. Artistic creation posed a potential threat to the Platonic ideals of justice and reason and came to be associated not with a ‘healthy city’ but a ‘feverish city,’ ‘with superfluity, effeminacy, violence, theatricality and social hierarchy’ (Potolsky, 2006, pp. 17–18). In the allegory of the cave in Book VII we grasp the different kinds of knowledge and political expertise available, how eagerly the deluded cave dwellers resist truth, and how fruitless is the task of trying to share wisdom with those who wish to remain child-like in their apprehension and understanding. But now imagine further, that they [the philosophers] descend into their old habitations; in that underground dwelling they will not see as well as their fellows, and will not be able to compete with them in the measurement of the shadows on the wall; there will be many jokes about the man who went on a visit to the sun and lost his eyes, and if they find anybody trying to set free and enlighten one of their number, they will put him to death, if they can catch him. (Plato, 1987, p. 320) The philosopher who has left the cave has seen the world outside. To him the shadows on the wall of the cave are illusions. But now that the philosopher knows the truth behind the images he also knows too that most people will not be able or willing to recognize that truth. Consequently, the philosopher’s knowledge will permit him to govern his deluded fellow citizens in their best interests. Plato’s view of mimesis,


then, supports a particular view of political order and one of the earliest justifications for lying in the form of what he terms the ‘noble lie’ beginning a political tradition that supported deception for the sake of civic happiness (see Bok, 1978; Runciman, 2008). The tension between semblance and reality persisted into the early modern period. Christianity, under the influence of Augustine, took a dim view of earthly appearance. As Sennett notes, thanks to the inward turn initiated by Augustine ‘the outside as a dimension of diversity and chaos…lost its hold upon the human mind as a dimension of moral value, in contrast to an inner space of definition’ (Sennett, 1993, p. 19). However, during the period of state formation in the Renaissance we find some of the clearest expressions of the role of illusion, with government conceived as spectacle and political leadership the management of collective fantasy. For the image-conscious Medici family this made political and religious sense. The Medici grew wealthy from a banking and credit system that loaned money at interest. Yet they were also acutely aware of the perils of this earthly success. Profiting from the credit system put their souls in jeopardy. From Dante they knew that the seventh circle of hell was reserved for sodomists, blasphemers and usurers. To redeem themselves they financed the projects of artists like Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Donatello who made Florence beautiful to the eye (see Strathern, 2004). It was, as Parks (2006) argues a conspicuous form of benevolence, an early expression of corporate responsibility/ propaganda with clear political designs. By financing the construction of libraries, churches, chapels, including Brunelleschi’s completion of the Duomo, the Medici were seen as honest republicans. By using the currency of representation, the Medici provided continual reminders that their political vision, manifest in the art that smothered the city, was also good for Florence. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince with acute awareness of the potency of appearance. In fact, some have argued convincingly that the book itself is a work of illusion in its own right, written by a republican theorist for the benefit of those citizens who wished to discover how the Medici actually managed the polity.1 Men, Machiavelli tells us, in various places are wont to imitate others, incredulous until they have first hand experience of novelty, forgetful, ungrateful, selfish, and are primarily motivated by fear and the threat of punishment. In response, he advocates the annihilation of entire populations if necessary but is also acutely aware of the symbolic power of violence, as in the example made of Rimirro de Orco by Cesare Borgia. Above all,


Machiavelli notes, people permit themselves to be deceived and in general judge by appearances, by their eyes not their hands. ‘Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are…The common people are always impressed by appearances and results’ (1981, p. 101).2 Machiavelli’s leader is a ‘feigner and dissembler’ whose actual integrity is secondary to its appearance. His advice, to develop the art of dissimulation and concealment is founded upon the observation that political life is a form of theater. The significance of that observation and the complexity of the common fictions that leaders encouraged (and that a population seemed all too willing to follow) were examined by other writers during the same period. Giordano Bruno, writing in De Vinculis In Genere (On Bonds In General), made the keen observation that all such fantasies were based on eros, on love understood as a desire for things, ideas, or people. Human beings, he noted, have this phenomenon of desire in common though they desire different things. The art of government lies in determining which loves are suited to different sorts of people. Bruno noted: All affections and bonds of the will are reduced to two, namely aversion and desire, or hatred and love. Yet hatred itself is reduced to love, whence it follows that the will’s only bond is Eros. It has been proved that all other mental states are absolutely, fundamentally, and originally nothing other than love itself. For instance, envy is love of someone for oneself, tolerating neither superiority nor equality in the other person; the same thing applies to emulation. Indignation is love of virtue…; modesty and fear [verencundia, timor] are none other than love of decency and of that which one fears. We can say the same of the other mental states. Hatred, therefore, is none other than love of the opposite kind, of the bad; likewise, anger is only a kind of love. As regards all those who are dedicated to philosophy or magic, it is fully apparent that the highest bond, the most important and the most general [vinculum summum, praecipium et generalissimum], belongs to Eros: and that is why the Platonists called love the Great Demon, daemon magnus. (cited in Couliano, 1997, p. 2) Accordingly, the art of political leadership was the determination of which object or idea would best bind a particular individual or group of individuals to the state. For Bruno, it was always necessary for his political leader to conceal this art, and to bind different people by


using ‘different kinds of knots.’ The ability to manipulate the feelings of love that men possess successfully and secretly was for Bruno the highest virtue (p. 152). People, he noted, were ‘bonded to higher and immaterial things, as well as to imaginary things, and especially to things beyond experience…’ (p. 153). For Bruno, learning this art of manipulation was ‘a very practical form of knowledge’ as most individuals possessed a ‘limited vision’ of the world about them and an inflated view of themselves. His method was a powerful device for securing authority that relied on emotion rather than reason (p. 163). ‘Bonding,’ he suggested, occurred through three ‘gates’: vision, hearing, and mind or imagination, each one offering a different combination of effects. Entering through the gate of hearing permitted the use of speech; vision permitted the use of forms, gestures and motion to bind; and imagination could be captured or influenced by art and custom (Bruno, 1998, p. 155). The latter was particularly interesting because it could lead to an individual being bound by what is unreal or not true. ‘Apparent bonds…imagination of what is not true can truly bind…even if there were no hell, the thought and imagination of hell without a basis in truth would still really produce a true hell, for fantasy has its own type of truth. It can truly act, and can truly and most powerfully entangle in it that which can be bound, and thus the torments of hell are as eternal as the eternity of thought and faith’ (p. 165). It was the central task for Bruno’s man of public affairs, his ‘psychologist-magician’ (Couliano, 1997, p. 90), to determine exactly what sort of bond was suitable for the different types of human character within society. This was so because the majority of human beings could not control their desires. Very few occupations demanded even acknowledgement of the power of desire; poets and artists being the exception. Consequently, for Bruno, control over the individual and collective imaginary was a source of power. As Machiavelli instructed his prince to learn the art of self-control, so too the political performer must possess an extraordinary quality – the ‘art of memory’ (see Yates, 2001) – regulating his own emotions and desires, otherwise they will master him. ‘Being human, he is subject to the same weaknesses but must train himself to become immune to the chains around him’ (Couliano, 1997, p. 92). What is essential to all these processes of manipulation, however, is the will to believe as a precursor. Indeed, nothing can be achieved without faith. It is ‘the prior condition for magic’ (1997, p. 93). It forms the strongest bond, the chain of chains, or vinculum vinculorum.


Fortunately, suggests Bruno, because most people are ignorant they can be more readily controlled through desire. However, any individual, providing he is willing to recognize his own weaknesses and the power that desire has over him, can break the chains of enslavement by seeing them for what they are. Yet, as Couliano notes, if Bruno is correct hardly any of us have the ability or desire to become manipulators and magicians as we do not have the stomach to acknowledge the fragility of our own desires and imaginings. For most of us, therefore, we choose only the chains with which to enslave ourselves (1997, p. 98). The man of public affairs, by contrast, is the only one who has understood this mechanism and wishes to gain knowledge from it and from which he can subsequently profit. Human society is really, therefore, a magical society because there is no act that occurs between people that is not motivated by eros in the widest sense (1997, p. 103). Writing in England at the beginning of the sixteenth century, another writer who understood the profound connection between politics and theater, Thomas More, was acutely aware of the bonds of government and how the competing imaginaries of the religious and the secular world made different demands upon the subject (see Ackroyd, 1999). At the center of Augustine’s work was the question that was uniquely to concern More himself: do we wish to live in the earthly city or in the heavenly city? In Augustine’s work, these two worlds were distinct but not entirely separate. The physical presence of churches, for example, was a token of sacred history within the city walls. But the issue of loyalty, to divine law or to positive law was one with which More struggled and which challenged his conception of duty as a Christian. More was aware of how the court operated; the collective name for those who surrounded the King in the fifteenth century was ‘a threat of courtiers’ (Ackroyd, 1999, p. 197); and in the first book of Utopia, written while he considered an offer of employment from the king, he debated whether ‘sinning [politically] with a clear conscience’ was possible for a Christian who already saw the world of courtly life as an elaborate fiction. On the surface, at least, Henry VIII’s court offered much to an intellectual star like Thomas More. His close friend Erasmus described it thus: ‘[Henry’s court was] the seat and citadel of the best studies and of the highest characters…where under princely favor good letters are dominant…and a sentence of banishment has been passed against that futile and tasteless learning with its masked affectation of holiness, which used to be in fashion with uneducated men of education.’(cited in Hexter, 1976, p. 126).


Yet life at court was also a collective fantasy. The reason why people indulged in such fictions was political power. The more absurd the fiction the more power was required to support it. People did not necessarily have to believe in the performances in which they played a part but they had to be conscious of the role they were playing and not employ inappropriate responses to that fiction. For example, certain kinds of speech (academic philosophy) were wholly unsuited to a context that required more subtle ways of talking (civilized philosophy). Politics required tact and adherence to convention. ‘Don’t spoil the entire play’ says More’s character in his dialogue of counsel, ‘just because you happen to think of another one that you’d enjoy rather more’ (More, 1965, p. 63). To try to break through the political charade was dangerous. Yet, to try to take a part of one’s own within the fiction was equally problematic. As Greenblatt (1980) notes in his analysis of the period, for Machiavelli’s prince the choices were much simpler. A prince engaged in deception in order to secure political authority. For More, appearances had a more difficult relationship to reality. His was a world in which everyone was profoundly committed to upholding conventions in which no one really believed. Belief in the truth (at least in politics) had ceased to be necessary; a diagnosis that some contemporary theorists suggest has returned (see Frankfurt, 2005). This sentiment was echoed again by Francis Bacon, writing at the end of his career as an Elizabethan courtier. Polities were based upon deception and collective, love-less illusions where ‘faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal’ (1999, p. 59).3 Bacon was both a parliamentarian and judge until his downfall, which resulted in his expulsion from office over an issue of granting monopoly rights. Abandoned by his ‘friends’ at court he offered the following description of political life: There be some whose lives are as if they perpetually played upon a stage, disguised to all others, open only to themselves. But perpetual dissimulation is painful, and he that is all fortune and no nature is an exquisite hireling. Live not in continual smother, but take some friends with whom to communicate. It will unfold thy understanding; it will evaporate thy affections; and it will prepare thy business. (Bacon, 1999, p. 144) Each of these different approaches, written during the early modern period, provides us with insights about the function of appearance


within political life. All of us, it seems, can become ensnared by the power of images and ideas. Once this power is recognized it can be controlled and used. This is the moral of the story for a thinker like Machiavelli. Yet, if one chooses to recognize that one is ensnared, theoretically one may also break the mental bonds. For More, this ran a clear risk of upsetting the symbolic universe and those players who continued to play their part, whether they believed in it or not. Yet, as Bruno notes, it is possible, nonetheless, to become aware of the charm of a particular conceptual snare and to throw it off.

4.3

Contr’Un

It was precisely this possibility, and more often than not its refusal, that was explored in a little known treatise written in the middle of sixteenth century by an 18 year-old law student, Étienne de la Boétie. In fact, Boétie’s analysis that he developed in Contr’Un, a spirited defense of republican freedom and attack upon tyranny, provides one of the earliest justifications for non-violent, civil disobedience; a fact that makes its almost total neglect by political theorists all the more curious (see Bleiker, 2000; Keohane, 1977; Sharp, 1973b). We know of Boétie’s work largely as a result of his relationship with the essayist Michel de Montaigne. In Montaigne’s middle essay on ‘Affectionate Relationships’ the author discusses the rare gift of friendship that he shared with Boétie but also the treatise on politics that Boétie had authored while a student. He notes: Having discovered that this work of his has since been published to an evil end by those who seek to disturb and change the state of our national polity without worrying whether they will make it better…so that the author’s reputation should not be harmed among those who cannot know his opinions or his actions, I tell them that this subject was treated by him in his childhood purely as an exercise…I have no doubt that he believed what he wrote, for he was too conscientious to tell untruths even in a light-hearted work…But he had another maxim supremely imprinted upon his soul: to obey, and most scrupulously submit to, the laws under which he was born. There was never a better citizen, one more devoted to his country’s peace or more opposed to disturbances and novelties of his time. He would have used his abilities to snuff them out, not to provide materials to stir them up. The


mould of his mind was cast on the model of centuries different from ours. (1993, pp. 218–19) Scholars continue to speculate as to why Montaigne refused to include the text of the treatise itself within his own work; the most recently advanced thesis, that by excluding Boétie’s well-known treatise he was advancing his own writing career (see Moser, 2000). La Boétie wrote the essay while still a law student at the University of Orléans, France in the early 1550s and as Conley (1998) points out, it was part ‘of a body of revolutionary writings loosely affiliated with the tradition of the mazarinade and the polemical discourses…that circulated during the Wars of Religion (1562–98)’ (p. 67). Though never published during Boétie’s lifetime, the treatise continued to circulate in manuscript form during the next 200 years. Bleiker (2000) suggests that Boétie may have written the treatise shortly after the rebellion of Guyenne in 1548, an uprising of peasants prompted by the imposition of a salt tax. After they briefly took control of Bordeaux, the local authorities under the control of Henry II responded by capturing the leaders of the uprising and torturing them publicly. For Boétie, the event marked a turning point. Contr’Un begins with a series of reflections upon tyranny by arguing in contrast to the prevailing orthodoxy concerning absolutism and the divine right of kings that any form of rule ultimately depends upon popular consent. In the context of sixteenth century France this was a radical idea. Bleiker adds: ‘[Boétie] does not perceive power as something stable and restraining, a privilege that some have and others do not. Power emerges from popular consent and it is relational, a constantly changing force field located in the interactive dynamics between ruler and ruled. Perhaps most important, power is enabling, it provides common people with the chance to create opportunities for social change’ (2000, p. 61). Whereas authors like Machiavelli instructed the prince on how best to obtain and retain power, Boétie suggests something altogether different: power is a relational concept that ultimately rests with the body of the people. Withdrawal of this power at any time would result in the collapse of political authority.4 The central concern of Boétie’s treatise is to try to determine why, when people have such power, they persist in obeying governments when it is simply not in their interests to do so? This question, deceptively simple, prompted Boétie’s enquiries, much as it continues to inspire contemporary social critics


and scholarly enquiries into what is today called ‘the psychology of legitimacy’ (see Chomsky and Herman, 2002; Jost et al, 2002). Boétie’s question, ‘why would people consent to their own enslavement?’ might have elicited the following from a thinker like Hobbes: better happy enslavement than unhappy freedom. As he showed in Leviathan, where all are free to do whatever they want, to whomever they want then none are free. Human rationality and the natural pursuit of self-interest lead to conflict. Hence, an overarching, absolute power is required if society is to function peaceably. This view of freedom and subjection appears crude when compared to Boétie’s analysis of the dimensions of ‘voluntary servitude.’ For Boétie, subjection may appear ‘rational’, much as the feigning of courtiers was ‘rational’ if one wished to retain one’s position at court. Yet social and political subjection for the majority of the population occurred when much less was at stake. In Boétie’s view this occurred because our ‘natural freedoms’ were forgotten, the power of habit and custom upheld the status quo, the human capacity for self-deception and what we might term ‘false consciousness’ was omnipresent, and because people ultimately desired status advancement and ‘reputation’ more than they desired real freedom. Boétie’s treatise begins with a consideration of why people consent to government with the allusion to monarchy as a specific problem. Boétie thinks, regardless of how much more efficient it makes rulership, monarchy also leaves people subject to the every whim of a ruler. ‘It is always in his power’ he notes ‘to be cruel whenever he pleases’ (1997, p. 46). For the present I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation! (Boétie, 1997, p. 46) One might interpret this approach to understanding power as elitist or populist. Boétie the Humanist, concerned with the recovery of ancient, republican liberties, is clearly appalled at the folly that he sees about him including the emotionality of the masses (see Keohane, 1977). Yet, the manner in which he writes also suggests that he intended to move


the reader and by implication, the concerned citizen, into a powerful position: a view supported by the fact that the treatise resurfaced across Europe in times of popular revolutionary crisis (Bleiker, 2000). Unlike Machiavelli, who writes his discussion of power largely though not exclusively for rulers, Boétie writes in a way that seeks to empower citizens. In this sense, his approach to political theorizing may be considered a forerunner of later republicans like Thomas Paine whose style of writing was decidedly inclusive and deliberately inspirational.5 Boétie offers a number of different reasons why people obey tyrannical authority. There are occasions when one simply has no other choice but to obey power as physical force. When a nation is conquered, Boétie notes, that nation comes under the sway of one more powerful. We should not be amazed by such an occurrence, only wait until such time when a happier future might be possible. Yet, we also suffer tyrants also because the social structure in which we live encourages certain relationships to exhibit themselves when we interact with others. We think it good to ‘love virtue’, he notes, ‘esteem good deeds’ to be grateful for good from whatever source it comes, including honoring those individuals who show fortitude in times of crisis. In fact, we are likely to esteem these people so highly we might even wish to elevate them into a position of authority over us, and willingly obey those individuals who have served us well. But this is a terrible mistake Boétie thinks, for as soon as we grant them authority we remove the person who did a good deed from one context and place them in a position where they are likely to do evil. It is a strange phenomenon, Boétie suggests, a peculiarly human one that seeks to award individuals who have achieved notoriety in one area of human endeavor with public office. Even more extraordinary, once an official begins to abuse his duties there is a strong desire to resist as far as possible the temptation to remove him. It is almost as though the desire for personal wellbeing is offset by an equally powerful, if not more powerful, inclination to persist in believing that the public official is doing a good job even, and perhaps especially, when he is not. In the meantime, ‘they suffer’ Boétie says, ‘plundering, wantonness, cruelty, not from an army, not from a barbarian horde, on account of whom they must shed their blood and sacrifice their lives, but from a single man; not from a Hercules nor from a Samson, but from a single little man’ (1997, pp. 47–8). Even when millions of individuals are enslaved by the will of the ‘little man’, Boétie argues that it is the capacity for self-deception combined with the lack of desire for liberty, an indifference to freedom


rather than cowardice, that is the reason why many will not resist tyranny. And yet, it is also a fact of political life that in order to remedy the situation, ‘it is not necessary to give the little man anything’ but simply to deprive him of that which he needs in order to remain in power – respect. This is an ever-present possibility. Yet where people do not do this, they perpetuate their own subjection. It is, Boétie suggests ‘the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being slaves and free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it’ (1997, p. 50). And this latter conclusion must be true, Boétie argues, for the recovery of real freedom itself costs nothing. All that is required is a desire for its return. Nonetheless, in a situation where the flame of liberty has almost died out, Boétie does not recommend taking up arms even when one is convinced that the cause is just. Instead, he suggests that if there is to be a response it must in a language that is different from that of the state: a non-violent response. The tyranny of the little man becomes more powerful the more he is resisted on his own terms. However, if one refuses to resist in the manner dictated by state power, through violence, changing the context of disagreement with political authority renders the latter powerless. If these are the practical reasons for disobedience, there are ideological ones as well. Boétie reminds his reader that without government there is not a war of all against all. According to him, 300 years before Rousseau would advance a similar argument in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, we are not propelled by nature into a savage war of all against all. On the contrary, we are all naturally free and cooperative, communal creatures whom nature attempts in all ways to make more communal, increasing bonds of union and kinship. Importantly, in Boétie’s ‘state of nature’ there is no slavery and liberty is natural. Without it we suffer terribly as animals suffer terribly when deprived of their freedom and are trained to do our bidding. We should remember, then, that rulers are but men with two eyes and two hands and that the power they have is the power granted to them by ordinary citizens who choose to believe a particular political fable. While everyone might be morally culpable for not willing to be free, the reverse is also true: everyone combined has the power to


remove a tyrant’s supports and ‘like a great colossus whose pedestal has been removed, watch him dashed to pieces’ (1997, p. 53). While Boétie’s analysis of kingly power is perceptive his greatest insights come when he considers the psychology of follower-ship, rather than leadership. Indeed, Boétie returns to the same point at various places in his treatise, that a people’s willingness to continue with a situation fraught with dangers to their liberty is due to custom and contrived ignorance: ‘It therefore appears that they feel a sense of contentment at winning their enslavement rather than losing their liberty’ (p. 60). At first it might be difficult to persuade people of the benefits of ‘voluntary servitude’ but after a while people may even begin to enjoy certain aspects of it, like the idea that they have always been enslaved, that their parents lived the same way before them or, if they think their slavery an evil, that they have been chosen especially to suffer for it. As liberty disappears, so too does patriotism. A patriotic people would die to defend their liberties, suggests Boétie; which is why the tyrant must replace patriotism with sentimentalism and those entertainment and distractions that keep a people preoccupied. Boétie notes the historic trend, first developed by Cyrus the Persian, who recognized that distractions – brothels, public games, and taverns – could be used against the inhabitants of a besieged city to such effect, that violence became unnecessary to subject them. ‘These wretched people’ he notes ‘enjoyed themselves inventing all kinds of games, so that the Latins have derived the word from them, and what we call pastimes they call ludi, as if they meant to say Lydi’ (1997, p. 69).6 Indeed, entertainment or what we might term the ‘culture industry’ is a great cause of concern for Boétie. ‘Plays…’ he says ‘and other such opiates’ were in the past the bait towards slavery. And how eagerly the people followed shouting salutations at the monarch who had just fed them, not realizing how they had just been fed with their own food. Others used religion and magic to bamboozle the populace. The Egyptian kings, he notes, carried implements that made them appear magical and other-worldly. This use of a ‘stray bit of divinity’ (p. 73) inspired a sacred reverence and admiration that was wholly misplaced. Yet, importantly, deception is perpetuated in all these instances because the vast majority of the population actively desires it. They believed, Boétie notes, that the great toe of Pyrrhus performed miracles. This sort of people, a foolish sort, ‘itself invents lies and then believes them’ (1997, p. 72). If this were not enough, the final component of Boétie’s treatise examines what he calls the secret of domination in political societies: a


division of political labor. There is at the pinnacle of the political summit, a ruler. Next to him are five or six individuals that seek to maintain his rule and are his advisors. These five or six have five or six hundred carrying out their desires, which are said to emanate from the king, and these in turn have five or six thousand. Eventually, everyone is tied to and dependent upon this structure of rule. For Hobbes, this dependency was the mark of good government where we are all ‘chained’ to the Leviathan in unbreakable bonds. For Boétie, however, it is a web of servitude, fatal to the health of the polity because it involves almost everyone in the perpetuation of despotism. This is the reason, Boétie notes, why the structure of the polity does not change, because there are always a majority of individuals who see in tyranny advantages to themselves. They will accept servility in order to secure office, status and reputation even if it means they live the most precarious of lives, having to pre-empt a tyrant’s every desire in order to be ready for his commands. The paradox of the tyrant’s power, Boétie asserts, is that he is never truly loved. Moreover, ruling a people who does not care for liberty means that they are incapable of any great achievements. Ironically, their own political rulers who facilitated their wretchedness are unable to trust them. The paradox of political power, Boétie notes, is that a tyrant does not consider his power firmly established until he has reached a point where there is no citizen left under him of any worth. Though Boétie came to distance himself from these opinions; he accepted a position at the Bordeaux parliament in 1554 and published a memoir that advocated the use of repressive force in order to restore peace between religious factions; his thoughts with respect to political illusion and self-deception on the part of the populace continue to resonate. ‘His most subtle point’ as Keohane points out, ‘is his most basic one, that this is voluntary servitude, willed and accepted by men for a variety of reasons’ (1977, p. 129).

4.4

The political construction of contemporary reality

For Kateb (2002), the purpose of political theory in the twenty-first century is to search for explanations for the terrible events of modernity: the atrocities of the Second World War, the destruction of Japanese cities with the use of atomic weapons, the calamities of the Korean and Vietnamese Wars. It is to try to understand the sheer scale of human destructiveness, ‘the motivation of leaders who initiate these events and of the motivation of followers who sustain the leaders’


(2002, p. 483). Kateb’s conclusion, however, is that the concepts used by political theorists, at least up until the end of the nineteenth century, are simply incapable of understanding the violence and destructiveness that came after. To write political theory after the holocaust requires new categories of understanding, a new kind of imagination, and a new appreciation of human freedom informed by the painful recognition of its fragility where ‘common sense’ has lost all meaning. Writing at the end of the modern period, Hannah Arendt’s political thought responded to these ‘crises’ by acknowledging the intellectual rupture they had produced effectively exploding traditional categories of political thought.7 According to Arendt, the new political experience of totalitarianism, combined with the cosmic processes unleashed through the development of atomic power, and the desire to reach into space and away from the world (world alienation), called for a fundamental reappraisal of the meaning and possibility of human freedom. What made totalitarianism so terrifying was not its denial of freedom, ‘but rather the notion that human freedom must be sacrificed to historical development, a process that can be impeded only when human beings act and interact in freedom’ (2005, p. 120). In the decades following the world wars, modern societies were afflicted with a kind of desperation, a result of the acknowledgement that humanity could destroy itself. This was matched by an equal frustration with politics. The latter was perceived as a problem one that one day might no longer be necessary. Weber had predicted the demise of politics in 1919 at the conclusion to his essay, Politics as a Vocation: one day the state and the world would run efficiently like a machine so that there would be no need for political conflict. For Arendt, what emerged in mass democracies after 1945 was, a ‘self-perpetuating process of consumption and forgetting’ (2005, p. 98), where common sense had been ‘put to sleep’ overwhelmed by the internal logics of ideologies and worldviews that dominated political reality exercising a ‘hypnotic effect’ on subject populations (1972, p. 110). Scholars of Arendt’s writings have already noted the many influences upon her development that contributed to a somewhat idiosyncratic theory of politics.8 Yet, while her view of politics and human freedom placed her at odds with the prevailing trends in Anglo-American political theory her approach highlighted otherwise neglected areas of public life; specifically the centrality of imagination, the human capacity for spontaneity, and what one might term for the purposes of the current work, ‘the political construction of reality.’


As Arendt explained in perhaps her most famous work, The Human Condition, politics was a distinctive form of human activity, one that permitted people to experience freedom in a manner that was simply not possible in the private life of the family or within the sphere of employment. Arendt was convinced that the tradition of philosophy in the West after Plato had substituted administration and management for politics. The Christian tradition from the fifth century onwards had further reduced freedom to the notion of an individual free will, and the rise of instrumental thinking in all spheres of life associated with modernity had all but negated a proper understanding of politics as freedom experienced with others. Consequently, she noted, ‘[i]t is so difficult to comprehend that there is a realm in which we can be truly free, that is, neither driven by ourselves nor dependent on the givens of material existence’ (2005, p. 95). Although almost entirely neglected, this tradition of political activity was still discernible, albeit infrequently, in spontaneous (sometimes revolutionary) bursts of political activity. Further, Arendt argued, it was the ‘forgotten treasure’ of the revolutionary tradition that provided the only possible answer to the horrors of modernity: the death camps, the expansion of state power, and the rise of societies obsessed with mass consumption (see Arendt, 2001). If politics was the realm of human freedom it was markedly different from the commonplace understanding of politics, one that in the age of television had been reduced to a version of celebrity worship and advertising (see, for example, Corner and Perls, 2003; Hansen, 2004; Heath, 2001; Schumpeter, 1962). For Arendt, the freedom that could be expressed in the political realm was the only human activity unconditioned by social conformity and the functionality of employment. It was spontaneous and unpredictable revealing the self of the acting agent; who one was as opposed to what one did; to others in ways that were not possible in society (Arendt, 1958). In the modern world there were few places, unsurprisingly, where individuals could participate in and experience this kind of freedom. Political freedom was intimately tied to political reality, then, something that could only be perceived with others and not alone. It was for this reason that Arendt criticized the, in her terms, apolitical act of voting which occurred alone in a voting booth. The strange loss of the public realm in modernity was, she noted, like a ‘magic trick.’ The space of appearances that occurred between people had disappeared (1958, p. 52). In a late essay, Arendt reiterated some of these themes in a slightly different manner, this time by suggesting that: ‘The possibility for enjoying ‘public happiness’ has decreased in modern life


because during the last two centuries the public sphere has shrunk. The voting booth can hardly be called a public place; indeed, the only way in which a citizen today can still function as a citizen is as member of a jury (Arendt, 1979, p. 104, my emphasis). For the most part, everyday life in society proceeded without interruption, supported by prejudice and unexamined judgments. Prejudice ‘shielded’ an individual from having to contemplate the meaning of her actions by providing ready-made answers. The law further cemented these realities forging them into a framework in which people lived, worked, and thought about what was socially acceptable. By contrast, political action always arose at moments of crisis, bursting onto the political realm and into the visual field, disturbing the phenomenal world by creating new ways of imagining ‘reality’: ‘the relationships arising through action are and must be of the sort that keep extending without limits…a web of ties and relationships in which it triggers new links, changes the constellation of existing relationships, and thus always reaches out further (2005, pp. 186–7). The task of politics, for Arendt, then, was to shed light upon accepted opinion. This was something that might be possible through the ‘act’ of thinking in moments of extreme crisis where thoughtlessness had become the norm (see, Arendt, 1971).9 For the most part, however, political activity required the presence of others. The human capacity for imagination permitted the development of ‘perspective seeing’, a freedom in the mental world that paralleled freedom of movement in the physical world by permitting exchanges of opinion and points of view (2005, p. 168). Imagination acted as a kind of inner compass, permitting us to come to terms with the unpredictable, the spontaneous, and the outrageous (1953, p. 391). It was, she argued, the ability, ‘to put that which is too close at a certain distance so that we can see and understand it without bias and prejudice, to bridge abysses of remoteness until we can see and understand everything that is too far away from us as though it were our own affair’ (Arendt, 1953, p. 392). Significantly, politics was essentially nonviolent because of its reliance upon deliberation, the revelation of the actor in speech. Consequently, Arendt offered a view of political power that was markedly different from individual ‘strength’ or power understood as a form of violence or ‘force.’ Power, much as it was for Boétie, was a relational concept enabling the co-creation of the phenomenal world: ‘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’ (Arendt, 1958, p. 200, my emphasis).10 [N]o one can adequately grasp the objective world in its full reality all on his own, because the world always shows and reveals itself to him from only one perspective, which corresponds to his standpoint in the world and is determined by it. If someone wants to see and experience the world as it “really” is, he can do so only by understanding it as something that is shared by many people, lies between them, separates and links them, showing itself differently to each and comprehensible only to the extent that many people can talk about it and exchange their opinions and perspectives with one another, over against one another. (Arendt, 2005, p. 128; see also pp. 175–6) This would seem to cast Arendt as a philosopher of appearance where the world is a kind of stage. However, Arendt noted that if there is nothing external to the performance, reality and truth lose all meaning. Spectacle acquires a ‘hypnotic’ effect and becomes a tool of pacification and depoliticization. Ultimately, we inhabit what thinkers like Baudrillard and Virilio have termed the ‘hyperreal’, where every thought is mediated, and the division between reality and the virtual worlds collapse. ‘Our own reality doesn’t exists anymore’ (Baudrillard, 2000, p. 198; see Virilio, 1984). In Arendt’s view, however, there were limits to our understanding of reality via the collective imagination and political action, in part, provided those limits. It was possible to differentiate between a symbolic world constructed from those common clichés of collective speech and thought that reflected back the content of ‘social realities’ from the disruption caused by political facts, which were indisputable. Lies had always played a part in political life and in the modern period propaganda and public relations were but the latest manifestation of organized lying. Yet, there remained a difference between lies and truth. Even though the former made life palatable, lies were dependent upon the truth precisely through the act of denying it. ‘Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality’ she noted, ‘since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear…whereas reality has the disconcerting habit of confronting us with the unexpected, for which we were not prepared’ (1972, pp. 6–7). Once the liar neglected or ignored truth;


reverting to what, in the parlance of some modern philosophers we may term ‘bullshit’ (Frankfurt, 2005); the effect was to confuse rather than convince people. Even in institutional settings, which seemed peculiarly prone to mass deception, Arendt noted that at some point that the charm of the world of lies collapsed as a result of internal contradictions and complications (see Ellsberg, 2002). For Arendt, understanding the relation between lies and truth was particularly important at the end of the modern period when truth was under assault from image-makers and from a public that actively desired – in the wake of Vietnam and the scandals of the Nixon presidency – not to know unpleasant truths. She noted: ‘[t]he facts I have in mind are publicly known, and yet the same public that knows them can successfully, and often spontaneously, taboo their public discussion and treat them as though they were what they are not – secrets’ (1972, p. 236). Unwelcome facts about the past, historical facts, were continually converted into mere opinion to suit what was expedient politically denying what had hitherto been regarded as ‘elementary’ and ‘indestructible.’ Indeed, for Arendt, where a community had given itself over to organized lying, truthfulness, like thought, assumed a political dimension. Where everybody lies about everything of importance, the truthteller,[sic] whether he knows it or not, has begun to act; he, too, has engaged himself in political business, for, in the unlikely event that he survives, he has made a start towards changing the world. (Arendt, 1972, p. 251) The phenomenal world was continually threatened by unwelcome facts brought to light by those individuals who had managed to ‘escape the spell’ of the social imaginary. Such images themselves were always unstable as there was no possibility in the modern world with its plethora of public viewpoints to make one view and only one view ‘foolproof.’ Social realities supported by lies were ‘likely to explode not only when the chips are down and reality makes its reappearance in public but even before this, for fragments of facts constantly disturb and throw out of gear the propaganda war between conflicting images’ (Arendt, 1972, p. 256).

4.5

Government interrupted

Though not widely discussed by scholars, Arendt did consider the function of civil disobedience in some detail in a number of different


works. Informed by her view of politics, she noted in The Human Condition: Popular revolt against materially strong rulers…may engender an almost irresistible power even if it forgoes the use of violence in the face of materially vastly superior forces. To call this “passive resistance” is certainly an ironic idea; it is one of the most active and efficient ways of action ever devised, because it cannot be countered by fighting, where there may be defeat or victory, but only by mass slaughter in which even the victor is defeated, cheated of his prize, because nobody can rule over dead men. (Arendt, 1958, p. 201) For Arendt, civil disobedience was a political act for the simple reason that it was conducted with others in public. While conscience was ‘unpolitical’, (1972, p. 60) civil disobedience took place in the public arena and arose, in her view, as a result of an erosion of legal and political authority. The activities of the 1960s, the civil rights and student movements, were an expression of revolutionary activity, unprecedented because of their global scope, and unappreciated for their significance. What the activities of these ‘organized minorities’ signified was frustration with a government for whom the legality of its actions were open to grave doubt and a sense that the normal channels of change no longer functioned. For Arendt, the protests were part of a larger symptom of representative government. The bureaucracy and two party system: ‘represent[ed] nobody except the party machines’ (1972, p. 89). While modern states had produced ‘stability’ in varying degrees, what they had not done was provide an outlet for political activity, which as the people on the streets were experiencing, was a peculiar kind of ‘joy’ (p. 180). The quality of their opinions together with the scale of their actions differentiated these ‘organized minorities’ sufficiently so that civil disobedience, at least in the form it took in advanced societies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, warranted serious theoretical analysis. The public actions of these groups were intended to provoke and upset the symbolic order of political power. Nonviolent protests were adopted at a time when state power had grown in scale; unfettered capitalism continued to spread across the globe, and the egregious policies of the Vietnam War together with the systemic lying


and scandals of successive political administration had seriously damaged the image of politics (see Ellsberg, 2002). Since men live in a world of appearances and, in their dealing with it, depend on manifestation, hypocrisy’s conceits – as distinguished from expedient ruses, followed by disclosure in due time – cannot be met by so-called reasonable behavior. Words can be relied on only if one is sure that their function is to reveal and not to conceal. It is the semblance of rationality, much more than the interests behind it, that provokes rage. (Arendt, 1972, p. 163) Writing in the essay On Violence, Arendt was perceptive to note that the rise in nonviolent protest arose at precisely the same moment when the violence of the state had reached new and unprecedented capabilities in terms of bureaucratic reach and the development of atomic weapons. As existing ideologies began to fail, no longer relevant in a world where total annihilation was possible and where citizens of advanced societies were beginning to learn that the path of modernity led to the concentration camps and genocide, the reaction of citizens took the form of protest ‘against every form of violence, an almost matter-of-course espousal of a politics of nonviolence.’ While the subject of law breaking dominated scholarly discussions of civil disobedience during the period, as it still does to a great extent, Arendt noted that only a failure to appreciate the distinction between politics and law-making could obscure the political significance of disobedient groups. The law, she noted, ‘can indeed stabilize and legalize change once it has occurred, but the change itself is always the result of extra-legal action’ (1972, p. 80). Civil disobedience performed a similar function in the twentieth century as those ad-hoc organizations that accompanied revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (p. 124). It was revolutionary in two senses. First, the protagonists desired to ‘change the world’ and, second, the call for participatory democracy was consistent with the ‘council system’ that had sprung up in the immediate aftermath of the revolutionary experience in earlier periods. In each instance, and civil disobedience was no exception, such organizations constituted ‘a separate nation in the midst of the nation, a government within a government’ (p. 95). Arendt explored the political significance of the council system in another work, On Revolution. Here, she noted that human freedom in the modern world had all but been forgotten, a result of a philosophical


tradition that inclined moderns to forget and to conflate politics (the realm of freedom) with government (the realm of administration). Disdain for novelty and an overwhelming desire to preserve the status quo had succeeded in misdiagnosing the proper ends or purposes of government. In the absence of a political institution to keep the ‘revolutionary spirit’ alive, the consequent loss of ‘common sense,’ the ability to determine right from wrong, was so extreme that there was a very real danger that a proper understanding of reality would be compromised (p. 220). Freedom experienced in public with other people had been the motivating force – at least in the case of the American Revolution. Yet what followed the immediate aftermath of the revolution was a desire to turn away from the ‘power’ that had made it possible. Political freedom was replaced by civil liberties, the experience of public freedom replaced by a concern with welfare, the development of taste and judgment by public opinion, and the possibility of participating in a meaningful political sense a right reserved for those few representatives who were able to enjoy away freedom in legislative assemblies away from the demands of economic necessity, the life of the oikos. The problem Arendt addressed in On Revolution appeared intractable: how to find a form of association that kept the spirit of revolutionary action alive without ossifying into a form of administration once the revolution was over. In the Human Condition, Arendt noted that the ‘intangible’ dimension of political activity or ‘web of relationships’ was necessarily complemented by a second but no less important ‘physical’ dimension, which provided support and a home for the fragile political realm. The ‘world’ was an artificial environment created by men to record the outstanding activities of political individuals for posterity. Although there does appear to have been some shift in Arendt’s thought about what elements constitute ‘the world’ she fairly consistently put the case that it may be regarded as the buildings and institutions that bring a sense of security and durability to the extraordinary, those spontaneous and ‘fleeting moments of action’ that occurred in the public realm (see Canovan, 1985). The problem with spontaneous outbreaks of political activity, unless they were able to find a means of preserving their elements of spontaneity, was their temporary nature. In one important sense, politics was ‘futile’ and the loss of politics inevitable as the revolutionary moment passed to be replaced by the semi-permanent structures of political authority that would, necessarily, restrain revolutionary freedoms (Keenan, 1994). ‘Man’s urge for change’ she noted, ‘and his need for stability have always balanced and


checked each other…’ (Arendt, 1972, pp. 78–9). The paradox of freedom and the stability of political institutions was less a problem to be solved once and for all, however, and more a question of political judgment: finding equilibrium between two necessarily opposed forces. As politics needed protection from the stultifying tendencies of modern life so the ‘world’ needed protection from the unpredictability of the ‘newness’ of politics and its spontaneous and unpredictable beginnings: ‘without being talked about by men and without housing them, the world would not be a human artifice but a heap of unrelated things…without the human artifice to house them, human affairs would be as floating, as futile and vain, as the wanderings of nomad tribes’ (Arendt, 1958, p. 183). If the groups engaged in civil disobedience were to keep the revolutionary spirit alive they would, consequently, have to become a permanent feature of the institutions of government. Arendt noted that pressure groups had become institutionalized and reached a degree of influence sufficient, in some instances, to be regarded as ‘assistant government’ (1972, p. 96).11 For Jefferson, the problem of how to maintain the revolutionary spirit was resolved in favor of a new kind of state. His ward system permitted people to enter into the political arena at different levels. They were, he noted, ‘the vital principle’ of government. ‘[I]t is by division and subdivision of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen, personally, a part in the administration of the public affairs’ (1963, p. 542). The historical failure of previous revolutionary spaces, for Arendt – the town hall meeting in Revolutionary America, the 1848 communes in France, the council system in Russia in 1917 – was not a failure of politics, per se, but an institutional inability to provide a permanent space for the real purpose of revolution: continuous public engagement. The consequence was the ‘lethargy’ and ‘inattention to public business’ that so readily characterized the modern world (Arendt, 1990, p. 238). Against the backdrop of rampant consumerism, of politics reduced to a competition between sellers (representatives) for the votes of buyers (citizens), Arendt saw the civil disobedient movements of the 1960s as nothing short of miraculous. They represented the spontaneous emergence of a self-chosen elite. Not an elite of wealth; the plutocratic elite that governed in the name of democracy; but a publicly spirited elite who cared more for the public world than their own private interests.


Finding no institutional space to express their concerns about the public world, they made their own, challenging political reality in the process. A student rebellion almost exclusively inspired by moral considerations certainly belongs among the totally unexpected events of this century. This generation, trained like its predecessors in hardly anything but the various brands of my-share-of-the-pie social and political theories, has taught us a lesson about manipulation, or, rather, its limits, which we would do well not to forget. (Arendt, 1972, p. 130) Civil disobedience upset the assembled truths of custom and doctrine, intruding into the settled way of being, upsetting the order of things by attempting to dispel prejudice. It represented a spontaneous rupture of the social fabric of reality, showing the possibility to a wider audience of a new kind of freedom and a new way of imagining the world. Yet, if such actions were to avoid the same fate as all previous revolutionary activities nothing short of a new concept of the state was required, one that challenged the prevailing orthodoxy. Arendt was once asked in an interview whether she thought such a prospect likely. Her response was intriguing: ‘Very slight, if at all. And yet perhaps, after all – in the wake of the next revolution’ (1972, p. 233).

4.6

Conclusion

In March 2008, amidst a flurry of reports concerning the outbreak of civil unrest in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, the Chinese government invited reporters to a day of interviews with government officials and victims of the riots. The strategy, noted one report in the Financial Times, was clear: to blame those rioters who sympathized with the political position of the Dalai Lama for the disturbances and to label them as ‘criminal elements’ and ‘terrorists.’ The Chinese government, set to host the Olympic games in August, found itself under intense pressure regarding its human rights record. Yet, as one journalist noted: ‘there were the unconvincing occasions when the official script was followed too neatly, leaving the impression of an event heavily stage-managed.’ Consequently, the government has hired a group of public relations experts to smooth things over (see Dyer, 2008, p. 5). We are perhaps all too familiar with examples like this, the ‘stagemanagement’ and ‘spin’ that has become such a central part of political


life. The institutionalized forms of symbolic management in society have been of interest to sociologists and anthropologists for some time (see Cannadine and Price, 1987).12 This chapter has examined those theorists who explicitly acknowledge how the control of symbols or their disruption is an exercise of political power. The theorists discussed here provide a powerful set of theoretical concepts that invite us to reexamine the phenomenal aspect of government as theater, a closed but ultimately unstable universe of meaning. Writing just after the end of the Second World War, Ernst Cassirer suggested that this expressed a return of mythical thought to the political realm. If the citizen of modern, democratic states no longer believed in natural magic he persisted nonetheless in believing in magic of a different order: social magic. Modern advances in technology had not dispelled the need for myth. Rather, the modern politician employed the latest technologies in the service of myth-making. Politics had moved out of the orbit of most people’s lives into the realm of experts. Politician-prophets now stirred up appropriate emotions in captive populations, and new words and new ways of communicating with vast numbers of people ‘lull[ed] asleep all our active forces, our power of judgment and critical discernment…take away our feeling of personality and individual responsibility…’ (1974, p. 285). Ours is a semiotic democracy, less a place where the strongest and best argument will win the day, more the location for the distribution of political narratives and the construction of political realities. We now know, thanks to the work of neuropsychologists, that the way we perceive the world is largely learned, the product of convention as much as biology. Seeing is a creative endeavor, dependant to a large degree upon memory. The essential point about perception is that it is related only indirectly to the external world. The brain never sees light, only signals from the senses, which it decodes from knowledge with rules, so that the brain constructs the world around us. What we actually see is very little. Reality occurs behind the eyes as the brain creates predictive hypotheses of what is ‘out there’ (Gregory, 1998, pp. 608–11). Politically, our ability to discern ‘reality’ is compounded by the application of image-building and image-manipulation techniques that are an integral part of the democratic process (see, Gilroy, 2000). To a significant degree, at least, in politics believing is seeing. Yet, this does not mean that the process is passive or unidirectional. As McBride points out in a relevant context, ‘imagination needs to be understood as the connection between individual and collective. In this way, the individual is influenced by the collective, yet this also


holds out the possibility that the individual may come to influence the collective in return’ (McBride, 2005, p. 19) After Arendt, we may say that civil disobedience remains a distinctly political possibility, a form of collective action that is an expression of human freedom, one that stands ready to rupture the political and social imaginary at any time. The possibilities for the realization of this potential in the contemporary political context will be examined in the next chapter.

5 Civil Disobedience, Alienation, Political Rupture

Superpower’s ideal citizen is apolitical but not alienated. Wolin, 2004 The docile political behavior of the undergraduate student body suggests something is seriously amiss. Letter from Harvard Alumni to the University President, 2008 The ability of society to co-opt, infiltrate and subvert those very areas which we had hoped to hold sacred for the attainment of meaning, progress and self has increased throughout this century. No sooner has a new road to the true self been encountered than it is boxed and packaged for sale in the escape-attempts supermarket, no sooner has a new vocabulary of meaning been articulated, than it is raided for concepts and slogans by calendar makers and record producers, no sooner have we begun acting in an entirely novel way than we see coming over the horizon a mass of others mimicking our every action. Cohen and Taylor, 1992

5.1

The end of revolutions?

In the last decades of the twentieth century there was a marked change in interpreting and understanding the significance of ‘the revolutionary tradition.’ As the authors of a recent collection of essays on the subject note, this new interpretation of history, and consequently ‘the present day’, corresponded to events of global significance and a conceptual shift in understanding the meaning of revolution (Haynes and 106

Civil Disobedience, Alienation, Political Rupture 107

Wolfreys, 2007). With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the project of socialism lost its coherence as an alternative project for western democracies. Scholars such as Anthony Giddens (1998) and Francis Fukuyama (1992) pointed to what they saw as a fundamental connection between market capitalism and liberal democracy. And while these thinkers declared the end of history and the beginning of a Third Way, the practice of politics itself reflected a return to the golden age of market capitalism. The power of the markets was regarded as the only true model for society at precisely the same moment when national markets were deregulated permitting the free flow of capital around the world. In short, the economy was superior to democracy. The collapse of coherent alternatives to the economic view of democracy resulted in the present no longer needing to justify itself. The place of structural change or revolution, at least within advanced industrial, liberal-democratic societies was disqualified.1 In philosophy, Richard Rorty celebrated what he described as bourgeois postmodern liberalism and claimed without irony that the west had had the last conceptual revolution it needed (1991). In some variants, liberalism was reduced to a crude form of economic liberalism with its radical, progressive agenda effectively sidelined. Writing in 1996, the neoSchumpeterian Richard Posner was convinced that low voter turnout indicated contentment rather than apathy in domestic populations. Avoiding politics altogether was preferable for the vast majority of TV educated ‘citizens’ because in a heterogeneous society it ‘fomented painful, divisive, time and energy consuming conflicts of worldviews and fundamental values, conflicts better left latent and inarticulate’ (p. 112). Entirely absent from these views was a coherent or alternative vision of the future. Politicians increasingly cast themselves as managers who responded to the whims of a self-interested electorate, while at the same time power shifted away from the nation state to unrepresentative financial institutions who set the tone for national policy, particularly economic policy. As Haynes and Wolfreys noted: ‘The focus on elite activity and the attempt to establish a causal link between ideas and events [left] little room for the active role played by groups who do not form part of the elite. Popular insurgencies, violence and insurrection are no longer integral to revolutionary change but an unnecessary distraction, or worse, a reactionary brake on modernization and peaceful reform’ (2007, p. 14). In the new politics of the late twentieth century, social conflict and struggle were removed from political reality making talk of revolution


and civil disobedience fashionable but little else. The icons of civil disobedience could be found as part of mass advertising campaigns for corporations that recast revolutionary action as ‘innovation’ and social change as a desire for the latest technological gizmo. To a great extent, the trend has continued. In a reflection piece on the student uprisings of 1968, Tariq Ali recently noted the following: Some, who once dreamed of a better future, have simply given up. Others espouse a bitter maxim: unless you relearn you won’t earn. The French intelligentsia, which had from the Enlightenment onwards made Paris the political workshop of the world, today leads the way with retreats on every front. Renegades occupy posts in every west European government defending exploitation, wars, state terror and neocolonial occupations; others now retired from the academy specialise in producing reactionary dross on the blogosphere, displaying the same zeal with which they once excoriated factional rivals on the far left. (Ali, 2008, p. 57) Where the previous chapter considered the phenomenological dimension of politics – politics as theater – this chapter will further examine how appearances can be upset by the political act of civil disobedience. This ‘aesthetic dimension’ as Herbert Marcuse described the student uprisings of the 1960s and early 1970s, while retaining a certain theoretical potential finds itself undone in a postmodern world of spectacle and hyperreality, where signs and symbols have lost their referents and where what is at stake is less the coherence of virtual reality but, instead, what one perceptive social critic has called the ‘reality’ of the virtual world (Zizek, 2004). For social and political critics like Marcuse, steeped in the humanist and Existenz traditions of philosophy, art provided a point of ‘truth’ outside of normal experience. Yet, it is precisely this point ‘outside’ of ‘paramount reality’ that postmoderns deny. There is, to quote Derrida ‘no escape’ from reason, no outside of language or its metaphors. The linguistic turn in philosophy has turned language from the house of Being (Heidegger, 1993) to the prisonhouse of Being (Cohen and Taylor, 1992). A period of 40 years or more separates the marches of the Civil Rights movement and the worldwide student uprisings from the present, a period that has seen the transformation of demands for institutional change into different forms of cultural politics. While there have been notable examples of civil disobedience – The Greenham Common


Women’s Movement in Britain, for example – the loss of general interest in civil disobedience as an important political and cultural phenomenon in mass democracies reflects underlying narrative shifts in understanding the world. Indeed, much of the pessimism surrounding the political project of the times can be explained by the absence of a compelling framework where politics might somehow be different (see Zizek, 2008a). Consequently, this chapter considers the theoretical resources available for understanding the meaning of civil disobedience as an integral feature of western democracies, and whether it retains any meaning in western democracies beyond public acts of street theater. Civil disobedience promises a point ‘outside,’ an alternative to political reality. This chapter examines that promise and its limits.

5.2

Life in one dimension

Writing in 1969, the historian Eric Hobsbawm noted that the student movement of May 1968 in France demonstrated ‘what practically no radical over the age of twenty-five…believed, namely that revolution in an advanced industrial country was possible in conditions of peace, prosperity and apparent political stability’ (1998, p. 213) In Paris, London, Prague, Mexico City, and major cities and campuses in Pakistan and the United States, students took to the streets, occupied universities, and confronted police and military units. A combination of unique events: a grossly mismanaged conflict in Vietnam reported by a media that largely escaped censorship, a large student population that came of age in a period of relative affluence in the post-war period, and leading intellectual figures who were able to critique governmental and more broadly ‘establishment’ practices and articulate the significance of the political moment (see Judt, 2005, pp. 390–413). In France, an aging Sartre lectured to thousands of students, describing their actions as the realization of ‘imagination in power’, while openly attacking the French university system and its teachers. Sartre, however, admitted that he never properly understood the meaning or significance of the student movement (Drake, 2005, p. 125). Indeed, somewhat surprisingly, the key figure to emerge during the period, particularly in the United States, was Herbert Marcuse who provided a theoretical analysis of and justification for the student rebellions and civil disobedience. As a member of the Frankfurt School in exile, Marcuse appropriated aspects of Marx’s canon, particularly his early, Humanist writings and set about revising and updating Marx, applying his thought to gender


relations, environmental questions, and the key issue of social and political change and how it might be brought about in modern, advanced, capitalist societies. The transition prophesied by Marx from capitalism to socialism had failed, according to Marcuse, because the internal contradictions of capitalism had, since the beginning of the twentieth century, been subject to increasingly efficient organization. The opposing force of the proletariat, a unified agent of historical significance and revolutionary potential, had also been reduced as the working class was incorporated into the capitalism system. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx had marveled at the productive capacities of capitalism and successfully predicted the scope of competition between nations over international markets. Yet, Marx had not been able to predict the degree to which capitalist productivity had managed to effectively subvert thoughts and reflections about significant political change. Writing in Reason and Revolution, Marcuse noted: Technological progress multiplied the needs and satisfactions, while its utilization made the needs as well as their satisfactions repressive: they themselves sustain submission and domination. Progress in administration reduces the dimension in which individuals can still be ‘with themselves’ and ‘for themselves’ and transforms them into total objects for their society. The development of consciousness becomes the dangerous prerogative of outsiders. The sphere in which individual and group transcendence was possible is thus being eliminated – and with it the life element of the opposition. (Marcuse, 1999, pp. 436–7) The refusal to reexamine and develop Marxian categories, treating them as reified concepts instead of understanding their historical and dialectical nature had, according to Marcuse, severely restricted the power of Critical Theory and its humanizing aspects. The concept of socialism in the second half of the twentieth century was almost entirely focused on the development of more ‘rational’ productive forces and the higher productivity of labor. Instead, a socialist society, as the younger Marx envisaged, was a society that was qualitatively different from all preceding societies. A genuinely socialist society, Marcuse argued would address the persistent problem of alienated labor and not merely strive to turn laborers into specialists or ‘experts’. That Marcuse should become preoccupied with the early Marx’s description of labor was largely accidental. In 1932, a fellow student of Marcuse’s published the recently recovered Economic and Philosophic


Manuscripts of 1844. In Marx’s description of alienated labor and ‘species being’ Marcuse found a description of the ontological dimensions of human existence providing a philosophical basis for both a critique of existing market relations and the possibility of social and political change. For Marx, alienation was not merely a description of physical deprivation under the conditions of capitalism but a property of the relationships that it encouraged between human beings and, importantly, within human beings. There were at least three dimensions to this alienation. The first was as a person’s alienation from a particular product. This might be understood in the simple sense that a product was not owned by its producer but belonged to an employer. Yet, the worker was alienated in the more complex sense that the profits from his/her labor were reinvested thereby increasing the control of capital over labor. The worker’s own labor increased the loss of power over the process of production. As profits increased, the division of labor was refined and expanded, increasing efficiency but reducing skilled employment into the operation of machinery and the repetition of simplified tasks. In turn, this reduced the bargaining power of labor as simple operations could be performed by anyone. It also transformed creative, human work into mindless employment. In pointing out this dimension of the work process, Marx was hardly being original. Adam Smith, whom Marx had read along with other major liberal political economists like David Ricardo, had addressed the increased efficiency and productivity of capitalism and its associated costs. Smith also noted the enervating effect upon the large majority of people employed in such occupations.2 Yet, unlike Smith, Marx’s philosophical analysis went further. The significance of this alienated labor was that it abandoned the notion that work, instead of being the free and creative expression of individuality, made this quintessentially human activity an animal one. The worker worked in order to live. She did not live in order to work. For the young Marx, man’s species-being lay in his practical creativity, and as such it contained a ‘universal’ element. When one created, one did so for an audience of other human beings. As Marx put in his notebooks on James Mill: ‘in your enjoyment or use of my product I would have had the direct enjoyment of realizing that by my work I had both satisfied a human need and also objectified the human essence and therefore fashioned for another human being the object that met his need…In such a situation our products would be like so many mirrors, each one reflecting our essence’ (cited in McLellan, 1973, p. 202).3


This abstract expression of alienation, however, meant something quite concrete in practice. As things stood, people were unable to produce for one another in the way Marx described and so were alienated from one another. Workers understood each other as factors in production, competing for the same jobs, subject to the immutable economic laws of supply and demand without considering for a moment the human consequences of work of this kind. At best, the majority of individuals survived the cruelty of the 12 or 14-hour day, and ameliorated their existence with the comforts of religion or the distractions of alcohol and entertainment. This discussion provided two enormously important conceptual components for Marcuse’s appraisal of the disobedients he would encounter. First, it reintroduced the concept of the individual as central to Marx’s concerns. Marcuse noted that the later Marx in particular took insufficient account of the individual because the historical agent of change had been identified as a revolutionary class, the proletariat. Yet, Marcuse thought that the proletariat no longer existed in anything like the manner that Marx imagined having been successfully integrated into the structures of capitalism. The second conceptual breakthrough came with what Marcuse identified as Marx’s missing ontology. The concept of ‘species being’ and its radical claim to identify the underlying, essential structure of human existence accorded well with the young Marcuse’s preoccupation with Heidegger’s phenomenological discussion of the structure of Dasein. ‘Being human’ he noted in a paper written in the 1930s, ‘is always “more” than its present existence. It goes beyond every possible historical situation and precisely because of this there is always an eliminable discrepancy between the two: a discrepancy that demands constant labor for its overcoming, even though human existence can never rest in possession of itself and of its world’ (Marcuse, cited in Katz, 1982, p. 78). What ontology provided through discussion of the authentic and inauthentic modes of existence was the possibility of a transcendent critique. It was precisely this critique that was absent from organized capitalism; more so in the United States than in Europe since liberalism, science, rationality and capitalism had developed together in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to form the ‘natural order of things’ (see Hartz, 1955). For Marcuse, the post Second World War period, one of unparalleled affluence, ushered in a ‘good life’ for many. New forms of social control, however, seriously undermined individual agency and the capacity for individuals to think for themselves. Indeed, Marcuse was one of the first thinkers to seriously examine the impact of consumer


society upon the consciousness of citizens (Kellner, 1984, p. 243). The ruling powers manipulated, managed, and controlled the consciousness and subconscious life of individuals. Technology and a desire for greater forms of efficiency and control had replaced a concern with ontology. And although the technology itself had changed, domination of the many by the few remained. A situation of dependency existed based upon an ‘objective order of things.’ The system of production perpetuated domination by creating a ‘false consciousness’ of the ‘way things are.’ We live and die rationally and productively. We know that destruction is the price of progress as death is the price of life, that renunciation and toil are the prerequisites for gratification and joy, that business must go on, and that that alternatives are Utopian. This ideology belongs to the established social apparatus, it is a requisite for its continuous functioning and part of its rationality. (Marcuse, 1968, p. 145) Dependence was transformed into what was scientific and rational. Yet this rationality had lead to the destruction of nature and the domination of human beings by technology, which claimed to operate in an entirely separate realm of objective truth where values and ethics were mere ideals. Yet, Marcuse argued, it was precisely because scientific administration could be used for good or bad ends that it should be subject to the same degree of philosophical scrutiny. Technology affected the structure of human relationships but if questions of value were pushed to one side, then technology ‘circumscribes an entire culture; it projects a historical totality – a “world”’ (1968, p. 154). Although societies in the west called themselves free, indeed they prided themselves upon their freedom compared to the horrors of communism, the question that Marcuse sought to answer was as follows: …how can the administered individuals – who have made their mutilation into their own liberties and satisfactions, and thus reproduce it on an enlarged scale – liberate themselves from themselves as well as from their masters? How is it even thinkable that the vicious circle be broken? (Marcuse, 1968, p. 251) His answer, one that he articulated in works such as Eros and Civilization, One Dimensional Man, an Essay on Liberation, and The Aesthetic Dimension,


was that in order to experience a new world and to break the vicious circle, a new Subject or agent of change would need to be created, and created non-violently.4 Fortunately, the means for the creation of this new Subject were already present within existing societies. The catalyst for change, however, would not be the traditional working class. Rather, it would be those people, the ‘outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and unemployable’ who would be the catalysts of change. Those who lived on the margins of society were more likely to upset the natural order of things and to usher in the possibility of critique. ‘When they get together and go out into the streets, without arms, without protection …The fact that they start refusing to play the game may be the fact which marks the beginning of the end of a period’ (1968, p. 257). America in the early 1960s was emerging from a period of chronic paranoia and relative affluence. Advanced societies were becoming ‘richer, bigger, and better’ but the threat of violence on a global scale went unabated. Productivity had become perverse. It was not simply that modern societies made so many things, many of which made life easier, but that these societies seemed to have no answer to what, after the necessities of life were taken care of, these things were for. Marcuse was genuinely in awe of the productive capacities of capitalism. But the internal logic, one that emphasized the increase of productive capacity per man-hour, ran at odds with the real needs of human beings. Advanced societies held out the possibility of a life that Marcuse thought could be unalienated. And yet, citizens in modern societies submitted to ‘the peaceful production of the means of destruction, to the perfection of waste, to being educated for a defense which deforms the defenders and that which they defend’ (1968, p. ix). Marcuse and the early Marx shared a similar sense of moral outrage at the inhuman treatment of human beings, the reduction rather than the maximization of individual freedom, and a sense of bewilderment at the obvious contradictions of the good life in advanced capitalism: a peace maintained by the constant threat of war, an irrational celebration of inequality and the repression of any real possibility for improving the human condition, the corruption of language and thought, and the absence of historical understanding.5 Containment of social change, he noted, was ‘perhaps the most singular achievement of advanced industrial society’ (1968, p. xii). For many, not even diabolical catastrophe was likely to shake them from the comfort of their narcolepsy. Most would not recognize what was being done in their name, or would


make every effort in fact to minimize contact with the ‘real world’ that occasionally broke through into the virtual reality of advanced capitalism. For Marcuse, a society that limited discussion of alternatives – e.g. ‘Why do they hate us?’ in contrast to ‘Why did this happen?’ – and maintained systems of unfreedom when real freedom was a possibility for all, had become totalitarian. A free politics that had become the freedom to choose between parties offering similar political programs, a free press that censored itself in order to retain advertising income, and freedom of choice for individuals that had been reduced to the freedom of the consumer was not free in any real or meaningful sense. This was not the totalitarian fantasy of Orwell; an imaginative scenario with which those in liberal democracies were all too familiar. But rather the nightmare fantasy of Huxley, where the slaves had grown to love their chains and where there were sufficient compensations – ‘false needs’ in Marcuse’s view – to offset any fears and anxieties. Huxley’s futuristic version of western society was a society that would bend rather than break.6 For Marcuse, the ‘freedom’ of advanced capitalism increasingly obliterated the opposition between individual and social needs, between private and public existence. The evidence for this was everywhere apparent (1968, pp. xv–xvii). What was good ‘for society’ was also good for the individual. If the production of automobiles was good for society, then the individual desired automobiles – ignoring the damage they caused to the environment, the lack of adequate public transport, the effect that the automobile had on cities, and so on. If the society desired national defense programs of increasing sophistication and cost, then so too did the individual with little wonder about the use of public funds for private corporate gain, what national defense actually meant, whether tendering out contracts actually ever happened, what the threat was exactly, and so on. For Marcuse the rational character of its irrationality characterized modern life. ‘The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored to new needs which it has produced’ (1968, p. 9). Individuals identified with their society so completely that they felt threatened if an aspect of that society was challenged. For Marcuse, this meant that the division between self and society had effectively collapsed. Within the universe of public and private discourse, hardly anything emerged that might seriously question this order of things.


What emerged was ‘a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced in terms of this universe’ (1968, p. 12). What was required, therefore, was some way to go beyond this dimension and to introduce within the closed discourse of advanced capitalism an alternative way of thinking and being. What Marcuse sought was nothing else than ‘another dimension of reality.’ And in the realm of philosophical aesthetics and in the practical activities of those marginalized groups Marcuse thought he had identified the new catalyst for change.

5.3

The view from elsewhere

According to Katz (1982), Marcuse’s work may be read as an exercise in ‘aesthetic ontology’: an attempt ‘to articulate a dimension of life and a corresponding domain of consciousness in which a frankly transcendent standard is operative. This suggests not a metaphysical quest, however, but a political one, for the practical function of this theoretical construct has been to provide a standard of criticism against which the prevailing reality may be judged and condemned in terms of its potentialities’ (p. 12). If Marcuse was informed of the potential for change by the transcendent or metaphysical power of art, then this was a response to the processes of the twentieth century, its appalling violence and cruelty, the obsession with scientism, and the absence of any adequate reflection on the nature of human subjectivity. It was also an act of desperation, a resistance to cultural and political ‘suffocation.’ In March 1967, Marcuse delivered a lecture entitled ‘Art in OneDimensional Society.’ He noted. I would like to say a few words about how I came to feel the need for occupying myself with the phenomenon of art…It was some sort of despair or desperation. Despair in realizing that all language, all prosaic language, and particularly the traditional language somehow seems to be dead. It seems to me incapable of communicating what is going on today, and archaic and obsolete compared with some of the achievements of the force of the artistic and poetic language, especially in the context of the opposition against this society among the protesting and rebellious youth of our time…Now, this may sound romantic, and I often blame myself for perhaps being too


romantic in evaluating the liberating, radical power of art…still, the survival of art may turn out to be the only weak link that today connects the present with the hope of the future. (Marcuse, 1967, pp. 53–4)7 For Marcuse, art occupied a position ‘outside of the system’ enabling those within to ‘transcend and break the spell’ that he had outlined in One Dimensional Man. The emancipatory potential of art corresponded philosophically to the ontological dimension of human relationships, of being-with-others, one that was neither instrumental nor narcissistic. Art provided the possibility for the free exercise of the imagination ‘recalling’ (in the Heideggerian sense) man’s species-being (in the Marxist sense). Marcuse drew parallels between new forms of art (the music of Dylan and Jazz; ‘the piano and the jazz player stood well between the barricades’ (1971, p. 22)), new forms of subjectivity (experiments with living), and the mass protests of those disenfranchized groups (the Civil Rights Movement and the student rebellions). In so doing, Marcuse argued that what was being expressed in each was an attempt to move beyond the current historical period of affluence and comfortable acquiescence with totalitarian political regimes in order imagine an alternative social and political vision instead; what Bloch called a ‘concrete utopia’ (see Kellner and O’Hara, 1976). Art and political struggle were intimately linked, the former providing the intellectual impetus to transform the latter. It was the ‘sensuous’ expression of human freedom. The genesis and development of these ideas can be traced back to Marcuse’s experience of the First World War and his early theoretical enquiries into the significance and development of the German novel in the nineteenth century. Marcuse became convinced that the life of the artist was at odds with the society in which s/he lived. The artist was alienated from prevailing social norms. S/he was a ‘refuser’ standing against ‘reality’ immune to the leveling and normalizing forces of the status quo. Art maintained a transcendent position as a point of ‘irrational’ critique outside of a ‘rational society’: a society that discussed without any sense of postmodern irony the need for ‘luxury bomb shelters’ and ‘harmless fall out.’ These and similar statements resisted historical interpretation (1968, p. 89). The abridgement of language, its corrupt, absurd and contradictory nature exerted a kind of hypnotic quality over the listener, mediating even our self-understanding through the language of advertising and movies, emptying words of their meaning.


What great art possessed, in contrast, was the ability to rupture and disturb this fabricated social reality, exerting a ‘magic of rational transgression’ (1968, p. 63). This was the central task of art (and critical philosophy) in modernity: to subject language to ideological analysis and critique, and to reintroduce a concern with human finitude and the promise of an anxiety-free future where it was possible to think one’s own thoughts. Genuine or great art, thought Marcuse, opened up the space to imagine a new vision of human reality – ‘existence in free time on the basis of fulfilled vital needs’ (1968, p. 231). This was very different from the position in which one found oneself as a member of the affluent society where the possibility of change was contained by an obsession with production, overdevelopment, and the creation of false needs. For Marcuse, ‘the artistic-aesthetic mode of existence…is in essence irreconcilably opposed to the prevailing society…a persistent critical standard, immune to the integrative forces of the status quo – of any status quo’ (Katz, 1982, p. 53). Here then, was a positive dimension to alienation. By using the sense of aesthetic alienation developed in German Idealism (see Bernstein, 1992) art served the dual function of providing the break with the normal and rational and offered the possibility to imagine a different world. This ‘aesthetic dimension’ to human freedom constituted The Great Refusal – ‘the protest against that which is’ (1968, p. 63) – an uncompromising estrangement that could not be expressed in words alone: ‘…no persuasion, no theory, no reasoning can break this prison, unless the fixed, petrified sensibility of the individuals is ‘dissolved,’ opened to a new dimension of history, until the oppressive familiarity with the given object world is broken – broken in a second alienation: that from the alienated society’ (1972, pp. 71–2). In his Essay on Liberation (1971), written at the height of the student uprisings, Marcuse tied this aesthetic dimension to a new notion of subjectivity and the possibility of democracy. The growth of productivity has resulted in the production of waste rather than providing a space for a more human, non-violent existence. New needs were created and luxuries were perceived as essential to one’s sense of self. Yet opposition to this impoverished vision of society had occurred through the activities of small, poorly organized groups, a phenomenon that was completely unique and international in scope. A radical change in consciousness had emerged at the margins of onedimensional society, one ‘with qualitatively different needs and aspirations’ (p. 52) demanding a ‘radical transvaluation of values’ (p. 54).


The student revolts were catalysts of real change because they recognized their future role in the perpetuation of unjust societies. With respect to the student movement, a basic trend in the very structure of advanced industrial society favors the gradual development of such a community of interests. The long-range process which, in large areas of material production, tends to replace heavy physical labor by technical, mental energy, increases the social need for scientifically trained, intelligent workers; a considerable part of the student population is prospective working class – ‘new working class,’ not only not expendable, but vital for the growth of existing society. The student rebellion hits this society at a vulnerable point; accordingly, the reaction is venomous and violent. (Marcuse, 1971, p. 59) The rebellion was, according to Marcuse, a moral rebellion just as it was for the young Marx, directed against inequality, hypocrisy, and towards real freedom for all. The strategy of disobedience adopted by the students was one deliberately designed to unsettle, much as art alienated and unsettled. Using language that was strikingly similar to Boétie, Marcuse noted that ‘voluntary servitude’ could be broken only by refusing to participate in the familiar and routine (1971, p. 6). Acts of disobedience interrupted the smooth narrative flow upon which society depended. Traditionally, authority worked to simplify images of power. Captive populations within states were participants in a reassuringly simple yet deceptive narrative. In challenging this, something that became increasingly possible in the wake of political corruption and the scandals that altered perceptions of political power thereby decreasing deference among the young, what was at stake was nothing less than a new understanding of selfhood and a new description of a future democratic society. Yet it was ‘nothing but a chance’ (1968, p. 257). In Marcuse’s next work, Counterrevolution and Revolt, he shifted his position away from the optimistic reading of the phenomenological alternative offered by marginal groups within advanced society and in other developing nations to a more traditional analysis of capitalism. What united people in their struggle, he noted, was the undeniable fact of exploitation. Capitalism’s own internal dynamics were contradictory. Hence, ‘[t]he extension of exploitation to a larger part of the population, accompanied by a high standard of living, is the reality behind the facade of the consumer society; this reality is the unifying force which integrates, behind the back of the individuals, the widely


different and conflicting classes of the underlying population’ (1972, pp. 15–16). While noting the power of art to transform, Marcuse also recognized the limits imposed upon ‘the shock of the new’ by a society obsessed with watching, with images.8 For Hegel, great art had the power to reduce reality to its bare essentials and in so doing freed it from all that was oppressive. While art could serve the interests of power; indeed, historically this is exactly what art had done; it could also liberate and transform. For Marcuse, the aesthetic dimension contained a vision of liberation and remained ‘a refuge of critical truths.’ In so doing, it could speak truth to the conventional wisdom (Kellner, 1984, p. 348). Yet, Marcuse also noted that the industrial and hence commercial capacity to reproduce images flattened out the ‘antagonism between cultural and social reality through the obliteration of the oppositional, alien and transcendent elements in the higher culture by virtue of which it constitutes another dimension of reality’ (1968, p. 57).9 Those sympathetic to Marcuse have repeated similar claims. Richard Sennett, for example, argues that to counter power is ‘to remove the quality of omnipotence from figures of authority’ (Sennett, 1983, p. 168). Borrowing a term from aesthetics, en abyme, referring to the infinite reproduction of images, Sennett suggests that certain ways of seeing contain a moral dimension that performs a necessary ‘disruption’ within the political system keeping the democratic spirit alive. ‘The chain of command’ he notes, ‘is an architecture of power which inherently does injury to the needs and desires of some at the will of others. There is no way to cure this disease; we can only fight against it. There can be partial, important victories; it is possible to structure the chain of command so that controls are not omnipotent and universal. It is possible to prevent the alchemy of absolute power into images of strength which are clear, simple, and unshakeable’ (1983, p. 190). We could, perhaps, draw on other perceptual effects to make similar points. The anamorphic effect of the skull in Hans Holbein’s Ambassadors for example, could be interpreted as a device that ‘forces’ the viewer to confront their own sense of finitude by literally moving them to the side of the painting in order to correct the perspective of the flattened skull. In so doing, the splendor of the courtly surroundings of two French diplomats blurs while the image of ‘death’ comes into focus (see Greenblatt, 1980). Alternatively, we might wish to maintain that art, however many times it is reproduced, retains a transformative, disturbing power.


When Colin Powell, then U.S. Secretary of State, walked out of the Security Council on February 5, 2003 after delivering a speech that advocated the bombing of Iraq, he stood before a blue curtain that covered a tapestry reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica. Safely covered by a blue blanket, Picasso’s startling interpretation of the 1937 bombing of the small town of Guernica by Spanish and German forces did not upset viewers at home who tuned in to see the nightly news. Was this, perhaps, an unintended acknowledgement of art’s power? Perhaps the power of art today rests with those who deliberately set out to provoke by taking art ‘out of the museum.’ The British graffiti artist known as ‘Banksy’, for example, has startled audiences in Britain, the United States and the West Bank with his illegal spray-painted and stenciled renderings of consumers hugging their television sets, apache helicopters adorned in pink bows, or torture victims from Abu Ghraib in urban settings.10 For Sliwa and Cairns (2007): ‘Banksy invites us to question our own lack of critical reflection on the relationship between organizations and society, and on businesses’ commitment to the social good’ (p. 80). Yet, at work here is a controversial epistemological claim about truth, ideology, and images – that great art, in fact, possesses the capacity to not merely disturb social reality but reveal the truth about it; a position that stands in contrast to contemporary perspectives on art which see its relation to ethics and political ‘power’ as deeply problematic (see Carroll, 2008). Marcuse argued, taking his cue from Marx, that the ideas and beliefs that keep economic and political inequalities in place in our societies are the result of material dependency, commodity fetishism, and reality construction. Consequently: the ‘containment of social change is perhaps the most singular achievement of advanced industrial society’ (1968, p. xii). If unequal economic relations managed to appear ‘natural’ then the ideology inspired narratives that supported it served to keep the illusion of normalcy in place. If our ideas and thoughts were themselves products of the society in which we lived – a mantra that advertising agencies seem to take for granted, at least – then this view of reality might with some justification be considered ‘false’ with its opposite ‘true’ (see Augoustinos, 1999). The idea of breaking away from the ‘false’ nature of consciousness has been further complicated since Marcuse wrote because of the changing nature of capitalism, and what Jameson has described as a move away from the production of commodities to the production of signs (1979). If there is an aesthetic dimension to contemporary existence in advanced capitalist democracies, suggests Jameson, then this


distinction rests less on the defining difference between high art and mass or popular culture and a generalized sense that the intrinsic value of art and art objects has been lost to the universal values of the market. Commodity reification and consumption is relevant to aesthetics because art’s ‘function’ is reduced to the production and reproduction of images. The critical stance of art of the kind advanced by Marcuse is problematized further as high and low art forms intertwine. An authentic artistic experience, argues Jameson, was possible in precapitalist societies. While in late capitalism the idea of the authentic continues to resonate as a kind of perpetual lure of consumption (while such experiences remain tantalizingly out of reach), replacing the unique experience with the generic. Citizens live in a constant sea of generic sounds and images such that by the time they arrive to purchase something ‘new’ they already know what it is they are purchasing; they are familiar with the basic plots and are disappointed if the product or producer deviates too far from the script. The possibility of a ‘political art’ becomes impossible, according to Jameson, as authentic art, like authentic living, has been dissolved. To the degree that any authentic cultural production is possible, it is only a matter of time before the original is repackaged as the generic and the all too familiar.11 If the market must render all ‘newness’ safe then it will become increasingly difficult to develop strategies of disobedience that can still ‘rupture.’ Patterns of consumption offer emotional compensation for the political impotence experienced by postmodern subjects. They also remove from images their potency as they become exchangeable.12 To put this crudely, the ‘quality’ of a pair of running shoes matters less than the ‘reality’ offered the consumer by the product – an image of the consumer-future-self reflected back as healthy, more individual, determined, and so on (Goldman and Papson, 1999). Along with ‘individualism’, democratic ideals and the desire for a better world are also repackaged as so much emotional currency – a view entirely consistent with Jameson’s critique of late capitalism. So, too, the image of civil disobedience (or at least the generic image of civil disobedience) reflects back to the observer an image of manageable and purchasable spontaneity, a spirit of rebellion against injustice (Kahney, 2002). Gandhi in the 1930s was acutely aware of the power of new technologies. Indeed, without the railway, the telegraph, the camera, movie reel, and the newspaper, it is unlikely that his campaign for ‘ethical nationalism’ would have been successful. Acutely image-conscious


– evidenced in his adoption of traditional swadeshi over his barrister’s suit (see Tarlo, 1996) – Gandhi used technology in order to critique the western system of advanced industrial capitalism as a ‘disease’ (1997, p. 51).13 Yet modern corporations and their advertisers who recognize the importance of the ‘idea’ of revolution and the enduring appeal of ‘the outsider’ continue to employ his critical message less the critical politics. In death, Gandhi has become a ‘celebrity,’ part of a mélange of stars including Martin Luther King Jr., Pablo Picasso, Richard Branson (!), and Ted Turner (!), that stand for ‘genius,’ ‘innovation’ and the capacity to ‘Think Different.’ If there is a ‘use’ for the revolutionary or disobedient today, then it is as ‘the communicator.’ Imagine, asks one award-winning commercial, what Gandhi could have achieved if he had been able to access Internet communications technology from his ashram?14

5.4

Disobedience in our liquid world?

For Marcuse, one-dimensional thought disabled the capacity of individuals to discriminate between appearance and reality. The dominant narratives produced by commerce, administration, and entertainment shaped individual behaviors. Citizens who lived in one-dimension were like those cave dwellers in Plato’s mythic story staring at the shadows reflected upon a wall. And as in this story, so the majority of citizens in advanced industrial democracies would be content with the illusions of comfortable living. The effect was to make revolution all but impossible. ‘Imagination’ Marcuse noted, ‘has not remained immune to the process of reification. We are possessed by our images, suffer our own images’ (1968, p. 250). Yet, Marcuse held to the notion that great art and the actions of those marginal groups within society might still somehow break through the facade. The phenomenology adopted by Marcuse rested on a kind of essentialism, and a similar point may be made regarding Arendt’s phenomenological politics, her distinction between ‘genuine’ and ‘false’ politics (see Hansen, 1993). Both theorists, profoundly influenced by their own experiences of the Second World War, searched for an elusive subject or moment, an agent of historical change or set of historical contingencies that might open up a space for authenticity at precisely the moment when such notions of individuality and the critical analyses supporting them were under assault. Kellner (1984) summarizes what he regards as the key problem with Marcuse’s analysis as follows:


‘despite his sharp critique and modification of orthodox Marxism, his theory is still too tied up with the Hegelian-Marxian problematic of the revolutionary subject, which presupposes a unitary revolutionary class as the subject of revolution. In this concept, the features explicated by Marx in his early analysis of the proletariat are ascribed to whatever group, class or tendency the revolutionary theorist believes is the key to revolution’ (p. 316). The possibility of penetrating beneath the surface of ordinary life has been further reduced by exposure to hyperreality. The result is a profound sense of disorientation in the minds of political leaders whose ability to ‘navigate’ through political waters; the defining feature of the professional politician since Plato is undercut by the dominance of global capital (Bobbio, 1998, p. 26). Relatedly, contemporary citizens, facing the personal consequences of global trends are simply unable to organize a coherent politics of dissent – Marx’s proletariat has been replaced by the precariat (Hardt and Negri, 2004).15 The plethora of images, of infinite realities, diminishes our political bearings. We find ourselves ‘mapless’ according to one critic (Berger, 2007, p. 119), disoriented and ‘de-realized’ ‘lost in reality’ according to another (Virilio, 1994). The virtual and the actual become interchangeable. Life in postmodernity reduces our sense of belonging and with it the possibility of ‘real life.’ Our understanding of space and time has altered as a result of social, economic, and political changes rendering earlier critiques redundant, describing worlds that no longer exist. Individuals may wish to be reflective but they have neither the time nor the space to do so, forced to live in an atmosphere of insecurity and risk. Citizens cannot reclaim Enlightenment concepts of sincerity or authenticity even if they wanted to. Citizens have become combinards (BeckGernsheim, 2002). In the absence of narratives and truths, those signposts of modernity, citizens are forced instead to wander in the dark and ‘make it up as they go along.’16 For Cohen and Taylor (1992), the absence of a shared sense of reality, of ‘what is going on,’ does not permit comparison between present and future, what is and what might be. The subverting power of art is reduced to a play on words, ‘culture jamming,’ an attempt to undermine corporate control of signs by, in turn, subverting those images.17 Yet, this cannot move us towards ‘reality’ when ‘the only real thing is Coke’ (Cohen and Taylor, 1992, p. 5). The sense of alienation that art and the politics of the street were supposed to effect has been negated as the significance of otherness has weakened and the chance of radical


escape from the present undermined. What used to motivate the search for the true self, for meaning, for progress, no longer possesses a solid philosophical justification. Instead, truth and the alienating power of art are reduced to a particular set of culturally significant discourses. The ‘collapse of meta-narratives’ implies for Cohen and Taylor, ‘that there is no single meaning system or metaphor that we can use to obtain a sense of the world from which we want to distance ourselves or against which we want to construct an alternative…the very attempt to create any solid base for knowing the world is hopelessly untenable and not even a worthwhile philosophical enterprise’ (1992, p. 15). In modernist tales like 1984 and Brave New World, an era ‘which hoped to legislate reason into reality, to reshuffle the stakes in a way that would trigger rational conduct and render all behavior contrary to reason too costly to contemplate,’ (Bauman, 2000, p. 48) it was possible to identify an enemy. For Orwell, it was the bureaucratic, centralized state and a political leadership that craved power for power’s sake. Power was an end in itself for ‘The Party’ and a leadership whose vision of the future was a ‘boot stamping on a human face – forever.’ The hero of this narrative was the individual, the existential ‘refuser’ who carved out a space for freedom against and in spite of the totalitarian threat. In Brave New World the analysis shifted. Now it appeared that most individuals would sacrifice the slings and arrows of fortune for bliss. Here, then, was a society closer in shape to Marcuse’s one-dimensional polity populated with one-dimensional selves, a caricature of Huxley’s California of the 1930s updated to reflect post-war affluence. Yet even here, among the sleepwalkers, there was the possibility of individuality and disruption, an outsider in the form of the Savage who represented all that was authentically unhealthy in contrast to the modern sanitized world populated by citizen-sleepwalkers. There was a clear alternative that most would shun but it provided a point, nonetheless, from which one could criticize the irrationality of the rational ordering of modern society. Both narratives appear quaint compared to their postmodern counterpart, the virtual world of The Matrix. The significance of this postmodern fable is less the overwhelming reliance upon technology, the symbiosis achieved between human beings and machines, or the replaying of the old epistemological conundrum between what is real and what is false. The importance of this addition to the dystopian canon is that, according to one astute commentator, the narrative of refusal, of rebellion has finally run out of steam. The freedom fighters


while they fight for the ‘real world’, a brutal and unappealing place by all accounts, can offer no convincing alternative political program to the comforting illusions offered by life in their virtual counterpart. The absence of convincing alternatives, Zizek (2003) notes in his analysis of the movie, mirrors our own political predicament. Hence his recommendation: if no alternative is possible, then it is best to retreat from politics altogether. Under current conditions, this is the only way not to play the game. To participate in any way within the system – to strategize civil disobedience – is to legitimize it. While a refusal to participate, to withdraw completely, is the only possible alternative.18 The threat today is not passivity but pseudo-activity, the urge to ‘be active’, to ‘participate,’ to mask the nothingness of what goes on. People intervene all the time, ‘do something’; academics participate in meaningless debates, and so on. The truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw. Those in power often prefer even a ‘critical’ participation, a dialogue, to silence – just to engage us in ‘dialogue,’ to make sure our ominous passivity is broken… [abstaining from ‘participation’] confronts us with the vacuity of today’s democracies. (Zizek, 2008b, p. 183) Zizek’s critique is both powerful and provocative, one that openly advocates a retreat from the (pseudo) political life of modern democracies. In first modernity, the individual occupied a role within society, or rebelled against that role. Now, the institutions that provided a ‘home’ for individuals are under assault, their functions outsourced or privatized in the name of market efficiency. Arguably, the issue now is less one of overcoming alienation or of feeling disgust at the affluent society. Instead it is coping with job insecurity and the fear of impoverishment in a situation that is constantly changing. The experience of advanced capitalism is such that the conditions under which citizens act changes faster than it takes to form habits and routines. This is ‘liquid life’: the life that cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long (Bauman, 2005, p. 1). ‘The career’ has ended. The stability that this form of employment offered individuals in late modernity has vanished. Now citizens can expect to constantly ‘re-skill’ if they are to remain marketable to employers who themselves are constantly adapting to stay alive in the global economy (see Sennett, 2006).


The twin pillars of the postmodern condition – ‘risk’ and ‘individualization’ – conspire against political reform. What Beck (1992, 1999) terms ‘risk society’ is intended to characterize this new political, social and economic context in which the activities and transactions that occur do so at a level that transcends the boundaries of regions and national frontiers. The phenomenon of ‘globality’ argues Beck, ‘means that from now on nothing which happens on our planet is only a limited local event; all inventions, victories and catastrophes affect the whole world, and we must reorient and reorganize our lives and actions, our organizations and institutions, along a ‘local-global’ axis’ (1999, p. 11). Accordingly the ‘nation state’ is a ‘zombie category’; the interdependence of economies and intensification of cross-border trade, the speed of communication, and information transfers have fundamentally altered the way we think about our lives and the politics within the nation (Beck, 2006; Giddens, 1999). It has also impacted the way we think of ourselves, and our collective identities within the groups we join. Beck (2000) argues, for example, that the new notion of individual agency at work in ‘reflexive’ or ‘second modernity’ is markedly different from the egoism and self-interest encouraged political and economically during earlier periods. It is different, too, from notions of individualism, varied though they were, that emerged from the Enlightenment period, with an emphasis placed upon rationality and later, a Romantic search for individual authenticity. Indeed, Beck argues that so new is this phenomenon that it marks a transition into ‘second modernity.’ For 200 years, the state’s power expanded and the relationship between individual and state finally came to be worked out in the form of a social contract, a welfare system, rights, constitutional democracy, and so on. Yet now, a profound period of transformation politically and economically has seen the end of consensus politics, along with a challenge to those dominant ideologies that had provided so much of the intellectual fuel for critique and analysis. This has triggered a new process of ‘individualization’: ‘the disintegration of previously existing social forms…class and social status, gender roles, family, neighbourhood’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002, p. 2). For Beck, this condition is characterized as one of ontological insecurity fueled by the absence of ‘certainties of industrial society as well as the compulsion to find and invent new certainties for oneself and others without them’ (1997, p. 95). For social critics like Anthony Giddens, such insecurity offered a host of new possibilities and projects for selfhood, where ‘self-actualization’


requires the making and remaking of personal narratives, and relationships are entered into and sustained for their own sake only if they are perceived as bringing sufficient rewards (Giddens, 1991, p. 117). In the absence of alternatives to capitalism new forms of politics must be considered as market socialism and social class no longer offer convincing narratives for the future. In earlier times this might have been characterized as a lamentable, ‘temporary’ way of living.19 Yet now, we do not lament but embrace this way of life in all its aspects. ‘[I]individual achievements cannot be solidified into lasting possessions because, in no time, assets turn into liabilities and abilities into disabilities’ (Bauman, 2005a, p. 1). As Bauman states, ‘To put it in a nutshell, “individualization” consists in transforming human “identity” from a “given” into a “task” – and charging the actors with the responsibility for performing that task and for the consequences (also the side-effects) of their performance: in other words, it consists in establishing a de jure autonomy (although not necessarily a de facto one)’ (2002, p. xv). In the past, unequal access to resources prompted collective action as a response to perceived political and economic injustice. The Civil Rights Movement, for example, may be understood in just this fashion. The campaign for justice and equality, while it represented many things to different constituents, was ultimately concerned with gaining and securing access to legal protections and public services that were being denied. Then, ‘[d]eprivations, so to speak, ‘added up’ and congealed in ‘common interests’’ (Bauman, 2002, p. xv). Yet, according to critics like Bauman, it is precisely this feature of political life that has disappeared. Social and economic injustice is no longer a spur to action precisely because we do not recognize the political world as being of public or shared concerns, the kind of environment in which such action could take place. Consequently, collective injustice is recast as individual failure. It is not a symptom of injustice but a symptom of personal inadequacy. Even if many individuals suffer the same ‘injustice’ their suffering remains individualized within societies that are better characterized as ‘networks.’ Suffering does not possess an additive element sufficient to turn it into a cause for common concern. On the contrary, the outlet for these grievances is more likely to be the chat show where emotions are ‘shared’ with anonymous voyeurs rather than taking action to the street. In Arendt’s (1953) terms this ‘suffering’ provides a fuzzy feeling of ‘solidarity’ but it is not the basis for political action. ‘[W]hat one learns in the first place from the company of others is that the only


service which company can render is advice about how to survive in one’s own irreparable solitude and that everyone’s life is full of risks which need to be confronted and fought alone’ (Bauman, 2002, p. xvii). If there is reform to be done it is to ‘the self’ and not society. The vicious circle that Marcuse first identified cannot be broken when unhappiness turns inward in order to find its cause (Bauman, 2005a, p. 12).20 For Furedi (2004), the political expression of this ‘inward turn’ is a politics of recognition.21 Furedi argues that today we are convinced that our experiences come about through personal choice. As a result of increased hypermobility and the fragmentation of communities, we are incapable of interpreting individual experience except through the lens of selfhood. Social problems are not issues of justice but of the discomfort this causes to the self, experienced as a problem for the self. ‘Increasingly, we tend to think of social problems as emotional ones’ (p. 24). What matters to an increasingly asocial self is its internal life. Social issues are translated into emotional ones, and politics has been reduced to a pragmatic managerialism where parties and politicians are regarded as insignificant by a large proportion of the electorate. There has been, argues Furedi, a decline in the political imagination as the therapeutic ethos has grown. The beginning of the twenty-first century offers a radically different political landscape. Politics today has little in common with the passions and conflicts that have shaped people’s commitments and hatreds over the past century. There is no longer room for the either the ardent defender of the free market faith, or the robust advocate of revolutionary transformation. It would be wrong to conclude that politics has become simply more moderate. Politics has gone into early retirement…It is widely believed that the world is out of control and that there is little that human beings can do to master these developments of influence their destiny. (Furedi, 2004, p. 53) Collective action in such an environment is not sustainable. Human beings no longer possess a frame of reference for their life strategies or long term plans. The fluidity associated with risk society has left politics trapped within the nation state while power operates globally, away from citizens. Individuals find themselves increasingly alone, responsible for their successes and failures, their identities as citizens weakened, their hopes for the future limited to the ‘fight against losing.’


‘You can no longer seriously hope to make the world a better place to live’ adds Bauman, ‘you can’t even make really trustworthy and secure that “relatively better” place in the world which you might have managed to cut out for yourself’ (Bauman, 2005b, p. 308). In societies where deep commitments no longer make sense (Bauman 2005a), indeed such commitments are considered ‘fundamentalist’, the politics of protest can only manifest itself in occasional emotional outpourings, where the spirit of 1968 (Time Magazine’s most important year in the history of the world) is recaptured for a brief illusory moment in the form of ‘cloakroom communities.’ Short-lived, and single-aspect, these communities correspond to the degree of emotional investment citizens feel about a particular issue, appearing for a moment then disappearing just as quickly. If the interests of individualized selves coalesce briefly they will just as quickly move on to the next topic of interest where awareness can be raised. These are ‘spectacle communities’, an opportunity to dress up and dance, to wear blue to save the planet, symptoms of liquid modernity rather than a cure. They offer no lasting hope of changing the structure. They ‘scatter energies’ and contribute to ‘the perpetuation of the solitude desperately yet vainly seeking redress in the rare and far-between concerted and harmonious collective undertakings’ (Bauman, 2000, p. 201). Second modernity offers an illusion of control via consumer choice – the thousands of combinations on offer in coffee shops each morning or the personalization of consumer items in computer stores and car showrooms. And politics comes the same way. Yet real politics, suggests Bauman, is nowhere to be seen. What is needed is another reformation, ‘the radicalization of modernity.’ Beck argues that ‘this assumes social inventions and collective courage in political experiments.’ And yet, it is precisely this courage that is lacking (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002, p. xix). When Sartre condemned his individuals to be free, when he reminded them they were always already engaged in the historical moment, that they could not abdicate from the present, this was intended as a message of liberation. Choice was a fundamental, human possibility. What it meant to be a human being was still possible through choice even in the most dreadful of circumstances. Our newfound freedoms after the end of socialism, by contrast, condemn individuals to choose everything – except politics. Much as nationalisms were invented in the nineteenth century, artificial identities that bound otherwise disparate individuals together across social and economic divisions, so in the


new circumstances of individualization there must be an attempt to ‘reinvent politics’ to ‘forge new, political open, creative forms of bond and alliance’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002, p. 18). Yet how might this be possible given the critique offered here?

5.5

Deviating from the script

According to Judt (2005): ‘The Sixties ended badly everywhere. The closing of the long post-war cycle of growth and prosperity dispelled the rhetoric and the projects of the New Left; the optimistic emphasis on post-industrial alienation and soulless quality of modern life would soon be displaced by a renewed attention to jobs and wages’ (p. 447). Disgust with the affluent society was replaced with a fear of impoverishment and a renewed concern with status.22 Insecurity was mirrored in political terms as power moved away from leaders who had traditionally provided visions for their populations, passing instead to largely unrepresentative and unelected institutions who often held governments to account. By the turn of the century, decreasing participation in the formal political process, but also secondary institutions like unions and political parties, was widely observed. The erosion of traditional rules and structures found no replacement and individuals became more isolated and hence much less effectual as a consequence. The attacks on the US Mainland in September 2001 also reintroduced fear into political discourse. The reaction of governments and their domestic populations, according to some commentators, was indicative of the extent of the depletion of social bonds and affiliations. Indeed, these elements combined meant that the resilience of populations to fear and threats of terror was severely undermined. ‘Shaped by mass political disengagement and the fragmentation of once-core social networks,’ one analyst noted, ‘many people increasingly fear the worst. Sadly, they are encouraged in this fear by political, cultural, and scientific elites. This has led to a situation where cynicism, suspicion, and mistrust of all forms of authority are at an all-time high. Accordingly and gradually, over a period of about a decade, a cultural climate has developed that is defined by an insatiable appetite for anything relating to personal safety’ (Durodié, 2004, p. 5). Critics are surely right to point out that there are many factors that persist to undermine political action, and civil disobedience – job insecurity, fear, and the absence of clearly articulated political alternatives among them. However, while globalization has made it possible for corporations to expand their influence, the networks that


support transnational business have also led to a fundamental transformation of politics making new forms of political struggle and alliances across boundaries possible. Consequently, ‘we must ask whether or not our old perceptions of dissent and human agency can remain valid’ (Bleiker, 2000, p. 116). People are finding new ways to resist and explore new forms of community that pose a direct challenge to the way we do and imagine politics now (see Leadbeater, 2008).23 Perhaps civil disobedience is not so much about the appearance of [T]ruth in the form of an aesthetic moment but the reconfiguration of power within this new context. The fragmentary nature of modern media life can provoke a sense of disorientation. But, as Bleiker notes, access to ‘the real’ has always been mediated by social images intertwined with the symbolism of language. We have always been charged with deciphering the world that reaches us in code. The postmodern hyperreal is, therefore, an intensified version of what we have always faced. And increased speed and a plethora of fragmented images increase the chances for interference in the construction of political reality (Goldfarb, 2006). It would, therefore, be premature to embrace fatalism, or to signal retreat from what’s left of the public world. Marcuse’s analysis was powerful and deeply moving. Yet, perhaps its greatest achievement was to illustrate the limitations of its own approach. What was missing from Marcuse, notes Kellner, was the notion that ‘social change comes from complex conjunctures and alliances between different social groups and forces. Therefore it is wrong to identify in advance the revolutionary subject with any particular social class, group or tendency’ (1984, p. 317). That ‘elusive subject’ is in a continual process of transformation and will remain so until the event of social struggle itself. The revolutionary act, as Zizek notes, ‘creates the conditions of its own possibility’ (2008b). Yet, what was right about Marcuse’s analysis was the reintroduction of imagination or ‘utopian thinking’ into political analysis. Our inability to escape from historical contingency does not mean a simple acceptance of the prevailing political order. Utopian visions provide an ‘imaginative purchase’ upon the world. Yet crucially, if the questions now are directed towards understanding what meaning ‘citizenship’ or, indeed, ‘politics’ might have in a globalized world, then space for civil disobedience can only be meaningful if it too breaks free from the container of the nation and representative institutions. To be credible, politics requires a planetary stage: ‘an acknowledgement of the fact that all of us who share the planet depend on each other for our present


and our future, that nothing we do or fail to do can be indifferent to the fate of anybody else, and that none of us can any longer seek and find a private shelter from storms that may originate in any part of the globe’ (Bauman, 2005a, p. 153). What role, then, might civil disobedience play on this planetary stage? In the next chapter we will begin to explore an answer to that question.

6 Disobedience: International or Cosmopolitan?

Many people think nothing of moving from Rio to Cape Town or from Delhi to Bangkok on business, or visiting the game parks of Zimbabwe, Tanzania and South Africa or the beaches of Goa. In their travels they live in a perpetual cocoon, carefully protected from the real lives of the great majority of the people around them…The world’s elite, numbering many hundreds of millions, is mobile as never before yet travels the world in a perpetual mirage, constantly protected and made comfortable, happily unaware of the real world. Paul Rogers, 2000, p. 2 Patriotism is not enough. Edith Cavell’s last words before her execution by German officers, 12 October 1915 (cited in Pickles, 2007) But here precisely lies the problem. The ideal of market sovereignty is not a complement to liberal democracy, but an alternative to it. Indeed, it is an alternative to any kind of politics, since it denies the need for political decisions, which are precisely decisions about common or group interests as distinct from the sum of choices, rational or otherwise, of individuals pursuing their private preferences. Eric Hobsbawm, 2007

6.1

When patriotism is not enough

The term ‘globalization’ refers to a cluster of interrelated concepts covering different dimensions: economic, ideological, technological, 134

Disobedience: International or Cosmopolitan? 135

political, and cultural. However, it is the economic dimension that has provided the most salient and controversial features of globalization to date. As Kacowicz (2007) notes, the increasing integration of economies around the world, particularly through trade and financial flows occurs through the internationalization and de-territorialization of production, along with the greatly increased mobility of capital and of transnational (multinational) corporations deepening and intensification of economic interdependence. The economic manifestations of globalization include: the spatial reorganization of production; the interpenetration of industries across borders; the spread of financial markets; the diffusion of identical consumer goods across markets, the massive transfer of populations and knowledge across national borders; and the extension beyond national borders of market forces. By definition, Kacowicz suggests, these economic forces are undemocratic, if not antidemocratic. ‘By condensing the time and space of social relationships, economic globalization transcends the territorial states, and, as a result, is not accountable to elected political officials’ (p. 568). A particular form of democracy has emerged to complement this phenomenon, of course, one with which nearly all citizens in advanced liberal-democratic polities are familiar, one that supports privatization in the domestic institutional realm of any given polity. As a consequence, critics argue that political citizenship has been destabilized and all but emptied of content. In place of political citizenship, there are citizen consumers, and political power is effective in the hands of large economic actors like corporations. The new legal environment of deregulation coupled with the hypermobility of these economic citizens gives them power over individual governments without being accountable to any of them (Kacowicz, 2007). The precise role of civil disobedience within this new world order is complicated further by the claims of advocates who see it as either a) a counter to the ‘neo-liberal’ economic agenda or b) a strategy that may be used in support of this same agenda and the ‘democratization’ process towards economic and political liberalization. Civil disobedience has been celebrated as a form of nonviolent ‘people power’ (Ackerman and Duvall, 1999, 2004) when it corresponds with the foreign policy agendas of western states, notably those policies emanating from Washington, and just as readily disregarded as ‘mob rule’ when they do not (Economist, 2005). Protests in Seattle in 1999, Genoa, Prague, Nice, and Barcelona endorsed the former view, challenging the emerging neo-liberal consensus advanced by national governments and international organizations like the World


Trade Organization (WTO).1 However, civil disobedience also found support from those who wished to advance the neo-liberal approach. In November 2003, the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine saw thousands take to the streets in protest against electoral fraud and corruption eventually toppling the political regime. So distinct was this phenomenon, so different from previous ‘waves’ of democratization, that scholars claimed that the nonviolent democratic revolutions in post-communist regimes represented a ‘fourth wave’ of democracy. In contrast to the earlier power-sharing accommodations that were primarily elite based, the so-called ‘third wave’, the latest global democratic trend was distinguished by being driven by revolutionary movements from below and a commitment to ideas (McFaul, 2004a). Yet this analysis remains controversial. The endorsement of strategies of civil disobedience by states when it furthers their own policy agendas continues to be seen as a cynical move by critics on the part of state powers who have become conscious of the effectiveness of such strategies (see Robinson, 1996). Fortunately, the editors of the Global Civil Society Yearbook 2004/5, one important reference for the study of global civil society (GCS), note, in fact, that it is possible to distinguish between different approaches to globalization: – Supporters – those who embrace interconnectedness across all fields. – Rejectionists – those who oppose this and wish to defend nation-state sovereignty. – Regressives – those who support interconnectedness when it can be used to defend the state – supporting free trade but not the free movement of people across borders. – Reformers – those who support interconnectedness and wish to reform the global system to make it more accountable to people (represented by civil society groups) and not just another power game for elites (2005, pp. 2–3).2 This framework is helpful when considering alternative views of civil disobedience and its role on the international or ‘cosmopolitan’ stage. Indeed, what has become clear is that in a relatively short period of time global civil society (GCS) and civil disobedience have both become contested concepts. GCS is a catchall term for almost any kind of activity that is loosely said to ‘empower’ individuals in a manner reminiscent of national civil societies (see German et al, 2005), while civil


disobedience has been claimed by those critical of globalization and by others who wish to advance it still further. To that end, this chapter will examine the place for civil disobedience beyond the boundaries of the nation state and along different theoretical dimensions. The purpose of this chapter will be to enhance our understanding of civil disobedience within a global context. To do so, the next section will consider the contribution of Immanuel Kant to the notion of cosmopolitan democracy, especially his article Perpetual Peace. I will reexamine Kant’s prohibition against disobedience within states in the wake of globalization and his desire to transition states away from the norms of violence. The following section will move from the purely theoretical to a consideration of civil disobedience within an international context. Two alternatives approaches will be considered. The first seeks to uphold one version of democracy that considers civil disobedience (or ‘strategic nonviolence’) a useful strategy that may be employed in nondemocratic nations in order to ‘achieve’ democracy. The second critiques this approach arguing instead that within the context of globalization the challenge is to reclaim democracy from those elites who have reduced it to the processes of government and administration. The final section will remain with the issue of transition towards the reform of states by considering the possibilities of institutionalizing civil disobedience. Of particular note in this regard is the work of Beck (2006) who recommends significant party reforms and the development of a cosmopolitan agenda; both approaches I consider consistent with attempts to institutionalize disobedience.

6.2

No externalities without representation

In an earlier chapter, I noted Kant’s desire to sanction disobedience within nation states.3 I further suggested that it was this heritage that continued to prompt skepticism towards civil disobedience among many liberal political theorists, notably John Rawls and his followers. The result was that for many theorists citizens are said to have a ‘natural duty to obey’ their governments considered as just or nearly just regimes. Nonetheless, within Kant’s political philosophy it is possible to offer speculation concerning a role for civil disobedience with respect to the international arena, or so I shall argue. In order to achieve the cosmopolitan goals that Kant highlighted in a text like Perpetual Peace, Kant faced the problem of transition; how his permissive laws that would end hostility between nations might, in


fact, be achieved. Though Kant posited a number of different strategies that he thought would lead to the inevitable move towards a federal structure at the international level of politics and the eventual cessation of hostilities, in the light of present political realities his prognosis may be updated to include a constructive form of civil disobedience (CCD). The latter, as Green (2002) points out, is unlike other normative models of civil disobedience that justify resistance on the grounds of a breach of trust with government (Locke’s view) or focus exclusively upon relations within a given territory. On the contrary, CCD’s focus deliberately shifts from the national to the cosmopolitan sphere. Moreover, disobedience is not justified by claiming a breach of trust on the part of the government as moral justification for disobedience (pace Locke). Instead, it is the absence of a social contract altogether at the international level that forms the purely rational basis for disobedience. Within states, the absence of a social contract resulted in a duty to compel others to leave the state of nature in order to institute a state of right or law. For Kant, while there was a duty to obey just institutions, in the absence of such institutions there was a moral imperative to resist and coerce others towards the creation of just institutions. Duty understood thus was the means towards the universal happiness of the world (1991a, p. 65). In On the Common Saying, Kant set out to describe the social contract. He began with a distinction between contracts that are made between people to serve their common ends and a contract made between people with ends in mind that they ought to share. The latter was of particular interest to Kant and formed the basis of rational decisionmaking. What was at issue was how to abandon the state of nature; a condition of general uncertainty, where individuals were ‘a standing offence to one another by the very fact that they are neighbours.’ Violence would thereby be transformed into authority, with law or Right exerting a legitimate, coercive power over people. ‘Right,’ Kant says, ‘is the restriction of each individual’s freedom so that it harmonizes with the freedom of everyone else…and public right is the distinctive quality of external laws which make this constant harmony possible’ (1991a, p. 73). In civil society, in order to retain freedom, one must permit coercion in the guise of laws. This must be the case, irrespective of what you want to do with that freedom and is a formal condition of existence in civil society. Within this theoretical construct there existed no right to revolution even if a ruler misbehaved. ‘If the ruler, does anything against the laws


(e.g. if he infringes the law of equal distribution of political burdens in taxation, recruiting of the like) you can lodge complaints about this injustice, but he may not offer resistance’ (1991e, p. 143). Similarly, there could be no clause within the law that permitted the possibility of resistance: ‘even the actual constitution cannot contain any article which might make it possible for some power within the state to resist or hold in check the supreme executive in cases where he violates the constitutional law’ (1991e, p. 143). This is so, Kant suggested, because it would be self-contradictory. A supreme power could not be considered supreme if some other power could conceivably challenge it. The reason why it is the duty of the people to tolerate even what is apparently the most intolerable misuse of supreme power is that it is impossible ever to conceive of their resistance to the supreme legislation as being anything other than unlawful and liable to nullify the entire legal constitution. (Kant, 1991e, p. 145) Hence, the ordinary citizen’s role, at least those who qualified for citizenship (based on their own economic independence) was reduced to that of a respectful spectator. While everyone, citizen and subject, was to be treated in accordance with equality and freedom, Kant was clear: ‘it does not follow that they also have a right to influence or organize the state itself as active members, or to cooperate in introducing particular laws’ (1991e, p. 140). Kant did, however, suggest that there was limited room for protest. It was possible, for example, to publicize political concerns by writing about them (1991a, p. 85). This was a task especially suited to philosophers; which is why Kant thought that philosophers were the most trustworthy of individuals, incapable of dishonesty, and consequently the best advisers to princes (1991d, p. 115). But even here, literary critique was tightly circumscribed: ‘Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like, but obey!’ (1991b, p. 55). Kant’s theory of the state is remarkably Hobbesian in its understanding of contract. He says the people cannot and may not ‘pass judgement’ on the head of state. In fact, any speculation as to the legitimacy of the state or its origin is absurd in Kant’s opinion because you could only be having such a thought under a constitution that finds you already subject to the law – a law which Kant thinks the people make themselves. As such, those who continue to speculate ‘are a menace to the state’ (1991e, p. 143). In fact if you do persist with this line of idle


reasoning you can be punished, eliminated or banished as an outlaw (1991e, pp. 143, 161). If you really do not like it you can always leave of course, though Kant says that although the state cannot bar your exit you cannot take anything with you, including the money you may have received from the sale of your property. In fact, Kant claims that as a practical principle of reason, men must obey ‘the legislative authority’ they happen to find in power ‘irrespective of its origin’ (1991e, p. 143). The motivating desire within Kant’s description of the social contract is the avoidance of anarchy (1991c, fn. 83). It is precisely this principle that provides the engine of his critique of the state of nature prior to civil society but also within the international realm. As it stands, states regard one another like Hobbes’s gladiators their weapons in a constant state of readiness. They were, for Kant, like ‘lawless savages’ who are in a constant condition of war even if they are not actually engaged with in battle against one another. …the greatest evils which oppress civilized nations are the result of war – not so much of actual wars in the past or present as of the unremitting, indeed ever-increasing preparation for war in the future. All the resources of the state, and all the fruits of its culture which might be used to enhance that culture even further, are devoted to this purpose. Freedom suffers greatly in numerous areas, and the state’s maternal care for its individual members is replaced by demands of implacable harshness (even if this harshness is justified by fear of external threats). (Kant, 1991f, pp. 231–2) Individuals were treated as a means to an end by their respective governments as the latter pursued wars of conquest, putting their citizens’ lives and wellbeing at risk.4 This intolerable situation prompted Kant to ask the following question: ‘what right has the state against its own subjects to employ them in a war on other states, and to expend or hazard their lives in the process? Does it not depend upon their own judgement whether they wish to go to war or not?’ In order to stop this cycle of violence Kant proposed a ‘federation of peoples’ idea that was conceptually similar to the social contract, so states protected one another against external aggression and at the same time do not interfere with another’s ‘internal arrangements.’ While Kant flirted with the idea of a world republic, he was quite certain that world government was neither possible nor necessary.


There was no sovereign power for the world at large, as the people were the sovereign power within states. What was required was an alliance or federation ‘which can be terminated at any time, so that it has to be renewed periodically’ (1991e, p. 165). This proposal formed the basis of Kant’s position in perpetual peace, based upon the deeper notion that citizens were members of one community. The similarities between events in the eighteenth century and the present form of globalization are obvious: Through the spherical shape of the planet they [the earth’s peoples] inhabit, nature has confined them all within an area of definite limits…The oceans may appear to cut nations off from the community of their fellows. But with the art of navigation, they constitute the greatest natural incentive to international commerce…Yet, these visits to foreign shores, and even more so, attempts to settle on them with a view to linking them with the motherland [colonialism] can also occasion evil and violence in one part of the globe with ensuing repercussions which are felt everywhere else. But although such abuses are possible, they do not deprive the world’s citizens of the right to attempt to enter into a community with everyone else and to visit all regions of the earth with this intention. (Kant, 1991e, p. 172) It is because of these mutual dependencies that Kant declares: ‘There shall be no war.’ War is not the way anyone should pursue his or her rights. It is not a question whether perpetual peace is realistic or whether it could really happen. If you are persuaded as Kant is, that war is not the answer and, in fact, undermines states internally and externally, and further that you cannot rationally will that everyone makes war, then all that is left is to act ‘as if [perpetual peace] could really come about.’ ‘[E]ven if there is not the slightest theoretical probability of its [the cosmopolitan perpetual peace’s] realization, provided that there is no means of demonstrating that it cannot be realized either’ you have a duty to pursue it (1991e, p. 174). The recent history of political and state violence shows that this problem is yet to be solved. Nor have we adopted the solutions offered in Kant’s Perpetual Peace. Yet, what is of interest here, at least for the purposes of this chapter, is less the validity of Kant’s goals, his recommendations or articles of peace, and more his means of achieving these laudable aims.5 Some of his principles, he suggested, ought to


be applied straight away, notably the removal of one state’s coercing another. If political leaders were serious about obtaining a perpetual peace then this is simply what they would do. For Kant, these are the straightforward requirements of rational leaders for there is simply no way of building trust between states if they are not prepared to honor existing peace treaties or the sovereignty and independence of other states. In other instances, perpetual peace will occur, Kant thinks, because leaders recognize that peace can only be possible on the basis of mutual recognition of autonomy. States should relate to each other just as independent individuals do in a civil society. One state’s refusal to recognize the right of another to be the author of its own destiny can only be the cause of continual tension. In Kant’s view there can be no excuses for disobeying this rule. Further, states must recognize that war between them is an abnormal condition. This, suggests Kant, is what rules out the use of spies, assassins and treason, because this cannot possibly be part of the civilized, peaceful relations between states. If it is possible to think of and agree upon those things that states do not want even in times of war, Kant thinks, what we might term a common evil rather than a common good, then there is some notion of a common human interest on which to base hopes for the peace of mankind. Other articles contain a more permissive element with little hope of being immediately achieved. Nonetheless, Kant proposes these articles as norms at which one might aim. This is particularly noticeable in the call for the abolition of standing armies that ‘are themselves the cause of wars of aggression which set out to end burdensome expenditure.’ While an immediate disbandment of professional armies is not possible, Kant proposes interim solutions such as the creation of citizen militias. The latter would satisfy the defense that states crave without the corresponding military expenditure. Moreover, the members of such a militia would have no reason to prolong a campaign for a moment longer than absolutely necessary because of their anxiety to return to their professions. Other nations need not therefore feel in the least threatened by such a citizen army. Kant also regards economic factors as important, contributing to the long-term development of a peaceful international order. Like other cosmopolitan thinkers, notably Thomas Paine, he was very optimistic indeed about the progressive impact of the spread of the commercial and financial system to those parts of the world not then affected by global capital. Kant saw the spread of commerce as a facilitator to peace not one that undermined its chances. ‘For the spirit of commerce


sooner or later takes hold of every people, and it cannot exist side by side with war. And of all the powers (or means) at the disposal of the state, financial power can probably be relied on most. Thus states find themselves compelled to promote the noble cause of peace, though not exactly from motives of morality’ (1991d, p. 114). Nonetheless, Kant recognized that the commercial system was a powerful tool with which to plan and engage in war. ‘Of the three powers within a state – the power of the army, the power of alliance and the power of money – the third is probably the most reliable instrument of war.’ For this reason, he recommended regulation and financial controls. Noting the instrumental role of money in modern warfare lead him to suggest that no state should be allowed to increase its national debt for reasons connected with its foreign policy. By means of increasing the national debt states have at their disposal a too ready and means for preparing and engaging in war. It was precisely this policy, that enabled states to finance conflict, borrowing to make war, forcing the country into debt, then raising taxes across the country in order to pay the interest on the debt incurred. Finally, Kant suggested that what was required, above all, to move the world towards the cessation of hostilities was moral leadership. He saw the events in America and France in his own time as moments of optimism; the obvious problem of their being revolutionary moments notwithstanding: For if by good fortune one powerful and enlightened nation can form a republic (which is by nature inclined to seek perpetual peace), this will provide a focal point for federal association among other states. These will join up with the first one, thus securing the freedom of each state in accordance with the idea of international right, and the whole will gradually spread further by a series of alliances of this kind. (Kant, 1991d, p. 104) Kant foresaw an evolutionary process beginning with one large state, which was peacefully inclined, through example and debate persuaded others to follow the same path. He recognized the need for change within states, but thought this could happen with gradual reform from the top downward. Above all, he believed in the essential unity and equality of everyone. ‘World citizen’s law’ he says ‘should be confined to the requirements of universal hospitality.’ By this he meant the ‘right of a stranger not to be treated with hostility when he or she


arrives on someone else’s territory.’ As the human race shared the earth’s surface there was no possible justification for one nation or group of nations to assume they had a superior right to exploit the world’s resources or assume they had the right to teach mankind how to live. Indeed, the treatment of slaves by so called ‘civilized’ nations Kant regarded as the utmost hypocrisy. Kant put his faith in the rationality and morality of a moral form of political leadership, and the promise of an open economy; a faith that persists.6 Two centuries on from his thoughts concerning the possibilities for political reform we can reexamine his prognosis. The very process of globalization that Kant made so central to Perpetual Peace has continued unabated. There is, for example, increasing economic interdependence. However, the growing inequalities between and within states have undermined the promise, to some extent, that commerce will create a harmony of interests. We may also question what he has to say generally about political leaders. Many have criticized the high sounding appellations which are often bestowed on a ruler…as gross and extravagant flatteries, but it seems to me without reason. Far from making the ruler of the land arrogant, they ought rather to fill his soul with humility. For if he is a man of understanding (which we must certainly assume), he will reflect that he has taken over an office which is too great for a human being, namely that of administering God’s most sacred institution on earth, the rights of man; he will always live in fear of having in any way injured God’s most valued possession. (Kant, 1991d, fn., p. 101) This seems to overestimate the humility of political leaders and is more accurately a reflection of Kant’s predisposition towards Frederick II of Prussia. It also seems to overestimate the amount of change that leadership, even well intentioned political leadership, can effect in a global climate where power has leaked away from the state to the global corporation (Tomusk, 2002, p. 335). Second, as Held and McGrew point out (2003), an additional problem is that global institutions themselves are international and not cosmopolitan i.e. they are based on negotiated interests among nation states and their representatives, so they are only very indirectly inaccessible to democratic input. For Green (2002), this justifies the


practice of civil disobedience as a campaign for representation at the international level. He notes: Everyone has a right to leave the state of nature, and a right to take others with them – in Kant’s view, by any effective means. So those who complain, for example of the secrecy of the WTO, of the extortionate and detailed control of IMF proposals, of the shift of effective political power away from national governments, may have a defense of protest that does rest on their rights…Law-breaking in defense of this mode of governance does not require the usual showing that the substantive policies of the protestors are correct. It is enough that they are morally entitled to participate in decisions from which they are now excluded, and to do so under clear, stable, open and effective laws that provide for such participation. (Green, 2002, pp. 28–9) The cosmopolitan goals that Kant stipulated will be ignored by nation states that persist in a zero sum game of advantage and domination. As a result, in the absence of suitably ‘rational’ leaders, NGOs and INGOs the associations that have been dubbed transnational or global civil society must engage in the actual politics of cosmopolitan institution building. A generation ago such a suggestion may have appeared absurd when the focus of political life was almost exclusively upon the nation state and citizens obligations to it. Consider, for example, the earlier examination of Singer’s discussion of obligation and citizenship within nations in Chapter One. Yet now, it is perfectly plausible to speak of multiple citizenships, cosmopolitan empathy, and obligations that are transnational in character (see Anheier et al, 2005; Beck, 2006; Sassen, 1996). The deeper issue here, however, is not only making the international arena more responsive democratically but the internal political life of nations as well. This is important for a number of reasons. While globalization may diminish nation state identity it can also intensify local and ethnic identities, intensifying them in some instances. The state’s response to this is not always favorable. In a climate of fear and anxiety when the raison d’être of the state is also threatened, a recycled form of nationalism better suited to nineteenth century than twenty-first century realities is often seen as the only course of action available. (British Pledge of Allegiance). Alternatively, however, the nation state could be strengthened democratically to make cosmopolitan law and democracy a possibility. The cultural pluralism that is a feature of most


current nation states, on this model, would consequently need to be transformed into cosmopolitan public spheres. One such attempt, advanced by Bohman (1997), updates Kant’s original ‘single people, single state’ to account for the existence of culturally plural states. He reinterprets Kant’s argument for federalism among states as a new desire for cosmopolitan public spheres within republics, an active transnational civil society without, and the ongoing transformation of existing democratic institutions to account for what he envisages as a radically plural and, most important, critical cosmopolitan democracy. The notion of ‘publicity’ and a critical public if it is to be effective, if it is to act as a counterweight to the activities of representatives, stop them from waging constant war, and provide solutions to economic and ecological crises, must be inclusive of the diversity of modern states and not limited to a privileged elite. This reflects a broader concern Bohman has about the danger of institutions becoming entrenched and monolithic; a common feature of state structures with large bureaucracies. Bohman asserts that world citizens should have the capability to make their opinions known in such a way that the authorities cannot avoid acknowledging them. The problem that Bohman brings up is how to practice democratic sovereignty on a global scale if you are actually to solve ecological and economic crises while remaining a coherent, realistic alternative to politics as usual. The question is, how might citizens continue to act as a countervailing power to the institutions of governance that have a tendency to become monolithic while at the same time offering more than reactive politics that is, by its very nature, ephemeral (e.g. Bauman’s ‘cloakroom communities’). It is to this subject that we turn in the next section.

6.3

‘People power’ or superpower?

While civil disobedience and ‘strategic nonviolence/people power’ are terms that are often used interchangeably, it is important for clarity’s sake to keep these notions distinct. The latter will be taken here to refer to the mobilization of large numbers of people in the name of ‘democracy promotion’ and is a policy in line with regressives and rejectionists. Civil disobedience, in the present context, I take to be an expression of popular, cosmopolitan democracy (Beck, 2006) and is consistent with the goals of supporters and reformers (Anheier et al, 2005). The point of this distinction is to illustrate the fact that states and their opponents have come to recognize the power of civil disobedience and that there


are competing narratives that seek to employ it in the context of globalization. The revolutionary events that occurred in Ukraine in November 2004 – ‘the most momentous political event in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall’ (Arel, 2005) – provide a relevant illustration of the division concerning the application of civil disobedience in the international arena. The ‘Orange Revolution’ as it came to be known was, for many, the latest manifestation of ‘people power’, a trend that began for the countries of the former Soviet Union under President Mikhail Gorbachev, notably Poland and Czechoslovakia, and accelerated after independence in 1991 (Ackerman and DuVall, 2004; Karatnycky, 2005). A flurry of ‘strategic nonviolent’ movements in different parts of the globe prompted scholars to reconsider civil disobedience from a global perspective broadening analysis beyond the two most discussed examples within the literature: Gandhi’s resistance against the British in the 1930s, and Martin Luther King’s movement for Civil Rights in the 1960s (see Zunes et al, 1999). Indeed, the last two decades of the twentieth century saw scholars speculate upon the emergence of a new political consciousness (Boulding, 1999) with one commentator arguing that, ‘Gandhian-style nonviolent civil resistance had had a greater global impact since 1945 than armed struggles and violent resistance’ (Hardiman, 2003, p. 255). In retrospect, it was possible to see a genealogy of non-violent movements, from the efforts of Gandhi and King, via the Polish Solidarity movement in 1980, the Velvet Revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989, to the bloodless revolutions of the twenty-first century, in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. Non-violence and democracy appeared together as revolutionary and complementary elements in a global trend away from brutal, authoritarian governments. The ‘real story’, noted the authors of one of the most important collections of non-violent case studies: ‘is about common citizens who are drawn into great causes, which are built from the ground up’ (Ackerman and Duvall, 1999, p. 9). Empirical studies seemed to confirm the link between nonviolence and democratization. Civil society organizations employing non-violent techniques and strategies for peaceful change had been present in over half the transitions from non-democratic to democratic regimes between 1970 and 2003. A high degree of non-violent civic involvement in the transition process also seemed to ensure that ‘democracy’ would continue to function in the post-revolutionary period.7 There were also hopeful signs that the world was, in fact, becoming less violent overall. A report published by the Liu Institute for Global


Issues at the University of British Columbia argued that a marked decrease in political violence had followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The number of armed conflicts had decreased by more than 40% and the number of major conflicts by 80%. Non-violent resistance emerged during this period as a legitimate object of study for scholars, and both politicians and commentators were eager to support the principles of non-violence.8 Democratization theorists argued that the spread of democracy during the 1990s represented a new historical ‘tipping point’. Only in the 1990s had democracy become a global phenomenon and the only truly legitimate form of government (Diamond, 2003). So distinct was the phenomenon and so different from previous ‘waves’ of democratization that scholars sympathetic to this analysis claimed that the democratic revolutions in post-communist regimes represented a ‘fourth wave’ of democratizations. In contrast to the earlier power-sharing accommodations that were primarily elite based, the so-called ‘third wave’, the latest global democratic trends were driven by ordinary citizens (McFaul, 2004a). This particular interpretation of the role of non-violent movements within this narrative of power politics is controversial, however. Those thinkers wedded to the nation state model see sponsorship of domestic groups that support a political candidate more in line with western views as legitimate ‘influence.’ Sovereignty, argued Diamond (2003), was being redefined as a consequence: ‘negating the longstanding presumption that states are free to do what they like within their own borders’ (Diamond, 2003). One scholar went even further and acknowledged that groups including the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy, a sponsor of civil society groups overseas might legitimately ‘meddle’ in the internal affairs of other countries. The choice in Ukraine, for example, was characterized as one between democracy or dictatorship: ‘Is [Ukraine] going to be a consolidated democracy and the eastern border of Europe, or does it settle in favor of Yanukovich and a quasi-authoritarian regime?’ (McFaul, 2004b, p. 15; see also Garton Ash, 2004). Nonetheless, the US’s declared mission to spread its own distinctive brand of freedom to the rest of the world, via the use of strategic nonviolence, led some commentators to note the peculiar ‘blind-spot’ this encouraged among policy makers (Ignatieff, 2005; Lieven, 2004). Advancing the cause of people power has consequently been criticized as an element of unjustified foreign interference in an electoral process, albeit often highly corrupt ones, with non-violence a crucial part of a


strategy for deposing an incumbent regime (Steele, 2004).9 The endorsement of non-violence as a political strategy was seen as a cynical move on the part of state powers that had become conscious of the effectiveness of such movements. As Robinson (1996) argued in his analysis of ‘democracy promotion’: The impulse to ‘promote democracy’ is the rearrangement of political systems in the peripheral and semi-peripheral zones of the ‘world system’ so as to secure the underlying objective of maintaining essentially undemocratic societies inserted into an unjust international system. [Democracy promotion] is aimed not only at mitigating the social and political tensions produced by elite-based and undemocratic status quos, but also at suppressing popular and mass aspirations for more thoroughgoing democratization of social life in the twenty-first-century international order. (Robinson, 1996, p. 6) For Robinson, ‘democracy promotion’ contained a crucial ideological dimension. Coupled with people power, it was an extremely appealing idea, particularly to those domestic populations in the west. In Ukraine, non-violence training, sponsored by western government institutions and affiliated non-governmental organizations (NGOS) provided civil society groups with the skills needed to mobilize large numbers of people and effectively disable a government that had become unpopular. Due to the high moral cachet associated with non-violence, iconic images of peaceful revolutionary crowds were easily marketed to the western media (Laughland, 2004). ‘Events in Ukraine have inspired most people living in the free world’, noted one scholar (McFaul, 2004b; my emphasis). The rhetoric of civil disobedience remains powerful thanks to the legacy of Gandhi and King, and politicians are all too aware of its potent effect upon western populations. However, what the example of Ukraine encourages is consideration not only of the extent of foreign influence on the outcome of a domestic political process, but the partial nature of this support (see Herman and Peterson, 2003). Support for the non-violent democracy movement in Burma has, until very recently, been muted, as has criticism of the governments of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan for their treatment of civil society groups (see Denber, 2004; Freedland, 2005). Within the international arena, and from the perspective of those wedded to the nation state model, any appreciation of people power


must be tempered by the remembrance that foreign policies are shaped by economic and (power) political considerations. The Orange Revolution noted one commentator was: ‘a true battlefield of power where Russia, the European Union and the United States struggle[d] to exert influence in this strategically located Eastern European country’ (Proskuryakova , 2005). It was also an example of a successful alignment between the goals of an opposition movement and a western strategy of containing Russia’s influence in the region. Securing a pro-western government would return Ukraine to the foreign policy of the early Kuchma period and open the way for further foreign investment and strategic alliances. Equally interesting, perhaps, is how Russia interpreted the role of non-violent movements. As one commentator noted, the spread of non-violent revolutions in the former Soviet republics inspired Moscow to place civil society at the heart of a new foreign policy for its nearest neighbors. Russia’s new strategy in the making is – in a distorting echo of the ‘guerillas without guns’ model pioneered by youth movements in countries to its west and south – based on exporting its own version of democracy and building pro-Russian constituencies in the postSoviet societies. The major objective of this policy is to develop an efficient infrastructure of ideas, institutions, networks and media outlets that can use the predictable crisis of the current Orangetype regimes to regain influence not simply at the level of government but of society as well. Russia will not fight democracy in these countries. Russia will fight for democracy – its kind of democracy. (Krastev, 2005) The example of Ukraine shows that civil disobedience once couched in the language acceptable to state power can form part of a narrative that preserves and even enhances state autonomy. It is clear that a combination of factors led to regime change in Ukraine, both domestic and foreign. A history of non-violent mass protest, worsening socioeconomic conditions, changeable oligarchic loyalties, and heavy-handed election tactics all played their part in the downfall of the regime. Yet, foreign influence, including the training of election monitors, and the indirect funding of opposition groups trained in the techniques of strategic non-violence was also of critical importance. Andrew Wilson (2006), in one of the more sober analyses of the events of November 2004, concluded that without a genuine domestic mass movement support for NGOs by western governments would have had


little effect. One cannot manufacture revolutions. Yet, the issue here appears to turn on what kind of democracy people power is regarded as promoting and the legitimacy that NGOs are seen as conferring upon a new political regime. As Robinson adds, democracy promotion strategies often set out not to promote, but to curtail, democratization. ‘Democratization struggles around the world are profound threats to US privilege and to dominance of core regions in the world system under overall US leadership’ (1996, p. 16).10 While the narrative of ‘people power’ forms one influential approach to interpreting the function of civil disobedience within the international arena there are alternatives. Those who see a threat to existing democracy in the form of unrepresentative corporate influence, for example, have developed a reformist response. Indeed, what began as the ‘anti-globalization’ movement at the end of the twentieth century has come to be understood as an altogether new political phenomenon: ‘globalization from below’ (Falk, 1995) or global civil society (GCS). Supporters of GCS claim it as a new agent of social and political change, one that fills the democratic deficit, critiques political and economic liberalization, and provides a necessary counterpart to institutions of global governance (Anheier et al, 2005; Falk, 2002). For critics of globalization, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOS), which have seen a rapid increase in their numbers during the 1990s (Held and McGrew, 2003), use civil disobedience as part of a strategy to resist the encroachment of global corporate practices into the public life of democracies and the private lives of individuals.11 Arguably, however, the most comprehensive theoretical treatment of the potential for civil disobedience in the context of globalization appears in Wolin (1996, 2004). Wolin identifies resistance to institutionalized power in the form of a democratic, revolutionary moment as the only possible response to what he considers a new form of government that has emerged in the twenty-first century: Superpower. While a society governed by democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy, would reflect a corresponding set of values, and while liberal democracy and tyranny (in the form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism) were the two forms recognizable in the twentieth century after the Second World War, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Superpower is the latest manifestation. This has arisen in part, argues Wolin, because of the eclipse of the sovereign state. ‘The emergence of globalizing corporations, the “internationalization” of culture, the European Union, international agencies such as the World Bank, and the growth


of non-governmental organizations operating without much regard for national frontiers were interpreted as challenging the modern notion of the state as master within its boundaries’ (2004, p. 559). Yet, Superpower also appeared because of the recasting of oppositions following the collapse of Cold War ideologies on the one hand and the events of September 11, 2001 on the other. For Wolin, the latter provided the occasion for the reappearance of a fundamental division between the world’s only remaining superpower and global terrorism in the amorphous form of Al Qaeda. The corresponding alteration in political life reflected a strong ideological commitment to the nation, at a time when popular culture and business were both becoming internationalized, along with ‘a fervent allegiance to a form of political fundamentalism, [and] loyalty to an idealized earlier America’ (p. 561; see also Connolly, 2005). The threat of terrorism was internalized and exploited, suggests Wolin, in order to alter the status of citizens, civil liberties, and to increase police powers. The result is a form of ‘inverted totalitarianism’, an ideology driven not by thoughts of racial superiority but by cost-effectiveness. Totalitarianism is consistent with a measure of competitiveness, disorder, rival centers of power, and competing loyalties…If we substitute profit and exploitation for war and ‘dynamic’ for ‘aggressive,’ then the postmodern economy begins to appear as a variant of the totalitarian in which ‘free competition’ masks the dominance of small groups in intense rivalry with each other, a rivalry that in its own way is as expansive as any practices by the Nazis and Fascists. (Wolin, 2004, p. 579) Consequently, for Wolin, it is necessary to re-imagine the political world as one where corporations resemble those warring city-states of sixteenthcentury Italy, and the role of the citizen is reduced to that of consumer and anxious subject, absolved of political action because of an overwhelming sense of collective futility, ‘periodically courted, warned, and confused but otherwise kept at a distance from actual decisionmaking and allowed to emerge only ephemerally in a cameo appearance according to a script composed by the opinion takers/makers’ (p. 565). Wolin recasts the brave new world of Superpower as the Middle Ages plus electricity, with allegiance to God replaced by allegiance to the law of the market redefined as objective truth, with civic virtue reduced to economic rationality (p. 589).


In such dire circumstances, one cannot imagine resistance or change coming from within the system. Indeed for Wolin, the paradox of democracy in the United States at least, is that while it is heralded as the political value above all that represents the nature of American political life, disaffiliation from the system means the state is becoming not only postdemocratic but also postrepresentative (p. 601). Any response must, therefore, come from without and must resist institutionalization. For Wolin, the democratic moment is necessarily ephemeral. Political experience must be continually recreated – a fugitive from institutional forms – if democracy is to avoid becoming predictable and open to manipulation (p. 602). Politics refers to the legitimized and public contestation, primarily by organized and unequal social powers, over access to the resources available to the public authorities of the collectivity. Politics is continuous, ceaseless, and endless. In contrast, the political is episodic, rare. (Wolin, 1996, p. 31) In the nineteenth century, the nation was both container and excluder. The boundaries of the nation worked to foster the impression of a circumscribed space that defined ‘us’ against ‘them.’ Consequently, political leadership became ‘the management of collective desires, resentments, anger, fantasies, fears, and hopes and the curatorship of the simulacra of democracy’ (1996, p. 33). The state encouraged identification of the self with the power of the state, while leaders became celebrities, courting public support for votes which, along with periodic elections, provided the illusion of political motion, one supported by the media. This has become the accepted and acceptable form of democracy. Yet, for Wolin, it is necessary to challenge this Weberian image and reconceive the state along lines that would preserve the democratic moment. The challenge is to work out how collective action can be maintained long enough to check modern forms of power. Hyperindividualized individuals that celebrate difference and homogeneity do not make for effective counters to state power. And yet, the possibility of resistance and renewal remains: Ordinary individuals are capable of creating new cultural patterns of commonality at any moment. Individuals who concert their powers for low income housing, worker ownership of factories, better


schools, better health care, safer water, controls over toxic waste disposals, and a thousand other common concerns of ordinary lives are experiencing a democratic moment and contributing the discovery, care, and tending of a commonality of shared concerns. Without necessarily intending it, they are renewing the political by contesting the forms of unequal power that democratic liberty and equality have made possible. (Wolin, 1996, p. 44) Wolin’s pessimism is tempered by a faith in the collective spontaneity of individuals who protest the system by appealing to a shared sense of fate. In this scenario, the ephemeral nature of resistance is not a weakness, it is a strength. The challenge is to find a home for this revolutionary moment; to preserve the autonomy of politics and ensure that the democratic moment is not regarded as a surplus, something that can safely be replaced by government (see Clarke, 1988). This would either require a new understanding of institutional forms of government, ones that are built around the collective creativity of individuals rather than modeled upon the military inheritance of Bismarck. Alternatively, it would require acknowledging the necessity of civil disobedience within representative democracies as a permanent and necessary feature of those systems, a check upon a ‘system’ that is prone towards administration. Civil disobedience and democracy understood thus will remain a ‘rebellious moment that may assume revolutionary, destructive proportions’ (Wolin, 1996, p. 43). It is to these separate challenges that I now turn.

6.4

Institutionalizing resistance?

As Hannah Arendt once noted, philosophy and (real) politics are not the same (Arendt, 1990a). Yet, she also noted one possible alternative to withdrawal from political life: the institutionalization of dissent. Though insightful, this was by no means an original idea. Jean Jacques Rousseau in his Social Contract described the need for ‘fixed periodical assemblies’ of the sovereign populace held according to a regular schedule over which the government had no control. These assemblies could dissolve the government, and the first two questions asked at each assembly were: ‘Are we the people content to leave the present form of government intact?’ and ‘Are we the people, content to leave those who currently occupy positions in the administration where they are?’ (1991, p. 273). Thomas Paine argued for something similar in his


Rights of Man in the form of periodic recourse to citizen conventions which were set up to evaluate and reform the constitution, and Jefferson famously noted how a little revolution now and then was a good thing for modern, representative governments prone to the excessive influence of business. As we saw in an earlier chapter, Arendt (1979) also noted the importance of the town hall meeting and, crucially, the space of the jury as an institutionalized space for real politics in the modern world. Yet, what the civil disobedience movements of the 1960s also prompted, she thought, was renewed concern for something far more profound: a new kind of state. Developing this notion, others have advocated the institutionalization of dissent as a response to the structure of political life in representative democracies. Jan Patocka, taking his cue from Arendt, developed the notion of shakenness to describe what he considered to be the necessary, unstable, and irreducible element of uncertainty in political life. Patocka, a dissident in the 1970s in Czechoslovakia, developed a philosophy of political morality, one that resisted modernity’s attempts to reduce civilization to a series of problems that could be solved. As Findlay (2002) notes in his discussion of Patocka’s politics: ‘The recognition of history – of human life as problematic, and of the human being as historical, is precisely what contemporary, technological civilization denies’ (p. 122). For Patocka, a space for individual conscience needed to be preserved in the modern world. The person who was able and willing to recognize that the problems of civilization were not reducible to technical fixes was the person who recognized the importance of human freedom. For Patocka this recognition, or what he termed conscience, understood thus had a decidedly political dimension. The task was to find a way to bring such individuals of conscience together. His ‘solidarity of the shaken’ was a description of a space kept open for such individuals, one that signaled a different kind of power, available to those outside the system (the powerless) where a ‘politics of small things’ could occur that state power could not destroy (see Goldfarb, 2006). The ‘shaken’ were in a constant battle against the tendency within modern societies to reduce politics to administration, to close these political spaces of resistance whenever and wherever they occurred. Consequently, resistance and shakenness went together, working against the existing political system.12 Inspired by this notion of shakenness, the theologian Andrew Shanks (1995, 2000, 2001) has extended Patocka’s analysis by arguing for institutional reform such that resistance may occupy a permanent place under the conditions of what he terms ‘third modernity.’ In Shanks’


view, first modernity was characterized by grand narratives of the kind one finds in the Old Testament where all nations head in pilgrimage towards Zion. Second modernity is typically understood as the modernity of the Enlightenment period, the modernity of liberalism, socialism, and nationalism. This is a secular grand narrative in opposition to the first theological grand narrative. Third modernity, by contrast, has arisen precisely because of the failure of both the previous narratives falling short ‘in their capacity to cope with corporate trauma’ (2000, p. 20), their failure to cope with shakenness. According to Shanks, enormous effort is spent in modern societies to distract members of political communities from facing up to the traumas of their particular society’s history. Political parties with their slogans and propagandaproduction are a case in point. Propaganda is an all-pervasive influence in the contemporary world, systematically organizing historical reality, ‘reflecting and reinforcing the average thoughtlessness of its target audience’ (1995, p. 137). Yet, while propaganda simplifies reality, one of the virtues of shakenness is to recognize the intrinsic complexity of reality and to open oneself up to this understanding. Shanks provides three distinguishing characteristics of shakenness: • It is the expression of a radical unease with any sort of establishment-mindedness; an urgent call into question of all establishment dogma, as such. • Yet it is by no means just an easy, complacently individualistic agnosticism, of the sort that merely dismisses ultimate questions as not being worth the fuss. It is really the exact opposite. Thus, shakenness differs from an agnosticism in that it is always oriented, in yearning, towards an appropriate solidarity-no matter how frustrated that yearning may be. • Neither, on the other hand, is it merely the opposing of mainstream establishment dogma with the even more regimented counter-dogma of a sectarian, and revolutionary, counter-establishment. For that which shakes is also, very much, a yearning for fresh air. (Shanks, 2001, pp. 20–1) Shanks and Patocka, in their search to articulate a response to modernity’s ills, both identify the need for a dynamic communal response that avoids both the reductionism and simplification of life’s essential freedom to a series of self-sufficient propositions. These are grand claims indeed.13


For Shanks, to be shaken is to be aware of the collapse of certain historical truths, and false hopes, that we as a society took for granted. Second modernity did not recognize the need to embrace and confront such social angst. But third modernity has no choice particularly in light of warnings concerning pollution, climate change, energy, and genetically engineered products, concerns that cut across national boundaries and require international cooperation and regulation. Social movements, of the kind that appeared in the last three decades of the twentieth century, are an altogether unique political phenomenon, suggests Shanks, because they are not obliged to keep the myth of second modernity alive. On the contrary, their marginal position from the perspective of mainstream political activity is crucial. However, and crucially, they cannot be so marginalized that they have no influence upon political debate. Nor can they advance their own particular point of view regardless of others rather like pressure groups in the classic economic model of political action. Consequently, in Shanks’ view, in order to preserve shakenness in the spaces between mainstream political parties and the outer edge of influence, a new form of civil religion is required to institute shakenness; where religion is understood as ‘ideal solidarity-reinforcing ritual expression-and transmission-process-of shakenness’ (1995, p. 26). The solidarity of the shaken possesses two components: a) that it is anti political; a nonparty politics of resistance and b) a context for the development of intercultural conversation. Shanks readily admits that this may be regarded as a utopian dream of a third modernity (1995, p. 34). In Civil Society, Civil Religion, Shanks argues that such groups should receive state funding so that they become a permanent feature of the political landscape. Indeed, he even explores the possibility that church communities, suitably reformed, might provide the stability needed to house the otherwise transient activities of these social movements (1995, p. 13). For Shanks what is at stake is keeping the conversation going. We can do this if we embrace the post-modern condition of anxiety and the pathos of shakenness. Though written from within the theological tradition, Shanks’ observations resonate in the work of theorists like David Held and Ulrich Beck who, in similar fashion, search to find a home for resistance. For Held (2004), there are three ‘gaps’ that a new form of political life must address in the context of globalization: • A jurisdictional gap – resulting in the problem of ‘externalities’ and the degradation of the global commons. An issue, philosophically


speaking, of whose responsibility it is for the unpleasant side effects of globalization. • An incentive gap – because there is no overarching framework for governance in this new arena regulating the supply of global public goods, many states ignore environmental problems and plan for the short term, or assert their own power in one area to the detriment of other states. • A moral gap – the massive inequality between states and growing awareness that the cost of living for many is too high. Often there is indifference or willful ignorance, coupled with the assertion of a primitive patriotism, rather than a broader and meaningful discussion of how to prevent hardship for most of the world’s less privileged populations. (Held, 2004, p. 79) As Held notes, earlier models of politics assumed symmetry between political decision-making and those affected by policy. Yet it is precisely the lack of symmetry between decision-making and those affected by those decisions that requires new forms of state and nonstate participation. While Held recognizes the need for reform at the level of global governance and has written about strengthening the capacity of developing nations to negotiate with their more powerful partners (Held et al., 1999; Held and McGrew, 2003), of particular note are his recommendations concerning the ability to create institutions in a timely fashion to address and resolve global problems. Held suggests, taking his cue from Rischard’s (2002) work on Global Issue Networks (GINs), that a policy problem might be addressed by coordinating multiple actors across networks each working on different parts of a particular issue. The proposal is similar in some fashion to the Wiki phenomenon of distributed networking, a form of institutionalized innovation (see Tapscott and Williams, 2008). Actors who might formerly have engaged in resistance in order to increase ‘awareness’ around a particular issue would then be encouraged to provide research or propose policy initiatives to address a social problem and contribute to its resolution. Resistance is thereby transformed into innovation.14 The one weakness with this approach, as Held notes, is that these networks rely on state actors to accept or enforce their policy recommendations. Unfortunately, ‘they contribute little to the question of norm and rule enforcement in the face of a reluctant actor – political, economic or social – that might refuse to come into line or which, by virtue of taking no action, could perpetuate and add to the core


problem involved. Nor do they provide a solution to the problem of how one determines the range of legitimate voices or stakeholders that ought to be involved in a GIN, or how this matter can be effectively arbitrated’ (2004, p. 107). Nonetheless, if, after months or years of painstaking work, a state actor were to unreasonably reject or stall the recommendations of one such network, one might imagine the same individuals applying their networking skills to engage in coordinated acts of resistance (e.g. whistleblowing) to help publicize the matter. Resistance and innovation are not, therefore, mutually exclusive. The ability of established authority structures to drag their feet regarding institutional change should not be overlooked. Moreover, the issue of who forms part of a network is itself a political matter, one that will doubtless reflect a bias among decision makers who retain the ability to appoint individuals to relevant networks or working groups. As Wilkinson (2005) notes, after the demonstrations in Seattle and other cities, the World Trade Organization (WTO) made significant attempts to liaise with those NGOs it considered sympathetic to its overall aims. In short, the WTO determines which NGOs it would work with, either from business or civil interests. ‘These “acceptable” groups,’ notes Wilkinson, ‘are among those more likely to gain access to global decision-making anyway. It is those least likely to be able to exercise their voice that will again find themselves debarred’ (p. 171). The point to take away from this discussion is that NGOs that form part of global civil society, while they are often counterposed against the state and the rule of law, inhabiting a supposedly free and ethical realm removed from power politics are actually dependent upon it. As Sassoon notes (2005), state and civil society in the modern period developed together conceptually with the rule of law the guarantee of civil society’s continued existence. ‘The fantasy of a creative, fluid, ‘free’ civil society without the constraints of law and order may be attractive, but questions of responsibility and accountability remain however much responsibility and power is spread through society.’ Indeed, Sassoon recommends ‘reconceptualizing and putting the state back in’ (p. 45). To that end, Beck (2005) urges as a first step towards real reform, reform of the party. Indeed, he sees the transformation of the national party into a ‘world party’ as the most hopeful arena of real social and political change within nation states: ‘parties could make a difference if they opened themselves up to the range of options available for


shaping global domestic politics, which has entered a state of flux’ (p. 251). These new cosmopolitan parties represent transnational concerns transnationally, only within the nation-state political arenas … They compete with national parties for consent and power in the issues and conflicts that only seem to be national ones. There are three senses in which they can be called ‘world parties.’ (Beck, 2005, p. 251) Beck fully recognizes the impact of NGOs and their consciousnessraising programs, especially in the areas of environmentalism and women’s rights, upon national politics. Yet, he considers the natural extension of these movements the transformation of national parties to reflect and appeal to the values and common traditions in every culture. Unlike existing national parties, world parties would be reconfigured as sites of competition over ideas, appealing to people as world citizens and not just as members of one nation. Institutionally and programmatically, according to Beck, these parties would offer a home for a constituency that is currently underrepresented. This is not the home for the transnational capitalist class (Rogers, 2000; Sklair, 2002), the managers who travel in business class, but those who already identify with others and with issues beyond the nation; global citizens not global capitalists. Global citizens already possess knowledge of interdependence produced by global risks and crises overcoming the political division between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ These cosmopolitans exhibit empathy and perspective taking, a desire to redraw boundaries and acceptance of the mélange principle – recognition that local, regional, and national cultures interprenetrate. For Beck, ‘cosmopolitanism without provincialism is empty, provincialism without cosmopolitanism is blind’ (2006, p. 7). As a consequence, Beck (2005) argues elsewhere that new rules and institutions like a ‘world party’ are required for global domestic politics. The principle of national sovereignty that formed the basis for the inviolability of nation states enshrined in the United Nations Charter can no longer guarantee peace or defense against climate change, global poverty, or terrorist violence. What is required is an institution that is at once responsive to the concerns of global citizens,


providing a forum for the discussion of ideas, and possessing the wherewithal via the state and its institutions to effect change. In other words, there need to be world citizens’ movements and parties of French, North American, Polish, German, Japanese, Chinese and South African provenance, which struggle together in the various nooks and crannies of global society to gain acceptance for cosmopolitan values and institutions. Inside the world parties, then, beats the Babylonian heart of cosmopolitanism. (Beck, 2005, pp. 269–70)

6.5

Terra incognita

The increase in the number of democratic states recognized by others in the international community has not been accompanied by an increase in democracy among states in the international arena. As Held (1997) notes, ‘[t]he explanation for this has partly to do with uncertainty about the rules, values, and institutions necessary to establish greater accountability among nations. But it has also to do with the reluctance of democracies to extend their model of governance to inter-state relations – that is, with their reluctance to be called to account in matters of security involving foreign and international affairs’ (p. 238). This reluctance can, in part, be said to explain the rise of the phenomenon of global civil society and with it, the presence of civil disobedience within the international arena. This chapter has pointed to the problematic nature of democracy within states as well as the need for global citizens to be heard. The key issue considered here was the function of civil disobedience under the changed circumstances of globalization. The responses to that issue as we have seen fall within a matrix that runs from those who wish to reform the international institutions of governance to increase accountability and democracy, to those who wish to defend the power of the nation state. The argument developed in this chapter is that neither approach, taken by itself, can possibly hope to address the sorts of issues now facing the planetary community. In the past, civil disobedience alerted policy makers and a wider public to issues concerning the public good. For Beck it was the advocacy group, often employing tactics of civil disobedience that developed the subjects of political contestation in late modernity: climate change, women’s rights, human rights. Today, the relation between groups


who use civil disobedience to convey a message and the state is made more complicated because of the changing nature of political life. Citizens find themselves located within states that possess fewer controls over the economic system of production, distribution and exchange. The state is also constrained by international treatises and obligations with new forms of collective decision-making involved at the inter-governmental level and there is the concomitant rise of international laws that provide individuals with rights that they can exercise against their states. For Ulrich Beck (2005), the context of late modernity provides both opportunities for new forms of resistance and exposure to their limits. On the one hand, he notes, there is an obvious countervailing power to global capital: global civil society in the form of political consumers. For Beck, power in the twenty-first century is about the withdrawal of consent where consent is understood as a form of consumption. The political consumer can exert a power beyond forms traditionally understood. Consumers are not members – like the working class – they are transnational: ‘Consumers are everything that workers are not. This is what makes their counter-power such a threat to the power of capital – and so far they have hardly begun to exploit it’ (2005, p. 7). Not buying certain products, for example, is completely risk-free. Yet as a power it needs to be organized. For Beck, ‘[t]his is the context in which the public awareness-raising strategies of advocatory movements come into their own in terms of both opportunities and power. The denationalization, delocalization and transnationalization of business and state generate and intensify both the legitimatory decline of domination and the dilemma of democracy ion the global age’ (pp. 236–7). For Beck, the power of the NGOs lies in the coordination of the global customer, one who possesses the global power of refusal Capital is largely at the mercy of the politicized global customer. In a certain sense, the political consumer avenges the state: just as transnational capital breaks the power of territorialized states through a politics of refusal, so the political consumer breaks the power of transnational capital by buying this product instead of that product. (Beck, 2005, p. 237) However, there are weaknesses to this strategy. There is no single language of conflict available to describe or articulate the strategies of resistance that NGOs use in rallying political consumers to their side.


While public outrage can arise by focusing on a particular problem, many such issues are ephemeral and easily countered with equally sophisticated ‘information campaigns’ that can quickly muddy an issue. Finally, the legitimacy of many NGOs which ‘speak’ for a particular cause is questionable and can be undermined totally if their information turns out to be false. Consumers can quickly lose trust over an issue that they do not understand (O’Neill, 2002). Consequently, they can contribute to lowering expectations about state democracy, encouraging cynicism about politics. NGOs, by their design, do not exercise legal power but can only serve to alienate, rupture, and raise awareness. Hence, as we saw in this chapter, many theorists are turning to reform of the institutional structures of government in the hope of institutionalizing dissent in some manner. This move has potentially profound implications. As Hobsbawm notes in a relevant context, the three pillars upon which modern government has stood, the notion that states have more power than other units operating on their territory, that the inhabitants of a state accept their authority, and that governments can provide services for citizens which could not otherwise be provided equally effectively or at all, have all been undermined, to varying extents, over the past generation. Consequently it is possible to ask the following: What, if anything, will replace it [the nation state] as a general model of popular government in the twenty-first century? We do not know. (Hobsbawm, 2007, p. 102) This chapter has attempted to write civil disobedience into the emerging narrative of state reformation. What has thus far been at issue in discussions of civil disobedience, because of the tight control that states have had over their subject populations, is ‘shaking the chain of command’ (Sennett, 1983, p. 184). Yet, what civil disobedience in the near future might achieve is a permanent sense of innovation/ revolution.

7 Conclusion

And how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one. The number of revolutions is infinite. The last one – that’s for children. Infinity frightens children, and it’s essential that children get a good night’s sleep… Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924/1993 Democracy has been confined to the nation state. It stands at the national border, suitcase in hand, without a passport. George Monbiot, 2003 Walls must be replaced by bridges. Ulrich Beck, 2007 I began this enquiry into civil disobedience by suggesting that this form of collective activity constituted an act of uncommon sense. While common sense leveled down political options so that alternatives played out within a field defined by the existing institutional order, civil disobedience (at least in some forms) held out the possibility of rupturing this constructed social and political reality. Subsequent chapters examined the justification for such actions within the state and beyond the state, together with an examination of political reality and the potential to disturb its smooth function with the spontaneous and unpredictable; with, in other words, human freedom. The previous chapter, examining civil disobedience from international and cosmopolitan perspectives, concluded with an examination of the potential for institutionalizing civil disobedience, thereby making it a permanent agonistic feature of government. Hence, in the words on one commentator: The problem is thus: how to regulate/institutionalize the very violent egalitarian democratic impulse, how to prevent it being 164

Conclusion 165

drowned in democracy in the second sense of the term (regulated procedure)? If there is no way to do it, then ‘authentic’ democracy remains a momentary utopian outburst which, on the proverbial morning after, has to be normalized. The harsh consequence to be accepted here is that this excess of egalitarian democracy over the democratic procedure can only ‘institutionalize’ itself in the guise of its opposite, as revolutionary democratic terror. (Zizek, 2008b, p. 266) If this is the problem, then it would appear that however necessary (in order to avoid democratic terror) and successful such institutionalized forms of dissent/democracy/disobedience might be, there will always be a need within democracies for collective forms of political action that set out to ‘shake’ the system. This is quite different from saying that civil disobedience ought to be considered an acceptable means of protest, or that it performs a valuable function in the policy-making process. These views, and others like them discussed in earlier chapters, reflect a desire to preserve things as they are while tolerating or accommodating occasional outbursts that serve to legitimize the way things are. However, I have suggested that civil disobedience may also be understood as a form of political activity that intends to alter the political landscape; perhaps in fundamental ways. There is an element of utopian thinking in the latter approach, not so much a blueprint for a new world order, more an element of daring, an attempt to imagine how things might be different than they are. The most general point seems to be that civil disobedience alters the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed by asserting an element of spontaneity and freedom into the order of things, providing a space in which citizens might see their society from a different angle thereby alerting them to political possibilities that, hitherto, remain hidden inside common sense (see Held, 1972). Whether civil disobedience so understood can form part of the institutional framework of advanced democratic societies, as the previous chapter illustrated, by fundamentally altering the structure of those societies, or whether it will continue to represent a symptom of pseudo-activity for the young and the dispossessed is very much an open question. My own hope, if I may be permitted to hope, is that discussion of civil disobedience, at least, may be set within the larger context of what constitutes justified obedience to legitimate authority especially when the nature of that authority is changing before our eyes.


The need for ‘creative tension’, as Martin Luther King Jr. once pointed out, is or ought to be, a permanent feature of democratic societies. How or when that tension manifests itself remains an issue to be thought through. What was offered her was one such attempt though necessarily an incomplete one. As Kant once remarked: …the theory may be incomplete, and can perhaps be perfected only by future experiments and experiences from which the newly qualified doctor, agriculturalist, or economist can and ought to abstract new rules for himself to complete his theory. (Kant, 1991c, p. 61) Time, then, for experiment and experience.

Notes Chapter 1

What Civil Disobedience is (and is not)

1 McKie (2003); Sissons (2003). Countryside Alliance website: (http:// www.countryside-alliance.org.uk/hunting-campaigns/hunting-views/civildisobedience/). 2 Hartocollis (2006). 3 Adam (2007). 4 Sheldon Wolin (1996) has argued that the rebellious element of democracy and what he terms ‘the political’ may be traced to Athens and each successive change to the ancestral constitution (39). We could, however, go even further back into a mythic past when Prometheus, the founder of civilization, stole fire from the gods and thereby reduced the inequality between gods and men. It was an act of disobedience that founded earthly civilization. 5 I would like to thank my colleague at San José State University, Professor Larry Gerston, for alerting me to the activities of Critical Mass. 6 The Economist Magazine noted in June 2007: ‘In the tropical seaport of Xiamen citizens still talk excitedly about how an anonymous text message on their mobile phones last month prompted them to join one of the biggest middle-class protests of recent years. And in Beijing, politicians are scrambling to calm an uproar fuelled by an online petition against slave labor in brick kilns.’ See ‘Mobilised by mobile’, June 23rd, 2007, p. 48. 7 See A Force More Powerful (http://www.aforcemorepowerful.org/game/) 8 ‘A Baker’s Dozen of Writers Comment On Civil Disobedience, 1967’, New York Times, November 26, 1967. 9 It is not impossible, however, to imagine an individual using the judicial process in her defense, believing that respect for the society is sufficiently demonstrated by willingly accepting society’s judgment, not its punishment. See Schochet (1972). 10 As Bauer and Eckerstrom (1987) note: ‘In the United States vs. Ashton, merchant sailors argued that necessity excused their criminal act of disobeying the captain’s orders. The sailors refused to continue their scheduled voyage because they believed that the boat was unseaworthy. Weighing the “necessity of having a just and tender regard for life” against the dangers of not upholding with a steady hand the authority of the master’ the court found that the sailors asserted a “justifiable self-defense against an undue exercise of power,” and submitted the defense to the jury’ (p. 1176). 11 While control over the mainstream media has tightened and moved closer to the military and political administrations, the choice of coverage has broadened. Activists may now turn to a variety of local, national, and international news outlets as part of the independent media movement to gather alternative viewpoints from those broadcast in the major networks. 167

168 Notes 12 Though for an alternate view see McCloskey (1980): ‘I wish to suggest that both seemingly and actually quite useless civil disobedience may be justified, not because both may really be useful in some indirect, unrecognized way, but because they are what they are, expressions of moral integrity of the civil disobedient. This is more evidently so with the disobedience of the conscientious objector who is also a civil disobedient’ (p. 549). 13 The case of Socrates is, however, extremely controversial. Though there is evidence that he committed an act of civil disobedience in the Apology, ultimately the ‘dialogue’ with his friend Crito shows Socrates to be an obedient subject to the Laws. I will explore this in more detail in Chapter 2, Section 2. 14 See ‘Conscience and Conscientiousness’, in Joel Feinberg, Moral Concepts, pp. 80–92. Also, David S. Meyers notes in The Politics of Protest, that ‘the political efficacy of tax resistance as a topic was of far less interest to Thoreau than the moral inconvenience of compliance…He is not…a political tactician or activist in any sense, and he leaves the real problems of politics and policy for others to ponder. Indignation may be the start of meaningful politics; it is not, however, a substitute’ (pp. 106–7). 15 In this tradition, one might also include Thomas Paine’s natural right to conscience discussed in the first part of his Rights of Man. Paine argued that individuals always have the power and right to use their conscience (or judgment) to decide when someone has treated us unjustly, or whether a government ought to be replaced. 16 However, as Hannah Arendt pointed out in The Life of the Mind, there may be occasions when even the supposedly apolitical act of thinking takes on political significance. I will examine this point in more detail in Chapter 5. 17 According to Clarke (2003), ‘[t]he task of proving this society to be fundamentally exploitative and unjust is onerous only in the sense that the supporting material stretches to infinity’ (p. 491). The law can serve to keep inequities in place, perpetuating injustice from one generation to the next. In fact, Clarke goes further and argues that: ‘As a general rule, we can say that whatever economic, social, and legal rights that oppressed people have secured have thus far been obtained through social resistance that disrupted the status quo to the point of generating crises. Such activity was rarely conducted with official sanction, and it often occurred despite legalized efforts to destroy any uprising’ (p. 495). 18 See Macnair (2003). For an opposing position, see McCloskey (1980) who argues: ‘What kinds of civil disobedience are justified will depend in part on what kinds are most effective. Thus, if violent, intimidatory [sic], coercive disobedience is more effective, it is, other things being equal, more justified than less effective, nonviolent disobedience’ (p. 547). This definition is broad enough to include violent resistance within a definition of civil disobedience, and in so doing overturns the prohibition against non-state actors use of violence. 19 Hedges (2002) notes: ‘Most of us willingly accept war as long as we can fold it into a belief system that paints the ensuing suffering as necessary for a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness but also meaning…And tragically war is sometimes the most powerful way in human society to achieve meaning’ (p. 10).

Notes 169 20 Those who suggest otherwise face the ire of cultural critics and commentators. As Kellner (1984) notes, Herbert Marcuse’s defense of the student movements ‘led him to defend confrontation politics and revolutionary violence and deeply alienated Marcuse from those who advocated more moderate models for social change’ (p. 280). Marcuse justified violent responses qua self-defense against the brutal state suppression of student groups. See Marcuse (1977). For a classic defense of the transformative power of revolutionary violence see Fanon (1990) along with Jean PaulSartre’s ‘Introductory Essay.’ 21 Political violence is defined by Hondereich (1976) as follows: ‘a considerable or destroying use of force against persons or things, a use of force prohibited by law, directed to a change in the policies, personnel or system of government, and hence also directed to changes in the existence of individuals in the society and perhaps other societies’ (p. 9). For a related discussion see Christian Bay (1975) and Michael Bayles (1970). 22 See also Slavoj Zizek (2008a): ‘At the forefront of our minds, the obvious signals of violence are acts of crime and terror, civil unrest, international conflict. But we should learn to step back, to disentangle ourselves from the fascinating lure of this directly visible ‘subjective’ violence, violence performed by a clearly identifiable agent. We need to perceive the contours of the background which generates such outbursts. A step back enables us to identify a violence that sustains our very efforts to fight violence and promote tolerance’ (p. 1). 23 See Waldron (1987) for a discussion of umbrella concepts in political theory. 24 Others have developed similarly nuanced views of reality, noting how norms become internalized through self-regulation and self-discipline, and the manner in which people live their lives on a daily basis (see Foucault, 1980). The point here, as Eagleton notes in his discussion of ideology, is that: ‘in order to be truly effective, ideologies must make at least some minimal sense of people’s experience, must conform to some degree with what they know of social reality from their practical interaction with it…ruling ideologies can actively shape the wants and desires of those subjected to them; but they must also engage significantly with the wants and desire that people already have, catching up genuine hopes and needs, reinflecting them in their own peculiar idiom, and feeding them back to their subjects in ways which render these ideologies plausible and attractive. They must be ‘real’ enough to provide the basis on which individuals can fashion a coherent identity, must furnish some solid motivations for effective action and must make at least some feeble attempt to explain away their own flagrant contradictions and incoherencies. In short, successful ideologies must be more than imposed illusions, and for all their inconsistencies must communicate to their subjects a version of reality which is real and recognizable enough not to be simply rejected out of hand’ (1991, p. 15).

Chapter 2

Obedience: Ancient and Modern

1 As Daube (1972) notes, the earliest deliberate disregard of a governmental decree occurs in the Second Book of Moses, Exodus 1.15, when the Hebrew midwives refused to obey the order from Pharaoh to kill the male children.

170 Notes

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4 5 6

7

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The refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake is another such example of disobedience from the Old Testament. Similar treatments were conducted by Aeschylus in the Oresteia. However, in the latter a family conflict is ultimately resolved by the state. In the first of the cycle of plays, Agamemnon, King Agamemnon returns from Troy and is greeted by his wife, Clytemnaestra. After a battle of wills over whether he will walk on a golden carpet she has prepared for him, she pours him a hot bath and then promptly stabs him three times; along with Cassandra (the Trojan prophetess). In the second play, Choeophori, Agamemnon’s only son, Orestes, returns and avenges his father’s death by murdering his mother. Yet this is a crime that cannot go unpunished. In the final play of the cycle, Eumenides, Orestes is pursued by the Furies, takes sanctuary in the temple of Apollo at Delphi then finally goes to Athens where he stands trial for his life. What is significant here is that a court of law adjudicates the matter of Orestes’ guilt, deciding whether he has suffered enough, and puts an end to a familial cycle of violence. Aristophanes was allegedly taken to court by Cleon, an Athenian politician, who found himself on the wrong end of some of Aristophanes most virulent assaults. Although such an attempt has been made. See Herman (2007). See the early Platonic dialogue, Lysis. The actual indictment read: ‘This indictment is entered on affidavit by Meletus son of Meletus of the deme Pitthus against Socrates son of Sophronicus of Alopeke. Socrates is guilty of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the State and introducing other, new divinities. He is also guilty of corrupting the youth. The penalty demanded is death.’ Given the average composition of an Athenian jury and the rate of pay, it would have attracted a mixed demographic of the elderly and unemployed. Aristophanes makes a similar point in the Wasps. Republic, 434a–5b. Dworkin (1977), for example, is sympathetic to the notion of civil disobedience. ‘…the argument that, because the government believes a man has committed a crime, it must prosecute him is much weaker than it seems. Society ‘cannot endure’ if it tolerates all disobedience; it does not follow, however, nor is there evidence, that it will collapse if it tolerates some’ (p. 206). For a relevant discussion and defense of ‘anarchism’ see Samuel Clark (2007). W. D. Ross (1930) for example, argued that we had owed obedience to the state out of a sense of gratitude for services received. The history of the early Christian Church may be read this way, not only because of Constantine’s adoption of one version of Christianity but his subsequent attempt to bring order to the competing doctrines within the empire at Nicea in 325 A.D. This is also precisely the approach of early modern thinkers like Machiavelli. In The Discourses he provides a veritable list of ingredients for assuring compliance. 100 years later we find Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan making a similar set of recommendations though now under the influence of rationalism. For Hobbes, order comes about because it is undeniable and takes the form of a (pseudo)geometric proof. William

Notes 171 Connolly (2005) makes the related point that spheres of politics, economics, religion are not exclusive but overlap: ‘no political economy or religious practice is self contained. Rather, in politics diverse elements infiltrate into the others, metabolizing into a moving complex-causation as resonance between elements that become fused together to a considerable degree. Here causality, as relations of dependence between separate factors, morphs into energized complexities of mutual imbrication and interinvolvement, in which heretofore unconnected or loosely associated elements, fold, bend, blend, emulsify, and dissolve into each other, forging a qualitative assemblage resistant to classical models of explanation’ (p. 870). It is a point that nearly all the major thinkers within the Western tradition would certainly endorse. 12 Some of the material used in this section also appears in a related article. See Quill (forthcoming). 13 For a superb analysis of the US Economy’s reliance upon military spending see Reich (1972). 14 A point of view echoed by later critics of public service, notably those from the Public Interest School.

Chapter 3

Appealing to Heaven

1 See also Colossians 3:22; Titus 2:9; Ephesians 6:5: ‘Slaves you must obey your earthly masters. Show them great respect and be as loyal to them as you are to Christ.’ 2 This, one should note, appears in direct contrast to Cicero views on kidnapping by Pirates and agreeing to pay a ransom to them for your safe return. Upon landing, Cicero suggests, you should not pay the pirates because when they kidnapped you they contravened natural law and in the process became less than human. See On Duties, Book 3. 3 For a discussion of the connection between Locke and the American founders see Hartz (1955). For a summary of the arguments, see Quill (2006), pp. 8–12. 4 The choice of metaphor is revealing, particularly in light of the obsession of economists and political scientists with ‘game theory’ since the end of World War Two. For a brilliant analysis of the use of metaphor in the social sciences see Philip Mirowski (2002). 5 This did not, however, stop King from exploiting the potency of the language of consent for his own purposes. See the Letter from Birmingham Jail as a good example of King’s successful blending of the myth of the founding, Socratic heroism, and Locke’s theory of consent qua withdrawal of consent to unjust authority. 6 John Rawls (1971) has provided the theoretical backdrop for this approach, although the origins to contemporary discussion go back at least as far as H. L. A. Hart (1955). Hart notes: ‘When a number of persons conduct any joint enterprise according to rules and thus restrict their liberty, those who have submitted to these restrictions when required have a right to a similar submission from those who have benefited by their submission. The rules may provide that officials should have authority to enforce obedience…but the moral obligation to obey the rules in such circumstances is due to the

172 Notes

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8 9

10

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13

cooperating members of the society and they have the correlative moral right to obedience.’ (1955: 185) Nozick’s (2001) example referred to a group of neighbors who purchased a public entertainment center in their neighborhood. While all ‘benefited’ from the purchase Nozick argued that not all were obliged to pay for the purchase (p. 93). The literature on inequality is vast. See Cornell University’s Website for a summary of the most recent findings: http://inequality.cornell.edu. Mill objected to: ‘the whole character of the marriage relation as constituted by law…for this amongst other reasons, that it confers upon one of the parties to the contract, legal power & control over the person, property, and freedom of action of the other party, independent of her own wishes and will…[H]aving no means of legally divesting myself of these odious powers…[I] feel it my duty to put on record a formal protest against the existing law of marriage, insofar as conferring such powers; and a solemn promise never in any case of under any circumstance to use them.’ Cited in Shanley (1998, p. 396). Mill made a similar point in his 1867 Reform Bill intended to enfranchise women. ‘The world had changed,’ Mill noted, and ‘[t]he notion of a hard and fast line of separation between women’s occupations and men’s – of forbidding women to take interest in the things which interest men – belongs to a gone-by state of society which receding further and further into the past.’ (Cited in van Weingarten, 1999, p. 12). Singer (1974) notes a similar point in his analysis of discrimination against minorities in democratic communities. If a minority is consistently discriminated against it will depend upon the history of a community, whether prejudice is manifest in decisions, but also the attitude of prominent members of the community towards the group. It is hard to decide in these circumstances who is best placed to make a decision about the unfairness of treatment. As Singer notes, if it is left to the minorities in question then whatever reasons were given for obedience will lose their weight. Yet, if the decision is left to the majority then they are likely to rule in their favor. ‘There is no solution to this problem…It must be left to the group concerned, and we must hope that the criteria I have outlined are sufficiently clear to prevent too many wrong decisions’ (p. 63). McCloskey (1980) makes a similar point: ‘Where not merely personal convenience but one’s carefully thought out, sincerely held moral beliefs dictate disobedience, a new factor enters, such that disobedience is not only morally permissible but in a sense basic to morality, morally necessary. One cannot be moral by acting contrary to one’s beliefs. One must act according to what one believes to be right’ (p. 542). For one thing, it is almost impossible to say whether civil disobedience will persuade a state to change its policy on a given issue; at least at the beginning of the protests. Early demonstrations conducted at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement would probably not have suspected that eventually the Civil Rights Act would come into effect. The 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, amended by the 2005 Serious Organized Crime and Police Act, created an offence of trying to ‘persuade any person…not to do something that he is entitled or required to do’ or

Notes 173 ‘to do something that he is not under any obligation to do.’ Harassment was defined as ‘alarming the person or causing distress.’ Protection from Harassment Act 2005, Section 125. In 2001, protestors outside the US intelligence base at Menwith Hill were prosecuted for ‘distressing’ American servicemen by holding up a placard reading ‘George W Bush? Oh dear!’ See the related story, ‘This is Now a Protest for Democracy’, George Monbiot, Guardian, August 7, 2007. 14 The recent nonviolent civil disobedient actions in Myanmar (formerly Burma) seem to support his view. However, only time will tell whether these actions and others like them prove successful.

Chapter 4

The Politics of Perception

1 See, for example, Mattingly (1958). 2 He would provide a similar analysis in his Discourses on Livy, Chapter 25. 3 Elizabeth was even more acutely aware of appearance than Henry. Her image appeared in allegorical paintings and her court became a fantasy world of glamour and magic, something that Spenser immortalized in his poem The Faerie Queen; a work that found sufficient favor with Elizabeth to ensure the poet received a pension for life. 4 Thomas More noted something similar in his fictional account of Utopia: ‘People like aristocrats, goldsmiths, or money-lenders, who either do no work at all, or do work that’s really not essential, are rewarded for their laziness or their unnecessary activities by a splendid life of luxury. But labourers, coachmen, carpenters, and farmhands, who never stop working like cart-horses, at jobs so essential that, if they did stop working, they’d bring any country to a standstill within twelve months – what happens to them?’ (1965, p. 129, my emphasis). 5 See Mark Philp’s (1979) analysis of Paine’s legacy. 6 For the origins of human game playing see Johan Huizinga (1971). 7 It is for this reason, among others, that Kateb applauds her approach. See Kateb (2002). 8 For an Aristotelian interpretation, see Jurgen Habermas (1977). For a Nietzschean interpretation, see Kateb (1984) and Shklar (1983). For a Heideggerian version, see Dana Villa (1996). On the influence of Saint Augustine, see Hannah Arendt (1999). 9 Arendt (1971) notes in The Life of the Mind: ‘When everybody is swept away unthinkingly by what everybody else does and believes in, those who think are drawn out of hiding because their refusal to join in is conspicuous and thereby becomes a kind of action’ (p. 192). 10 For a similar reading of Arendt, see Lewis P. and Sandra K. Hinchman (1984). For a close reading of Arendt’s view of power and how it differs from standard views, see Terence Ball (1990). 11 Arendt continued to remain suspicious of the partisanship of such organizations, however. In her essay ‘Public Rights and Private Interests’, she noted the following: ‘…but it [the public right] has degenerated into lobbying, that is, into the organization of private interest groups for the purpose of public, political influence’ (1979, p. 105). 12 See also, Chaney (1983).

174 Notes

Chapter 5

Civil Disobedience, Alienation, Political Rupture

1 This did not mean that revolution and mass civil disobedience was not encouraged and promoted elsewhere. We shall see some evidence of this in the next chapter. 2 Smith (1776/2007) noted in Book 4 of The Wealth of Nations that capitalism made a man as ‘stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life…His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved civil society this is the state into which the laboring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it’ (pp. 302–3). 3 This, it seems to me, gets us closer to a view of unalienated labor, supplementing the often-quoted excerpt from The German Ideology that presents a view of the ‘multi-activity’ society. 4 Controversy surrounded Marcuse’s statement about the use of violence as this appeared in Counterrevolution and Revolt. However, in an interview with Bryan Magee for the BBC in 1972 he clarified his comments by suggesting that the use of violence could only be justified in ‘self defense.’ He also spoke out openly against terrorist actions in Germany in the article ‘Murder Is Not a Political Weapon.’ Marcuse’s commitment to non-violent revolution was entirely consistent with Marx’s own views. In 1872 in a tract entitled: ‘The Possibility of Non-Violent Revolution’ Marx noted: ‘You know that the institutions, mores, traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries – such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland – where the workers can attain their goals by peaceful means’ (see Tucker, 1972, p. 523). 5 Christopher Hitchens (1998) described this state of affairs recently as a ‘present tense culture’ unconcerned with history where, in fact, to say to someone ‘You’re history’ is a term of abuse. 6 See Douglas Kellner’s excellent discussion of Marcuse, Orwell and Huxley: From 1984 to One-Dimensional Man – Critical Reflections on Orwell and Marcuse. (http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/illumina%20folder/ kell13. htm). Downloaded April 11, 2008. 7 It was later published in Arts Magazine in May 1967. This ‘desperation’ can be identified in other of Marcuse’s works. As Douglas Kellner notes, ‘throughout the last chapter of One Dimensional Man there are frequent expressions of a stoical and defiant individualism – and occasional quietism…a personal withdrawal quite foreign to Marxist activism…’ (1984, p. 279). 8 The phrase comes, of course, from the title of Robert Hughes’ (1980) work on the birth of modern art. 9 The defender of liberatory art seems closer here to a defender of the Romantic self of the kind found in Mill (1983) than in Marx. Consider

Notes 175

10 11 12 13

14

15 16

17 18

Mill’s discussion of the consequences of the production process in On Liberty: Now people ‘read the same things, listen to the same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their hopes and fears directed to the same objects, have the same rights and liberties and the same means of asserting them…And the assimilation is still proceeding. All the political changes of the age promote it, since they tend to raise the low and lower the high’ (p. 139). See http://www.banksy.co.uk With reference to the commercial success of Banksy’s work, see Fisher (2008). This would seem to run counter to the view that dramatic events can affect attitude change. See, Riley and Pettigrew (1976). He noted: ‘I should like to add that a man is so made by nature to require him to restrict his movements as far as his hands and feet will take him. If we did not rush about from place to place by means of railways and other maddening conveniences, much of the confusion that arises would be obviated…’ (1979, p. 51). In the case of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas K. Gandhi, what is ‘reflected back’ to the consumer is not the possibility of social and political struggle but the change that only broadband and cell phone technologies can bring. Perhaps the most extraordinary use of Gandhi as ‘celebrity’ was Italia Telecom’s (2004) appropriation of Gandhi’s image and lifestyle. In this particular example, Gandhi delivers his ‘One World’ speech, a spinning wheel in the background, directly into a web camera. The images are then broadcast simultaneously to different locations around the world. A group of Masai warriors even manage to pick up Gandhi’s message using their laptop(!) The 60-second commercial may be downloaded at the following site: http://www.gandhiserve.org/streams/ti.html. (Accessed July 14, 2008). For Baudrillard’s supporters this means that dissent is impossible as reality is no longer a reference point. See Barry Smart (1993). In the early 1970s, Lionel Trilling’s (1972) classic study noted that sincerity has fallen on hard times. They heyday of sincerity has passed and with it society had moved instead into the realm of authenticity. Yet, as Guignon (2004) noted in his recent study of the notion of authenticity: ‘What if many of our deepest and most personal thoughts and desires are actually products of the latest fads and fancies purveyed by the media? And how are we to know that what we find deep within ourselves is something to be embraced and expressed in public space rather than something to be worked over, concealed or replaced? What if the whole notion of the innermost self is suspect? What if it turns out that the conception of inwardness presupposed by the authenticity culture, far from being some elemental feature of the human condition, is in fact a product of social and historical conditions that need to be called into question?’ (p. 10). Both concepts, it appears, are now deeply problematic. See www.adbusters.org Zizek (2008a) discusses the significance of withdrawal from the political system in another work of fiction, José Saramago’s novel Seeing. The population of a small city refuses to legitimize a political system by withholding their votes on polling day thereby rejecting the very framework of decisionmaking.

176 Notes 19 The reference is to the character Willie Lomans and his existential complaint in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. 20 This view is consistent with critiques offered by critics such as Furedi (2004) and Durodié (2004). See also the recent report by Frederic Crews (2007). 21 Charles Taylor (1992) published the original essay with this title. Furedi’s thesis is supported by the notion of the ‘third concept of liberty.’ See David Sidorsky (2001) for a discussion of the implications of the ‘recognition’ thesis. 22 Growing inequality within advanced nations, notably the US which saw inequality reach levels unseen since the 1920s, did not prompt widespread outcry but merely confirmed what many already knew: life in the context of globalization was profoundly unsettling. Within academia commentators such as Paul Krugman and Robert Frank pointed to the behavioral effects of economic anxieties while a similar message was popularized by theorists who examined the history of ‘status anxiety’. See De Botton (2004). 23 The world-wide protests on February 15, 2003 against the second Gulf War, and the demonstrations that regularly accompany World Economic Forum and G8 summits support this view.

Chapter 6

Disobedience: International or Cosmopolitan?

1 For detailed documentation of yearly protests from 2000 onwards see the Global Civil Society Yearbooks that originate from the London School of Economics and the University of California at Los Angeles. 2 Similar distinctions have been advanced by McGrew (2002). 3 See Chapter 3, Section 3. 4 In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant noted that even a state that is attacked may defend itself except in a way that reduces its citizens to a level where they can no longer function as citizens. They cannot be used as a means to an end. They cannot be used as spies, assassins, sharp shooters, poisoners, or propagandists because this undermines the possibility in the future of a lasting peace. 5 For a discussion see Bohman (1997). 6 Kant (1991d) actually made a distinction between a political moralist and what he termed a moral politician in Perpetual Peace. The moral politician is, he says, ‘someone who conceives of the principles of political expediency in such a way that they can coexist with morality.’ Whereas a political moralist is someone ‘who fashions a morality to suit the interests of the statesman.’ The moral politician works towards what he thinks is in the true ethical interests of man. The political moralist on the other hand unites politics and morality in entirely the wrong way. He takes advantage of the natural desire of men to see the aims of their leaders in a moral light to create an ethic that merely serves the purpose of those few in power (pp. 116–18). For a recent discussion of various views of moral leadership see Rhode (2006). 7 See How Freedom is Won – From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy (NY: Freedom House, 2005). 8 See The Human Security Report, http://www.humansecurityreport.info/ index (Accessed January 3, 2006).

Notes 177 9 It is also important to note that the term ‘civil disobedience’ is rarely used in this discussion while the term non-violence is. 10 Tariq Ali (2003) similarly notes that civil society rarely confronts power directly and leads to a liberalization of cultural values but not to the democratization of a political regime. With respect to Iraq he noted: ‘NGOs will descend on Iraq like a swarm of locusts. Intellectuals and activists of every stripe will be bought off and put to work producing bad pamphlets on subjects of purely academic interest. This has the effect of neutering potential opposition, or to be more precise, of confiscating dissent in order to channel it in a safe direction. Some NGOs do buck the trend and are involved in serious projects, but these are an exception’ (p. 3). 11 From the outset, a commitment to the principles of non-violence has been an important component of these transnational groups, codified in the World Social Forum Charter. See http://www.wsfindia.org/charter.php (Accessed January 3, 2008). 12 Goldfarb (2006) picks up on this notion. ‘When ordinary people got together around the kitchen table in the former Soviet bloc, they added a new dimension to their society. Their informal interactions proved that totalitarian politics and culture have social limits, structured by ordinary people interacting with each other outside of official definition’ (p. 143). 13 And dangerous ones. Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury and a commentator who sympathizes with Shanks’ position (see Williams, 2003), faced an enormous backlash when trying to ‘shake’ his own faith community in the UK in 2008 on the subject of Sharia Law and the English Constitution. 14 This seems an almost natural progression for resistance movements. Consider, for example, the transition that has taken place since 2001 at the World Social Forum as it has moved from a space to air grievances to an alternative policy forum.

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192 Bibliography Wilson, A. ‘Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, NGOs and the Role of the West’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 19 (2006), pp. 21–32. Wilson, L. ‘Cyberwar, God and Television: Interview with Paul Virilio’, CTHEORY, 1994, http://www.ctheory.net/aspx?id=62 (Accessed 25 December, 2007). Wink, W. The Powers That Be – Theology For a New Millennium (New York: Doubleday, 1998). Wolin, S. Politics and Vision, Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, Expanded Edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). Wolin, S. ‘Fugitive Democracy’ in Seyla Benhabib (ed.) Democracy and Difference – Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, pp. 31–45 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). Woozley, A. D. Law and Obedience: The Arguments of Plato’s Crito (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). Yates, E. The Art of Memory (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001). Zajonc, R. B. ‘The Zoomorphism of Collective Violence’ in Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds) Understanding Genocide: The Social Psychology of the Holocaust, pp. 222–38 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Zamyatin, Z. We (London: Penguin, 1993). Zimbardo, P. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (New York: Random House, 2007). Zinn, H. Disobedience and Democracy (New York: Vintage Press, 1968). Zizek, S. In Defense of Lost Causes (London: Verso, 2008a). Zizek, S. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (London: Profile Books, 2008b). Zizek, S. ‘The Matrix, or Two Sides of Perversion’, Philosophy Today, 43 (2003), pp. 1–13. Zunes, S., Asher, S. B. and Kurtz, L. B. Nonviolent Social Movements A Geographical Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).

Index Ackerman, P. and Duvall, J., 2, 135, 147 Adams, G. and Balfour, D., 44 Adorno, T., 45 Ali, T., 108, 177 anagnorisis, 30 Anheier, H., 145, 147, 151 Antigone, 13, 29, 30, 31 Arendt, H., 21–4, 45, 94–105, 123, 128, 154–5, 168 Aristophanes, 30, 34, 37, 170 Augustine, 38, 52–3, 78, 82, 85, 173 Bacon, F., 86 Banksy, 121, 175 Bauman, Z., 43–4, 125–32 Beck, U., 3, 23, 24, 124, 127, 130, 131, 137, 145, 146, 157, 159–62 Bedau, H. A., 8 Bentham, J., 74 Billington, R., 14, 64, 68 Bleiker, R., 87, 88, 90, 132 Bloch, E., 127 Boétie, E., 24, 87–93, 96, 119 Bohman, J., 146, 176 Bourdieu, P., 80 Boyle, F. A., 12 Browning, C., 44 Bruno, G., 83–5, 87 bureaucracy, 40, 43, 45, 71, 99 Cassirer, E., 104 catharsis, 30 Cicero, 32, 171 Civil Rights Movement, 17, 64, 108, 117, 128, 172 Clarke, P. A. B., 45, 49, 154 Cohen, J., 9, 10 Cohen, S. and Taylor, L., 108, 124, 125 conscience, 1, 7, 13–15, 19, 25, 31–5, 70, 85, 99, 155, 168

consent, 23, 37, 47, 56–63, 65, 68–9, 88, 91, 160, 162, 171 cosmopolitan, 24, 134–64 Couliano, I. P., 83, 85 Critchley, S., 23 Critical Mass, 6, 167 Cudd, A. E., 72 Daube, D., 17, 26 democratization, 135, 136, 147–51, 177 Durodié, B., 131, 176 Dworkin, R., 1, 6, 170 Eichmann, A., 45 Erasmus, 54, 55, 85 Falk, R., 151 Fromm, E., 45, 78 Fukuyama, F., 107 Furedi, F., 129, 176 Gandhi, M. K., 1, 6, 8, 16, 123, 147, 149, 175 Gellately, R., 44 Giddens, A., 107, 127–8 Gilgamesh, 27 globalization, 12, 23, 24, 131, 134–41, 144, 145, 147, 151, 157–8, 161, 186 Goldhagen, D. J., 44 Gramsci, A., 21–3 Greaves, R. L., 41, 42, 132 Green, L., 54 Griffin, B., 12–13 Hampshire, S., 20, 23 Hartz, L., 112, 171 Held, D., 43, 144, 151, 157–8, 161, 165 Herzog, D., 69 Hilberg, R., 44 193

194 Index Hobbes, T., 48, 55–8, 69, 89, 93, 140, 170 Hobsbawm, E., 17, 50, 119, 144, 163 Hondereich, T., 19, 169 Hume, D., 39, 68–9 imagination, 23, 49, 78–80, 84, 96, 97, 104, 109, 117, 123, 129, 132 Job, 26–7 Judt, A., 109, 131 Kant, I., 45, 658, 137–46, 166 Kateb, G., 49, 93–4, 173 Kellner, D., 113, 117, 120, 123, 132, 169, 174 Kelman, H., 44 Keohane, N., 87, 89, 93 Kierkegaard, S., 37 King, M. L., 1, 6, 16–18, 32, 62, 123, 147, 166 Klosko, G., 62–3 Konstan, D., 31 liberalism, 20, 66–76, 107, 112, 156 Locke, J., 38, 55, 58–62, 65, 69, 138, 171 Lorenzetti, A., 78–9 Machiavelli, N., 82–4, 86–8, 90, 170 Macpherson, C. A. B., 69 Marcuse, H., 24, 108–25, 129, 132, 169, 174 Marlowe, C., 55 Marx, K., 24, 109, 112–17, 119, 121, 124, 174 Meyers, D., 2, 168 Milgram, S., 25, 48 Mill, J. S., 23, 43, 70–7 Milton, J., 55 mimesis, 81 Montaigne, M., 87–8 moral distress, 72, 75–7 More, T., 85–7, 173 Natural Law, 38, 58–9, 171 Nonviolence, 16–20, 24, 100, 137, 146–8

Nozick, R., 63, 172 Nuremberg, 11 obligation, 12, 15, 23, 30, 35–7, 47, 56, 58, 60, 61–8, 70, 76, 145, 162, 171, 173 Orange Revolution, 136, 147, 150 Orwell, G., 115, 125, 174 Paine, T., 90, 142, 154, 168, 173 Pateman, C., 64, 68 Patocka, J., 155–6 Pech, B., 15 People Power, 2, 135, 146–54 Pitkin, H., 63–4 Plato, 32–7, 71, 81, 83, 95, 123, 124, 170 presumptive goods, 62–3 Rawls, J., 14, 15, 20, 23, 62–8, 76, 137, 171 rebellion, 27, 59, 60, 67, 88, 103, 109, 117, 119, 122, 125 revolution, 14–17, 20, 22, 39, 58, 59, 64, 68, 81, 88, 90, 95, 99–101, 106, 100, 112, 123, 124, 129, 132, 136, 138, 143, 147–51, 154–6, 169, 174 Robinson, B., 136, 149, 151 Rorty, R., 107 Rousseau, J. J., 56, 91, 154 Russell, B., 8–10 Sands, P., 12 Sassen, S., 3, 145 Sennett, R., 39–40, 48, 82, 120, 126, 163 Shakespeare, W., 55 Shanks, A., 155–7, 187 Sharp, G., 17, 87 Singer, P., 4–5, 14, 145, 172 Sophocles, 28–9 Spartacus, 53 suffering, 9, 26, 46, 55, 60, 128, 168 Superpower, 146, 151–2 The Matrix, 125 Thoreau, H. D., 1, 8, 13–14, 16, 168

Index 195 van Weingarten, S. A., 18, 172 Vernant, J. P., 81 Vinthagen, S., 6, 17–18 violence, 4, 16–20, 24, 76, 81, 82, 91, 92, 94, 96, 99, 100, 107, 114, 116, 137, 138, 140, 141, 146–51, 161, 168, 169, 171, 174

Weber, M., 38–43, 61, 94, 153 Wilson, A., 150 Wink, W., 19 Wolin, S., 80, 151–4, 167 Wollstonecraft, M., 69 World Trade Organization, 3, 159 Wright Mills, C., 10

Wainright, H., 3, 22 Waldron, J., 72, 75, 169 Walzer, M., 41, 61, 62

Zinn, H., 10 Zizek, S., 7, 108, 109, 126, 132, 165, 169

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