Nonviolence has been chosen to test the revised framework for interpreting domination discussed in chapter five because it is a major topic in peace research which crosses boundaries between theory and practice. Nonviolence is also one of the most recalcitrant topics for peace research because nonviolence embeds ethical and practical perspectives within the data to be studied. Most existing approaches to peace research find it difficult to adequately theorise. The revised framework, in contrast, may offer greater purchase on the problem of how nonviolence can perhaps be better theorised and nonviolent actions better understood.

Nonviolence illustrates the limits of theory discussed in chapter one of part one. It is also difficult to explicate nonviolence deploying a notion of theory which presupposes rigid value–neutrality. On the other hand nonviolence is an excellent example to illustrate ways in which self–limited theory can be combined with a wider account open to normative and praxeological perspectives. Consistent with this, the importance of nonviolence is much emphasised in the literature on peace research. Even distinguished peace research theorists find it hard to handle, however, though they concede its practical significance.

The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section examines how the three major theoretical traditions discussed in the first part of this thesis approach nonviolence, and suggests that all three traditions mishandle nonviolence. The second section examines the definition of nonviolence. The concluding section presents key components in two approaches to nonviolence, a ‘negative’ or ‘pragmatic’ mode and a ‘positive’ or ‘conscientious’ mode, and points to some of their respective strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of this chapter is to prepare the ground for an application and evaluation of the revised framework for interpreting domination adumbrated in chapter five of section one of this thesis for the specific case of nonviolence.

Weber never explicitly wrote about nonviolence, or its then related concepts of ‘civil disobedience’, ‘passive resistance’, or ‘non–resistance’, although he was well aware of pacifism and socialism in their many varieties and had studied Western and Occidental religions and movements. Though he could acknowledge the ‘heroic’ moral rectitude of pacifists, Weber argued pacifists were unsuited to participation in politics because they could not use violence to achieve political ends. Given his stress on the importance of verstehen to social analysis, Weber would advocate investigating nonviolence, at least initially, from the point of view of actors claiming to be acting nonviolently. He would want to discern how those actors constructed their own understanding of what they thought they were doing, and why they were acting in those ways, and not other possible ways. This would uncover whether or not nonviolent actors acted from a vocative or a pragmatic commitment to nonviolence, which, in turn, would indicate how embedded in the action was the moral commitment which would aid distinguishing between ‘not violent’ and fully nonviolent actions.

Weber’s view of power, and thence domination, was very much a ‘top–down’ view, and there is little indication that he considered organised dissent erupting from below to challenge a regime unless it did so violently. Even then, unless the dissenters were prepared to duplicate some sort of legal–rational legitimacy borrowed from or developed upon the previous regime’s institutions and procedures, their revolution would be expected to be relatively short–lived. Though he acknowledged that some form of direct democracy could operate to facilitate stable social organisation, as practised in smaller Swiss cantons or in American town meetings, and as advocated by some socialists and syndicalists, he maintained that the complexities of modern national government required large–scale, centralised, legally legitimated, and rationally constructed and operated bureaucracies. Finally, Weber does offer some initially useful tools for investigating nonviolence, but nonviolence challenges his approach because it embraces both formal and affective rationality, as well as empowers actors imbued with what he deprecated as an ‘ethics of ultimate ends’ to act politically.

In order to discern what kind of rationality was informing or operating in nonviolent action, Weber is faced with the problem of differentiating between formal and affective or substantive rationality. Were nonviolent action to be described in terms of formal rationality, nonviolent actors would have to be shown to be seeking to establish a legal–rational social order legitimated by reference to laws or procedures enacted by a legally–rational legitimate authority. Given that he placed morally–legitimated action into the domain of affective rationality, he would probably place nonviolent action into the realm of action legitimated by reference to a–rational if not non–rational criteria. If a nonviolent movement were led by a figure such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King, who sought legitimacy by reference to normative categories, Weber could analyse the movement in terms of charismatic movements, prone to all the instabilities adhering to such movements. However, as Gandhi’s admittedly uneven involvement with the Congress Party, and his conception of a ‘constructive programme’ or sarvoyda and his agenda for independence or swarjajdemonstrates, he was very concerned to deal with the political and economic problems of establishing a more self–reliant India, something which Weber held charismatic movements could not do. Weber’s approach, once moved beyond verstehen, is flawed, and does not take account of phenomena evidenced by Gandhi. Hence, in a sense, Weber’s approach is able to encompass Gandhian nonviolence by allocating it to the sphere of charismatic behaviour. But Weber is unable to come to terms with nonviolent actors proposing substantive reforms of legal/rationally legitimated institutions, or proposing alternative economic arrangements because of his rigid distinction between formal and affective or substantive rationality where practical reforms of social institutions need to be discussed as rational behaviours. Equally problematical for Weber is the fact that nonviolent actors can be acting according to both instrumentally rational and value expressively rational criteria. In acting to achieve practical results, nonviolent actors deploy strategic analysis and act in accordance with that analysis while at the same time acting from normative analysis, which assists in making prudential judgements about the ethical validity of the complained–of phenomenon, and acting in ways congruent with their value rational rejection of violence.

Nonviolent actors, as opposed to ‘not violent’ or ‘almost nonviolent’ actors, operate from an inseparable unity of theory and practice, their vocative stance embedded within their praxis. Their rationality, in Weberian terms, is both affective and formal, and has to be interpreted as such according to the requirements of verstehen. Such an approach would also detect the distinctive social ontology operative in nonviolence, but Weber’s wider approach would fail to detect the rational significance of it.

Alongside this difficulty is the inherent rigidity of Weber’s use of ‘ideal types’ to distinguish between different forms of legitimation, rationality, and actual social phenomena. Because nonviolence contains elements of vocative, and thence morally–legitimated action, as well as formally rational action, it crosses his ‘ideal–typical’ boundaries, probably requiring the creation of an ‘ideal–type’ which encompasses the kinds of action which nonviolence evidences, or the recognition that ‘ideal–typical’ constructs fail to correspond to social realities.

Weber’s approach does highlight the need to take account of particular themes operative in specific societies. In a context such as India, with its complex mix of faiths and political ideologies in which an imperialist power sought to exercise increasingly unstable political and economic domination, Weber could have pointed to the almost insurmountable obstacles facing an apparent syncretist such as Gandhi seeking to unite the faiths, races, and ideologies to, firstly, nonviolently eject the occupying power, secondly, establish a radically new and largely untried form of social organisation at a national level, and thirdly, make it politically sustainable. Of course, the historical record provides some support for Weber at this point.

Most critical theorists, on the other hand, have rejected nonviolence as a matter for theoretical or empirical investigation. Contemporary critical theorists occasionally mention nonviolence in passing (e.g., Isaac Balbus’s discussion of anti–nuclear groups in the United States; Balbus, 1982: 353 – 398). Most critical theorists, however, ignore nonviolence, as do the vast majority of writers on contemporary social movements publishing in journals like Telos, Thesis Eleven, Praxis International, or New Left Review. The exceptions can be readily listed – Thomas Pantham (1986), Leonardo Paggi and Piero Pinzauti (1985), and Jürgen Habermas (1985).

It is true that a logic attached to a nonviolent commitment can be detected in some critical theoretical writings. Violence, understood as a manifestation, or a tool, of domination, is integral to the routine operations of industrial society. Violence against nature by humanity is viewed as fundamental. From this arises relations of domination between people in society (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972). Much of the debate can be summarised by stating that it turns on the degree to which human domination of nature and other human beings is necessary for the creation and maintenance of a genuinely rational society, and, more specifically still, the details of how domination works to prevent the creation of a better society by and for more people. When critical theory focuses on the contradictions of domination, it does so with the sometimes explicit intent of highlighting potentialities for overturning those relations, manifesting themselves in social movements of many kinds. If violence is taken to be integral to domination, then surely the repudiation of violence as a means of waging and resolving political conflicts must be at least theoretically considered.

Related problems for critical theory lie in the residues of Marxism’s treatment of violence, and connected problems of agency and praxis, which adhere to some versions of critical theory. For Marxists violence is usually taken to be an independent variable in the calculus of social change. Immediately, nonviolence, even in its minimalist guise, challenges this reification of violence. Marxist theorists tend to conflate violence as a tool for social change with more theoretical considerations. This leads to suspicion that Marxist defence of violence may simply lie in ignorance about alternatives – this is certainly the case for Marcuse in Repressive Tolerance and the fifth of his Five Lectures – and what amounts to excessive romanticism of revolutionary struggles and unreflective political socialisation (Marcuse, 1969; 1970). It may be that Marcuse confused nonviolence with passivity. Another major problem for critical theory involves resistance to the reception of the theory by its intended audience. Critical theory is caught in the tension of having to enlighten its audience without claiming that its superior insight will enable the struggle to result in a better society and not another form of domination. To overcome this problem, Brian Fay, one of the few critical theorists to acknowledge nonviolence as an important component in revolutionary action, writes of the problem of resistance to emancipatory theory by its putative audience that theory has to take account of this resistance. Such a theory:

If Fay thought that Gandhi, and by implication nonviolence as a whole, was important, he neglected to follow up on this point with the detail he seems to indicate it requires. In his later work, Fay again favourably mentions nonviolence but fails to explore nonviolence’s potential for genuine revolutionary change, though his coverage of nonviolence is more informed than almost anything else in critical theoretical literature which is, in the main, typified by its neglect of nonviolence (Fay, 1987: 131 - 134). He discusses nonviolence under the heading of ‘Strategies for Political Emancipation’ in which he outlines nonviolent and Marxist–humanist models of revolutionary action. He follows Sharp’s analysis of the theory of power which allegedly underlies nonviolence (Sharp, 1973: 7 - 62; Fay, 1987: 132 - 134). As Fay puts it, "... non–violence involves an active, intentional performance by a group of people, directed at those in power, expressing a refusal to co-operate or to obey them" (Fay, 1987: 132).

Some critical theorists ignore or overlook nonviolence because it is a form of action. Habermas attempted to avoid this problem in an early essay, ‘Some Difficulties in the Attempt to Link Theory and Praxis’ (1974) when he sought to chart a course between theory and practice. He wrote that theory was pitched at a level of human understanding removed from strategic or practical considerations central to the issue of waging struggle for emancipation from domination. Habermas held that:

But Habermas went on to admit that, especially in action for emancipation where decisions have been taken to act for freedom, theory’s utility was very limited indeed, humans are thrown back upon their own resources, and must act unguided by any theory. When practical struggle is undertaken, Habermas maintained, humans are tested. Political struggles for emancipation "... test the limits within which human nature can be changed and above all, the limits of the historically variable structure of motivation, limits about which we possess no theoretical knowledge, and in my view, cannot, in principle possess any" (Habermas, 1974: 37). Habermas asserted that, when action for emancipation has commenced, the barriers between experimenters and subjects cease to exist: "... in such situations we must act as best we can – but then without appealing to a theory, whose capacity for justification does not extend that far" (Habermas, 1974: 37).

Yet, a reading of Habermas’s more recent work suggests that nonviolence might be highly relevant as a means of grounding his theory of communicative action, though he had never formally discussed the phenomenon. In one of his more explicitly political articles, written for a German audience during a resurgence of the peace movement in Western Europe in the mid–1980s, he specifically discussed one form of nonviolent action – civil disobedience. Given Habermas’s main audience for this article, his limited coverage of nonviolence is understandable but neglects many of the complex theoretical and practical issues inherent in nonviolence.

Habermas defines civil disobedience as illegal acts which are carried out "... with appeal to the legitimating foundations of our democratic constitutional order" (Habermas, 1985: 99), indicating the existence of some sort of generally agreed legal and ethical standards in a society. Habermas supports reformatory civil disobedience, which "...may be aimed at changing only a particular aspect of the regime’s policies or a particular law or regulation regarded as immoral or unjust" (Sharp, 1973: 316). The other kinds of civil disobedience are purificatory, in which the disobedient actors are only seeking to remain true to their own deeply held beliefs, revolutionary, in which the actors are using civil disobedience to destabilise an entire regime, and defensive, used to defend a legitimate regime against an illegitimate one imposed by invasion or coup d’etat. Civil disobedience is defined as a method of political non–cooperation (Sharp, 1973: 315 - 319).

Habermas locates the legitimacy of civil disobedience in a social space between existing legal legitimacy, against which those using civil disobedience to protest the legitimacy of some specific law or practice are struggling, and a future, possibly improved situation brought about, at least in part, through the actions of the protesters. While civil disobedience cannot be legally legitimated, to do so would rob it of its prophetic power, it cannot be dismissed as wholly illegitimate because those doing it tend to speak from a generally accepted, though often highly diffuse, moral or ethical consensus in society on what constitutes acceptable legislation and political practices. "In these cases," Habermas argues, "civil violations of rules are morally justified experiments without which a vital republic can retain neither its capacity for innovation nor its citizen’s belief in its legitimacy" (Habermas, 1985: 104). Therefore, the ‘quality’ of democracy in a state legitimated by reference to a constitution which accords ultimate legitimacy to the people articulating their wishes through a democratic political system can be gauged by the extent to which that system responds to the sincerely articulated dissent, manifesting itself in civil disobedience, of even a minority of its otherwise law–abiding citizens.

Political theologians make much more of an issue of violence than Weber and critical theorists. But they are divided about the morality of violence. Some argue that violence against oppression is morally justified, and a minority, such as Camillo Torres, even joined guerilla bands. Many recognise that violence against oppression is symbolic of an extreme rupture in society between what ought to occur, and what is, in fact, occurring, the rupture only being closed through violent struggle against, often, awesome oppression which closes out all other alternatives. Other political theologians, such as Jürgen Moltmann, argue for an ethic of reducing violence, implying that violence may initially be the only viable alternative, but that it must be used with an explicit view to making it less necessary in struggle against domination. Still other political theologians argue for an ethic of absolute nonviolence, sometimes accepting of the requirement that nonviolence not be advocated by anybody other than those directly engaged in a specific struggle because outsiders cannot be fully cognisant of the realities of a specific context of struggle.

Some purchase on how some political theologians approach this issue can be seen in Helmut Peukert’s ‘fundamental theology’ developed on the basis of Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Peukert takes Habermas’s assertion that basic to human interaction are a series of validity claims which have to be satisfied if genuine communication were to occur and pushes it in theological directions by emphasising the acute solidarity with others indicated through suffering for and on behalf of others even unto death (Peukert, 1986: 234). Peukert does not mention nonviolence once in his detailed discussion of fundamental theology, but consider the following claim, made at the beginning of his summary of dimensions of a fundamental theology:

As with Habermas’s secular theory of communicative action, Peukert’s fundamental theology remains ungrounded. Not a few of his readers may well ask of Peukert, as some critics of Habermas have also asked of him, "This is all well and good, but how can we act in and upon the world in the light of this theory?" (c.f. Martin, 1989: 221). This question can be coupled with Hans Küng’s assertion that:

Peukert’s position could be consolidated through consideration of Gandhian Satyagraha. His argument about solidarity with the other taking its most extreme form in the acceptance of suffering even to death on behalf of the other may be at least partly actualised through the voluntary acceptance of unmerited suffering in the cause of truth and justice which is very much a feature of civil disobedience, nonviolence generally, and specifically Satyagraha. Peukert himself is silent on this point, though, as his whole discussion is rooted in Christian theological discourse, the example of this unmerited suffering he would have in mind would be Jesus.

Political and liberation theologians are divided on whether or not the example of Jesus, and the New Testament and subsequent Christian tradition as well, legitimates nonviolence as the ethical norm for Christian conflict waging, or, from the opposite tack, delegitimates violent conflict. Three broad approaches appear possible. The first is to return to scripture and carefully exegete the Biblical record to uncover what a New Testament ethic would counsel. One contribution to this approach comes from the American scholar and activist, Ched Myers, whose reading of Mark’s Gospel leads him to this conclusion:

The second approach is to examine the Christian tradition and see what guidance is provided by key Church teachings, such as the Just War Doctrine. In 1983, the National Conference of United States Bishops issued a famous Pastoral Letter on War and Peace The Challenge of Peace – God’s Promise and Our Response in which they acknowledged that Christian nonviolence is not passive about injustice, but resists injustice using nonviolence. The growth of nonviolent witness, especially among American Catholics, led the Bishops to affirm a shift away from a simplistic approach to Just War to a combination of Just War and nonviolence which they found shared a "... common convergence against the use of force as a means to solve disputes". Finally, they wrote,

By no means does this statement mean a repudiation of the Just War principles in favour of a nonviolent, even pacifist, witness on the part of, at least, the American Catholic communion. What it does mean, especially when read in the context of later comments in the Letter on ‘Efforts to Develop Nonviolent Means of Conflict Resolution’, is that the U.S. Bishops were prepared to give much greater legitimacy to nonviolence as a central tenet in Catholic social justice teaching than has generally hitherto been the case (U.S. Bishops, 1983: 34). This approach was also deeply influenced by a close reading of the directions then being taken by the nuclear arms race.

Other strands of Christian tradition can be examined which place great emphasis on what amounts to nonviolence. The so–called radical Reformation, examples of which were groups such as the Quakers, various Anabaptist groups, and others, were, and often remain, committed to nonviolence, their consistent witness and continuing action in a wide range of areas providing an influential source of information and support for contemporary nonviolent activists, sometimes well removed from an explicitly Christian context.

The third approach is to merge scriptural and traditional insights to develop a contemporary approach to the problem of whether or not nonviolence is a Christian absolute, and it is this approach which seems to make the most sense. For Moltmann, "The problem of violent action versus nonviolence is a false problem. The only real issue is between justified violence and unjustified violence" (in Fierro, 1977: 205 - 6).

The political theologians seem to be echoing Habermas in that, while debates at theoretical levels about violence and nonviolence are important, in actual social situations, decisions about nonviolence or violence have to be made by frail, scared, and dominated people who have to invent and re–invent their own praxis and destiny as best they can.

Nonviolence has existed in many forms for centuries. In the West it was often closely associated with pacifist groups such as the Quakers, although the ideal of the avoidance of harm to other creatures is central to many Eastern religions such as Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism. It is only in the last few decades that nonviolence has been the subject of systematic scholarly attention. The first scholarly treatment of nonviolence was by the Quaker sociologist, Clarence Marsh Case, whose book, Non-Violent Coercion (1923) apparently influenced Mahatma Gandhi’s already developed thought on Satyagraha (Hare & Blumberg, 1968: 319 - 327). Richard Gregg’s The Power of Nonviolence (1935; 1966) remains an important text for the study of nonviolence. The work of the American scholar Gene Sharp is seminal among post–war Western discussions of nonviolence (Sharp, 1973; 1979; 1980), because it remains by far the most systematic and detailed scholarly theoretical and historical treatment of the topic.

Over the last three decades scholarly interest in nonviolence has grown steadily, partly because nonviolence continues to be used by a diverse range of groups struggling for emancipation. Nonetheless, there is very little literature specifically on nonviolence and domination. This paucity is difficult to explain, though, along with the marginalisation of peace research with respect to related fields such as international relations or strategic studies (e.g., Neufeld, 1993), and political theory’s difficulty with handling normative, vocative, and practical activity, and its emphasis on violent conflict, nonviolence may well have been consigned to a scholarly ghetto, a topic apparently too associated with ethical, pacifist, and religious themes and history for serious consideration by practitioners of ‘realist’ real politic theory and history (c.f., Sharp, 1973: 71 – 74).

Nonviolence appears to offer a content neutral means of waging conflict, with nothing intrinsic to it to prevent its use by actors seeking either domination or emancipation. Indeed, from a minimalist perspective, simply the refusal of people to do physical harm to their opponents in conflict, even relations of domination which do not involve physical violence can be said to be nonviolent. Simply ignoring a grievance group, or shunning them, would be minimally nonviolent, and this tactic can be used against protesters to maintain relations of domination. I shall argue for a less inclusive definition of nonviolence because it is important to focus upon those features which are most clearly displayed in the core rather than in the peripheral cases. Specifically, I will emphasise the vocative nature of nonviolence to distinguish it from ‘not–violence’ or ‘almost nonviolence’, and the fact that in prototypical cases nonviolence contains an explicit moral call upon the other to behave as a fellow subject as a second person, and not as a third person subject.

Nonviolence is sometimes glossed in terms of ‘civil disobedience’, ‘passive resistance’, or pacifism. Roger Scruton’s criticisms of what he labels ‘passive resistance’ and ‘civil disobedience’ relate more to the contexts in which nonviolence has been used rather than to any allegedly inherent weakness in it as a way of waging struggle (Scruton, 1982: 346). Viewed from a perspective informed by a detailed knowledge of nonviolence theory and history, Scruton’s definitions are seriously inadequate, if not to say confusing. It should not be overlooked that Scruton has been a vigorous critic of peace research from a politically conservative position (e.g., Cox & Scruton, 1984). The term ‘non–resistance’ was also used to describe nonviolence but this term has fallen from currency. The term still appears in some literature as ‘non–violence’, indicating that it is a coined term, rather than as ‘nonviolence’, indicating its acceptance as a proper descriptive noun.

When leading social theorists approach nonviolence, or even social movements for which nonviolence can be said to be significant, they usually either ignore it, overlook it, or mishandle it. Anthony Giddens, for example, has noted that peace movements, even in a nuclear age, are:

Giddens acknowledges that the analytical division between peace groups which, to cite the American pacifist A. J. Muste, hold that ‘peace must also be the way’ to achieve peace, and peace groups which do not adopt pacifism is by no means clear–cut, but he fails to explore the centrality of nonviolence to peace movement praxis. More recently, Giddens has written about ‘life politics’ as a response to the strictures of modernity. Giddens, while pointing to the centrality of reflexive moral concerns to ‘life politics’, writes:

It is significant that Giddens avoids grasping the crucial issue of how in the case of ‘life politics’ action is being conducted by social movements for which the very issues he rightly identifies are vital. It seems almost inconceivable on purely logical grounds alone that if ‘life politics’ is about repudiating, challenging, and developing alternatives to modernity’s morally suspect means and ends, an alternative to modernist politics would also be found, or at least be sought, for conducting political action for change. On empirical grounds alone, ample evidence can be found after even the most rudimentary inquiry in any Western and many so–called Third World countries that social change groups seeking to challenge aspects of modernity almost invariably begin to do so using, at least minimally, nonviolent means. Some may later abandon nonviolence (such as the A.N.C. in the early 1960s), but others remain committed to nonviolence. Giddens neatly evades what is for many social change groups an integral element in their overall agenda: in order to challenge what amounts to the violence of aspects of modernity, struggle must be conducted in ways which, in and of themselves, repudiate that violence itself as at the same time the issue of concern is confronted. The praxeology of the agents engaging in Giddens’ life politics is completely embedded in their praxis, and it cannot be easily separated out for analytic convenience.

Contemporary social change activists’ definitions of nonviolence also consistently extend nonviolence beyond narrow definitions into a world view embracing spirituality, environmentalism, social justice, and an explicit renunciation of dualism in favour of duality. Participants at a conference on nonviolence held at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, in June 1989, were asked to write their personal definitions of nonviolence. They included:

These personal definitions also evidence the evolving nature of definitions of nonviolence, and how narrow definitions exclude what people actually attempting to use nonviolence understand it to mean. This indicates how limited strict definitions of nonviolence can be when confronted by what people actually using nonviolence understand it to be.

Early in the 1980s, Isaac Balbus argued that emancipatory social movements such as the women’s, environment, and participatory democracy movements:

But, like Giddens, Balbus overlooks the significance of the ways in which many social movement activists attempt to overcome the dualistic separation of self and other as almost as integral to their activities as their explicitly asserted goals or agendas. The means used to address activists’ concerns are of equal significance to their proposals for ameliorating the specific problem against which they are struggling.

A more rounded account of nonviolence needs to include ‘creative conflict waging’ or a range of techniques or practices which are used to nonviolently ameliorate injustice, and wage, or resolve political conflicts. Bruyn describes nonviolent action as ‘creative conflict,’ but does not go on to justify his use of the term ‘creative’ beyond stating that the ‘creativity’ in nonviolence lies in its simultaneously subjective and objective transformative potential, contributing to subjective attitude changes and objective change in social structures (Bruyn, 1979: 18).

The techniques and practices to be incorporated into ‘creative conflict waging’ include negotiation, mediation, and arbitration techniques, and nonviolence in its various practical forms, together with a loose, and open-ended, repertoire of individual and group empowerment techniques such as brainstorming, a wide range of techniques designed to enhance group cohesion and solidarity (e.g., Bolton, 1986; Coover et.al, 1978), practical skills essential to many nonviolent campaigns such as first aid skills, media skills and computer literacy, and what is often called ‘Despairwork’, a set of psychological therapies designed to help people cope with the threat of nuclear war (Macy, 1983). The fact that over 200 separate nonviolent techniques for waging conflict have been identified (Sharp, 1973) and a further 102 mediation, negotiation, and arbitration techniques have been listed (Fogg, 1985), indicates that a wealth of methods for preparing for and waging conflict without direct violence exist and are used in conflict situations.

‘Creative conflict waging’ can also be envisaged as something of a continuum in the evolving or escalating level of persuasion being brought to bear on an opponent, together with a concomitant escalation in activist’s own empowerment, personal risks, and enlightenment. All along the continuum, I place emphasis on solidarity, empowerment, and what can be summarised as communicative competence and communicative action in a Habermasian sense.

The label ‘creative’ includes "... specific outcomes that are unusual, remote, flexible, numerous, and generally non-zero-sum" (Fogg, 1985: 331). Part of the key to understanding creative conflict waging, including nonviolence in its more positive guises, lies in recognising that it abandons the dualism of zero-sum, ‘win-lose’ conflict outcomes and attempts to achieve a duality of multi-sum, ‘win-win’ conflict outcomes. This approach is inherent in Satyagraha as will be discussed in detail below.

Many nonviolent campaigns do not commence with nonviolent direct action. They usually start with people becoming aware of some practice they find offensive, or which oppresses them, develop through enhancing their awareness of the dynamics or factors which are at work to cause the problem, and include approaches to agencies held to be responsible for or able to ameliorate the situation. Negotiation, conciliation, and even neutral third–party arbitration can be attempted between activists and their opponents, and amelioration or compromises developed and implemented well before direct action of any kind is prepared and executed. Gandhian Satyagraha in theory and practice always contains an embedded openness to negotiation and acceptable compromises, as well as the option to disengage from action if violence or impure motives enter the struggle.

There is nothing especially exclusive of domination in many aspects of ‘creative conflict waging’, as dominators can and do use many of its components to establish, reinforce, and extend their domination. Negotiations can occur simply to lengthen a conflict to exhaust the resilience or resources of the protesting group. Indeed, an astute dominator could appropriate techniques from ‘creative conflict waging’ and use them to suit their own purposes. A moral conundrum can obtain in that, while appropriating more enlightened group process techniques from social change groups, a dominator can still engage in practices regarded as offensive by social change activists. Some contemporary participatory management practices, originally developed by civil rights and anti–war groups, are used by large corporations and government departments in human relations policies while they continue to pollute the environment, exploit workers in developing nations, or manufacture weapons. In order to limit domination, it seems likely that something more is needed in creative conflict waging to at least restrict its appropriation by agents and agencies of domination. This may lie in an embedded vocative or normative component which cannot be teased out of creative conflict waging methods or tactics.

A common explanation for the eruption of a nonviolent campaign is that some agency is violating some aspect of a society’s alleged ethical consensus with a practice deemed offensive by the activists who mobilise to oppose it. One of the important dynamics in nonviolence lies in the capacity of activists to gain third-party support, galvanised through witnessing or learning about activists suffering in the cause of freedom (e.g., Sharp, 1973: 658 - 665). This relates to the claimed solidarity between self and innocent others (Peukert, 1986). De–traditionalisation caused by modernity would erode this alleged, albeit vague, consensus which is the fulcrum, as it were, upon which nonviolence can rely for its efficacy. But it may be that nonviolence does not require the existence of some vague yet significant ethical consensus (though this consensus would aid nonviolence’s efficacy) because there are cases in which nonviolence has been effectively used in highly ethically pluralistic situations where ethical consensus appears impossible to achieve. One example of this could be Hindu – Muslim conflicts in India (see section two, chapter three, below). It may be that the vocative power of nonviolence may lie in its proto–typical ethical appeal, and that analysis of nonviolence needs to more closely discriminate between a causal explanation and an action–theoretic explanation in which the manifest event can turn out to be quite different to what initially presents.

Having located nonviolence in a general conception of ‘creative conflict waging’, it is nevertheless important to propose a more adequate definition of nonviolence to clarify the range of behaviours and events which could be properly described as ‘nonviolent’. Three features set nonviolent conflict waging apart:

But this definition, situationally limited as it must be, is open to a wide range of interpretations. Pacifism, civil disobedience, and passive resistance need to be distinguished from nonviolence. Adherence to pacifism is not essential to nonviolence. One need not be a pacifist to wage struggle nonviolently, though it may assist in maintaining psychological discipline under pressure to be a member of a community or group which shares a common ideology, be it pacifist or not (e.g., Pelton, 1974: 128 – 143; 199 – 247). Many of the techniques used by nonviolent activists aim at enhancing and maintaining group cohesion and solidarity before and during a nonviolent campaign. Almost all commentators on nonviolence emphasise the need for extensive preparation and training prior to engaging in direct action. Civil disobedience is a phenomenon closely associated with nonviolence, and indeed the term is occasionally inaccurately used as a synonym for nonviolence (e.g., Scruton: 1982: 64). For John Rawls, civil disobedience is:

Civil disobedience is civil in two senses. It is civil or courteous, respecting of the persons of onlookers and authorities who arrest or otherwise apply sanctions to the disobedient actors, and it arises from disquiet within the civil society about some practice of the formal sphere which appears to violate traditional or accepted standards of justice.

Passive resistance is one of many nonviolent tactics used by actors waging conflict nonviolently and cannot even logically, let alone empirically, be descriptive of nonviolence as such. Sharp uses the term ‘passive resistance’ only twice outside of quotes from other writers in his 900 page work The Politics of Nonviolent Action and on both occasions he is paraphrasing other writers (Sharp, 1973: 748 & 797). Nonviolence theorists reject phrases such as ‘passive resistance’ because they are misleading or enable simplistic typifications of nonviolence to be made by critics of both nonviolence itself and those using it. Gandhi also made crucial distinctions between Satyagraha and passive resistance even though he often used the term as a better understood, if inaccurate, synonym for Satyagraha (e.g., 1961: 35; in Fischer {ed.}, 1962: 86 – 89).

In this thesis, the term ‘nonviolence’ is reserved for political struggles. A definition stressing the active nature of nonviolence assumes that humans living in society will always have political conflicts to wage (Collins, 1975: 59 – 61; Lukes, 1974: 24). Acts of violence arising from individual frustrations and emotions, induced by intoxication or mental illness, criminal violence, or even fraud (which can be considered a ‘non–’ or ‘not–violent’ crime) the motivation for which would be the satisfaction of greed, or needs for personal power are excluded. The other crucial point in a definition would be that the users of nonviolence refuse to do direct and intentional violence to the persons of their opponents in pursuit of their political goals. Parallel moral and practical considerations underpin this caveat, as well as an unresolved point in nonviolence theory. Defining nonviolence simply in terms of the refusal of people engaging in political struggle to use physical violence against their opponents, the refusal not to dominate their opponents, and acting to deal with the causes of violence overlooks what can actually occur in nonviolent actions.

Nonviolent actions need to be closely examined, as some may be better described as ‘not–violent’ rather than strictly ‘nonviolent’. A ‘not–violent’ action could do psychological violence to an opponent, such as impugning their reputation or moral sensibilities, or do indirect physical damage to them, such as making noise calculated to deprive them of sleep. Gandhian scholar, Joan Bondurant, describes such acts as ‘symbolically violent’, and, referring specifically to acts such as chanting demeaning slogans at the opponent, argues that "...it is essential to refrain from using irrational elements in an emotional appeal to onlookers and opponents in an effort to gain adherents without an explanation of the nature of the conflict and the issues for which solutions are genuinely sought" (Bondurant, 1971: 128). As shall be seen, nonviolent action often involves dealing with multiple and simultaneously operative hermeneutics of the sometimes many actors involved, such as actionists from many different social groups, their opponents from government, bureaucracy, police, or other social groups with interests in preventing change, and many observers whose responses may range from complete indifference, to tacit but inactive sympathy, through to conversion to and even active engagement in the activist’s campaign at international, national, and local levels.

The issue of violence against property, such as breaking down barricades or gates, painting slogans or symbols on walls, or sabotaging equipment, is situational matter which is not central to the basic definition, though it is germane to differentiating between ‘not–violent’ and ‘nonviolent’ acts. A ‘not–violent’ act, such as sabotaging a bulldozer in a logging dispute may be redeemed by a ‘nonviolent’ act, such as repairing it and apologising to the bulldozer’s operator, who is seen as a victim of a manifestation of structural domination which effectively forces them to damage the forest. Tactical considerations also turn on the probability that shifting the mode of struggle from nonviolent to violent will return the initiative to the opponent, and "... shift attention to that violence and away from the issues at stake in the conflict and from the nature of the opponent’s system, and also away from the (usually much greater), violence of his repressive measures" (Sharp, 1973: 597). As shall be seen, Gandhian Satyagraha take this issue much further.

In order to more adequately explore nonviolence, a more precise distinction needs to be made between various kinds of nonviolence. This distinction will assist in focusing on nonviolence as an object of theoretical concern.

Ralph Summy has proposed a schema which distinguishes between Satyagraha, typified as ‘positive mode’ nonviolence, and Sharp’s ‘negative mode’ nonviolence (Summy, 1976). Another approach to turns on the differences between ‘conscientious nonviolence’ and ‘pragmatic nonviolence’ (Stiehm, 1968). Conscientious nonviolence derives from some religious or ethical objection to doing injury to one’s opponents. It holds that conflict is the result of a breakdown in communication between people, and that, through holding rigorously to one’s own moral or religious beliefs, the opponent may be convinced of the error of their ways through the persistence and voluntary suffering of the actionists. In contrast, pragmatic nonviolence "... is less concerned with meeting exacting ethical requirements as to means than it is with waging an effective, goal oriented struggle against a stronger opponent, or, minimally, against an opponent capable of inflicting severe damage if the conflict should become violent" (Stiehm, 1968: 452).

While positive or conscientious and negative or pragmatic modes of nonviolence are both nonviolent in a minimalist sense, they depart on almost every substantive issue, even though the specific tactics deployed can be identical. Comparing and contrasting these two modes of nonviolence highlights the role of moralism versus power in nonviolence.

I will now discuss Sharp’s approach in considerable detail and bring out some of its deficiencies. ‘Negative mode’ nonviolence, represented by Sharp’s work, is about the manipulation and destabilising of an oppressor’s power. According to Sharp nonviolence can be described in terms of ‘nonviolent action’ as a:

Nonviolent action for Sharp includes behaviour such as nonviolent resistance, passive resistance, Satyagraha, nonviolent direct action, as well as a wide range of specific tactics for actually waging conflict nonviolently, such as strikes, demonstrations, petitions, ‘go slows’, ‘work–ins’ and prayer meetings (Sharp, 1980: 218). He emphasises that it is not to be equated with psychological persuasion. "It is a group of sanctions and a technique of struggle that wields power..." (Sharp, 1980: 219).

Sharp’s view of nonviolence can be shown by his consistent reference to it as an ‘alternative weapons system’ (e.g., Sharp, 1973: 112 - 114; 452 - 453; 1990). Sharp has described nonviolent action as "...a means of combat, as is war. It involves the matching of forces and the waging of ‘battles’, it requires wise strategy and tactics, employs numerous ‘weapons’ and demands of its ‘soldiers’ courage, discipline, and sacrifice" (Sharp, 1990: 37). For Sharp, the central dynamic of nonviolence is basically ‘political jiu-jitsu’, in contrast to Gregg’s conception of ‘moral jiu-jitsu’, which the former term includes (Sharp, 1973: 698). While Gregg stresses the moral rectitude of the activist, Sharp, while not deprecating moral rectitude as an important component in nonviolence, repeatedly stresses the political dynamics at work in nonviolent struggle. Recognising the importance of appeals to the other’s moral sensibilities, Sharp does not see vocative elements in nonviolence as germane to its effectiveness. Morality, for Sharp, is a tool to be wielded as another ‘weapon’ in nonviolent struggle (see also, Sharp, 1979: 251 – 271).

Sharp’s view of power, and thence of the potential of nonviolence for successful political struggle, is a reversal of Weber’s view of power in that the oppressor is understood to be powerful only to the extent to which they can expect obedience to orders from the oppressed. If obedience is withdrawn, the oppressor’s power is weakened, even destroyed. The oppressor does not necessarily have power in the sense of having some material artefact, but only has power to the extent to which others in society allow them to have it. Political power, for Sharp, is thus diffused throughout society, and those often considered to be powerless can also exercise power through nonviolent action. The oppressor is confronted at the point where they often believe their power to be greatest, their political balance shifted, and their power used against them, hence the analogy with jiu-jitsu.

The crucial difference between violent and nonviolent conflict waging, for Sharp, lies in the unique dynamics which nonviolence brings to conflicts which, as he has extensively documented, directly challenge violent oppression. Sharp takes account of the suffering endured by nonviolent actors, but he sees it as another tactic useful to garner important third–party support for the struggle. In summary, Sharp maintains:

While not being opposed to pacifism as such, Sharp argues that most societies are not ready to seriously consider an alternative ‘weapons system’ were it promoted as if it were a form of pacifist ideology, or that only pacifists were sufficiently disciplined or righteous to use it properly or successfully. He argues that the failure of pacifist groups and war resistance movements to achieve the end of war reinforces his argument that nonviolence, especially deployed as a means of national defence, has to be developed and promoted as being the most realistic alternative to violent conflict waging now approaching its apotheosis in nuclear warfare. War resistance movements must become the initiators and promoters of alternative ways of waging conflicts and national defence which can stand the same rigorous examinations currently applied to many components of contemporary violent conflict waging strategies (e.g., Sharp, 1980; 1985; 1990).

Sharp’s theory of power, and of how and why nonviolence works, takes little account of the subtle and not so subtle ways in which power can be used to ensure that the allegedly powerless remain in their powerless condition. Sharp’s theory amounts to reversing Weber’s theory of power to argue that the powerful are powerful largely because the powerless let them get away with it. Sharp also accepts Weber’s general position (Sharp, 1973: 16 – 24). "The most important single quality of any government, without which it would not exist, must be the obedience and submission of its subjects. Obedience is at the heart of political power" (Sharp, 1973: 16). Withdrawal of obedience can literally mean withdrawal, as in strikes, or it can be active engagement by activists disobeying instructions to do or not to do certain things, such as holding prayer meetings or vigils when large gatherings have been prohibited by a regime, or ‘work–ins’ when factories or offices have been closed.

Brian Martin has contrasted Sharp’s theory of power with a more structural theory of power which, Martin argues, implies that certain structures (such as the bureaucracy, the state, or patriarchy) become so entrenched in society that they take on almost an independent existence of their own irrespective of the individuals who may occupy key positions of control within them:

Sharp’s theory of power is at its strongest when power is starkly differentiated, as in totalitarian regimes, or where the law or practice protested against is regarded by many, perhaps even a majority, in a society as offensive. But it fails when it is confronted with more sophisticated theories of power, especially those theories which take greater account what has been typified in this thesis as some of the existential effects of being dominated.

Sharp’s theory of power is also weak when confronted by non–totalitarian regimes, especially those in which there appear comparatively few objective reasons why people ought to rebel. Any theory of power in nonviolence has to take account of the existential dimensions of domination, which arguably act to dissuade, even prevent, people from recognising their dominated status, and acting to challenge or change it. At the same time, a theory of power in nonviolence needs to consider the structural aspects of domination, and how social structures act to maintain relations of domination.

Acts of resistance can be apparently trivial, occurring at an individual level where an individual in a subordinate role refuses to give deference to, or accord expected respect to a superior, or otherwise engages or avoids engaging in expected acts necessary to efficiently maintaining their superior’s power or activities. One tactic in this instance has been called ‘schweikism’ after the main character in Jaroslav Hasek’s novel, ‘The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War’ who gave all the appearance of eagerly complying with every order issued by his superiors in the Austrian army but was quite incapable of effectively or efficiently carrying them out (Hasek, 1974). These subtle acts contain their own hermeneutics from both actor’s perspectives, and their significance can be overlooked except when acts occur on a mass level involving many Svejks each subtly ‘monkey wrenching’ components of an oppressor’s administrative structures.

Another example can be briefly mentioned here to indicate some problems with Sharp’s overall approach. In arguing for nonviolence to be incorporated into, or even replacing, conventional means of national defence, he has consistently pitched his arguments at political and military elites (Sharp, 1985; 1990). He emphatically argues that his conception of civilian–based defence must remain ‘transpartisan’, and that the "... new policy [must not] be presented in ways that might alienate the conservatives and members of the existing defense establishment or the independent social groups and institutions that would bear responsibility for carrying out the future policy" (Sharp, 1990: 124; for an earlier, and similar argument, see Sharp, 1979: 251 – 271).

In contrast, Brian Martin, an Australian advocate of ‘social defence’, maintains that state military forces exist for purposes well removed from the strict role of national defence (Martin, 1984; 1993). Without actually acknowledging Weber, Martin agrees with Weber’s definition of domination being inextricably bound up with violence and the state. "It is not feasible to dismantle the military system of organised potential for violence without undermining the dominant power structures within states, including the power of capitalist and bureaucratic elites" (Martin, 1993: 29). Martin goes on to accuse Sharp of being exclusively concerned with "policy" and "policy–makers", i.e., governments and bureaucrats. While agreeing with Sharp that ‘social defence’ or ‘civilian–based defence’ should not be the preserve of any one group or tendency, Martin cautions that "...neither is it likely, á la Sharp, to be a neutral technique that can be taken up by just anybody with equal ease and value. Popular nonviolent action has much more in common with grassroots democracy than with government and military hierarchy" (Martin, 1993: 37). It appears problematic to suggest that, following Sharp, a regime would commence or authorise large–scale training in nonviolence as either an adjunct to or a replacement for conventional military defence without somehow trying to dissuade those trained from applying their training to dealing with problems such as environmental degradation, internal attacks on civil liberties (e.g., Queensland’s street march ban during the latter 1970s), or maladroit government decisions to site freeways or toxic waste sites in populated areas, all of which fall within Giddens’ conception of ‘life politics’.

Another criticism of Sharp’s theory of power, which reinforces Martin’s point about his neglect of structural or systemic perspectives, also points to Sharp’s strong conception of agency. "Sharp assumes that the actors involved make a choice about their behaviour: in his words, subjects agree to obey rulers, or they agree to disobey them" in the context of an assumed shared political culture or generally agreed upon set of values (McGuinness, 1993: 103). Further, McGuinness argues, Sharp does not take account of women’s experiences of power even though there is considerable evidence of women waging nonviolent struggle (e.g., Roodkowsky, 1979; McAllister {ed.}, 1982), though, to be fair, he makes extensive reference to women using nonviolence in, for example, campaigns for women’s right to vote (e.g., Sharp, 1973: 126; 133; 677). This implies that Sharp’s approach to nonviolence is imbued with a subtle, yet significant, patriarchal ontology. "Sharp is able to maintain his view steadfastly because the choices that confront individuals ultimately rest on abstract concepts – consent and power – which are removed from the circumstances, relationships, and lives involved" (McGuinness, 1993: 109). Because Sharp consistently overlooks women’s experiences of power and consent (the latter often not even entering into relations of patriarchal domination) McGuinness finds Sharp’s theory of power inaccurate and inefficacious as a basis for a theory, or even a practice, of social change. There is clearly scope for further development of a feminist approach to nonviolence, and some work has been done in this direction (e.g., McGuinness, 1993; Broke-Utne, 1990; Carroll, 1987 & 1972; McAllister, 1982).

To get beyond Sharp’s theory of power, attention should focus simultaneously on structural, symbolic, and existential aspects of domination (Knights & Willmott, 1983). It would be all very well to propose action on the basis of dissatisfaction with the routine operations of a society’s structures or institutions when those routine operations do not directly harm many people, though those dissatisfactions may provoke some people to action. Similarly, focusing only on the existential aspects of domination, such as attempting to erode mimesis and replacing it with self–respect or alternative experiences of authentic being not derived from the expectations or perceptions of the powerful, will neglect structural changes which have to be made in the routine practices of society’s institutions within which people act upon the world, and with each other. What is needed is a creative and reflexive tension between all components in the framework of domination discussed earlier in this thesis.

Having examined one of the most influential Western approaches to nonviolence, which is a ‘negative’ or ‘pragmatic’ form, the next section will focus on ‘positive’ or conscientious mode nonviolence, specifically Gandhian Satyagraha.

Gandhi’s approach to nonviolence, called Satyagraha, will now be examined as a classic example of ‘positive mode’ nonviolence which merges theory and praxis together into an evolving morally–laden approach to human existence, and not just human conflict. Satyagraha addresses many of the failings of ‘negative mode’ nonviolence, but adds its own complications because of its action–theoretic and vocative nature. What will be glimpsed in even the following admittedly fragmentary survey of Gandhian Satyagraha is that, as a significant example of ‘positive mode’ or conscientious nonviolence, it entails far more than the superficially convincing simplicity of ‘negative mode’ or pragmatic nonviolence, or even some Western interpretations of Gandhi and his campaigns often suggest.

Making this claim out requires stepping back a little from commonsense interpretations of what nonviolence meant for Gandhi. The Gandhian concept of nonviolence consists of four major components — ahimsa, satyagraha, tapasya, and swaraj (for a more comprehensive discussion of the traditional influences on Gandhi, see: Brown, 1989: 8 – 15; Chatterjee, 1983; Iyer, 1973; Basham, 1971; Bondurant, 1965: 105 – 145;). In Gujarati, ahimsa means ‘no harm’, and the concept is found in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist scriptures, all of which place nonviolence very high indeed in lists of moral virtues. Contained in the notion of ahimsa is the notion of advaita, which connotes a duality of all things. If all is one, then Gandhi’s concept of ahimsa leads to an absolute disinterested love for all beings. The word itself comes from the root hins, meaning to injure, kill, or destroy, and one of its derivatives, himsa, refers to the wish to kill. The negative prefix, a, connotes a renunciation of the wish to kill. In a series of weekly discourses on the Satyagraha Ashram Vows sent to members of his Sabarmati Ashram while in Yeravda Jail (or mandir, or temple, as he called it) in 1930, Gandhi wrote of ahimsa that:

In Young India published on August 25, 1920, Gandhi had described ahimsa in terms of universal love, an understanding very close to the Christian concept of agape:

Satyagraha is usually translated as ‘Truth-force’. Gandhi defined Satyagraha as ‘Truth-force’ and Truth as ‘soul or spirit’. Satyagraha, he wrote in Young India published on March 23, 1921, "...excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute Truth and, therefore, not competent to punish" (Gandhi, 1961: 1).

The term satyagraha comes from two Gujarati nouns, satya, meaning ‘truth’, itself coming from sat, meaning ‘being’ with a suffix, –ya, and agraha, meaning ‘firm grasping’. This noun comes from the verb agrah which is the root grah meaning ‘seize’ or ‘grasp’ with a verbal prefix of a indicating ‘to’ or ‘towards’. In general terms, the search for truth is a central duty of Hinduism. The Manu classification of duties places satya among the sadharanadharmas, or duties of universal scope and veracity. The Prasastapada classification of duties places satyavachana, or ‘speaking the truth’ as one of the generic duties. At the same time, the pursuit of God as set out in the Vedanta was the search for realising the truth of human unity.

As Gandhi developed his conception of satyagraha, he increasingly connected it with a Hindu conception of the Divine, one modality of which is truth. The Divine, for Gandhi, was an experiential knowing, advaita, a non–dualism between self and the Divine, called moksha. As he put it in his Autobiography:

Gandhi also tended to define being, or more accurately, becoming human as congruent with God understood as truth. As he described it in a letter to P.G. Matthew dated July 9, 1932, later published in Harijan on March 27, 1949:

It is important to make some allowance here for language differences and for the inherent difficulty of trying down Indian high talk in Anglo–Saxon terms. What Gandhi sought to do was link well–understood conceptions of satya with an outward ethical practice in which the individual’s search for truth was merged with the realm of social action. Writing in Harijan published on May 8, 1937, Gandhi asserted that: "The whole of the constructive programme — including handspinning and handweaving, Hindu Muslim unity, removal of untouchability, prohibition — is in pursuit of truth and non–violence" (Gandhi, in Bondurant, 1965: 110).

Even as a child, Gandhi was exposed to Jain teachings, and one of these was the doctrine of anekantavada, or the notion that reality is not one–dimensional but multi–dimensional. Different truth claims may then be referring to aspects of the same reality. In Young India in March, 1925, he wrote

The third component of Gandhian nonviolence, self–suffering or tapasya, again reverses Indian cultural understanding of suffering. Yogis underwent personal suffering as part of their religious discipline. But Gandhi essentially used suffering as a refractory tool to indicate the utter sincerity of those resisting what they took to be evil. For Gandhi, self–suffering was never endured simply for its own sake. It was endured especially when violent alternatives were also available. He explained this view in Harijan published on July 20, 1935:

The fourth component in Gandhi’s conception of nonviolence was swaraj, which means ‘self–rule’. Originally, swaraj referred to the autonomy of the moral self, the ‘control of the self’ and of one’s senses. Gandhi appropriated the concept and expanded its meaning to refer to Indian independence, or ‘Home Rule’ while not relinquishing its original meaning. In Young India published on May 8, 1930, Gandhi wrote that:

This double meaning Gandhi gave to swaraj caused consternation among both British colonialists and Indian nationalists from all the major religious and ethnically–defined camps. Both groups understood the idea of Indian independence, or Home Rule, but Gandhi consistently linked it to reforms in Indian society such as improvements in the treatment of women, the eradication of untouchability, and removal of Hindu – Muslim hatred. For Gandhi, swaraj was a condition to be created, and not granted or removed by rulers. On August 12, 1928, for example, during a speech at Bardoli, later published in Young India on September 13, 1928, he was reported as saying that:

That Gandhi’s position regarding swaraj remained consistent is evidenced by his constant criticisms of anger, intolerance, rowdyism, carelessness, and lack of discipline almost until his assassination in January, 1948. Indeed, his last fast earlier that month was begun in an attempt to stop inter–communal violence between Hindus and Muslims (Brown, 1989: 372 – 382).

Gandhi summarised the necessary conditions for successful satyagraha in Harijan published on March 31, 1946, in these terms:

He was acutely aware of the necessity of preparation and training for a campaign, and often exhorted his followers to adhere to the discipline of satyagraha before, during, and after a campaign, and to desist if impure motives or actions entered the campaign.

Gandhi clearly saw the methodological problem of differentiating between ‘not–violent’ or ‘almost nonviolent’ acts and genuine satyagraha. He attempted to resolve the problem of differentiating between ‘not–violent’ and ‘nonviolent’ acts in the following way. Upon learning of the Polish resistance to the Nazi invasion in September, 1939, he praised Polish violent resistance as ‘almost nonviolent’. He went on to explain his position in Harijan in August, 1940, in these terms:

It is a nice point as to what actually constitutes ‘almost nonviolence’. Gandhi implies that nonviolence could be defined in terms of the potential or actual violence against which nonviolence is deployed, so an ‘almost nonviolent’ action could be otherwise defined as a ‘less violent’ action than that of one’s more violent opponent. This leaves the definition of what is nonviolent open to serious abuse. Gandhi’s rationalisation is hardly helpful.

Notoriously, Gandhi’s rationalisation of ‘almost nonviolent’ acts described in terms of violent resistance against a vastly superior violent aggressor could lead to an interpretation which accepted the conventional view that Gandhi’s and Sharp’s views are in some way supplementary. However, as will be discussed in the next chapter, Sharp’s view of nonviolence could allow it to become a content–neutral technique of political struggle stripped of vocative elements which would then render it amenable for use by dominators. Unlike Sharp, Gandhi embeds the normative and vocative dimensions of nonviolence in his whole approach, necessarily restricting his approach from appropriation by dominators. If his opponents, or even less disciplined and committed supporters, took up elements of Satyagraha, but left other elements aside, for Gandhi, their actions ceased to be congruent with Satyagraha, something which often caused him grave concern, even anguish, and sometimes precipitated some of his celebrated fasts, especially towards the end of his life.

Satyagraha appears to be a convoluted and scattered position as opposed to a concise or systematic doctrine because it was developed in struggle by Gandhi in South Africa (see, e.g., Brown, 1989: 30 – 94; Huttenback, 1971; Payne, 1969: 89 – 283) and then India. The opening quotes of this section of the chapter demonstrate his recognition of this fact. As Gandhi’s understanding of satyagraha developed, so too his focus shifted more to ethical considerations to do with ends as means. The shift can be traced through noting that his fragmentary epistemological statements retreat from absolute statements about the nature of Truth towards statements which indicate that while he is searching for Truth, the means used are more important to facilitate the search. "Satyagraha is that mode of practico-political action through which we can try to realise or approximate to the ultimate identity of the practical and the ethical. It is an end–creating means and as such it partakes of the ultimate unity of the real or the practical and the ethical or the moral" (Pantham, 1986: 195 - 196).

Gandhi viewed all people as being capable of conducting their own searches for Truth. Human reason was taken to be the measure of all things. Joan Bondurant writes that:

In reconciliation between satyagrahi and opponent, a new situation is achieved in which both see themselves and their conflict in a new way. Means and ends largely collapsed together for Gandhi because the search for Truth was an ever–evolving one. The final end could never be known, but it had to be sought using a process and a technique which did not deny the Truth in anybody or deny anybody their own search. In the eternal ambiguities which burden the human condition, at least nonviolence, particularly in its Gandhian form, contains potential for maintaining principled action for change without adding the ambiguity of violence to an already very ambiguous situation.

Satyagrahis seek to reconcile activist and opponent, who are assumed to have more in common than they do not, through the activist’s voluntary acceptance of suffering in pursuit of their goals. Satyagrahis do not engage in struggle unless they have assured themselves that their motives are entirely pure, and even then are prepared to disengage should they be shown to be wrong or should their campaign violate their own moral standards. Though the voluntary acceptance of suffering can be over–emphasised in Satyagraha, what is attempted is a transcendence of the ego,

Also central to ‘positive mode’ nonviolence is what Gandhi described as a ‘constructive program’ or sarvodaya, which included independence from Britain (or swarj), but went much further to include the principles of an ideal society, which would be created partly by using Satyagraha, and which would emphasise political and economic decentralisation, self-reliance, adherence to truth, and the dignity of labour (Bondurant, 1965: 6; 146 – 188, esp. 180 – 81). Gandhi’s apparent obsession with seemingly trivial details such as village sanitation and general cleanliness, diet, adult education, or khadi (the making and wearing of locally produced cloth) is actually entirely congruent with his conception of sarvodaya and swarj. In addition to obvious health benefits, attention to sanitation and general cleanliness would help demonstrate to the colonialists that Indians could control and govern themselves, as well as instil a greater sense of self–respect among Indians. In Young India published on July 16, 1925, for example, Gandhi wrote:

In his constant campaigning for the emancipation of untouchables, whom he called Harijans, meaning ‘beloved’ or ‘children of God’, Gandhi called on them to renounce habits such as meat eating, consuming alcohol, and improve their personal cleanliness, all activities which contributed to their ostracism from orthodox Hindu society while he largely refrained from addressing the structural role of Harijans who tended to labour in activities regarded as unacceptable for higher caste Hindus. He sought to raise the status of some of those activities, such as latrine cleaning, to an almost sacred level to transform the symbolic nature of the task, but not its essentially low social or economic status, a point which brought criticism from some Harijans who wanted more radical economic reforms (e.g., Brown, 1989: 206 – 207; see also, Gandhi in Fischer {ed.} 1962: 132 – 137).

It can be seen then that Gandhi had a keen sense of the multiple hermeneutics employed by different actors in many of his campaigns. The khadi campaign, for example, would demonstrate to the British how reliant they were on Indian produce by removing it at the source, and markets, by refusing to buy foreign made cloth, shift the reliance of cotton merchants from overseas-origin income to national income, by using simple and readily to hand technologies provide the masses of rural and urban poor and unemployed with the means for greater self–reliance, income, and self–respect, erode barriers of caste, education, and community because anybody could spin and weave, and, particularly when coupled with the organisational base provided by the Congress Party, and an All–India Spinners’ Association established as an off–shoot of Congress in late 1925 together with smaller local spinning and weaving associations, be a means of instilling and spreading the discipline and commitment he believed were essential for genuine swarj. Initially, many British and Indian observers regarded Gandhi’s apparent obsession with khadi with derision and incomprehension, but the symbolism, and at times, the actual results of the khadi campaign quite soon came to be widely felt and understood (e.g., Brown, 1989: 202 – 205; Bondurant, 1965: 180 – 182), especially when coupled with boycotts of foreign cloth and those selling it, and even destruction of foreign cloth, the latter action Gandhi initially supported and later condemned (e.g., Brown, 1972: 313 – 315). Gandhi adopted traditional Indian dress made from his own khadi. He explained his position in Young India published on September 29, 1921:

An equally powerful multiple hermeneutic was actually semiotically created, as amply shown in famous photographs of Gandhi, clad in his dhoti and chaddar, striding into Buckingham Palace (in Fischer, 1982: frontpiece) and attending the Second Indian Round Table Conference in London in September, 1931, or with Viceroy and Lady Mountbatten on March 31, 1947 (in Payne, 1969: 207 – 8; 227; Brown, 1989: 258; 371), or in the famous London Evening Standard cartoon by David Low published on March 20, 1933, while Gandhi was enjoying one of his sojourns in jail. It shows Gandhi in his dhoti seated cross–legged in a cell, his spinning wheel at his feet, and his nose barely above a solid round table. Facing him, in full imperial regalia, is the British Viceroy, Lord Irwin, with a copy of a White Paper on India on the table. The caption reads: "The leader of the largest party in India being unavoidably detained in gaol, it is anticipated that special arrangements will be made to discuss with him the new Indian Charter of Liberty" (in Brown, 1977: 331; 1989: 271).

Winston Churchill, who always took a strong position against Indian independence, attacked the Labour Government’s India policies in the Commons on many occasions, and Gandhi’s dress, aside from everything else, prompted his acid comment, after learning that Lord Irwin was to meet with Gandhi in mid–February, 1931, after the latter’s release from jail on January 26, that he was revolted by "... the nauseating and humiliating spectacle of this one–time Inner Temple lawyer, now seditious fakir, striding half–naked up the steps of the Viceroy’s palace, there to negotiate and to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King–Emperor" (in Fischer, 1982: 348; Payne, 1969: 404; see also, Brown, 1989: 139; Brown, 1977: 189 – 190; on Gandhi’s use of symbolism, see also Payne, 1969: 354 – 356). By the middle of that September, Gandhi was in London ‘striding half–naked’ up the steps of Whitehall. Though Churchill’s comment deserves little recognition, and no doubt appealed to anti–independence interests in Britain, nevertheless it, and Gandhi’s dress, indicates how at least four hermeneutics were in parallel play simply due to Gandhi’s choice of clothing: wearing little in Gujarat was a traditional symbol of mourning; identification with the poorest peasants who Gandhi saw as his major power–base; wearing khadi as an important symbol of the wider agenda of swarj; and so–called superior Western contempt for Gandhi, his culture and society, and his political agendas. Further research on this matter would indicate still further hermeneutics in play, such as Muslim League activists and the general Muslim populace’s views of and responses to Gandhi’s dress, educated and bourgeois urban Hindu views and responses, Sikh or Tamil views and responses, responses from the small Indian Communist Party, and those of Indian–based British missionary, military, and administrative representatives (on the latter, see, e.g., Payne, 1969: 404 – 5).

Many writers have drawn attention to Gandhi’s evolving ideas about the ideal society for post–independence India (e.g., Gandhi in Fischer {ed.} 1962: 283 – 302), and have noted that these ideas were basically a nationally–grounded synthesis of anarchism, French syndicalism, and English guild socialism (Woodcock, 1972; Toscano, 1979: 75 - 87). These views, though valid from a Western perspective, seriously neglect the distinctively Indian origins and location of Gandhi’s thought and practice, and his views of what constituted swarj. Bondurant argues that Gandhi was, finally, his own person, at one and the same time, conservative, liberal, socialist, and anarchist, and none of these: "Once satyagraha is introduced into a system by satyagrahis who maintain their self–imposed and exacting requirements, the system becomes metamorphosed" (Bondurant, 1965: 188).

This admittedly brief examination of Gandhi’s conception and practice of nonviolence, called Satyagraha, has indicated the complexity of its origins and evolution as an action–oriented approach not only to the specific activity of waging conflict, but as an attempted holistic and vocatively energised praxeology of social transformation developed for a specific context but with potentially universal application as amended to suit other contexts well removed from India.

The purpose of this chapter has been to redress the paucity with respect to nonviolence in the three theoretical traditions discussed in chapters two, three, and four of this thesis. These traditions mishandled nonviolence as a topic for theoretic and empirical analysis, but their deficiencies can be used to make some conceptual progress, clarifies what is missing in nonviolence, and in turn indicate the need to differentiate between positive and negative modes.

This chapter has thus been largely concerned with explicating some of the main features of ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ modes of nonviolence, as presented by the two major strategists of nonviolence, Gandhi and Sharp.

Both an expanded and a restricted definition of what constitutes nonviolence has been proposed. A continuum of minimalist nonviolence was then suggested, using the term ‘creative conflict waging’ to indicate how negotiation, conciliation, arbitration strategies often precede, and also operate in nonviolent actions. Distinctions were indicated between ‘not–violent’, ‘almost nonviolent’, ‘symbolically violent’, and nonviolent acts, and related concepts to nonviolence such as passive resistance and civil disobedience. A schema of nonviolence was used which enabled important general distinctions to be made between ‘negative’ or pragmatic mode nonviolence, represented by Gene Sharp’s approach, and ‘positive’ or conscientious mode nonviolence, represented by Gandhian Satyagraha. A more detailed discussion of central elements in both modes drew out important features and deficiencies in both modes with respect to their theories of power, their action–theoretic and vocative components, their approaches to the notion of agency, and the need for more detailed research on the multiple hermeneutics often needing attention to more clearly understand what is in train when nonviolence, especially on a mass scale, is used in struggle.

Attention will now turn to an evaluation of the efficacy of the revised framework for interpreting domination when applied to the specific case of nonviolence.