Gandhi's Legacy

This is the second installment of my three part series on how empires are brought down. If this is your first time visiting, or the first you’ve read of this series, my purpose here is to discuss how empires fall, particularly how they are brought down from within. In the first essay I discussed violent revolts, and in this essay I shall tackle nonviolent rebellion. The third essay, entitled The Third Course, will sum up and discuss what I feel are the key factors in whether or not an empire is brought down successfully.

First, I am going to discuss my own feelings about nonviolence. That will be the first question that comes to mind for anyone who reads this. I consider myself to be a conditional pacifist. That isn’t a conventional term, so give me a minute to explain that. The tradition definition of pacifism can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism For the most part, this fits me, as I do not believe violence is a legitimate way of solving problems. I am not a violent or aggressive person, and given my druthers I would and will live my life in as peaceful away as possible. That said, I am a child of the streets and as such am wise enough in the ways of the world to recognize that pacifism is a luxury. I have the highest respect for the Amish and the Mennonites; they are an amazing group of people. But they are able to live as they do because their neighbors are generally peaceful and orderly people who do not want to hurt them or take what they have. If that were to ever change, they would either have to let the intruders have their way or fight to stop them. In the world of Genghis Khan and his ilk, the Amish would simply have been wiped out.

Likewise, I am able to live my life peacefully at the moment because I live in a fairly ordered society. If I were suddenly plunked down in the middle of Darfur, I would immediately lose the luxury of being pacifistic if I wanted to keep life and body together. Therefore, I consider myself a conditional pacifist: I will not harm you, I will not be aggressive towards you, and I will never initiate aggression against another human being. But, I also believe in self-defense. If someone broke into my house tonight, I would have no compunctions against shooting them dead. Likewise, if someone invaded us with the intent of taking over our land and us, I would support fighting them and be ready and willing to fight myself.

That is what I mean by conditional pacifist.

But that is not the purpose of this essay. Its purpose is to explore the non violent route of bringing down empires, how and if it works, and what the advantages and drawbacks are. So, here is the essay.

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It happened one morning in early September, the 11th to be exact. No, not that September 11th –this one was in 1906. I have no idea what the weather was like, but perhaps it was a cool, crisp fall day just as our 9/11 was. On this day, a man did what had long been considered impossible: he brought down an empire. And he did it using unconventional means. There was no war, no attack, no violence of any sort. He simply walked away. And a few million others followed him. The beleaguered, battered, tottering British Empire couldn’t withstand a loss of support of this magnitude, and it simply crumbled.

The relevant question for this paper is, was what Gandhi did an anomaly or it a useful tool for bringing down an empire? I would argue that the answer lies somewhere in between.

There can be little doubt that Gandhi left behind an impressive legacy. Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks. The Children’s March. The Freedom Riders. Powerful images that evoke powerful feelings. The entire Civil Rights struggle in the U.S. and countless other social and liberation movements in other countries drew from the teachings of Gandhi. Without Gandhi, there might never have been the great social upheavals of the mid-20th century.

By now, astute readers will have noticed an important difference between these movements and the subject of this essay: these were movements for social change and the subject here is social revolution. The distinction is a very important one. Social change is relatively easy compared to revolution. The goal of such a movement is to change the society within its currently existing paradigms. The goal of a revolutionary movement is to change the paradigms themselves, thereby creating a new society. In the former example, the existing Empire merely changes a few of its rules to quiet the rabble rousers. After it’s over, the same Empire exists underneath. Basically the end result is a face lift of the prevailing Imperial structure. The goal of a revolutionary movement is not to change the Empire, but to bring it down.

Social Movements need surprisingly little support to succeed. The rule of thumb I was taught in my upper-level sociology courses was 3%. That’s all it takes to change the face of a society. That’s the reason some Equal Rights movements have advanced so rapidly. Take the LGBT rights movement, which has made incredible gains in only two decades. LGBT individuals make up at least 10% of the population of the U.S., and well over half are politically active. Add in their supportive friends, families, and other straight allies and you have a powerful force for change.

But again, social change is not social revolution. As an example, could 3% of an Empire’s population walking away bring it down? Probably, but it wouldn’t happen –except in the extraordinary cases were, like the British Empire in 1906, said Empire is all ready in rags and there is nothing to stop them. For one thing, were would they go? It’s easy for one person or a family, or even 100 of them, to walk away. It’s not so easy for 10,000 or 100,000 to do so –much less a few million. Those people still have to have food, income, clothing, and so on and so forth. Unless there are alternatives to those provided by the Empire, they will still be dependent upon it to some extent. It’s impossible for that many people to simply walk off into the woods.

There is one other example of people bringing down an Empire by primarily non-violent means. But this is an example of how NOT to do it, because said Empire was replaced by another that was far worse than the first. Two millennia ago, give or take a century, a young Jewish carpenter was executed in a rather hideous manner. His followers didn’t just disband, as was hoped for by the ruling elites of the time. Rather, they grew and became such a popular movement that the Empire was toppled. And thus, was the Roman Catholic Empire born with the passing of Rome. There is no doubt that this one was worse than its predecessor –after all, the Church not only plunged the world into the Dark Ages for over 1500 years, but they also burned some of the most priceless works in human history, destroyed the cultural heritage of millions, started countless bloody wars, repressed well over half the human race, and burned over 5 million women at the stake (just in the first 3 centuries), many for “crimes” that included midwifery. Ok, so that was my Catholic Church rant. I’m entitled to it –I am pagan after all!

In conclusion, if walking away from an empire won’t bring it down, and picking up arms won’t necessarily bring it down, then what are the necessary ingredients in a successful revolution? That will be the subject of my next essay, The Third Course.

As an aside, I would like to suggest that walking away is probably the best course to take if one is going to survive the collapse of an empire. To have the best chance of survival, one needs to be as far as possible from the seat of Imperial Power, and also be as independent from the services of the Empire as one can be.