Photo of December 4, 1967 draft protest, San Francisco. (photo: AP)
n response to my last column on the call to direct action
by Daniel Ellsberg and others, one commentator - # Shorey13 - suggested
that without changing the system, "our protests are just a form of
political masturbation." It's an old canard and could easily be taken as
an excuse to stand on the sidelines, though I do not think Shorey
intended that. In practice, the argument will fade away if enough of us
learn how to use mass civil disobedience to change the system - and the
political culture - as we go along.This was the pragmatic, non-ideological, post-Gandhian approach many of us took against segregation, the suppression of free speech, and the American war in Vietnam in the 1960s. We called it tactical non-violence - I even taught it in a free university course at Stanford - and it worked to bring political change in the real world.
Though we did not know it at the time, the underlying idea goes back to an aristocratic 16th century French judge, philosopher, poet, and humanist named Étienne de La Boétie. He was, as it happens, born in the medieval village of Sarlat, not far from where my wife Anna and I are now growing old in the Dordogne. Local linguistic purists pronounce his name as he probably did, [bwa'ti], while a plaque on his higgledy piggledy old house commemorates his life. But few here or anywhere else know of the political time bomb he left behind with his short, brilliantly reasoned "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude."
Writing his tract while still a law student, La Boétie raised questions that almost no one had ever bothered to think about. Why, he asked, do ordinary people obey their rulers? Why does the vast majority consent to their enslavement by a small minority? And to borrow an exquisite phrase from the right-wing American anarchist Murray Rothbard, why does the majority give the tyrant its civil obedience?
Drawing on his extensive knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome, the young Frenchman began with an insight that remains wonderfully subversive. Even absolute tyrants rely on the tacit acquiescence of their subjects. "It is the people who enslave themselves, who cut their own throats, who, when they have the choice of being either free men or slaves, give up their freedom and take up the yoke if they accept their ill, or rather pursue it," he wrote. The choice is not the tyrant's, but their own.
"Resolve no longer to be slaves and you are free. I do not want you to push him or overthrow him, but merely no longer to sustain him and, like a great colossus whose base has been pulled away, you will see him collapse of his own weight and break up."
Why the "stubborn willingness" to remain subservient? Does it come from fear, cowardice, or constraint? La Boétie thought not. Subservience prevails primarily because the mass of people grow accustomed to their lot. "It is unbelievable how people, once they are subjected, fall so quickly into such a deep forgetfulness of freedom that it is impossible for them to reawaken and regain it," he wrote.
"They serve so freely and so willingly that you would say to see them that they had not lost their liberty but won their servitude." The tyrant encourages the consent with bread and circuses, mystery and magic, religion and ideology. He presents himself as defender of the public good and surrounds himself with a hierarchy of supportive subordinates who share in the plunder and rush to defend his tyranny. But most people go along because they no longer know how to do anything different.
La Boétie never published his youthful discourse and few knew of it until the Protestant Huguenots used it to defend their rebellion against France's Catholic king in the religious wars that swept much of Europe. Anarchists of both right and left subsequently found inspiration in La Boétie's ideas, as did the historic sages of nonviolent passive resistance - Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, and Mahatma Gandhi. What a perplexing legacy! From religious blood-letting and anarchist bomb-throwing to the liberation movements against colonial rule in India, racial segregation in the American South, and American intervention in Vietnam, the little known La Boétie has left a profound mark on a wide and contradictory range of human struggles.
Sadly, as I wrote in "How Washington Learned to Love Nonviolence," La Boétie's latest enthusiasts have now extended his influence to imperial power plays to topple Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, tame the Arab awakening, and install pro-NATO regimes along the borders of the former Soviet Union. But we can learn from their strategies and tactics even as we oppose their Washington-backed meddling.
La Boétie framed the problem, and whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Daniel Ellsberg have heroically offered the beginnings of a solution. But what about the rest of us? Do we stand on the sidelines and play with ourselves?
Do we stick a toe in the pond by signing petitions, sending checks, and periodically casting too often worthless votes? Or do we fully withdraw our consent and add needed muscle with massive nonviolent actions against the invasive and imperial National Security State and the Big Money groups who destroy our planet and impoverish the vast majority of us?
I would love to know where you stand.
One final note. Yes, please blow whistles at demonstrations and check out Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility at www.peer.org, all with a tip of the hat to # peterkofod in Denmark, # grandma lynn in New Hampshire, # seeuingoa, and # Secular Humanist, wherever he or she may be.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and
the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in
London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now
lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big
Money: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How To
Break Their Hold."
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