Without going out and checking it appears to be true of every successful nonviolent movement. During Ghandi’s time there was absolutely a violent independence movement, and Mandela literally started out as a “terrorist” (and those more active orgs were still around when he rebranded as non violent). Why would the powers that be give in to a group that doesn’t threaten them otherwise? Certainly not because they suddenly grow a conscience. If it were just Dr King and a bunch of nonviolent protesters - even a lot of them - why would the American government listen? It’s pretty obvious they don’t actually have to listen to people’s opinions, or they wouldn’t be supporting Israel and ICE would either be abolished or at the very least very, very different. Nope, gotta be materialist about these things. Peaceful protest alone has never achieved anything and even when it’s successful tends to only be partially so, because the peaceful protesters are there to negotiate and have more moderate demands to begin with - consider MLK v Malcolm X and exactly how much further they each would have liked the civil rights movement to proceed - obviously neither would have been happy with where it ended but I suspect Malcolm X would have been less so and would have driven it further.
The peaceful protest side also helps! The state would much rather make concessions to peaceful protest than they would to an armed one, because the latter challenges the state’s monopoly on power. The existence of a peaceful protest lets the state pretend to ignore the armed one, while still giving into their demands. Of course the state would rather make no concessions at all, so both are necessary.
I mean, yes, that’s what I was saying, but you’ve named the problem right here. Peaceful protest doesn’t challenge state power, it can reform things but not make radical change, so if radical change is necessary (it is), peaceful protest serves only to distract from truly effective movements.
I’m saying that if you don’t have the numbers for armed resistance to actually win, a parallel peaceful protest movement can still give a path to get concessions (but peaceful protest won’t get anything by itself).
And taking advantage of that phenomena to quell people’s outrage is very explicitly something the bourgeoisie do to keep the more extreme movements from being able to expand to the point that they CAN make the actual, needed, radical change.
In the same vein, social-democratic reform in Europe was a release valve to deter more radical, soviet-backed movements from gaining strength.
Yet another reason for the fall of the USSR to be a tragedy; it removed any incentive for western-capitalist governments to even pretend to care about workers.
I’ve never thought about it that way. And now I need to think about that for a while.
Without going out and checking it appears to be true of every successful nonviolent movement. During Ghandi’s time there was absolutely a violent independence movement, and Mandela literally started out as a “terrorist” (and those more active orgs were still around when he rebranded as non violent). Why would the powers that be give in to a group that doesn’t threaten them otherwise? Certainly not because they suddenly grow a conscience. If it were just Dr King and a bunch of nonviolent protesters - even a lot of them - why would the American government listen? It’s pretty obvious they don’t actually have to listen to people’s opinions, or they wouldn’t be supporting Israel and ICE would either be abolished or at the very least very, very different. Nope, gotta be materialist about these things. Peaceful protest alone has never achieved anything and even when it’s successful tends to only be partially so, because the peaceful protesters are there to negotiate and have more moderate demands to begin with - consider MLK v Malcolm X and exactly how much further they each would have liked the civil rights movement to proceed - obviously neither would have been happy with where it ended but I suspect Malcolm X would have been less so and would have driven it further.
The peaceful protest side also helps! The state would much rather make concessions to peaceful protest than they would to an armed one, because the latter challenges the state’s monopoly on power. The existence of a peaceful protest lets the state pretend to ignore the armed one, while still giving into their demands. Of course the state would rather make no concessions at all, so both are necessary.
I mean, yes, that’s what I was saying, but you’ve named the problem right here. Peaceful protest doesn’t challenge state power, it can reform things but not make radical change, so if radical change is necessary (it is), peaceful protest serves only to distract from truly effective movements.
That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying that if you don’t have the numbers for armed resistance to actually win, a parallel peaceful protest movement can still give a path to get concessions (but peaceful protest won’t get anything by itself).
And taking advantage of that phenomena to quell people’s outrage is very explicitly something the bourgeoisie do to keep the more extreme movements from being able to expand to the point that they CAN make the actual, needed, radical change.
In the same vein, social-democratic reform in Europe was a release valve to deter more radical, soviet-backed movements from gaining strength.
Yet another reason for the fall of the USSR to be a tragedy; it removed any incentive for western-capitalist governments to even pretend to care about workers.
Further reading on this topic
Well I see the point in that, too. I’ll note that though Malcolm became peaceful, and mlk2 they both ended up eating lead.