Direct Action and Democratic Values

...Now it can be argued that the sitins would have been morally defensible and deserving of support no matter when they had occurred—if, say, they had occurred twenty years earlier...

...For there is no other way to keep alive what is deemed to be the only legitimate form of power...

...Such institutions—one thinks immedi ately, though not exclusively, of the labor movement—fill the void between the individual and the state, between protest and mechanical politics...

...If, in carrying out its decisions, democratically arrived at, the majority tramples on my equal rights, I am justified in obstructing those decisions...

...It is interesting to note that rightwing and left-wing socialists alike rejected the anarchist concept of direct action...

...Whether such expression does represent a higher morality than the cause is an interesting question...

...There is a tendency among some "movement" people to defend forms of direct action that clearly misfire or damage the cause on the grounds that these nonetheless serve a higher morality, that of spontaneous human expression...

...Among virtually all other sections of the radical movement, this conception of direct action was rejected in favor of another: namely, that direct action was a supplement to parliamentary action...

...Something of this notion has already appeared on the scene...

...Rent strikes have—more or less—been legalized in New York State...

...ing in that action may derive important existential benefits: meaning may be added to thir lives and outlets for creative impulses may open...

...Even though the electorate may constitute a majority of the total population, denial of equal rights to the minority is inherently undemocratic and therefore invalidates the minority's obligation not to obstruct the implementation of the majority's policies...

...What is questionable is the right of a minority physically to prevent the implementation of national policy...

...Whom will it alienate, whom will it win over...

...But the existential or personal meaning presupposes the objective reality of the struggle...

...These are the mass organizations which a totalitarian state invariably destroys or takes over in its consolidation of power...

...It is also to deny, despite all of the perversions of political democracy one may cite, that there has been more public debate about, and vocal op...

...Staughton Lynd, in his Liberation article ("Nonviolent Revolution or Coalition Politics," June-July issue) helped crystallize the subtle putschism that characterizes this mood (fortunately, it is not yet an ideology...

...The unions engage in it through strikes and picket lines...

...The prominence achieved by coercive direct action, because of its dramatic successes in the South, may have obscured Rustin's point that it is applicable only in limited situations...

...Rallies, banners, speakers—all are legitimate...

...The only embodiment of this form in the United States was the IWW...

...Nonetheless, if at the time of the 1960 sit-ins, the majority of Southerners were still segregationists, the majority of the country was not...

...First, as a substitute for parliamentary action...

...More specifically, direct action as a mass movement—not merely as scattered protest—was most impressive and successful in the struggle for universal suffrage...

...They would have a healthy respect for the democratic mass movements of people, even when they felt those movements were short-sighted, or vacillating, or bureaucratized...

...If direct action calls attention to the injustice, it is symbolic...

...Hand-in-hand with this view of direct action goes what I would call "The Theory of Permanent Demon stration...

...Musing over the April 17th March on Washington, Lynd suggests that the next time the marchers should take over "their government," if "only for a few minutes...

...Bayard Rustin has oftent stated that direct action may call attention to an injustice but only in certain instances can simultaneously eliminate it...

...As it also turns out, most of the demands raised by the sit-in movement —mainly in the field of public accommodation— have been legislated into law...

...II Several analogies suggest themselves with regard to the civil rights movement in this country...

...To be sure, there are other forms of direct action or social dislocation which are not officially sanctioned...

...Direct action which alienates potential allies, which aims to differentiate itself rather than to attract others, soon succeeds in isolating itself...

...I have referred often to the radical and socialist movements of the past because the "new left" today, after all, regards itself not as liberal but as radical and at least socialistic...

...known and not without weight: the decision to pursue the war in Vietnam was not democratically arrived at...

...It is then prone to accept the notion that given the relative passivity or indifference or cowardice of the liberal or reform movements, it must act in place of them...

...Their right to protest against American policy has not been trampled upon (though exercising it may be unpopular...

...In Germany, for example, Rosa Luxemburg called for mass action precisely because the workers were denied equal suffrage...

...But if revolutionary symbolism is to be the aura of direct action, then at least the democratic vision should be kept clear...

...In general, this approach has been confined to the Syndicalist movement, reaching its peak in the myth of the general strike: halt production, and power will fall from the bourgeoisie into your own hands...

...1 In the radical movement, direct action (mass action, social dislocation) has been developed in two forms...

...From this it follows that politically successful direct action is not simply a form of self-expression but must be aimed at arousing and winning specific support from specific groups...

...Here, too, it should be noted that the advocacy of mass action by left-wing socialists was directed at large-scale workers movements or social democratic parties...

...Otherwise, what happens if power is hitched to the symbols...

...Does Lynd believe that they represented the views of anything approaching a majority of the American people on the question of Vietnam...

...the democratic elections are therefore shams...

...On the contrary, the public opinion polls all revealed substantial majorities in support of Administration policies...

...This is not to stay that it solves the problem of power...

...on the contrary, it does not confront it...

...They irritated the confused middle-classes because, while the Communists could not or would not themselves rule, they wouldn't let anyone else...

...Abstractly speaking, of course, any protest against injustice is always morally supportable...

...While ultimate problems of morality are being pondered, one is obliged to act morally, that is with a sense of responsibility, toward the movement itself...

...The need to put content into formal freedoms, as the "participatory democrats" recently (and democratic socialists all along) have urged, is no less urgent...

...The fact it that it is a matter of national policy to prosecute the war in Vietnam...

...I am not arguing that direct action has no place in a society where the right to vote is guaranteed...

...In concrete struggles there are always exceptional situations, unprecedented circumstances...

...For without a substantial political movement behind it, it cannot hope to effect change at the point where it must occur in public policy...

...The historical experience, as I understand it, can be summarized in this way: with regard to revolutionary overthrow, socialists believed that in a tyrannical regime, direct action or social dislocation was the only course...

...The moral effect of the march was enormous, but the real change occurred at the point when Congress passed the Voting Rights Act...

...I know of no efforts to organize such youths to campaign for abolition of the 2-S status...

...The change will continue as the Act is tested in the enforcement...

...Direct action of the self-expressive kind aims for visibility, not power...

...dispensable prerequisites for minority protest...

...I mean deliberately to exclude, at the outset, the purely conscientious form of direct action—that is, acts of protest conducted by individuals as a matter of private conscience or morality, regardless of their political impact...

...It was not viewed as suitable for everything by everybody at every time...

...Only through mass action could that right be extracted from the ruling classes...

...Opposition to segregation may have been passive, enforcement of integration certainly was...

...But I do feel the obligation to determine what forms of direct action are legitimate in terms of democratic theory...

...Or, the U.S...

...An example of this process is the current anti-draft campaign, the proponents of which admittedly do not expect to build a movement that can change American policies in Vietnam...

...The sense of individual purpose comes from engagement with others in the external challenge to maximize the potentialities for human change within our given time...

...V Direct action which is not related to a strategy for building a mass movement has within it a tendency toward elitism...

...the power structure controls the mass media...

...If an individual refuses as a matter of conscience (be it religious or political conscience) to serve in the armed forces or to pay his income tax, that is one thing...

...Certainly no one can question anybody's right to demonstrate at train stations or to protest troop movements...

...Individuals participat...

...It was represented, I think, by the Assembly of Unrepresented People, and by the recent slogans on behalf of "parallel government" and "counter-institutions...

...That, objectively, no other options were open to youth who opposed the war may or may not be true...

...We may take on others, voluntarily— but then we enter into different relationships, to which we ought not be involuntarily committed in advance...

...Others, not waiting for such a government to be born, have already declared peace...

...Are we engaging in an act which endangers not only our individual safety, but the prospects of the movement...

...There is not space to describe the nature of the struggle that went into causing the shift, except to say that it was not primarily based on direct action...

...If he urges these policies on others, advocating them as a strategy for social change, then he has stepped into the political realm, and consequently he invites political judgments...

...If we accept the definition of direct action as nonparliamentary, nonelectoral forms of struggle for social change, then it is clear that practically nobody of consequence opposes direct action...

...Again, the point is that direct action is effective to the extent that it secures a general political recognition, the latter being embodied or nailed down in society by legal in 26 struments with superior power behind them...

...It was not undertaken as a substitute for, or in the absence of, a major political movement...

...That is the mandate, the responsibility, each of us accepts...

...It does not seem to me that the Berkeley students could draw on the sit-ins for justification...

...In criticizing these institutions for their bureaucratic deformities and lack of militancy, we can easily forget that their very existence, independently of the state, is crucial to democracy...

...These benefits cannot be dismissed...

...One difficulty here was that the anarchists themselves were unwilling to accept that power...

...They surely have implications for the relationship of direct action to democracy, and not merely bourgeois formalist democracy, either...

...If I join a group in a lunch counter sit-in, I may experience a religious exaltation, the next man may be paralyzed with fear, the next may be seething with violence...

...Does one, for example, have the "right" to engage in an act which evokes hostility to the civil rights movement—or which discredits the peace movement...

...Indeed, the difference often is denied by some spokesman of the "new left...

...We do not expand and deepen these rights by refusing to recognize them when they exist—or by devaluating them when, because they are breached and undermined by their fair-weather friends, we are compelled to take to the streets...

...What is the goal to be achieved...

...It is important, and pertinent to democracy, to evaluate whether given forms of direct action lead to the building or strengthening of institutions which are capable of representing and struggling for the interests of aggrieved classes—not just in dramatic spasms but with unrelenting tenacity...

...decides to sell large quantities of wheat to the Soviet Union, and dockworkers refuse to load the ships...

...In actuality, "direct action" for the IWW turned out to be mainly a series of general strikes, mostly in small Western towns...

...That is, it becomes neces sary to have demonstration after demonstration, to keep the masses perpetually in motion in the streets...

...The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional right of citizens to sit-in, and even President Johnson has acknowledged that it took street demonstrations to get civil rights legislation through Congress...

...Symbolic direct action has wider possibilities in support of social change...

...This, it seems to me, is the justification for those forms of direct action which are coercive, though nonviolent, in effect (e.g., sitting-in at a lunch counter, which imposes on the owner the choice of integrating or closing down, foreclosing his preference for the status quo...

...Opposition, therefore, becomes individual...

...Even to discuss these matters is embarrassing, because they are so irrelevant to the struggles ardund us...

...But it was not made a fetish...

...If democracy means majority rule, it also means that the majority is under an obligation to protect the rights of the minority...

...But "participatory democracy" —with its striving toward consensus and lowest-common-denominator politics, and with its tendency to mute opposition and channel hostilities—is no substitute for the formal guarantees of the right to vote, to dissent, to organize an opposition, to seek leader ship and to denounce leaders (which assumes you can identify them...

...Hopefully, they will provoke counterarguments as well as refinements...

...But real change occurs when the dominant social organism acknowledges the demanded right and incorporates it into some effective legal instrument...

...One may oppose that policy and the majority supporting it...

...The decision to pursue the war has been made by a democratically-elected government and endorsed by a democraticallyelected Congress...

...if it simultaneously eliminates the injustice, it is likely to be coercive or obstructive...

...Another question in the same vein was raised by the Berkeley students who blocked trains carrying troops...

...It was therefore symbolic— and not very symbolic since it was so far removed from the injustice...

...Each contemplated action was to be judged on its own practical, strategic merit...

...My point is that among intelligent people the issue is not: for or against direct action per se...

...The latter are hardly major areas of social conflict where issues of power are involved...

...position to, the Vietnam War than to any war in a century...

...I understand it has been suggested that a counter-government be established to negotiate peace with the Vietcong...

...The following article is adapted from a speech delivered at a conference of "Turn Toward Peace...

...In the process of self-expression, to what extent do we take the destinies of others into our own hands...

...government, but his ideas may count for something in the "new left," particularly among the counter-institutionalists...

...A brilliant illustration of this process— and a monumentally successful direct action—was the Selma march...

...What gives the disaffected sons and daughters of the middle class the right even symbolically to become the government...

...It is in any case irrelevant to the main point, which is not what strategy the student movement should pursue with regard to the war, but the relationship between direct action and democratic social change...

...Questions of morality and democratic ethics become closely interwined...

...Perhaps the point becomes clearer if the historical setting is changed...

...Here I am reminded of Leon Trotsky's remark about the tactics of the German Communists in the immediate pre-Hitler period—namely, that they "succeeded only in irritating all classes instead of winning any...

...But in the overwhelming majority of these efforts there were no sequels, and no permanent or durable organization was left behind...

...They irritated the bourgeoisie by continued sniping, not followed up by energetic moves toward power...

...The counter arguments are well * This must be qualified: the draft does discriminate against working class and poor youths who, lacking money for college, cannot get student deferments...

...Even Negro pacifists participated on the grounds that so long as armies existed, they should be run without discrimination...

...But at that point, our common concern is to integrate the lunch counter, and each of us relies heavily on that assumption—on that common external goal...

...As a democratic socialist, I do not necessarily confine myself to those forms of direct action which have been legalized by the society...

...nonetheless, democrats in such a situation would be concerned with whether they had the visible support of majoritarian institutions and organized groups in the society...

...This is a complex subject, about which it is difficult to formulate hardandfast rules...

...Right wing groups lie down in front of the troop trains...

...It is a common external goal, whatever inner meanings this goal may have for the individual, that brings people together into a movement and defines their responsibilities to each other...

...The precedent might be the campaign of Negroes to integrate the armed forces...

...And it is the relationship be tween these institutions and the state at any given time that defines the potential for change—reformist or revolutionary, peaceful or violent, democratic or elitist...

...facts about the war have been concealed, public opinion has been manipulated...

...Granted that in a revolutionary situation, it may be difficult to take a head-count to see whether you have majority support for a seizure of power...

...The problem, of course, is that the masses, like everyone else, tire of the streets...

...In fact, when direct action was most successful, its purpose was to achieve parliamentary—that is, legislative—successes...

...But support for the cause is the basis of the human movement and the associations it fosters...

...The distinction depends not on the form of the direct action but on its function in a given situation...

...But in almost any area of life, direct action in the South has had a legitimacy precisely because of the absence of universal suffrage—that is, the disfranchisement of the Negro population...

...But what one may not do is, in effect, declare his views to be the majority view, and begin to implement his own policies...

...Perhaps the point is belabored, but not irrelevantly...

...They saw it, instead, as a weapon to which the masses were compelled to resort because they were otherwise cut off from democratic expression...

...Often, though not always, this question will bear on the tactical efficacy of direct action...

...It opposes power, but does not grapple with it...

...Unlike great theater, arenas of struggle cannot be reproduced at will to provide a framework of emotional involvement...

...The public opinion polls —and I grant they are faulty—indicate a large majority support for months...

...Indeed, this was the fate of earlier direct action attempts...

...As Bayard Rustin properly replied (Partisan Review, Fall 1965): "Under whose mandate are the 20,000 Washington marchers entitled to occupy 'their government' for even ten minutes...

...I am arguing for a correct understanding of the relationships of direct action to political power...

...Will the given action bring us closer to that goal or divert us from it...

...it is still important to know what relationship is desired...

...The minority has demonstrated in cities throughout the country, has confronted Administration spokesmen in scores of teachins at major universities, has received widespread publicity (much of it distorted, but much of it not) in the mass media, has organized two mass marches on Washington— in short, has openly and vigorously opposed official national policy to a degree inconceivable in a totalitarian society...

...they are central to the radical philosophical tradition which values engagement and struggle...

...For example, the sit-in a few years ago on the Triboro Bridge was obstructive of traffic but not of the New York segregation it was meant to protest...

...Even in a parliamentary regime, they considered it necessary in the struggle for legislative success...

...Rather, the issue is: what kind of direct action, at what time, and for what purpose...

...About this form of direct action, there is much to respect but little to say...

...The opportunities for the desired relationship may not always be present...

...If the following observations seem tendentious or dogmatic, they are intended as notes, not as last words...

...Let us assume that the man in the White House is Franklin D. Roosevelt and, with the approval of Congress, he has decided to send troops and supplies to support the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War...

...First of all, it is clear that the direct action phase of the movement, launched in the South, began at a time when official national policy had shifted from acquiescence in segregation to the view that it was wrong in principle...

...On the other hand, to deny my arguments is to deny that there is a difference between bourgeois democracy and totalitarianism...

...One may—and I think must—work in many ways (including direct action) to change that policy and to win over a majority of the people...

...They chained themselves to lamp-posts, filled the jails, and were masters at social dislocation...

...Inevitably, there comes along a force calling for the restoration of order—and all classes unite (actively or passively) in putting down the disorderly...

...This fact alone, where it obtains, negates the claim to political democracy and bars the redress of grievances through representative political structures...

...they cannot be kept constantly in turmoil— especially if the demonstrations fail to produce concrete gains...

...The democratic freedoms which some are prone to dismiss so lightly as "formalistic" have been precisely the in...

...Finally, they wore out the patience of the workers through continual demonstrations and street fighting...

...To deny all of this is to deny that we live in a class society wherein wealth and power are concentrated, and political democracy is qualified by economic oligarchy...

...That decision, though it may be politically wrong and offensive, does not deny equal rights.* Under such circumstances, how can a minority, in effect, impose its will on the majority...

...The right of Southern Negroes to obstruct the functioning of public accommodations and other institutions is clear because the effect of the majority segregationist policy was to deny them rights which everyone else had...

...On the other hand, it is quite possible that, had the sit-ins been launched earlier, they might have provoked the reactionary forces into brutal suppression, without arousing significant support...

...As it turned out, the sit-ins helped to create a massive civil rights movement and to split the white power structure...

...III It must simply be presumed that the goal of direct action is to change public policy...

...There is an exception to this principle...

...Rather, it was part of a strategy to move social forces in certain directions, to secure massive support...

...The reality of social conflict is a matter of tangible victories and defeats, of ground won and lost, of institutional changes which become the starting point of the succeeding generation...

...This was a criterion by which direct action was to be judged...

...I doubt that Straughton Lynd or his followers constitue a clear and present danger to the U.S...

...I will be talking about direct action as a nonparliamentary, nonelectoral form of struggle for social change—that is, as a political act...

...In another context, I might be interested in encouraging the fullest airing of all these feelings...

...Even the most sympathetic observers must recognize that because of the necessarily limited scope of the campaign, the most militant forms of direct action (e.g., draft-card burnings) can raise demands no more radical than that draftees be permitted alternate service in Vista, the Peace Corps, etc...