CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE & "RESISTANCE" -A Symposium: A Statement
Walzer, Michael
The following statement by Michael Walzer was sent to a number of persons for comment. Both the statement and comments appear below.—ED. THE SHEER GHASTLINESS of the American war in Vietnam...
...6. In discussing the second and third justifications of civil disobedience, it is important to stress the moral relevance of tactical considerations...
...And both civil disobedience and civil non-cooperation as described above can probably be called legitimate forms of opposition...
...The preservation of life and the safety of the innocent are increasingly significant objections to the use of violence as nonviolent means of social action gradually become available...
...It is important only to people who lack the moral stamina to oppose anything that's not positively monstrous...
...only now is civility itself a genuine obligation— at least for those who participate or expect to participate in the democratic process...
...A fortiori, civil disobedience is justified in all such cases, and probably should be tried first, but there is no obligation to act publicly and nonviolently against authorities who make this sort of action intolerably dangerous for all participants...
...on each side...
...an unsuccessful, especially a ludicrously unsuccessful "strike" might do more harm than good...
...This self-limitation is exemplified in several ways, above all by nonviolence during the disobedient action and by nonresistance to police enforcing the law...
...5. do citizens of a democratic or partially democratic society have a right to obstruct decisions taken or supported by a majority of their fellows...
...It means: "You can have your way, but you had better think twice and decide how badly you want your way, for you are going to have to put us in jail to get it . ." Here the disobedience has a clear political purpose and is or ought to be limited by collective decisions as to how that purpose is best pursued...
...Civil disobedience is sometimes necessary in a democracy precisely because elected governments, as well as nonelected governments, can do obnoxious or atrocious things...
...At the same time, however, the argument that the U.S., for these or other reasons, is not democratic at all is plainly wrong...
...Violence can be defended by the same argument...
...Here success clearly depends on numbers and organization...
...We would have to forego the moral heroism of civil disobedience in order to build the largest possible movement against the war...
...The crucial questions are: will such actions help to end an immoral war...
...Only now is its limited character congruent with its social environment...
...The willingness to "resist" and all the passions that accompany that willingness have grown enormously during the past year...
...Anyone committed to struggle toward some goal is also committed to struggle as effectively as possible and if at all possible actually to reach that goal...
...It is not obvious that a single movement can or should encompass the two groups, but if the two are in conflict, if they cannot grow together, then surely the smaller group would have to give way...
...is a partially democratic society—partially for two reasons: first, because gross inequalities of power exist among various social groups...
...Like the argument that the war in Vietnam is genocidal, it is the expression of moral distress or distraction, but not of critical intelligence...
...For democratic politics doesn't work by majority vote alone...
...Third, as a form of limited coercion on the model of a strike: the disobedient citizens say, "You can pursue this policy if you like, but without any cooperation from us...
...I want to suggest the terms in which such a justification might be attempted and also some of the difficulties involved in the attempt...
...it is sensitive also to the relative weights of interest, commitment, zeal, etc...
...What we have to do before we can justify civil disobedience is to explore the relations between disobedient citizens and all those others who oppose the war more moderately (or more fearfully) or who are just worried about it...
...There is no obligation to become a martyr...
...Like other forms of self-expression, this is apt to seem selfish, though moral selfishness—or pride —is sometimes the only resort of a principled but lonely man...
...THE SHEER GHASTLINESS of the American war in Vietnam forces all of us on the Left to think again of civil disobedience...
...Active obstruction of officials carrying out government policy (if it is sustained and not a short-term demonstration) is something else again...
...Given this crucial limit, civil disobedience in a democracy can be justified in three ways: First, as a purely personal protest, a form of moral self-expression: the disobedient citizen says to his fellows, "I experience this law or policy as morally degrading...
...I cannot accept it whatever the consequences (though I do accept the consequences...
...It is also exemplified by the public character of the action and the public explanations offered in its defense (though this cannot always be the case, for example, in the violation of laws like the Fugitive Slave Law, where danger to others is sufficiently great to require and justify secrecy...
...A minority that feels strongly about some issue often gets its way (and often ought to) over an apathetic majority...
...The recent "Call to resist illegitimate authority" is a misnamed defense of civil disobedience...
...do they legitimize all lesser forms of opposition and so increase the size and impact of the antiwar movement...
...We would resist the government, then, whatever the consequences, for our own sake if for no one else's, not in the hope of building a movement, but in despair of doing so...
...For the larger movement may grow so slowly and the brutality of the war escalate so rapidly, that finally many of us could stand it no longer...
...So long as the war continues, moral anxiety and humiliation are inherent in our very citizenship—and in all our daily comforts— and there is no more attractive way of relieving these feelings than to disobey the government that carries on the war, and to do so publicly, deliberately, forthrightly...
...8. Even assuming the tactical argument comes out that way (I am not at all sure it does), that may not be conclusive for any particular individual...
...But if we must think about civil disobedience, then surely we must think clearly about it, and if we choose civil disobedience we must justify our choice in moral and political, as well as emotional, terms, in terms of its consequences for others (and for the antiwar movement as a whole) as well as for ourselves...
...No one can be morally justified in acting (however heroically) in ways that defeat his own stated purposes...
...But surely that time has not yet come...
...13 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE & "RESISTANCE" 3. The U.S...
...It is, and ought to say it is, a call to resist the immoral acts of legitimate authorities...
...Civil disobedience can be a way of demonstrating emotional force or depth of interest...
...second, because there is no effective popular participation or representation in foreign-policy decision-making...
...1. In nondemocratic societies the issues I are fairly simple: uncivil disobedience is justified whenever it is used by or in the name of oppressed or excluded social groups and whenever it really helps or can rationally be expected to help end the oppression or democratize the society...
...What civility requires is that disobedience, when it is thought necessary, be of a carefully limited character, that it aim at specific changes (not necessarily minor ones) in law, policy, or social structure, but not at a total transformation of state or society...
...Partially excluded groups in partially democratized societies are justified in effective or potentially effective acts of civil disobedience—for example, in the American civil rights struggle—but they may not be justified in acts of violence unless there is clearly no civil recourse, all other means have failed, and so on...
...insofar as our help is required for its success, the policy shall fail...
...A Given the character of the war in Vietnam, it seems to me that arguments about civil disobedience today ought to be primarily tactical...
...The truth is bad enough, but honesty requires us to say, not that bad...
...It has led some of us to plan or engage in kinds of civil disobedience far more serious than those in which we were enthusiastically involved during the early years of the civil rights struggle...
...It is difficult to see how sustained obstruction can remain within the bounds of civility...
...Hence it is always important to talk about the likely political effects of any proposed disobedient act, even if this means nothing else than more or less disciplined speculation about an uncertain future...
...are they persuasive acts...
...My purpose is only to begin a discussion, and I won't pretend to be certain about everything I say...
...or do they alienate people from the movement as a whole and make prowar activity easier...
...Second, as part of a democratic political campaign, a collective effort to persuade other citizens of the rightness or wrongness of some law or policy or to register extreme intensity of feeling...
...They certainly have a right to oppose such decisions, even after they have been taken, 14 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE & "RESISTANCE" and to demand their reconsideration...
...2. The obligation to act civilly rather than uncivilly increases in direct proportion to the progress of democracy...
...it is implicitly revolutionary, challenging the moral authority of the political system itself and not merely the rightness of particular laws or policies...
...4. In democratic or partially democratic societies, civil disobedience comes into its own...
...Now it is not a question of challenging Southern sheriffs but local draft boards, not of sitting in at lunch counters but at the Pentagon, not of breaking obnoxious laws but opposing a national policy—and doing that in time of war...
...Nor is it clear, as is sometimes said, that these are justified only in extreme cases: the recent New York teachers' strike was an act of opposition of this sort, directed against a repressive but not morally atrocious labor law...
...Here there is no commitment to a movement or a cause and no direct concern with the social outcome of the action...
Vol. 15 • January 1968 • No. 1
