NON-VIOLENCE-THE TRUE REVOLUTION

...They want social progress and more democracy, both to enjoy at home and, as it were, to export abroad...

...Before making an attempt to suggest a solution for the problem which is thus set before the American people, it is necessary to state what might be called the other half of it, and this leads to a brief reference to the nature of the Russian or Communist phenomenon...

...The fact that we say our intentions are benevolent, even if it could be taken at full face value, would not essentially alter the demand for genuine independence...

...However, we are also told that common sense requires us to look well after our military "defenses" until Russia comes to its senses or is at least forced to make terms...

...Products at a good price, and not Sake serious trouble over the fact hat in the name of the "American System' of free enterprise, we shut their products out of the free market by our tariffs...

...It is well to nail it down that there would be a revolution even if Russia did not exist...

...In one aspect this revolution is a nationalistic revolt against foreign rulers, mainly the Western imperialist nations...

...It is also a spiritual struggle for the soul of the "one world" which must presently come into being if there is to be any "world" at all...

...In Communism the ostensible aim is still democratic, the liberation of man...

...One phase of the answer is simple enough...

...But that was an altogether exceptional situation...

...This revolution which is sweeping over great sections of Asia is essentially the creature or child of the West, including the U. S. Thence for decades came the ideas of nationalism, independence of peoples, the "revolutionary right" of peoples —to use Abraham Lincoln's words— to "dismember or overthrow" existing government "whenever they shall grow weary" of it...

...But how is it that Communism or the Stalin regime which is certainly totalitarian and expansionist, militarily powerful, and sometimes brutally terroristic, has achieved not only so much power in Asia but has commanded so much devotion as the liberator of the backward peoples and oppressed masses, such impressive political and moral initiative...

...There is a sense in which Communism also is a creation, a child, of the West...

...there, so they immobilize and stultify themselves at home because here also they try to ride two horses going in opposite directions...

...And just as progressives stultify themselves in Asia and fail to accomplish their aim of supporting the people's movements because they get involved in helping maintain the military or "defense" position of the U.S...

...One is that they support the popular revolutions which we disown, impede, or seek to strangle...

...This is the end of the republic of Washington, Lincoln, and Wilson...

...The struggle has its military, economic, and political aspects...

...It is paradoxical that this should be so since traditionally we have stood for anti-imperialism in the Orient...

...Having defeated Japan, and other nations which have been weakened and forced to a greater or less extent to withdraw, we would undoubtedly in any event now be establishing the American power position in the Orient even if Russia were not in the picture...

...This is an historical terrain consisting of traps and nothing but traps...

...Paradoxical as it may seem, the one sure way to get Stalin out of there is for us to give up the idea that we have to do that job and get out of there ourselves...

...At the moment of writing, labor's top representatives are setting up lusty yells of protest against this development as personified in General Electric's Wilson who pointedly ignored them in organizing the mobilization effort...

...Instead ot the tax form he sent the Collector of Internal Revenue a copy of the Gospels, Henry Thoreau's "Euef" on Civil Disobedience," and a three-page letter explaining his refusal to support rearmament...

...We must do exactly the opposite of what MacArthur proposes and not put ourselves in a position where we can make war in Asia or use Asiatic peoples in our wars...

...Moreover, the Russian revolution did put an end to feudalism and capitalism in Russia...

...Muste...

...Space permits the citing of only a couple of illustrations...

...Russia has therefore adopted the revolutionary Asian child whom we disown and seek to destroy, and multitudes, whether mistakenly or not, recognize Russia as mentor and liberator...

...But what will our conduct in Korea do to make Oriental peasants believe in America, and understand and covet the values of the democratic way of life...

...Take off the burden, break the shackles, and then the creative energies of the people can express themselves, and will in an age when the material requirements for the good life are in man's hands as never before...

...S How has this come about...

...It is incalculably important that we who own not far from half the wealth of the world should understand that this is so— and not just understand it intellectually, but in the very marrow of our bones...

...This is what Gandhi pointed out some years ago: "There is no escape from the impending doom save through a bold and unconditional acceptance of the non-violent method...

...Again we ask, what will the revival of the Japanese military establishment, the re-emergence of old-line Japanese military and industrial leaders, and of the spectre of Japanese forces moving on the Pacific waters and the Asiatic mainland do to promote popular, democratic revolutions in Asia or to convince Asiatic peoples that the United States is an anti-imperialist and peaceful nation...

...IV The withdrawal of American military pressure from Asia and elsewhere would be an act of non-violent revolution...

...In practical terms this means that the business and financial interests must be appeased...

...For reasons that need not be elaborated here Russia is interested in abolishing rather than maintaining the status quo in the non-Communist world...

...That is Item No...

...It is my conviction that the answer to this question must be NO...

...Moreover, if it had not been Korea, it would have been some other place...

...1 on their agenda...

...Another aspect of the revolution is economic—the revolt against poverty...

...Mac-Arthur was right in a certain sense in suggesting that Orientals understand power, especially Western power: they understand it only too well...

...It involves what is euphemistically called running "the calculated risk" of war at a time when technological development has made war equivalent to suicide...

...Muste is the author or, several books, including "Non-VioleiieKi in an Aggressive World" and "Not fc|^ Might...

...And this requires that we give up the attempt to establish a power position in the Orient...

...In a sense this decision of the hungry that they will no longer accept hunger as the decree of fate or the dispensation of an all-wise if somewhat inscrutable God, is the most important and basic thing which is taking place...

...This in turn means that they must have their profits...

...But for the achievement of this aim Marx and Lenin took not only the new technology but the West's materialism and secularism, its concept of man as producer and as exploiter and plunderer of nature, its mechanization, its amoralism, its reliance upon violence, and forged these into a philosophical system and a revolutionary instrument...

...We cannot accept the Communist-led revolution as the "true" revolution...

...at the reaUsatil^M we are not understood, are suspected and even hated by mag| tudes of Orientals...

...these in turn gravitate toward us...

...Russia and Communism, in the second place, have their hold in Asia for two reasons...

...For present purposes it is convenient to deal with three protagonists in this struggle—Russia and its satellites, Asia, and the United States...

...But the fact that the Russian-Communist bloc threat exists in the Orient convinces American policymakers—and probably most of the American people, at the moment— that, whatever might be the case otherwise, it is now a simple matter of self-defense and sheer survival for the U. S. to make the establishment of an impregnable power position in the Pacific area a major concern...

...What I have been saying presumably throws some light on the question why it has apparently been so easy for Stalinist propaganda to pin the labels of imperialism, terroriza-tion, and war-mongering on the United States...

...The United States has to live up to its anti-imperialist tradition, the "hands-off" policy in the Orient, now when the doctrine has to be applied not to the English, French, and Dutch, but to itself, when its own ox is gored...

...We must oppose it...

...On the other hand, the contemporary revolution is also the product of Western technology and industrialism, not least those of the United States...

...The United States, which began as a small nation, born out of i revolt against foreign rule and equipped with an ideology in which such terms as liberty, equality, and revolution were familiar, is now itself an extremely powerful and wealthy nation...

...Whatever may be the case in terms of abstract theory, in terms of contemporary political realities the job cannot be done in this way...

...Muste first submitted this manuscript as a solo article entitled "The Three Revolutions," but enthusiastically agreed to make it part of a debate with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., whose commentary on Mr...

...We must counter Soviet propaganda by propaganda on behalf of the democratic way of life and help the so-called backward peoples to develop a democratic society...

...War mobilization requires "national unity...

...The $64 question thus comes up: Can this combination of encouragement and/or leadership of the popular revolutions and of military readiness to contain and if necessary destroy Russia or the pseudo-revolution, be achieved...

...Stalin has fused these with the Russian power-state...

...Perhaps it was due to their recollection of the relatively favorable position labor enjoyed under Roosevelt in World War II...

...Perhaps most basic of all is the fact that being a gigantic nation-state we regard self-preservation as the first law of life—that is, regard it as our first concern to maintain and extend our power position as over against other nation-states, since it is axiomatic that it is the only way in which the national interest, security, and honor can be maintained...

...When we are really in there pitching for the peasantry instead of the landlords and native capitalists or warlords, Communism will lose its attractiveness...

...If the American people refuse any longer to conspire against themselves by submitting to American militarism, that also will be an act of non-violent revolution...

...The horses it is proposed to team up are going lickety-split in opposite directions...

...E. D. The revolution which the American imperialists and war-mongers would destroy is in good hands...

...We are in several respects "sitting on top of the world...

...and they are pledged to wholehearted support of the war mobilization program...

...had offered no resistance in Korea, this would have improved the power position of the Communist bloc for the time being and in a sense "encouraged" aggression...

...It is a policy of a global death-struggle which involves "commitments" on practically every mile around the circumference of the planet—"commitments" which certainly cannot all be met...

...It is taken for granted that the war-renouncing clause in the Japanese constitution will be removed or somehow made inoperative when that country becomes a sovereign nation again and a partner in the democratic bloc...

...We must inevitably cry out against it...

...But we who believe in the values of democratic society and the Judaeo-Chris-tian tradition cannot rest there...

...It is embarrassing and tragic America should be engaged in this power operation when the one thing on which all except a minority of reactionaries in the Orient are united is that they want all Western nations out of there—definitely and quick...

...and must be given control...

...The child, in a very genuine sense, of our idealism and skill, conceived in our spiritual tradition and fashioned by our hands, has been brought to birth, and we disown it...

...How soon would it have to abandon the exposed bastion of Japan, subjeerl| the promise of eventual "liberation^ To turn back to our main thesis, then, when we seek to maintain or establish a military position in the Orient in order to contain Russia, we automatically cut ourselves off from the popular or democratic movements there, since their first and unanimous aim is precisely that Asiatic peoples shall be left free to work out their own destinies...

...It is against the Western powers...

...There will then be a "true" revolution to set aside the people's revolutions which are sweeping the world, and to perfect and spiritualize them...

...The states that are today nominally democratic will either have to become frankly totalitarian or, if they are to become truly democratic, they must become courageously nonviolent...

...Present policy involves the attempt to establish a power position in the Orient when the era for that has irrevocably passed...

...An appalling swing to the right is in progress...

...The fact is that the drive to the right is on, and labor, in agreeing with the interests behind the drive that the nation must be mobilized for possible atomic war and that this has to be the primary consideration for all, has immobilized itself for effective resistance to antidemocratic measures and trends...

...For saving and extending the democratic way of life...

...There is much discussion of the forthcoming treaty with Japan which John Foster Dulles has been negotiating...

...But the revolution is also democratic, a revolt which is a rising up of human beings who want to be free, who want to be accorded the dignity of human beings...

...Thus we find that in the end only the most reactionary elements—the actual or potential Fascists, as the Communists at this point accurately allege—are really our allies...

...But it is not due, as some think, to the inadequacies of Truman or Acheson which presently Taft or Eisenhower or another Franklin D. Roosevelt will remedy...

...That the United States, with this policy, is fumbling, vacillating, inept, and hysterical in discharging its role as a world power, as is freely expressed in allied countries—is a fact...

...It is a seat we very much want to keep...

...They should not have been taken by surprise at this as they apparently were...

...It must share in the devastation of Korea and the slaughter of Koreans...

...Now if we were Communists or fellow-travelers we would rest there, saying, "Q...

...It must even permit, or rather stimulate, the rebuilding of the Japanese military establishment and the revival of industrial elements, for the destruction of which so much American blood was shed but yesterday...

...But now that the revolution is here the United States wants none of it...

...Democracy and violence go ill together...

...Total war will mean the extinction of democracy—totalitarianism...

...Is it the formula for removing the menace of Russia...

...So desperate is this longing for "democracy" and "liberation" that paradoxically many regard equality even under dictatorship as a boon and by the same token the dictators have to proclaim constantly that they are "liberators" and bring the boon of "people's democracy...

...This is the monster of pseudo-revolution, the false Messiah, which we confront, before which the U. S. becomes visibly hysterical...

...III The other reason why Russia has a hold in Asia is, as I have pointed out, that Russia offers to help get or keep the Western powers, including the United States, off the necks of Asiatic peoples...

...But how...

...They will tolerate no more...

...To put it another way, is this not handing Asia over to Stalin...

...Another way to describe the world revolution in its economic aspect is to say that it is a revolt against landlordism and feudalism, and an effort of non-industrialized peoples to catch up with the technologically advanced ones...

...More and more it is non-revolutionary or anti-revolutionary regimes such as Chiang Kai-shek's, Bao Dai's, Syngman Rhee's, Franco's, Salazar's, Peron's, and those of other Latin American dictators, which are our most dependable allies—those on whose votes we can really count in the U. N. In the economic field we want to invest surpluses in countries where labor is cheap, which will furnish us raw materials cheap, buy our finished A. J. MUSTE, ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church and executive secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, is one oi the n a t i o n's foremost pacifists...

...There will then be a "true" revolution to set over against the Stalinist pseudo-revolution, to purge and redeem it, to give the peoples of the Communist bloc a genuine alternative, and so to break the power of the pseudo-revolution as no form of reaction and militarism will ever be able to do...

...They have had a long, painful, and humiliating experience of it...

...It must exercise a new—of course, "democratic" and benevolent—imperialism in the Orient...

...It is essentially counter-revolutionary...

...It is in its Eastern and Southeastern portion that the masses are at the moment most obviously in vigorous and often violent motion under the impact of the revolution which is sweeping the world...

...It cannot be denied that if U.S.-U.N...

...It will triumph, and a phase of its victory will be the destruction of the arrogant American capitalism and imperialism...

...Muste's position appears on Page 14, followed by a brief concluding comment by Mr...

...To "defend" ourselves against Russian "aggression" or the strengthening of its power position to equip it for more effective "aggression" in the future, we do such things as we are doing in Korea...

...In view of all that is going on today under our very eyes at a time when not a single bomb has yet fallen on our land, it seems unnecessary to argue this matter much further...

...Let us begin with Asia...

...imperialism, in the Orient at the very moment in history when the former imperialist nations are being made to get out of there...

...If the Asiatics will not or cannot take care of the Russian problem, do we think uninvited and despised intruders in Asia can...

...The earth's peoples will then have a choice not between this "peace" propaganda and that "peace" propaganda beamed at them from this stockpile of atomic bombs and that one on the other side, but between "peace" talk and peace itself...

...When they have a chance to get it, Asiatics will prefer equality under freedom to equality under dictatorship...

...is felt, and that is everywhere in the world...

...He was in the news re cently when he re, fused for the third successive year to file an income tax return because pay ment of taxes would contribute to the armaments race...

...It is due to the fact that there is "no hiding place" down this road at all...

...But then what becomes of our "security" out there...

...Before American laborites and progressives conclude that these proposals are fantastic and mad—or assume the existence of a radical sanity of which the world's people are not capable—let them reflect upon the alternative, i.e...

...But, the more militarization, including the necessary psychological preparation for war, the less democracy...

...Thus committed to keeping things essentially as they are, we tend to be for the status quo wherever our influence, or "pressure" as others tend to regard it...

...Accordingly we now feel uncomfortable with and hostile toward radicals and revolutionists...

...The regime can furthermore pose before the non-industrialized peoples as having found the way by which a backward country can rapidly be industrialized so that it can win a victory in a World War and challenge the mightiest military rivals, even if it cannot provide its people with a high standard of living and must "temporarily" impose a harsh dictatorship on them...

...The trend is in exactly the opposite direction...

...The stark realities of the situation make it inevitable that if the U. S. undertakes to maintain a military position in the Orient, it will resort to the rearmament of Japan...

...Is it "protection" they would get by such inclusion or is it the U. S. which would get the protection if any, while Japan would be made into a threat and "provocation" which China and Russia would resent and feel bound to remove...

...The keystone of anti-imperialist policy in Asia— and the same would be true anywhere else—is that the Asiatic peoples should be granted genuine independence and should no longer be subjected to the frightful coercion of being drawn into the suicidal global conflict of Russia and the United States...

...The U. S., it is urged, must not impede but must take the leadership of the popular movements for a better life, at the very least must give them all possible encouragement and help...

...The one sure way to turn all Asia over to the Kremlin, at least temporarily, is to make democracy synonymous with American intervention in Asiatic affairs...

...Partly, surely, because this also is in a sense our child, an illegitimate child born out of wedlock—a sort of lower self, objectified and come to menace us...

...The keystone of democratic policy at home is that the people should be genuinely independent, i.e...

...We must put the oppressed peoples on guard and aid them against this false Messiah...

...No amount of American propaganda to the effect that the Russians do this for their own purposes, accurate as the charge may be, will impress the Asian masses...

...Or to persuade them that the United States is more peace-minded than Russia...

...Thence came the concept of the dignity of the human person and "the proposition that all men are created equal...

...should no longer be subject to the coercion of being drawn into the same suicidal global conflict...

...Militarism is the same crushing load, both in a material and in a spiritual sense, on the backs of Western peoples that colonialism in its various forms is on the backs of Eastern peoples...

...Do labor leaders see any possibility of such a conjunction of circumstances in the present era as in the Rooseveltian...

...all elements must work together harmoniously to ward off the common enemy...

...The first and indispensable requirement then, for a sound American policy in Asia, is to cease supporting reactionary regimes and the status quo generally and to give our friendship and support to the popular movements for national independence and the liberation of the peasantry...

...Labor and progressives generally can regain their freedom and power to work for democracy at home as well as against oppression in Asia, only by withdrawing support from American militarism...

...We are attracted toward those elements which have vested interests...

...Let us reflect upon this when we feel surprised and hurt, as many Americans do...

...Partly it is a racial or social revolt of the colored peoples against segregation and humiliation...

...Asia on the terms on which we are at present operating is—as Korea demonstrates-a trap for American amies and a grave for American boys...

...And in case of general atomic war, what commitments could the United States live up to...

...Among progressives in the U. S. there is unanimous agreement that the problem presented by the ongoing revolutions in the Orient and the Communist menace cannot be solved by military means alone...

...on the fantastic course which American policy is following today...

...In the first place, I think I have made it clear that save in the most temporary and superficial sense we have no "security" in Asia to give up...

...And, as the cases of India and Japan which I have cited suggest, middle class and professional elements may share this sentiment of peasant and proletarian elements, because, among other things, it is by no means certain to what extent American milij tary forces out there constitute even physical protection or defense, and to what extent provocation and exposure to attack...

...II If we were to take seriously the prescription that we must not impede but befriend and support the popular movements in Asia and satisfy their aspirations for liberation, the first thing we would have to do would be to abandon the attempt to establish our military domination, i.e...

...Now the moment one begins to think seriously about implementing the proposal of American progressives that the United States stop supporting reaction abroad and instead befriend the masses seeking food and freedom, he realizes that it would take a virtual revolution at home also to bring this about...

...Many thoughtful Japanese today are troubled as they contemplate the inclusion of Japan in the American defense or power sphere...

...T$ bare outline of an answer goes likt this...

...This movement at home and our alliances with dictators abroad are two faces of the same coin...

...It must range itself against the revolutionary elements which by definition oppose both foreign rule, even though it be American, and the native ruling elements which find it to their interest to "do business" with the foreigner...