Brian Martin - Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

A few writers and activists have supported a strategy involving sabotage. [18] . The most notable are David F. Noble, Progress without People: In Defense of Luddism (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1993) and the radical environmental group Earth First!, for which key books are Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood (eds.), Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching (Tucson, AZ: Ned Ludd Books, 1988, second edition) and Earth First! Direct Action Manual (Eugene, OR: DAM Collective, 1997). See also The Black Cat Sabotage Handbook (Eugene, OR: Graybill, n.d.) and the magazine Processed World . This approach has the advantages of encouraging action rather than passivity, of attacking the direct manifestation of oppression without hurting people, and of causing economic harm to the owners of the technology. There are also some severe limitations to this approach. Because most saboteurs do not want to be caught, using sabotage fosters secrecy and individualism and makes groups vulnerable to infiltration. It can alienate potential supporters. Opponents of monkeywrenching routinely claim that it causes danger to life and limb, such as to workers in timber mills at risk due to hidden nails in trees. This rhetoric highlights the importance of not only being nonviolent but of being seen to be nonviolent.

For the purposes here, a key problem is that sabotage is negative: by itself, it offers no picture of a desirable society. The idea of technology for nonviolent struggle, by contrast, is based directly on such a picture.

There are some principled saboteurs, such as the peace activists who hammer missile nose cones, pour blood on military files or damage rail lines used to transport nuclear materials, and who after taking action then fully acknowledge their responsibility and surrender themselves to police. [19] . See for example Per Herngren, Path of Resistance: The Practice of Civil Disobedience (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1993); Liane Ellison Norman, Hammer of Justice: Molly Rush and the Plowshares Eight (Pittsburgh: PPI Books, 1989). I thank Andreas Speck for helpful comments concerning sabotage. These sorts of actions can be thought of as a form of civil disobedience, with the primary impact occurring through symbolism rather than economic disruption.

It would be possible to investigate the most appropriate technologies for engaging in sabotage, whether carried out covertly or openly, as part of a grassroots nonviolent struggle against repression, aggression or oppression — acknowledging the view by some activists that sabotage is incompatible with the principles of nonviolent action. I have not done this here, so this remains an area deserving further investigation.

Suppose you have control over lots of money for research and development and want to spend it in the best way possible to serve military purposes. What areas have priority? The usual practice is simply to look at current funding and to assess which areas are producing valuable results. Some unproductive areas — unproductive for military purposes, that is — can be dropped, and some new areas can be added, drawn from new funding proposals.

Prior funding patterns provide little guidance in setting priorities for science and technology for nonviolent rather than military purposes since there has been almost no funding for nonviolent struggle, much less for relevant science and technology. There has been a little funding for social analyses of the feasibility of social defence, but that’s about all.

Another possibility is to examine the use of science and technology in actual nonviolent struggles, and then to assess whether there are technological improvements that would aid the struggle. This might involve looking at the use of radio in Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the role of agriculture and food delivery systems in Palestine during the intifada. This approach is valuable in gaining a feeling for particular research projects, but it does not provide an overview of the areas of science and technology most likely to be useful for nonviolent struggle.

The next possibility is to look at proposals for research. To get an overview, it is useful to look at the Dutch book Research on Civilian-Based Defence, which describes in detail 24 areas for major research projects into social defence. [1] . Giliam de Valk in cooperation with Johan Niezing, Research on Civilian-Based Defence (Amsterdam: SISWO, 1993). The background to this book is described in chapter 10. Here is a sketch of these projects.

An inventory of organisations and social structures, such as government bureaucracies, corporations and pressure groups, examining how an aggressor might seek to control them and how they might be strengthened to resist takeover.

An examination of centralised versus decentralised coordination of social defence, surveying studies of resistance to the Nazis during World War II, guerrilla warfare, military strategy and other areas.

Collection of information about technologies of repression and what can be done to oppose them. (This is discussed in chapter 8.)

An examination of the influence of the new information technologies on the capacity for both repression and social defence. (This is a central theme in chapter 5.)

An investigation of databases and personal files, how they might be misused and protected, and the social effects of measures for dealing with them. (This topic is dealt with briefly in chapter 5.)

An assessment of the value of instructions for workers in government bureaucracies on resisting occupation by an aggressor.

An inventory of key people and positions in government bureaucracies in relation to social defence.

A study of the reception to the idea of social defence, surveying social defence advocates, media, government bureaucracies, etc.

A study of factors promoting psychological health, focussing on child rearing and the school system, and their relevance to willingness to resist injustice.

A listing and examination of basic assumptions and unsolved questions in writings about social defence.

A survey of theories and ideas of writers on nonviolent resistance and their relevance to action.

An analysis of Dutch nonviolent struggle during the 1920s and 1930s and Dutch resistance to the Nazis.

An assessment of Alex Schmid’s ten conditions needed for the success of social defence.

An examination of the process of conversion from military defence to social defence, called “transarmament.” (An aspect of this is discussed in chapter 10.)

An assessment of the value to social defence of Lazare Carnot’s method of studying new fields “by stating problems as double negating sentences to come to new knowledge.”

An examination of the idea of the centre of gravity in a defence system, looking at both theory and case studies.

An inventory of means of confrontation, their relationships, their connection to the centre of gravity, and their relevance to strategic goals.

A study of different social defence security systems and how building each one up might affect social conditions after a war.

An examination of Jürgen Habermas’s distinction between strategic action and communicative action and the relevance of this distinction to social defence.

An inventory of goals and weapons of opponents of social defence, and an assessment of likely conflicts.

An examination of occupations by military forces since World War II and implications for social defence.

A study of the political effects of introducing social defence, including effects on diplomacy, the economic system and political structures.

An analysis of spying (“intelligence services”), how it might operate against a social defence system and how it might be resisted.