Civil Disobedience and its
Role in the American Democracy
by Colleen F. Halley
1993
Miners strike throughout the Soviet Union calling for better working conditions and an increase in the standard of living in light of economic failure...
Germans take action and tear down the Berlin Wall by hand in order to join the East and the West, letting the light of democracy break through the Iron Curtain...
People across all of Eastern Europe speak out, denouncing the repression that has smothered them throughout the Cold War...
Over one hundred thousand protesters take to the streets of Moscow, surrounding the Kremlin, calling for the resignation of Gorbachev..
These events and the images they evoke should be familiar to most everyone. Citizens take it upon themselves to start the wheels of change, moving out from under communist suppression toward a more democratic openness. The majority of these changes have been received with open (yet sometimes hesitant) arms by Westerners. The leaders that have emerged we now call heroes --- Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Boris Yeltsin. And just who are these people? Many began as regular citizens who organized massive civil disobedience in order to achieve social reform and political change.
Now, lets take a different snapshot: home.
A group of environmentalists from Greenpeace make dive off the Atlantic coast to manually plug a dangerous chemical pipeline, and are soon after thrown in jail. Local townspeople put up their bail...
A minuscule few turn out in D.C. to protest U.S. involvement in the Gulf War, but soon disappear...
........ wait? Is that it? Where is civil disobedience in the American society???
The fact is that you probably wouldn't realize the lack of civil disobedience if you weren't looking for it in the first place. We are seeing entire countries engage in civil disobedience as a means of achieving social change in Eastern Europe, but in America? It may have just become a thing of the past. Civil disobedience may no longer be viewed as a viable tactic for use by social groups in order to communicate their point to the public.
And why? This paper will examine just that.
The topic of civil disobedience initially conjures up, for most, images of either Henry David Thoreau or the civil rights movement of the 1960's. Thoreau can gain our literary respect and, in an historical context, political justification. But even at that, his ideas on citizen's rights and duties remain things of the past, restricted to his times. The civil rights movement often gets lost in the memory of everything that went on during the 1960's -- a period now remembered as a cloud of chaos in the American past, a novelty of protest that America learned from and matured beyond.
With the recent rebirth, or at least resurfacing of the anti-war movement this past January in response to the Gulf Crisis, the issue of civil disobedience was once again brought into the national spotlight. Extremists from both ends of the political spectrum were out in force proclaiming the immutability of their political viewpoint. But this didn't last.
I would like to suggest that the ever-changing public affection towards civil disobedience has played a vital role in the recent decline of its use. In this essay I will examine the many ambiguities that arise when trying to define civil disobedience and the role it plays in a democratic system such as ours. To do this, I will look carefully at the difference between how Americans see civil disobedience in non-democratic states undergoing changes, such as those of Eastern Europe, and how they perceive it at home.
First, I would like to clarify my definition of civil disobedience so that the many different interpretations that are available will not be confused with the very specific way in which I view this practice. Webster's offers a general working definition: "non-violent opposition to a government policy or law by refusing to comply with it on the grounds of conscience." (New World Dictionary of American English 1988). I would like to expand on this definition to fully embody the concepts of civil disobedience espoused by some of the most respected people in the history of its use. These people would include Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Thoreau and others.
For these people, as well as myself, civil disobedience mean purposely violating laws or social norms in order to protest an injustice. The actions of civil disobedience must be non-revolutionary in character and maintain strict allegiance to the specific cause at hand. The non-revolutionary character sets civil disobedience apart from anarchistic rebellions aiming at a complete destruction of the current system. The violations themselves must be open and public acts showing no intent to subvert. Ethically, the purpose of civil disobedience must be to educate and/or persuade the audience, not to coerce. Lastly, it is important to stress once again that the actions must be completely non-violent (this does not include or hold accountable the civil disobedient group for exterior violence that may result outside of the realm of their movement).
Although there are no exact written standards on how civil disobedience should be carried out or under what circumstances it can be justified, precedents set in the field by highly respected proponents of its development can be examined. Two such sources on civil disobedience are Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr . The history of their individual application of civil disobedience can enable us to trace its role in the American society.
Civil disobedience has a long historical tradition within the American society. Since the colonial period, citizens have actively spoken out in order to take part in the country's inner working. Looking back, what was the Boston Tea Party but a large public testimony against a law the colonists viewed as unjust? The Declaration of Independence itself was just a rash form of civil disobedience. Years after, Martin Luther King was accurate in noting that, whereas enemies of civil disobedience call it "undemocratic pressure tactics and even un-American in philosophy", the truth is that no one can scorn non-violent direct action without canceling out most of American history (Weber 220).
In Thoreau, we see what Bronson Alcott called a prime example of "dignified non-complacence with the injunctions of civil powers" (17). In his personal actions as well as his essay Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau proposed and preached the value of higher law, the law of conscience, the over-soul. This concept of higher law parallels King's religious means of justification in a more secular-social manner. His belief in the duty one has to higher law spurred Thoreau to write Civil Disobedience, an essay today still regarded as one of the foremost sources on the practice of civil disobedience.
Wendell Glick commented in The Variorum on Civil Disobedience, "Thoreau's chief purpose in Civil Disobedience was to wean men away from their adherence to an insidious relativism and to persuade them to return again to the superior standard of absolute truth" (79). While in his time Thoreau was considered innovative for supporting such assertive social policies, today his convictions would still be considered modern and liberal. The quantity of people with such quality of thought remains a minuscule few.
The extent to which civil disobedience finds its place in American society varies with the state of the social attitude as well as the level of legal tolerance at the time. The timing of the civil rights movement had a larger role in its reception than most credit. April Carter, in Direct Action and Liberal Democracy, points out that, "If direct action had occurred in the inter-war years it would most probably not have had the backing of the Supreme Court, because it is only since 1954 that the Supreme Court has adopted a positive role in promoting civil rights" (96). The impact of the civil rights movement expanded well beyond the relatively small number of those directly involved. This happened precisely because the social state of mind was ready for monumental changes in public behavior as well as policy. Therefore, many individuals became sympathetic to non-electoral modes of participation.
Years after Thoreau set the stage for civil disobedience, Martin Luther King reexamined the weight of causes meriting the use of civil disobedience by asking the following questions: Is it a just grievance? Has every normal means of rectification been tried first? Has the group established a clear program to relieve the injustice? (Weber 221). These questions help to examine the validity of the cause and the preparedness of the participants, both vital in justifying civil disobedience.
King stressed to his followers that with civil disobedience, the means must be as pure as the ends. "Immoral destructive means cannot bring about moral and constructive ends." (Zashin 212). This means-ends relationship can impressively heighten the respect for a cause and further the movement, while also managing to safeguard the movement's reputation.
This stipulation coincides with the love ethic on which King based the entire civil rights movement. This ethic can also be more specifically applied to the character of civil disobedience. The love ethic entails: seeking to defeat an unjust system, not those individuals who make up that system (the old "hate the sin but love the sinner" proverb); avoiding external physical violence, as well as inner violence of the spirit; and never inflicting injury upon another. (82) The love ethic bases itself on the foundation that there is something within human nature that can be changed, that within every person there is an inherent good that can be brought to the surface. There is a positive goodness expressed by civil disobedience through this characteristic. This is why civil disobedience aims at laws, policies and social trends rather than individuals.
The effect of civil disobedience can drastically depend on how it is carried out. The manner in which Martin Luther King brought civil disobedience to the forefront of American life added to the movement's appeal. Rather than just explaining that all other means to remedy the race relations problem had been exhausted, King expressed the introduction of civil disobedience as a move that would "transmute the deep rage of the ghetto into a constructive and creative force" (Weber 211). This allowed citizens to view the participants as changing potentially dangerous rage into a controlled and organized public display of non-violence.
So where does this leave us today?
Having set civil disobedience in a proper frame of understanding, we can more clearly and concisely examine how civil disobedience does or does not fit within the democratic, as opposed to communist systems. When considering this, one must take into account the relationships between the citizen and the state, as well as between disobedience and the law. Each relationship reflects the other. If the citizens play an active role in the state and its affairs, civil disobedience will not be as necessary to remedy social problems. But when normal channels of participation are closed, disobedience can prove effective in changing laws, and therefore will be employed more often.
One clearly understands that the nature of the communist system severely limits the active legal channels one has to bring about change. Although in America, those who protested against U.S. involvement in the Gulf were shunned by a majority who called them everything from pinko-commies to uncivilized vermin, at least they did not have the threat of being sent to a gulag or being thrown into forced labor for an unknown number of years. No matter what the level of tolerance for civil disobedience, the threat of legal repercussion in America is clear and decisive. You risk the normal punishment for whatever law you break, usually jail or fines. In comparison, the threat one faces under a communist regime can vary from a slap on the hand to banishment to Siberia, all depending on the whim of the party at that moment.
Since democratic systems have, by definition, more legal channels open for legally achieving social change, does this take civil disobedience off of the list of viable options? Do we have less of a right to civil disobedience because we live in a society that allows for legal means of expression?
Consider agreeing with this statement that, since we have access to other means of participation that do not violate the law, civil disobedience should not be an option. This leaves some issues unresolved. Very often civil disobedience is employed because the legal means that exist have been blocked in some way or denied to a certain group. We saw this in the South during the civil rights struggle. Although blacks legally had the right to vote, the process was often disrupted by local voting tariffs or impeded by threats of violence against blacks who attempted to vote. Should legal means under these conditions then still be considered open options?
No. Civil disobedience can then be employed as an alternative means to achieve the goals being blocked within the system.
Ideas about what citizens want from the democratic process have changed drastically since the times of Thoreau and King. For today's citizens, freedom has come to mean a series of choices about how they will accommodate themselves to the state's directives (Ginsberg 251). Not only have people come more accustomed to letting the system and their lives run their separate ways, but they have sought to benefit from the system rather than just be protected by it. When civil disobedience gets in the way of the system giving people what they seek from it, the public favor towards civil disobedience suffers greatly. Civil disobedience abroad does not threaten the comfort of maintaining the status quo, and in many cases can open up new opportunities from which we can benefit. Civil disobedience in Eastern Europe has not cost us anything; we have not had to change. Why then, would we have a problem with it, over there?
But what about here?
One common case made against civil disobedience at home is that it threatens those conditions upon which the realization of all important societal values rest. What are these conditions being threatened? Opponents of civil disobedience call into question respect for the law, the duty of citizens to obey laws, and the danger of people taking the legal system into their own hands by judging which laws to obey and which ones not to obey.
Martin Luther King offered his concept on just and unjust laws as the basis for making decisions such as these in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail. Just laws are those that agree with moral law, uplifting the human spirit. In contrast, unjust laws (those that warrant civil disobedience) are out of harmony with moral law, degrading the human spirit. He further explains that unjust laws are those inflicted by a majority onto a minority that had no say in their making, and that the majority does not hold binding on itself (82). Therefore, the laws that can be challenged by acts of civil disobedience are limited to those that are not in accordance with the moral standards espoused inherently in the democratic system. Like Thoreau, King places a priority on allegiance to "higher laws" governing man and society, believing that the individual's first duty is to his own conscience.
Once again we are faced with the issue of what other ways exist to change laws rather than by breaking them. But how long do people have to wait to be freed from unjust laws? Serious human rights violations should not be tolerated for any amount of time, even the time that it takes to use the democratic channels provided, which alone can take years. King was often asked why he could not be patient, since everyone was beginning to realize that blacks would eventually be given equal rights. King responded to this in many of his speeches and in his book, Why We Can't Wait.
Potentially unjust laws are questioned not on a personal level, but as they apply to all within the system. The legality of a local, state, and even national law demands more careful examination to see how it fits in accordance with the values encompassed in the highest laws of the land. In the American case, this would most always refer to the Constitution. Not all laws embody or reflect the values upon which this nation was based. As a country develops, these values may also develop and change. That is why constant reexamination must take place. If a law does not reflect the values upon which the nation is founded, it should then be reassessed and modified to reflect these highest values. In this sense, laws themselves can be unlawful, and therefore should not be taken for granted. Conflicts exist within the ever-changing legal system. As King said, "We must never forget that everything Hitler did was legal" (84).
Accepting that some laws can exist even when they do not necessarily reflect the mores of the society, the person who chooses to engage in civil disobedience can actually be seen as expressing the highest form of respect for the law.
Wait? Breaking laws can be showing respect for them?
Yes. If two laws are in conflict with each other, showing allegiance to one shows respect, while it may mean breaking the law with which it is in conflict. As Elliot Zashin said in Civil Disobedience and Democracy, "While civil disobedience may encourage an unthinking disrespect for law because of the public's lack of sophistication or self-control, it may also encourage a deeper realization of the values which law must embody in a democracy if it is to maintain a durable legitimacy in the minds of the large majority of its citizens" (127).
Which laws then, should be chosen to follow? The Constitution has always been the root of all American laws. Therefore, the laws of the Constitution should logically take priority over any local or state law that should find itself in conflict.
Respect for the legal system itself is also expressed through the willingness of those who engage in civil disobedience to freely accept the penalty for their actions. Even when this means jail, the agents of civil disobedience must be willing to accept the repercussions for their actions. By allowing themselves to be jailed, they show their dedication both to their cause and to holding the legal system together while attempting to make positive changes.
So we have the people who engage in civil disobedience as champions of the democratic system and law. But don't they have some intrinsic obligation to obey the laws, a sort of social obligation?
Yes, all citizens are part of a "social contract", if I may borrow this concept from Locke for just a moment. When in a contract with someone, it is understood that there are two parties that both need to hold up their end of the bargain. If a law is unjust, the law is not upholding the societal values the system promises to guarantee as their part of the bargain. This then, would free the other party (in this case, those citizens ready to engage in civil disobedience) to take measures of their own in order to guarantee these rights. The breaking of this contract must be on the part of the state first to justify civil disobedience.
Trust is an issue at stake when a promise or contract is broken. James F. Childress, in Civil Disobedience and Trust, points out a very important fact: "Trust is a matter of human expectation under conditions of freedom, not of control" (6). When we know that we have the freedom to trust, we will be more comforted and will be able to respond freely through other means of expression first. This remains one of the intrinsic differences between democracy and communism. In communist systems, the trust (if there is any at all) is one of control rather than freedom. Therefore, the citizen-state relationship is one of master and servant, very limiting in the context of social expression and ability to bring about change in the system.
Perhaps civil disobedience is not everyone's style, but it has proven to work when employed responsibly. One cannot ignore the fact that in some cases public violence erupts around civil disobedience. It is important to note that this most often occurs when the cause meets with a violent opposition group. The principles of civil disobedience themselves do not evoke strangers in the street to partaking in violence. In Alabama, King's non-violent marchers for civil rights were hailed with stones, showered with fire hoses and attacked by dogs. And through all of this, they followed principles of non-violence by not retaliating. The violence perpetrated against them was not something to blame them for, but in fact, an outward display of the internal violence King's followers were attempting to address and remedy through their peaceful actions. Where things can turn violent, there is proof of a problem that needs to be addressed. In a political sense, one may hesitate to use civil disobedience for this ambiguous threat of violence or confrontation. Moral and political decisions, however, involve probabilities, not merely possibilities.
It has been very easy for Americans to look across the Atlantic lately and champion the efforts of people struggling out from under the hard-fisted rule of communism. Most everyone around the world has welcomed the changes with open arms, even when they were started by massive civil disobedience. From the hunger strikes of Andrei Sakharov to the efforts of labor unions under Lech Walesa to the mass civil protests throughout all of Eastern Europe, it doesn't take much to win the hearts of freedom-loving Americans whose curiosity and care have come into full bloom since the death of the Cold War. Since the people of Eastern Europe have taken it upon themselves to start the wheel of change moving, we as Americans can share in their desire for democracy, reform and at last, perhaps peace.
While we are watching the changes unfold before our eyes, celebrating hesitantly at each step, the American people still have not come out actively in support of smaller (but similar) actions at home. The plight of the homeless, getting proper care for AIDS victims, the protection of the environment, and numerous other causes have yet to begin organized campaigns that include or consider civil disobedience.
The one exception to this statement that comes to mind is the persistent efforts of the environmental group Greenpeace. Non-violent civil disobedience, that in this case is important to stress does not endanger individuals or the environment, is a common element and dynamic part of their work to protect the environment. Whether it be placing Greenpeace concerns on large banners and draping them from chemical plant buildings or harassing whaling boats at sea, their tactics are effective in attracting media attention while clearly expressing their concerns, and garnering public support for their movement. The Greenpeace example works very well here because their use of civil disobedience remains in accordance with the guidelines I mentioned beforehand. Greenpeace does not depend solely on drastic measures as these. They also incorporate government lobbying, petition campaigns and public education into their agenda.
Through all of the various points made about the practice of civil disobedience, there remain a few common threads: the existence of and dedication to higher laws of conscience; duty and responsibility to law and conscience in the midst of conflict; the ability to disagree outwardly with the system and take steps to change injustices without placing the entire system's stability at risk. Keeping all of these considerations in mind, civil disobedience still has a place in the American democratic system. We have seen its historical presence and success. We have traced its development --- a development that compliments the maturation of society. With most things in history, there is a pendulum effect. Different ideas and concepts swing in and out of favor over a period of years. I believe it is time for the pendulum of public opinion to swing back in favor of using civil disobedience to attain goals of reform.
The slow and steady example of Greenpeace offers hope for the future in light of the new trend of saving the environment. The celebration of Earth Day has brought with it a conglomeration of socially active citizens in defense of nature. The "green conscience" no longer refers to greed; a new value has come into being. The movement is gaining momentum each day. If civil disobedience will see a comeback, the environment will be the cause. This issue merits wide scale attention and action by the sheer magnitude of its effects. It's a global problem; the future of the planet, and our survival, may depend upon it. Perhaps the new age of environmentalism will see the triumphal return of civil disobedience, and bring it back as an option for all causes. With so many concerns demanding public attention and action, it is our duty to ourselves and our future to act decisively and aggressively to further the growth of the American society, and when it calls for action, civil disobedience must be an open and viable option.
Works Cited
Carter, April. Direct Action and Liberal Democracy. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Childress, James F. Civil Disobedience and Trust. Indiana: Poynter Center of the
Indiana University Foundation, 1975.
Ginsberg, Benjamin. The Consequence of Consent. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Co., 1982.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. Why We Can't Wait. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
Thoreau, Henry David. The Variorum on Civil Disobedience. New York: Twayne
Publishers, Inc., 1967.
Weber, David R., ed. Civil Disobedience in America. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1978.
----- Webster's New World Dictionary. New York: Webster's New World, 1988.
Zashin, Elliot M. Civil Disobedience and Democracy. New York: The Free Press,
1972.
© Comet Consulting / Colleen F. Halley
Last Updated: November 23, 1999
Contact: cfhalley@madriver.com