The most perturbing question for the liberal is the question of violence. The liberal’s initial reaction to violence is to try to convince the oppressed that violence is an incorrect tactic, that violence will not work, that violence never accomplishes anything. The Europeans took America through violence and through violence they established the most powerful country in the world. Through violence they maintain the most powerful country in the world. It is absolutely absurd for one to say that violence never accomplishes anything.
The way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence. I want to state emphatically here that violence in any society is neither moral nor is it ethical. It is neither right nor is it wrong. It is just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence.
I used that example only to point out that the oppressor never really puts an ethical or moral judgment on violence, except when the oppressed picks up guns against the oppressor. For the oppressor, violence is simply the expedient thing to do.
Is it not violent for a child to go to bed hungry in the richest country in the world? I think that is violent. But that type of violence is so institutionalized that it becomes a part of our way of life. Not only do we accept poverty, we even find it normal. And that again is because the oppressor makes his violence a part of the functioning society. But the violence of the oppressed becomes disruptive. It is disruptive to the ruling circles of a given society. And because it is disruptive it is therefore very easy to recognize, and therefore it becomes the target of all those who in fact do not want to change the society. What we want to do for our people, the oppressed, is to begin to legitimatize violence in their minds. So that for us violence against the oppressor will be expedient. This is very important, because we have all been brainwashed into accepting questions of moral judgment when violence is used against the oppressor.
Excerpts from The Pitfalls of Liberalism, written 1969
This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to
discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: Who was right?
In Guatemala, was it Arbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile,
was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change.
They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead.
They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not
allowed, regardless of the d’etente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order,
those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported – what the rich countries said,
rather than what they did.
Excerpts from The Pitfalls of Liberalism, written 1969
https://redsails.org/the-pitfalls-of-liberalism/
See also