Note the second part of the concept -- "willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment". I am not a support of civil disobedience, at least not where democratic organising is possible, but where the protester accepts punishment there is a legitimacy that has moral suasion.
6 comments:
A; Your statement implies that Civil Disobedience and democratic organizing are mutually exclusive. The problem is,on the one hand, how one defines 'democratic organizing.' Some might say that we have a real and effective democracy, other might say that we do not. I believe that both positions are incorrect in as much as democracy is not a 'fixed state of affairs' but an ideal that one works toward. I believe this issue is one of the primary issues that separates the left from the rest of the ideological spectrum. True leftist ideology recognizes that we never "achieve" democracy but we always work toward a more democratic system that minimizes the power that can be wielded by unaccountable bodies and increases the voice of those with fewer resources and less power. Therefore, we ask the question "Who is to say when your so-called democratic organizing is effective and when it is not?" The fact is that those who are to determine are those engaged in civil disobedience. Civil Disobedience can be itself be a profoundly important mode of democratic organizing. Etc.
Muhammad Ali is my example. A man who willingly went to jail in the prime of his career instead of running away from the draft. By doing so, he proved he had more courage than all the draft dodgers, past and present who ran away to Canada.
Kirby,
I didnt mean that -- obviosuly they can feed into each other -- look to Selma in the 60's. Heck, look to Iran today. My point was that civil disobedience is only justified where it is necessary -- if I want to change, say, the laws of Canada and I can organize amd protest lawfully I should.
Dear Morton - In most cases in Western democracies you "can" organize and protest lawfully. But the question is what happens in a system that is flexible enough and has reached, in Gramsci's terminology, genuine hegemony, that it allows for so-called lawful protest but within a context of complete socio-economic domination? Look at the recent Supreme Court decision in the US concerning Maher Arar - it was a decision of complete corruption concerning the process of human rights and a fairly clear violation of number amendments to the constitution including but not limited to the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th and 9th. Now Arar and his supporters are perfectly free to stand in front of Capital hill and protest lawfully but such protest is entirely meaningless in a context in which the various branches of government have created a hegemonic situation in which the power of a class, or ideological group flows legally through the political structure.
I actually think it is a long term failure of liberal (with a small 'L') ideology not to understand the fundamental moral obligation that people have to Civil Disobedience. And this has flowed in countries like Canada with Liberals (big 'L') imagining that so-called democratically elected governments must a priori have legitimacy and represent the general will of the people. Rousseau's Social Contract is largely illusory and is enforced even in Western democracies through might and money. In the final analysis the legitimacy of a government must flow, for individuals through ethical rightness - this was the whole point of Dr. King's thought and career.
My biggest problem with encouraging/not discourgaing civil disobedience is that you have lunatics like Scott Roeder. Granted, he hasn't "accepted" his punishment, but that doesn't mean that there isn't another anti out there that would willingly kill a doctor and then turn themselves in. If you condone civil disobedience, where do you draw the line? At what point does it lose its "legitimate moral suasion"?
Good question "Not Guilty" but we can ask the same about so-called democratically determined decisions. Could Hitler be said to be legitimate because he was elected? Lester Madox? BNP representatives? Legitimacy can always be questioned and there is no objective measure by which to go. We presently have a Government that is essentially dismantling our most treasured institutions with considerably less that forty percent of the adult population. Is it legitimate?
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