Arms and the Movement

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Independence from colonial rule has given India more autonomy in a few areas, and it has certainly allowed a handful of Indians to sit in the seats of power. But the exploitation and the commoditization of the commons and of culture have deepened. Moreover, India lost a clear opportunity for meaningful liberation from a foreign oppressor. Any liberation movement now would have to go up against the confounding dynamics of nationalism and ethnic/religious rivalry in order to abolish a domestic capitalism and government that are far more developed.

The U.S. civil rights movement is one of the most important episodes in pacifist history. Across the world, people see it as an example of nonviolent victory. In truth, it was neither nonviolent nor a victory.

On the contrary, though pacifist groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference had considerable power and influence, popular support, especially among poor black people, gravitated toward militant revolutionary groups such as the Black Panther Party. According to a 1970 Harris poll, 66 percent of African Americans said the activities of the Black Panther Party gave them pride, and 43 percent said the party represented their own views.

The nonviolent segments of the civil rights movement cannot be distilled and separated from its revolutionary parts. Pacifist, middle-class black activists, including King, got much of their power from the specter of black resistance and the presence of armed black revolutionaries.

To cite one example: In the spring of 1963, King's Birmingham campaign was fixing to be a repeat of the dismally failed action in Albany, Georgia, where a nine-month civil disobedience campaign that began in 1961 had demonstrated the powerlessness of nonviolent protesters against a government with seemingly bottomless jails. Then, on May 7, after continued police violence in Birmingham, 3,000 black people began fighting back, pelting the police with rocks and bottles. Just two days later, Birmingham -- up until then an inflexible bastion of segregation -- agreed to desegregate downtown stores, and President Kennedy backed the agreement with federal guarantees.

Within days, after local white supremacists bombed a black home and a black business, thousands of black people rioted again, seizing a nine-block area, destroying police cars, injuring several cops (including the chief inspector), and burning white businesses. Within weeks, Kennedy ended several years of stalling and called for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act. As King himself said, 'The sound of the explosion in Birmingham reached all the way to Washington.'

In short, the largest victory of the civil rights movement came when black people demonstrated that they would not remain peaceful forever. Faced with the two alternatives, the white power structure chose to negotiate with the pacifists, and we have seen the results: The movement was successful in ending de jure segregation and expanding the minuscule black petty bourgeoisie, but fell far short of full political and economic equality, to say nothing of black liberation from white imperialism. People of color still have lower average incomes, poorer access to housing and health care, and poorer health than white people. De facto segregation still exists. Political equality is also lacking. Millions of voters, most of them black, are disenfranchised (from voting for white candidates in a white political system that reflects a white culture) when it is convenient to ruling interests, and only three black senators have served since Reconstruction.

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