Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle which raised enough ruckus the Federal government began regulating the meatpacking industry.
The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism is The Jungle applied to journalism. Based upon Sinclair's own experiences with the press as a result of the noise he made muckraking meatpacking, he looked back at the Press from the wrong end of the microscope and documented relevent events as they happened. He investigated the press as they investigated him.
The Brass Check of the title refers to a system of whorehouse management in which the customer pays the house for services and receives a brass check, a token to give to the whore upstairs to indicate he's paid.
The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism by Upton Sinclair
Arno Press and NYTimes, reprint edition 1970
originally self-published by the author in 1919
(31) ...the newspaper reviewers had set the rules of the game - that love and and beauty in art were heeded only in connection with personalities and sensation...
(42) Newspapermen are human, and cannot be blamed by their owners if now and then they yield to the temptation to publish the news.
(52) The Chicago Stop on the The Jungle Book Tour of 1908
Mind you, a little over a year before I had put Packingtown on the map of the world; I had made Packingtown and its methods the subject of discussion at the dinner-tables of many countries; and now I was coming back to Packingtown for the first time since that event. There was a big hall, jammed to the very doors with Stockyards workers. You will pardon me if I say that they made it clear that they were glad to have me come there. and to this uproarious audience I told the story of the "New York Herald" investigation [Editorial Comment: NYHerald commissioned then killed Packingtown a year after The Jungle story], and what had been discovered. I stood, looking into the faces of these working men and women, and said: "You are the people who know about these matters. Are they true?" There was a roar of assent that rocked the building. I said: I know they are true, and you know they are true. Now tell me this, ought they be made known to the American people? Would you like them to be made known to the American people?" And a again there was a roar of assent.
Then I looked over the edge of the platform to a row of tables, where sat the reporters looking up, and I talked to them for a while. I said: "You are newspaper men; you know a story when you see it. Tell me now - tell me straight - is not this a story?" The newspaper men nodded and grinned. they knew it was a "story" all right. "The public would like to read this - the public of Chicago and the public of all the rest of American - would they not?" And again the newspaper men nodded and grinned. "Now," said I, "play fair with me; give me a square deal, so far as you are concerned. Write this story just as I have told it tonight. Write it and turn it in and see what happens. Will you do that?" And they pledged themselves, the audience saw them pledge themselves. And so the test was made, as perfect a test as anyone could conceive. And next morning there was just one newspaper in Chicago which mentioned my speech in the Stockyards district - the "Chicago Socialist." Not one line in any other newspaper, morning or evening, in Chicago!
(63) The cynical newspaper editors, whose first maxim in life is that nothing can ever be changed...
(124) The thesis of this book is that our newspapers do not represent public interest, but private interests; they do not represent humanity, but property; they value a man, not because he is great, or good, or wise, or useful, but because he is wealthy, or of service to vested wealth.
(224) ...I assert there is no daily newspaper in America which does not represent and serve vested wealth and which has not for its ultimate aim the protection of economic privilege...
A capitalist newspaper may espouse this cause or that, it may make this pretense or that, but sooner or later you realize that a capitalist newspaper lives by the capitalist system, it fights for that system, and in the nature of the case cannot do otherwise. Some one has said that to talk of regulating capital is to talk of moralizing a tiger; I would say that to expect justice and truth-telling of a capitalist newspaper is to expect asceticism at a cannibal feast.
(236) ...maybe you feel proud about that, you like to be in the boat with the best fishermen - even though you are there as a fish.
(238) And if you go to the small town in Pennsylvania of Arkansas or Colorado, or wherever this paper is published, you find a country editor on the level of intelligence of the local horse-doctors of Englewood, New Jersey, and Tarrytown, New York whose proceedings I have described in this book. Frequently you find this editor hanging on by his eye-teeth, with a mortgage at the local bank, carried because of favors he does to the local money-power. You find him getting a regular monthly income from the copper-interests or the coal-interests or the lumber-interests, whatever happens to be dominant in that locality. You find him heavily subsidized at election -time by the two political machines of these great interests. His paper is used to print the speeches of the candidates of these interests and five or ten or fifty thousand copies of this particular issue are paid for by these interests and distributed at meetings. Campaign circulars and other literature are printed in the printing-office of this newspaper, and of course the public advertising appears in its columns - a graft which is found in every state and county of the Union, and is a means by which hundreds of millions of dollars are paid as a disguised subsidy by the interests which run our two-party political system.
(239) No, the editors of country and small-town newspapers are not giving their readers the truth about labor conditions in basic American industries. They know, as the phrase is, "which side their bread is buttered on," and they keep that side up with care. I have said that there are fortunes to be made by giving the news to the people; I must qualify the statement by explaining that it must be done on a large scale, and you must have capital to keep you going until you reach the people who can understand you. If you try it on a small scale, and without capital, you are crushed before you get your head out of the mud. And you know that, and govern yourself accordingly.
(241) The methods by which the "Empire of Business" maintains its control over Journalism are four: First, ownership of the papers; second, ownership of the owners; third, advertising subsidies; and fourth, direct bribery. By these methods there exists in America a control of news and of current comment more absolute than any monopoly in any other industry. This statement may sound extreme, but if you will think about it you will realize that in the very nature of the case it must be true. It does not destroy the steel trust if there are a few independent steel-makers, it does not destroy the money trust if there are a few independent men of wealth, but it does destroy the news trust if there is a single independent newspaper to let the cat out of the bag.
(248) A professional journalist may be defined as man who holds himself ready at a day's notice to adjust his opinions to the pocket-book of a new owner.
(259) A large part of what is called "conservatism" in our Journalism is this instinctive reverence for wealth, as deeply rooted in every American as respect for a duke in an English butler.
(408-409) The Mental Munition-Factory
A solution that comes at once to mind is state-owned or municipal-owned newspapers. This is the orthodox Socialist solution, and is also being advocated by Wiliam Jennings Bryan. Fortunately, we do not have to take his theories or anyone's theories; we have facts - the experience of Los Angeles with its public paper, the "Municipal News," which was an entire success. I inquire of the editor of the paper, Frank E. Wolfe, and he writes:
The "Municipal News"? There's a rich story buried there. It was established by an initiative ordinance, and had an ample appropriation. It was launched in the stream with engines going full stream ahead. its success was instantaneous. Free distribution; immense circulation; choked with high-class, high-rate advertising; well edited, and it was clean and immensely popular.
Otis said: "Every dollar that damned socialistic thing gets is a dollar out of the 'Times' till." Every publisher in the city re-echoed, and the fight was on. The chief thing that rankled, however, was the our growth of a clause in the ordinance which gave to each political party polling a three per cent vote a column in each issue for whatsoever purpose it might be used. The Socialist Labor Party nosed out the Prohibitionists by a fluke. The Socialists had a big margin in the preceding elections, so the Reds had two columns, and they were quick to seize the opportunity for propaganda. The Goo-goos, who had always stoutly denied they were apolitical party, came forward and claimed space, and the merry war was on. Those two columns for Socialist propaganda were the real cause for the daily onslaught of the painted ladies of Broadway (newspaper district of Los Angeles). There were three and three evening papers. Six times a day they whined, barked, yelped and snapped at the heels of the "Municipal News." Never were more lies poured out from the mouths of these mothers of falsehood. The little, weakly whelps of the pornographic press took up the hue and cry, and Blanche, Sweetheart and Tray were on the trail. Advertisers were cajoled, browbeaten and black mailed, until nearly all left the paper. The "News" was manned by a picked staff of the best newspaper men on the coast it was a clean, well edited, and gave both sides to all controversies - using the parallel column system. It covered the news of the municipality better than any paper had ever covered it. It was weak and ineffective editorially, for the policy was to print a newspaper. We did not indulge in a clothes-line quarrel - did not fight back.
The "News" died under the axe one year from its birth. They used the initiative to kill it. The rabble rallied to the cry, and we foresaw the end. The paper had attracted attention all over the English-reading world. everywhere I have gone I have been asked about it, by people who never dreamed I had been an editor of the paper. Its death was a triumph for reaction, but its effect will not die. Some day the idea will prevail, Then I might want to go back into the "game." [Editorial Comment: end of quote from Frank E. Wolfe, editor of the "Municipal News."]
City-owned newspapers are part of the solution, but not the whole part. As a Socialist, I advocate pubic ownership of the instruments and means of production; but I do not rely entirely upon that method where intellectual matters are concerned. I would have the sate make all the steel and coal and oil, the shoes and matches and sugar; I would have it do the distribution of newspapers, and perhaps even the printing; but for the editing of the newspapers I cast about for a method of control that allows free play to the development of initiative and the expression of personality.
In a free society the solution will be simple; there will be many groups and associations, publishing their own papers, and if you do not like the papers which these groups give you, you can form a group of your own. Being in receipt of the full product of your labor, you will have plenty of money, and will be surrounded by other free and independent individuals, also receiving the full product of their labor, and accustomed to combining for the expression of their ideas. The difference is that today the worlds' resources are in the hands of a class, and this class has a monopoly of self-expression. The problem of transferring such power to the people must be studied as the whole social problem, and not merely as the problem of the press.
(424-425) How all this works out, you may learn from the Syndicalist movement of Italy - only, of course, Capitalist Journalism has not allowed you to know anything about the Syndicalist movement of Italy! The glass-workers were beaten in a terrific strike, and they realized that they had to find a new weapon; they contributed their funds and bought a glass-factory, which they started upon a co-operative basis. When this factory had its product ready for sale, strikes were called on the other factories, by applying this method again and again, the union broke its rivals, and bought them out at a low price, and so before the war practically the entire glass-industry of Italy was in the hands of co-operative unions, and the glass-workers were getting the full value of their product.
The same thing was done before the war by the agricultural workers in Sicily. The strikers had been shot down by the soldiery, their own brothers and sons; they bought several estates and worked them co-operatively, and when harvest-time came there was labor for the co-operative estates, and there were strikes against the absentee landlords, who were spending their time in Paris and on the Riviera. So the landlords made haste to sell out, and the agricultural unions were rapidly taking possession of the land of Sicily.
(427) I cry to you that Journalism shall no longer be the thing described by Charles A Dana, master-cynic of the "New York Sun," "buying white paper at two cents a pound and selling it at ten cents a pound."
(438-439) A Practical Program
I propose that we shall found and endow a weekly publication of truth-telling, to be known as "The National News." This publication will carry no advertisements and no editorials. It will not be a journal of opinion, but a record of events pure and simple. It will be published on ordinary news-print paper, and in the cheapest possible form. it will have one purpose and one only, to give to the American people once every week the truth about the world's events. It will be strictly and absolutely nonpartisan, and never the propaganda organ of any cause. It will watch the country, and see where lies are being circulated and truth suppressed; its job will be to nail the lies, and bring the truth into the light of day. I believe that a sufficient number of Americans are awake to the dishonesty of our press to build up for such a paper a circulation of a million inside of a year.
Let me say at the outset that I am not looking for a job. I have my work, and it isn't editing a newspaper; nor do I judge myself capable of that rigid impartiality which such an enterprise would require. It is my idea that control of the paper should be vested in a board of directors, composed of twenty or thirty men and women of all creeds and causes, who have proven by their lifetime records that they believe in fair play.
(445) The "Federated Press" had its inception at a convention of the Labor Party in Chicago, November, 1919. It is a co-operative non-profit-making organization of working class newspapers, and maintains an admirable service of vital news from all over the world. It publishes a weekly four-page bulletin, which it will mail to you for five dollars a year, and which you will find worth the price many times over. The address of the "Federated Press" is 156 W. Washington Street, Chicago, Ill.
Monday, February 9, 2026
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume III
A friend told me she's reading Ron Chernow's biography of Mark Twain which reminded me that I haven't posted my notes to the third and last volume of his long-awaited and problematic autobiography, so here it is.<br><br>
_Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume III_ by Mark Twain
Oakland, CA: University of CA Press, 2015
ISBN 978-0-520-27994-0
(13) Many things have happened in the meantime, and as I recall them, I perceive that each incident was important in its hour, and alive with interest; then quickly lost color and
life, and is now of no consequence. And this is what our life consists of – a procession of episodes and experiences, which seem large when they happen, but which diminish to trivialities as soon as we get a perspective upon them.
(51) During a stretch of Thirty-Five years, I exercised my pen, in my trade of authorship, in the summertime, and in the summertime only. I worked three months in the year, and amused myself in other ways during the other nine.
(73-74) My habits underwent a sudden and lively change. At home they had bit of a lazy sort, for a year or two – to wit: breakfast in bed, at 8 o'clock, newspapers and the pipe until about 11, still in bed; then dictation for an hour or two with my clothes on; then downstairs to drink a glass of milk, while the rest of the family ate their lunch; back to bed at three in the afternoon to read and smoke and sleep; dinner downstairs at 7:30; then billiards until midnight, if Mr. Paine was on the premises – otherwise back to bed at 8:30, not to sleep, but to read and smoke until 1 o'clock, and then sleep if convenient.
(80) [1907 speech to Oxford undergraduates] In seven years, I have acquired all that worldliness, and I am sorry to be back where I was seven years ago. (Laughter.) But now I am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing here, and I hope you will forgive me for that; but when a man stands on the verge of 72, you know perfectly well that he has never reached that place without knowing what this life is – a heartbreaking bereavement. And so our reverence is for our dead. We do not forget them, but our duty is towards the living, and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit, cheerful in speech, and in hope that is benefit to those who are around us.
(95) It may be that there are persons in the world who get tired of compliments – a thing which I doubt – but I am not one of them; if I should run out of all other nourishment I believe I could live on compliments.
(102) Sir Gilbert Parker tells Sir William Harcourt’s story: Well, you didn't hear it. You and Churchilll went up to the top floor to have a smoke and a talk, and Harcourt wondered what the result would be. He said that whichever of you got the floor first would keep it to the end, without a break; he believed that you, being old and experienced, would get it, and that Churchill's lungs would have a half hour's rest for the first time in five years. When you two came down, bye and bye, Sir William asked Churchill, if he had had a good time, and he answered eagerly, “Yes." Then he asked you if you had had a good time. You hesitated, then said, without eagerness, "I have had a smoke.”
(130) What a coward, every man is! and how surely he will find it out, if he will just let other people alone, and sit down and examine himself. The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession, but carrying a banner.
(136) Mr. Roosevelt is the most formidable disaster that has fallen in the country since the Civil War – but the vast mass of the nation loves him, is frantically fond of him, even idolizes him. This is the simple truth. It sounds like a libel upon the intelligence of the human race, but it isn't; there isn't any way to libel the intelligence of the human race.
(193) comminuted - broken into multiple pieces
(243) …and the “Ponkapog" house would necessarily have to indulge in polo, because it is another symbol and advertisement of financial obesity…
(248) That idea pleased me; indeed, there is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, then out of thirty acts of a nobler sort.
(279-280) Dictation of November 20, 1908
A memorial respectfully tendered to the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
19 or 20 years ago, James Russell, Lowell, George, Haven Putnam, and the undersigned, appeared before the Senate committee on Patents in the interest of copyright. Up to that time, as explained by Senator Platt of Connecticut, the policy of Congress had been to limit the life of a copyright, by a term of years, with one definite end in view, and only one – to wit, that, after an author had been permitted to enjoy, for a reasonable length of time, the income from literary property created by his hand and brain, the property should then be transferred "to the public" as a free gift. That is still the policy of Congress today.
The purpose in view was clear: to so reduce the price of the book, is to bring it within the reach of all purses, and spread it among the millions, who had not been able to buy it while it was still under protection of copyright.
This purpose has always been defeated. That is to say, that, while the death of a copyright has sometimes reduced the price of a book by a half, for a while, and in some cases, by even more, it is never reduced it vastly, nor accomplished any reduction that was permanent and secure.
The reason is simple: Congress has never made a reduction compulsory. Congress was convinced that the removal of the authors royalty and the books consequent (or at least probable) dispersal among several competing publishers, would make the book cheap by force of the competition. It was an error. It has not turned out so. The reason is, a publisher cannot find profit in an exceedingly cheap addition if he must divide the market with competitors.
The natural remedy would seem to be a, an amended law requiring the issue of cheap additions.
I think the remedy could be accomplished in the following way, without injury, to author or publisher, and with extreme advantage to the public: by an amendment to the existing law provided as follows – to wit: that at any time between the beginning of a book's 41st year at the ending of the 42nd the owner of the copyright may extend its life 30 years by issuing and placing on sale and edition of the book at 1/10 the price of the cheapest addition, thitherto issued at any time during the 10 immediately preceding years; this extension to lapse and become null and void if, at any time during the 30 years he shall fail during the space of three consecutive months to furnish the 10% book upon demand of any person or persons desiring to buy it.
The result would be, that no American classic enjoying the 30 year extension would ever be out of the reach of any American press, let its compulsory price be what it might. He would get a two dollar book for $.20, and he could get none, but copyright expired classics at any such rate.
At the end of the 30 year extension, the copyright would again die, and the price would again advance. This by a natural law, the excessively cheap edition no longer carrying with it an advantage to any publisher.
A clause of the suggested amendment could read about as follows, and would obviate the necessity of taking the present law to pieces and building it over again: all books, and all articles other than books, enjoying 42 years copyright life under the present law shall be admitted to the privilege of the 30 year extension upon complying with a condition requiring the producing and placing upon permanent sale of one grade or form of said, book or article at a price 90% below the cheapest rate at which said book or article, had been placed upon the market at any time during immediately preceding 10 years.
Remarks.
If the suggested amendment shall meet with the favor of the present Congress and become law – and I hope it will - I shall have personal experience of its effects very soon. Next year, in fact: in the person of my first book, The Innocents Abroad. For its 42 year copyright life will then cease, and its 30 year extension begin – and with the later the permanent low rate addition. At present, the highest price of the book is eight dollars, and it's lowest price three dollars per copy. Thus the permanent low rate price will be $.30 per copy. A sweeping reduction like this is what Congress, from the beginning, has desired to achieve, but has not been able to accomplish because no inducement was offered to publishers to run the risk.
Respectfully submitted,
S. L. Clemens
(435) I like the truth, sometimes, but I don't care enough for it to hanker after it. And besides, I have lived with liars so long, that I have lost the tune, and a fact jars upon me like a discord.
More notes from my readings of Twain<br>
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2018/07/autobiography-of-mark-twain-volume-i.html
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2019/06/autobiography-of-mark-twain-volume-ii.html
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2021/10/quotes-from-complete-short-stories-of.html
_Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume III_ by Mark Twain
Oakland, CA: University of CA Press, 2015
ISBN 978-0-520-27994-0
(13) Many things have happened in the meantime, and as I recall them, I perceive that each incident was important in its hour, and alive with interest; then quickly lost color and
life, and is now of no consequence. And this is what our life consists of – a procession of episodes and experiences, which seem large when they happen, but which diminish to trivialities as soon as we get a perspective upon them.
(51) During a stretch of Thirty-Five years, I exercised my pen, in my trade of authorship, in the summertime, and in the summertime only. I worked three months in the year, and amused myself in other ways during the other nine.
(73-74) My habits underwent a sudden and lively change. At home they had bit of a lazy sort, for a year or two – to wit: breakfast in bed, at 8 o'clock, newspapers and the pipe until about 11, still in bed; then dictation for an hour or two with my clothes on; then downstairs to drink a glass of milk, while the rest of the family ate their lunch; back to bed at three in the afternoon to read and smoke and sleep; dinner downstairs at 7:30; then billiards until midnight, if Mr. Paine was on the premises – otherwise back to bed at 8:30, not to sleep, but to read and smoke until 1 o'clock, and then sleep if convenient.
(80) [1907 speech to Oxford undergraduates] In seven years, I have acquired all that worldliness, and I am sorry to be back where I was seven years ago. (Laughter.) But now I am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing here, and I hope you will forgive me for that; but when a man stands on the verge of 72, you know perfectly well that he has never reached that place without knowing what this life is – a heartbreaking bereavement. And so our reverence is for our dead. We do not forget them, but our duty is towards the living, and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit, cheerful in speech, and in hope that is benefit to those who are around us.
(95) It may be that there are persons in the world who get tired of compliments – a thing which I doubt – but I am not one of them; if I should run out of all other nourishment I believe I could live on compliments.
(102) Sir Gilbert Parker tells Sir William Harcourt’s story: Well, you didn't hear it. You and Churchilll went up to the top floor to have a smoke and a talk, and Harcourt wondered what the result would be. He said that whichever of you got the floor first would keep it to the end, without a break; he believed that you, being old and experienced, would get it, and that Churchill's lungs would have a half hour's rest for the first time in five years. When you two came down, bye and bye, Sir William asked Churchill, if he had had a good time, and he answered eagerly, “Yes." Then he asked you if you had had a good time. You hesitated, then said, without eagerness, "I have had a smoke.”
(130) What a coward, every man is! and how surely he will find it out, if he will just let other people alone, and sit down and examine himself. The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession, but carrying a banner.
(136) Mr. Roosevelt is the most formidable disaster that has fallen in the country since the Civil War – but the vast mass of the nation loves him, is frantically fond of him, even idolizes him. This is the simple truth. It sounds like a libel upon the intelligence of the human race, but it isn't; there isn't any way to libel the intelligence of the human race.
(193) comminuted - broken into multiple pieces
(243) …and the “Ponkapog" house would necessarily have to indulge in polo, because it is another symbol and advertisement of financial obesity…
(248) That idea pleased me; indeed, there is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, then out of thirty acts of a nobler sort.
(279-280) Dictation of November 20, 1908
A memorial respectfully tendered to the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
19 or 20 years ago, James Russell, Lowell, George, Haven Putnam, and the undersigned, appeared before the Senate committee on Patents in the interest of copyright. Up to that time, as explained by Senator Platt of Connecticut, the policy of Congress had been to limit the life of a copyright, by a term of years, with one definite end in view, and only one – to wit, that, after an author had been permitted to enjoy, for a reasonable length of time, the income from literary property created by his hand and brain, the property should then be transferred "to the public" as a free gift. That is still the policy of Congress today.
The purpose in view was clear: to so reduce the price of the book, is to bring it within the reach of all purses, and spread it among the millions, who had not been able to buy it while it was still under protection of copyright.
This purpose has always been defeated. That is to say, that, while the death of a copyright has sometimes reduced the price of a book by a half, for a while, and in some cases, by even more, it is never reduced it vastly, nor accomplished any reduction that was permanent and secure.
The reason is simple: Congress has never made a reduction compulsory. Congress was convinced that the removal of the authors royalty and the books consequent (or at least probable) dispersal among several competing publishers, would make the book cheap by force of the competition. It was an error. It has not turned out so. The reason is, a publisher cannot find profit in an exceedingly cheap addition if he must divide the market with competitors.
The natural remedy would seem to be a, an amended law requiring the issue of cheap additions.
I think the remedy could be accomplished in the following way, without injury, to author or publisher, and with extreme advantage to the public: by an amendment to the existing law provided as follows – to wit: that at any time between the beginning of a book's 41st year at the ending of the 42nd the owner of the copyright may extend its life 30 years by issuing and placing on sale and edition of the book at 1/10 the price of the cheapest addition, thitherto issued at any time during the 10 immediately preceding years; this extension to lapse and become null and void if, at any time during the 30 years he shall fail during the space of three consecutive months to furnish the 10% book upon demand of any person or persons desiring to buy it.
The result would be, that no American classic enjoying the 30 year extension would ever be out of the reach of any American press, let its compulsory price be what it might. He would get a two dollar book for $.20, and he could get none, but copyright expired classics at any such rate.
At the end of the 30 year extension, the copyright would again die, and the price would again advance. This by a natural law, the excessively cheap edition no longer carrying with it an advantage to any publisher.
A clause of the suggested amendment could read about as follows, and would obviate the necessity of taking the present law to pieces and building it over again: all books, and all articles other than books, enjoying 42 years copyright life under the present law shall be admitted to the privilege of the 30 year extension upon complying with a condition requiring the producing and placing upon permanent sale of one grade or form of said, book or article at a price 90% below the cheapest rate at which said book or article, had been placed upon the market at any time during immediately preceding 10 years.
Remarks.
If the suggested amendment shall meet with the favor of the present Congress and become law – and I hope it will - I shall have personal experience of its effects very soon. Next year, in fact: in the person of my first book, The Innocents Abroad. For its 42 year copyright life will then cease, and its 30 year extension begin – and with the later the permanent low rate addition. At present, the highest price of the book is eight dollars, and it's lowest price three dollars per copy. Thus the permanent low rate price will be $.30 per copy. A sweeping reduction like this is what Congress, from the beginning, has desired to achieve, but has not been able to accomplish because no inducement was offered to publishers to run the risk.
Respectfully submitted,
S. L. Clemens
(435) I like the truth, sometimes, but I don't care enough for it to hanker after it. And besides, I have lived with liars so long, that I have lost the tune, and a fact jars upon me like a discord.
More notes from my readings of Twain<br>
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2018/07/autobiography-of-mark-twain-volume-i.html
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2019/06/autobiography-of-mark-twain-volume-ii.html
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2021/10/quotes-from-complete-short-stories-of.html
Thursday, December 4, 2025
Thomas Paine: The Rights of Man
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1961
(275) When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man and not the subject that becomes exhausted.
(308) The fact therefore must be, that the _individuals themselves_, each in his own personal and sovereign right, _entered into a compact with each other_ to produce a government_: and this is the only mode in which govenrments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
(309) A constitution is _antecedent_ to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting a government.
...A constitution, therefore, is to a government, what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.
(353) While the Declaration of Rights was before the National Assembly, some of its member remarked, that if a Declaration of Rights was published, it should be accompanied by a Declaration of Duties. The observation discovered a mind that reflected, and it only erred by not reflecting far enough. A Declaration of Rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of Duties also. Whatever is my right as a man, is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee, as well as to possess.
Editorial Comment: Gandhi - "The true source of right is the duty. If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek."
(379) Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
(387) Where we would wish to reform we must not reproach.
(389) A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.
(398) Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all parts of a civilized community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together.
(403) … That government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society.
(413) Republican government is no other than government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as collectively. It is not necessarily connected with any particular form, but it most naturally associates with the representative form, as being best calculated to secure the end for which a nation is at the expense of supporting it.
(420) A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution, is power without a right.
(424) The compact was that of the people with each other, to produce and constitute a government.
(446) Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ought to have no other object than the _general_ happiness. When, instead of this, it operates to create and increase wretchedness in any of the parts of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessary.
(463) When the valleys laugh and sing, it is not the farmer only, but all creation that rejoices. It is a prosperity that excludes all envy; and this cannot be said of anything else.
(465) Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
(480) Social Security: … consequently, at the end of fifty years, he has paid one hundred and twenty-eight pounds fifteen shillings [£24,807.15 in 2025]; and at sixty, one hundred and fifty-four pounds ten shillings [£29,768.58 in 2025].
Converting, therefore, his (or her) individual tax into a tontine,the money he shall receive after fifty years, is but little more than the legal interest of the net money he has paid; the rest is made up from those whose circumstances do not require them to draw such support, and the capital in both cases defrays the expenses of government.
(482) It is monarchical and aristocratic governments, only, that require ignorance for their support.
… Were twenty shillings to be given to every woman immediately on the birth of a child, who should make the demand, and none will make it whose circumstances do not require it, it might relieve a great deal of instant distress. [£192.68 in 2025]
(488) It would be impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property, or the accumulation of it by bequest.
… The following table of progressive taxation is constructed on the above principles, and as a substitution for the commutation tax.
Declaration of Rights (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp)
Approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive power, may be compared at any moment with the objects and purposes of all political institutions and may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all. Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:
Articles:
1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.
6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents.
7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.
8. The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and promulgated before the commission of the offense.
9. As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner's person shall be severely repressed by law.
10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
12. The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are, therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be intrusted.
13. A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.
14. All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes.
15. Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.
16. A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all.
17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1961
(275) When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man and not the subject that becomes exhausted.
(308) The fact therefore must be, that the _individuals themselves_, each in his own personal and sovereign right, _entered into a compact with each other_ to produce a government_: and this is the only mode in which govenrments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
(309) A constitution is _antecedent_ to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting a government.
...A constitution, therefore, is to a government, what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.
(353) While the Declaration of Rights was before the National Assembly, some of its member remarked, that if a Declaration of Rights was published, it should be accompanied by a Declaration of Duties. The observation discovered a mind that reflected, and it only erred by not reflecting far enough. A Declaration of Rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of Duties also. Whatever is my right as a man, is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee, as well as to possess.
Editorial Comment: Gandhi - "The true source of right is the duty. If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek."
(379) Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
(387) Where we would wish to reform we must not reproach.
(389) A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.
(398) Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all parts of a civilized community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together.
(403) … That government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society.
(413) Republican government is no other than government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as collectively. It is not necessarily connected with any particular form, but it most naturally associates with the representative form, as being best calculated to secure the end for which a nation is at the expense of supporting it.
(420) A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution, is power without a right.
(424) The compact was that of the people with each other, to produce and constitute a government.
(446) Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ought to have no other object than the _general_ happiness. When, instead of this, it operates to create and increase wretchedness in any of the parts of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessary.
(463) When the valleys laugh and sing, it is not the farmer only, but all creation that rejoices. It is a prosperity that excludes all envy; and this cannot be said of anything else.
(465) Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
(480) Social Security: … consequently, at the end of fifty years, he has paid one hundred and twenty-eight pounds fifteen shillings [£24,807.15 in 2025]; and at sixty, one hundred and fifty-four pounds ten shillings [£29,768.58 in 2025].
Converting, therefore, his (or her) individual tax into a tontine,the money he shall receive after fifty years, is but little more than the legal interest of the net money he has paid; the rest is made up from those whose circumstances do not require them to draw such support, and the capital in both cases defrays the expenses of government.
(482) It is monarchical and aristocratic governments, only, that require ignorance for their support.
… Were twenty shillings to be given to every woman immediately on the birth of a child, who should make the demand, and none will make it whose circumstances do not require it, it might relieve a great deal of instant distress. [£192.68 in 2025]
(488) It would be impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property, or the accumulation of it by bequest.
… The following table of progressive taxation is constructed on the above principles, and as a substitution for the commutation tax.
Declaration of Rights (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp)
Approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive power, may be compared at any moment with the objects and purposes of all political institutions and may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all. Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:
Articles:
1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.
6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents.
7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.
8. The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and promulgated before the commission of the offense.
9. As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner's person shall be severely repressed by law.
10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
12. The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are, therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be intrusted.
13. A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.
14. All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes.
15. Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.
16. A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all.
17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.
Tuesday, November 4, 2025
The Ritual of Civility
I must remember this the next time a politician starts talking about “civility.”
When you are talking about civility, it is already empty ritual without justice, benevolence, virtue, or any way to the Way.
from Tao Te Ching, Chapter 38
故失道而後德.
失德而後仁.
失仁而後義
失義 而後禮.
夫禮者, 忠信之薄,
而亂之首.
Thus after losing the Way, virtue.
After losing virtue, benevolence.
After losing benevolence, justice.
After losing justice, ritual.
Those married to ritual are thin on loyalty and faith
and the first of chaos.
When you are talking about civility, it is already empty ritual without justice, benevolence, virtue, or any way to the Way.
from Tao Te Ching, Chapter 38
故失道而後德.
失德而後仁.
失仁而後義
失義 而後禮.
夫禮者, 忠信之薄,
而亂之首.
Thus after losing the Way, virtue.
After losing virtue, benevolence.
After losing benevolence, justice.
After losing justice, ritual.
Those married to ritual are thin on loyalty and faith
and the first of chaos.
Monday, September 22, 2025
Ursula K LeGuin on The Stalin in the Soul
from _The Language of the Night_ by Ursula K LeGuin
NY: GP Putnam, 1979
ISBN-13 : 978-0399123252
(page 213) The only way to defeat suppression, depression, and censorship – and where there is institutionalized power, there is censorship – is to refuse it. Not to reply to it in kind – if you try to silence me, I'll try to silence you – but to refuse both its means, and its ends. To bypass it entirely. To be larger than it is. That is precisely what [Yevgeny Ivanovich] Zamyatin [author of the Soviet censored sf novel We] was. He was larger in spirit than his enemies, and consciously refused to let their smallness infect him, and decrease his stature. He would not play the dirty little games. He would not admit Stalin into his soul.
… What affects every writer, every book published in the United States, is censorship by the market.
(214) Where the market reigns, fashion reigns. The fine arts, like the arts of costume, cooking, furnishing, etc., become subject to a constant pressure to change, since novelty, regardless of quality, is a marketable value, a publicizable value. It is, of course, a very limited kind of novelty. The skirt up or down 2 inches; the lapel, half an inch wider; the novel’s dead this year, but fictionalized journalism is big; in science fiction, Holocaust is out, but Environment is in. Pop art, so called, was the pure essence of art as commodity: soup cans. Genuine, newness, genuine originality, is suspect. Unless it's something familiar, rewarmed, or something experimental in form but clearly trivial or cynical in content, it is unsafe. And it must be safe. It mustn't hurt the consumer. It mustn't change the consumer. Shock him, epater le bourgeois, certainly; that's been done for 150 years now, that's the oldest game going. Shock him, jolt him, titillate him, make him writhe and squeal – but do not make him think. If he thinks, he may not come back to buy the next can of soup.
(216-217) Recently, I read in Giovanni Grazzini's fascinating book on Solzhenitsyn [ISBN 10: 0718110684 ISBN 13: 9780718110680], the following passage:
"The cultural industry, vanity, the resentment felt by intellectuals at seeing power slipping from their hands, have so obscured the vision of Western writers as to make them believe that not being persecuted by the police is a privilege."
I am very slow indeed. I puzzled over that sentence for three days before I understood what Grazzini meant. He meant, of course, that it is not a privilege, but a right. The Constitution, which is a revolutionary document, is absolutely clear on that point. It does not grant us, permit us, allow us freedom of speech. It gives the government no such authority. It recognizes freedom of speech as a right – as a fact. A government cannot grant that right. It can only accept it or deny it, and withhold it by force.
(217-218) When there are no formal rules, no, thou shalts and thou shalt nots, it is difficult to notice, even, that one is being censored. It is also painless. It is still more difficult to understand that one may be censoring oneself, extensively, ruthlessly – because that act of self-censorship is called, with full social approval,"writing for a market"; it is even used by some writers as the test and shibboleth for that most admired state of being, “professionalism.”
Indeed, to distinguish free enterprise from self-censorship takes a most uncomfortable degree of vigilance. And that so easily becomes paranoia.
(219) Once you stop asking questions, once you let Stalin into your soul, you can only smile, and smile, and smile.
...When art shows, only how and what, it is, trivial entertainment, whether optimistic or despairing. When it asks why, it rises from mere emotional response to real statement, and to intelligent ethical choice. It becomes not a passive reflection, but an act.
And that is when all the censors, of the governments out of the marketplace, become afraid of it.
(220) We are mere "viewers" and "consumers," not readers at all. Reading is not a passive reaction, but an action, involving the mind, the emotions, and the will. To accept trashy books because they are "best sellers" is the same thing as accepting adulterated food, ill-made machines, corrupt government, and military and corporative tyranny, and praising them, and calling them the American Way of Life, or the American Dream. It is a betrayal of reality, every lie accepted, leads to the next betrayal, and the next lie.
NY: GP Putnam, 1979
ISBN-13 : 978-0399123252
(page 213) The only way to defeat suppression, depression, and censorship – and where there is institutionalized power, there is censorship – is to refuse it. Not to reply to it in kind – if you try to silence me, I'll try to silence you – but to refuse both its means, and its ends. To bypass it entirely. To be larger than it is. That is precisely what [Yevgeny Ivanovich] Zamyatin [author of the Soviet censored sf novel We] was. He was larger in spirit than his enemies, and consciously refused to let their smallness infect him, and decrease his stature. He would not play the dirty little games. He would not admit Stalin into his soul.
… What affects every writer, every book published in the United States, is censorship by the market.
(214) Where the market reigns, fashion reigns. The fine arts, like the arts of costume, cooking, furnishing, etc., become subject to a constant pressure to change, since novelty, regardless of quality, is a marketable value, a publicizable value. It is, of course, a very limited kind of novelty. The skirt up or down 2 inches; the lapel, half an inch wider; the novel’s dead this year, but fictionalized journalism is big; in science fiction, Holocaust is out, but Environment is in. Pop art, so called, was the pure essence of art as commodity: soup cans. Genuine, newness, genuine originality, is suspect. Unless it's something familiar, rewarmed, or something experimental in form but clearly trivial or cynical in content, it is unsafe. And it must be safe. It mustn't hurt the consumer. It mustn't change the consumer. Shock him, epater le bourgeois, certainly; that's been done for 150 years now, that's the oldest game going. Shock him, jolt him, titillate him, make him writhe and squeal – but do not make him think. If he thinks, he may not come back to buy the next can of soup.
(216-217) Recently, I read in Giovanni Grazzini's fascinating book on Solzhenitsyn [ISBN 10: 0718110684 ISBN 13: 9780718110680], the following passage:
"The cultural industry, vanity, the resentment felt by intellectuals at seeing power slipping from their hands, have so obscured the vision of Western writers as to make them believe that not being persecuted by the police is a privilege."
I am very slow indeed. I puzzled over that sentence for three days before I understood what Grazzini meant. He meant, of course, that it is not a privilege, but a right. The Constitution, which is a revolutionary document, is absolutely clear on that point. It does not grant us, permit us, allow us freedom of speech. It gives the government no such authority. It recognizes freedom of speech as a right – as a fact. A government cannot grant that right. It can only accept it or deny it, and withhold it by force.
(217-218) When there are no formal rules, no, thou shalts and thou shalt nots, it is difficult to notice, even, that one is being censored. It is also painless. It is still more difficult to understand that one may be censoring oneself, extensively, ruthlessly – because that act of self-censorship is called, with full social approval,"writing for a market"; it is even used by some writers as the test and shibboleth for that most admired state of being, “professionalism.”
Indeed, to distinguish free enterprise from self-censorship takes a most uncomfortable degree of vigilance. And that so easily becomes paranoia.
(219) Once you stop asking questions, once you let Stalin into your soul, you can only smile, and smile, and smile.
...When art shows, only how and what, it is, trivial entertainment, whether optimistic or despairing. When it asks why, it rises from mere emotional response to real statement, and to intelligent ethical choice. It becomes not a passive reflection, but an act.
And that is when all the censors, of the governments out of the marketplace, become afraid of it.
(220) We are mere "viewers" and "consumers," not readers at all. Reading is not a passive reaction, but an action, involving the mind, the emotions, and the will. To accept trashy books because they are "best sellers" is the same thing as accepting adulterated food, ill-made machines, corrupt government, and military and corporative tyranny, and praising them, and calling them the American Way of Life, or the American Dream. It is a betrayal of reality, every lie accepted, leads to the next betrayal, and the next lie.
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Notes on On Strategic Non-Violent Conflict
On Strategic Non-Violent Conflict by Robert Helvey
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62b0eb7da51f3717911bb4e1/t/642f39caabfc7973cb415676/1680816586931/OSNC_English.pdf
Introduction
a framework that encourages orderly thinking about the fundamentals of strategic nonviolent opposition to state tyranny
Chapter 1
Source of power are identified as residing among the people throughout society, with the power holder able to exercise only that power that the people permit - pluralistic not monolithic power
Authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, cultural factors, material resources, sanctions are six sources of power
Chapter 2
Pillars of support: police, military, civil servants, media, business, youth, workers, religious organizations, NGOs
Chapter 3
The reason most people obey is the habit of obedience.
Fear of sanctions, self-interest, moral obligation, idol worship, psychological identification with the rulers, indifference, lack of self-confidence
Chapter Four
Recalling that strategic nonviolent struggle attacks the sources of power, conversion efforts against a regime’s pillars of support can be productive. The first step in this process is to insure that members of the organizations and taargeted institutions understand that they are not, as individuals, an “enemy of the people’ and, in fact, would be welcomed, appreciated, and respected as productive members within a democrtic society.
most important is a vision of a better tomorrow
noncooperation is the most powerful category of nonviolent methods available to opposition movements
NB: Noncooperation movement in Hungary in the 1860s
every person in the country can practice social noncooperation, avoiding social interactions with targeted members of the regime
NB: contrast with no “enemy of the people” and shunning former friends and family who support the regime
Chapter Five
Staff study process: statement of problem, assumptions, facts bearing on the problem, discussion of facts, conclusions, recommendations - suitable, feasible, acceptable?
NB: OODA Loops - Observe Orientation Decide Act - John Boyd https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2007/5/20/336798/-
Chapter Seven
Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration and Logistics, Command and Signal
Pull don’t push pillars of support
Creating dilemmas for opponents
Chapter Eight
Psyops is the centerpiece of a well-planned strategic nonviolent struggle
Propaganda of agitation, propaganda of integration - to instill conformity & acceptance of authority
better for democracy not to engage hate and prejudice
NB: what damps hat and prejudice down?
Chapter Nine
If the people do not participate in the struggle for their own democracy, it is unlikely they will be able to withstand the challenges of sustaining their freedom
Gandi’s Constructive Program - teach self-respect and dignity, decrease reliance upon British, pursue active struggle for independence, keep people who carry it out distinct from policy, seize and maintain the moral high ground
Liddell Hart: intermediate objectives to draw the enemy away from its stong points and distract it from pursuing its own objectives
NB: Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Khudai Kidmatgar
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/01/ghaffar-khan-nonviolent-badshah-of.html
Chapter Ten
The public must overcome the effects of fear in order to confront the violent sanctions a regime may impose upon them.
Surprise often results in panic.
Each person should be given a specific task to accomplish during the event that will require his or her undivided attention.
Chapter Eleven
Leadership Traits: set the example, know the people you expect to lead, be proficient in carrying out responsibilities, seek and accept responsibility, give others credit for success, loyalty, know your opponent, learn from experience, maximize and challenge the abilities of subordinates
It is important to remember, however, that competence is more important than the leadership style adopted (authoritarian to democratic)
Chapter Twelve
Contaminants: violence, appearance of disunity, perception of exclusiveness, presence of foreign nationals within a democratic movement, active partiicpation of military forces in political struggle, organizational structure ill-suited for nonviolent conflict, agents provocateurs
Chapter Fourteen
film “A Force More Powerful”
standardizing core knowledge: selecting final and intermediate objectives for the struggle, pluralistic nature of power or pillars or support, arsenal of noviolent tools and methods, fear and overcoming fear, fundamentals of propaganda, contaminants to nonviolence
Diversifying sources of knowledge and skills
Effective instructors and consultants: be a good listener and observer, sensitive to cross-cultural communications, knowledge beyond the lesson plan, understanding how learning takes place
NB: remember pluralistic ignorance
Summarization by ChatGPT
ChatGPT said:
Here’s a clear and structured summary of On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking About the Fundamentals by Robert L. Helvey, with direct quotes to preserve his voice and insights.
1. Scope & Purpose
Helvey introduces the work as a strategic framework, not a moral or religious manifesto: “Strategic nonviolent struggle is about seizing political power or denying it to others. It is not about pacifism, moral or religious beliefs.”
His aim is to help opposition movements think systematically—similar to how military planners approach strategy.
2. Foundations of Power (Chapters 1–2)
Theory of Political Power: Helvey draws on Gene Sharp’s pluralistic model: “Ruler can only rule with the consent and cooperation of the people.”
Pillars of Support: He emphasizes analyzing the government's sources of strength—military, media, bureaucracy, religious institutions, etc.—and targeting them strategically.
3. Dynamics of Obedience & Tactics (Chapters 3–4)
Obedience: Explores why people obey authority and how to disrupt compliance.
Methods of Nonviolent Struggle: Presents a wide array—from strikes and boycotts to civil disobedience and symbolic protests—all mapped by purpose. Helvey offers more than 30 methods in his appendices.
4. Strategic Thinking & Planning (Chapters 5–7)
Problem Solving: Introduces structured formats (e.g. staff study) to assess challenges methodically.
Strategic Estimate: Just as armies conduct military estimates, nonviolent groups must analyze political, military, and social environments. For instance, he notes that activists in Burma accounted for weather timing in planning demonstrations.
Operational Planning: Covers coordination, logistics, and safeguards—emphasizing one key principle:
“A fundamental principle is never to remain completely passive."
5. Psychological & Narrative Tools (Chapters 8–9)
Psychological Operations: Using storytelling and symbols to undermine authoritarian legitimacy.
Strategic Insights: Integrates lessons from military strategy into nonviolent campaigns.
6. Dealing with Fear & Leadership (Chapters 10–11)
Fear: Strategies to identify, reduce, and exploit fear—for both activists and opponents.
Leadership: Stresses the importance of adapting leadership style to context: decisiveness in crisis, participatory when possible.
7. Contaminants, External Influence & Training (Chapters 12–14)
Contaminants: Factors that undermine nonviolent discipline—jealousy, infighting, greed.
External Audiences: How to frame movement goals to attract international support without overreliance:
“By themselves… international gestures of support are never sufficient to remove a ruler from power.”
Consultations & Training: Recommends learning from veterans and peer movements to reduce mistakes.
8. Final Reflections
Helvey concludes that people hold the keys to power:
“People need to understand clearly that they hold the very sources of power that a tyrant uses to suppress them…”
He underscores that strategic nonviolent action can dismantle oppressive systems with fewer losses and long-term legitimacy.
Appendix Highlights
Glossary of Terms (e.g., power, pillars, coercion)
156 Practical Methods of nonviolent action
Templates for strategic estimates and problem-solving
In Context
Published in 2004 by the Albert Einstein Institution with backing from the U.S. Institute of Peace, the book distills decades of civil resistance theory (especially Sharp’s work) into a concise, strategic manual.
Ideal for activists, trainers, or political analysts seeking a practical, strategic toolkit—not ideological preaching—for challenging authoritarian structures through disciplined nonviolent action.
Notes on From Dictatorship to Democracy
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2025/07/notes-on-from-dictatorship-to-democracy.html
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62b0eb7da51f3717911bb4e1/t/642f39caabfc7973cb415676/1680816586931/OSNC_English.pdf
Introduction
a framework that encourages orderly thinking about the fundamentals of strategic nonviolent opposition to state tyranny
Chapter 1
Source of power are identified as residing among the people throughout society, with the power holder able to exercise only that power that the people permit - pluralistic not monolithic power
Authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, cultural factors, material resources, sanctions are six sources of power
Chapter 2
Pillars of support: police, military, civil servants, media, business, youth, workers, religious organizations, NGOs
Chapter 3
The reason most people obey is the habit of obedience.
Fear of sanctions, self-interest, moral obligation, idol worship, psychological identification with the rulers, indifference, lack of self-confidence
Chapter Four
Recalling that strategic nonviolent struggle attacks the sources of power, conversion efforts against a regime’s pillars of support can be productive. The first step in this process is to insure that members of the organizations and taargeted institutions understand that they are not, as individuals, an “enemy of the people’ and, in fact, would be welcomed, appreciated, and respected as productive members within a democrtic society.
most important is a vision of a better tomorrow
noncooperation is the most powerful category of nonviolent methods available to opposition movements
NB: Noncooperation movement in Hungary in the 1860s
every person in the country can practice social noncooperation, avoiding social interactions with targeted members of the regime
NB: contrast with no “enemy of the people” and shunning former friends and family who support the regime
Chapter Five
Staff study process: statement of problem, assumptions, facts bearing on the problem, discussion of facts, conclusions, recommendations - suitable, feasible, acceptable?
NB: OODA Loops - Observe Orientation Decide Act - John Boyd https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2007/5/20/336798/-
Chapter Seven
Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration and Logistics, Command and Signal
Pull don’t push pillars of support
Creating dilemmas for opponents
Chapter Eight
Psyops is the centerpiece of a well-planned strategic nonviolent struggle
Propaganda of agitation, propaganda of integration - to instill conformity & acceptance of authority
better for democracy not to engage hate and prejudice
NB: what damps hat and prejudice down?
Chapter Nine
If the people do not participate in the struggle for their own democracy, it is unlikely they will be able to withstand the challenges of sustaining their freedom
Gandi’s Constructive Program - teach self-respect and dignity, decrease reliance upon British, pursue active struggle for independence, keep people who carry it out distinct from policy, seize and maintain the moral high ground
Liddell Hart: intermediate objectives to draw the enemy away from its stong points and distract it from pursuing its own objectives
NB: Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Khudai Kidmatgar
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/01/ghaffar-khan-nonviolent-badshah-of.html
Chapter Ten
The public must overcome the effects of fear in order to confront the violent sanctions a regime may impose upon them.
Surprise often results in panic.
Each person should be given a specific task to accomplish during the event that will require his or her undivided attention.
Chapter Eleven
Leadership Traits: set the example, know the people you expect to lead, be proficient in carrying out responsibilities, seek and accept responsibility, give others credit for success, loyalty, know your opponent, learn from experience, maximize and challenge the abilities of subordinates
It is important to remember, however, that competence is more important than the leadership style adopted (authoritarian to democratic)
Chapter Twelve
Contaminants: violence, appearance of disunity, perception of exclusiveness, presence of foreign nationals within a democratic movement, active partiicpation of military forces in political struggle, organizational structure ill-suited for nonviolent conflict, agents provocateurs
Chapter Fourteen
film “A Force More Powerful”
standardizing core knowledge: selecting final and intermediate objectives for the struggle, pluralistic nature of power or pillars or support, arsenal of noviolent tools and methods, fear and overcoming fear, fundamentals of propaganda, contaminants to nonviolence
Diversifying sources of knowledge and skills
Effective instructors and consultants: be a good listener and observer, sensitive to cross-cultural communications, knowledge beyond the lesson plan, understanding how learning takes place
NB: remember pluralistic ignorance
Summarization by ChatGPT
ChatGPT said:
Here’s a clear and structured summary of On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking About the Fundamentals by Robert L. Helvey, with direct quotes to preserve his voice and insights.
1. Scope & Purpose
Helvey introduces the work as a strategic framework, not a moral or religious manifesto: “Strategic nonviolent struggle is about seizing political power or denying it to others. It is not about pacifism, moral or religious beliefs.”
His aim is to help opposition movements think systematically—similar to how military planners approach strategy.
2. Foundations of Power (Chapters 1–2)
Theory of Political Power: Helvey draws on Gene Sharp’s pluralistic model: “Ruler can only rule with the consent and cooperation of the people.”
Pillars of Support: He emphasizes analyzing the government's sources of strength—military, media, bureaucracy, religious institutions, etc.—and targeting them strategically.
3. Dynamics of Obedience & Tactics (Chapters 3–4)
Obedience: Explores why people obey authority and how to disrupt compliance.
Methods of Nonviolent Struggle: Presents a wide array—from strikes and boycotts to civil disobedience and symbolic protests—all mapped by purpose. Helvey offers more than 30 methods in his appendices.
4. Strategic Thinking & Planning (Chapters 5–7)
Problem Solving: Introduces structured formats (e.g. staff study) to assess challenges methodically.
Strategic Estimate: Just as armies conduct military estimates, nonviolent groups must analyze political, military, and social environments. For instance, he notes that activists in Burma accounted for weather timing in planning demonstrations.
Operational Planning: Covers coordination, logistics, and safeguards—emphasizing one key principle:
“A fundamental principle is never to remain completely passive."
5. Psychological & Narrative Tools (Chapters 8–9)
Psychological Operations: Using storytelling and symbols to undermine authoritarian legitimacy.
Strategic Insights: Integrates lessons from military strategy into nonviolent campaigns.
6. Dealing with Fear & Leadership (Chapters 10–11)
Fear: Strategies to identify, reduce, and exploit fear—for both activists and opponents.
Leadership: Stresses the importance of adapting leadership style to context: decisiveness in crisis, participatory when possible.
7. Contaminants, External Influence & Training (Chapters 12–14)
Contaminants: Factors that undermine nonviolent discipline—jealousy, infighting, greed.
External Audiences: How to frame movement goals to attract international support without overreliance:
“By themselves… international gestures of support are never sufficient to remove a ruler from power.”
Consultations & Training: Recommends learning from veterans and peer movements to reduce mistakes.
8. Final Reflections
Helvey concludes that people hold the keys to power:
“People need to understand clearly that they hold the very sources of power that a tyrant uses to suppress them…”
He underscores that strategic nonviolent action can dismantle oppressive systems with fewer losses and long-term legitimacy.
Appendix Highlights
Glossary of Terms (e.g., power, pillars, coercion)
156 Practical Methods of nonviolent action
Templates for strategic estimates and problem-solving
In Context
Published in 2004 by the Albert Einstein Institution with backing from the U.S. Institute of Peace, the book distills decades of civil resistance theory (especially Sharp’s work) into a concise, strategic manual.
Ideal for activists, trainers, or political analysts seeking a practical, strategic toolkit—not ideological preaching—for challenging authoritarian structures through disciplined nonviolent action.
Notes on From Dictatorship to Democracy
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2025/07/notes-on-from-dictatorship-to-democracy.html
Thursday, July 31, 2025
Notes on From Dictatorship to Democracy: Basics of Nonviolent Political Change
From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/126900/8008_FDTD.pdf
Chapter One - Facing Dictatorships realistically
"Political defiance” is nonviolent struggle (protest, noncooperation, and intervention) applied defiantly and actively for political purposes.
The term is used principally to describe action by populations to regain from dictatorships control over governmental institutions by relentlessly attacking their sources of power and deliberately using strategic planning and operations to do so.
By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority. The dictators are equipped to apply violence overwhelmingly.
Dictatorships usually exist primarily because of the internal power distribution in the home country. The population and society are too weak to cause the dictatorship serious problems, wealth and power are concentrated in too few hands.
When one wants to bring down a dictatorship most effectively and with the least cost then one has four immediate tasks:
One must strengthen the oppressed population themselves in their determination, self-confidence, and resistance skills;
One must strengthen the independent social groups and institutions of the oppressed people;
One must create a powerful internal resistance force; and
One must develop a wise grand strategic plan for liberation and implement it skillfully.
Against a strong self-reliant force, given wise strategy, disciplined and courageous action, and genuine strength, the dictatorship will eventually crumble. Minimally, however, the above four requirements must be fulfilled.
Chapter Two - The Dangers of Negotiations
The point here is that negotiations are not a realistic way to remove a strong dictatorship in the absence of a powerful democratic opposition.
The offer by a dictatorship of “peace” through negotiations with the democratic opposition is, of course, rather disingenuous. The violence could be ended immediately by the dictators themselves, if only they would stop waging war on their own people.
When the dictatorship is strong but an irritating resistance exists, the dictators may wish to negotiate the opposition into surrender under the guise of making “peace.” The call to negotiate can sound appealing, but grave dangers can be lurking within the negotiating room.
On the other hand, when the opposition is exceptionally strong and the dictatorship is genuinely threatened, the dictators may seek negotiations in order to salvage as much of their control or wealth as possible. In neither case should the democrats help the dictators achieve their goals.
Whatever promises offered by dictators in any negotiated settlement, no one should ever forget that the dictators may promise anything to secure submission from their democratic opponents, and then brazenly violate those same agreements.
“For the tyrant has the power to inflict only that which we lack the strength to resist,” wrote Krishnalal Shridharani.
Success is most often determined not by negotiating a settlement but through the wise use of the most appropriate and powerful means of resistance available.
Hitler often called for peace, by which he meant submission to his will. A dictators’ peace is often no more than the peace of the prison or of the grave.
People living under dictatorships need not remain weak, and dictators need not be allowed to remain powerful indefinitely. Aristotle noted long ago, “. . . [O]ligarchy and tyranny are shorter-lived than any other constitution. . . . [A]ll round, tyrannies have not lasted long.”
Recent history shows the vulnerability of dictatorships, and reveals that they can crumble in a relatively short time span.
The old preconception that violent means always work quickly and nonviolent means always require vast time is clearly not valid. Although much time may be required for changes in the underlying situation and society, the actual fight against a dictatorship sometimes occurs relatively quickly by nonviolent struggle.
Chapter Three - Whence Comes the Power?
Dictators require the assistance of the people they rule, without which they cannot secure and maintain the sources of political power. These sources of political power include:
Authority, the belief among the people that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it;
Human resources, the number and importance of the persons and groups which are obeying, cooperating, or providing assistance to the rulers;
Skills and knowledge, needed by the regime to perform specific actions and supplied by the cooperating persons and groups;
Intangible factors, psychological and ideological factors that may induce people to obey and assist the rulers;
Material resources, the degree to which the rulers control or have access to property, natural resources, financial resources, the economic system, and means of communication and transportation; and
Sanctions, punishments, threatened or applied, against the disobedient and noncooperative to ensure the submission and cooperation that are needed for the regime to exist and carry out its policies.
All of these sources, however, depend on acceptance of the regime, on the submission and obedience of the population, and on the cooperation of innumerable people and the many institutions of the society. These are not guaranteed.
The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is, it follows, in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.
Political scientist Karl W. Deutsch noted in 1953: If totalitarian power must be used at all times against the entire population, it is unlikely to remain powerful for long.
Niccolo Machiavelli had much earlier argued that the prince “. . . who has the public as a whole for his enemy can never make himself secure; and the greater his cruelty, the weaker does his re- gime become.”
Three of the most important factors in determining to what degree a government’s power will be controlled or uncontrolled therefore are: (1) the relative desire of the populace to impose limits on the government’s power; (2) the relative strength of the subjects’ independent organizations and institutions to withdraw collectively the sources of power; and (3) the population’s relative ability to with- hold their consent and assistance.
One characteristic of a democratic society is that there exist independent of the state a multitude of nongovernmental groups and institutions. These include, for example, families, religious organizations, cultural associations, sports clubs, economic institutions, trade unions, student associations, political parties, villages, neighborhood associations, gardening clubs, human rights organizations, musical groups, literary societies, and others. These bodies are important in serving their own objectives and also in helping to meet social needs.
If the dictatorship has been largely successful in destroying or controlling the society’s independent bodies, it will be important for the resisters to create new independent social groups and institutions, or to reassert democratic control over surviving or partially controlled bodies. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956-1957 a multitude of direct democracy councils emerged, even joining together to establish for some weeks a whole federated system of institutions and governance.
NB: Hannah Arendt in On Revolution writes about this in the context of alternatives to party politics, notes at https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2025/04/notes-on-hannah-arendts-on-revolution.html
Dictatorships in particular have specific characteristics that render them highly vulnerable to skillfully implemented political defiance.
Chapter Four - Dictatorships Have Weaknesses
Among the weaknesses of dictatorships are the following:
The cooperation of a multitude of people, groups, and institutions needed to operate the system may be restricted or withdrawn.
The requirements and effects of the regime’s past policies will somewhat limit its present ability to adopt and implement conflicting policies. The system may become routine in its operation, less able to adjust quickly to new situations.
Personnel and resources already allocated for existing tasks will not be easily available for new needs.
Subordinates fearful of displeasing their superiors may not report accurate or complete information needed by the dictators to make decisions.
The ideology may erode, and myths and symbols of the system may become unstable.
If a strong ideology is present that influences one’s view of reality, firm adherence to it may cause inattention to actual conditions and needs.
Deteriorating efficiency and competency of the bureaucracy, or excessive controls and regulations, may make the system’s policies and operation ineffective.
Internal institutional conflicts and personal rivalries and hostilities may harm, and even disrupt, the operation of the dictatorship.
Intellectuals and students may become restless in response to conditions, restrictions, doctrinalism, and repression.
The general public may over time become apathetic, skeptical, and even hostile to the regime.
Regional, class, cultural, or national differences may become acute.
The power hierarchy of the dictatorship is always unstable to some degree, and at times extremely so. Individuals do not only remain in the same position in the ranking, but may rise or fall to other ranks or be removed entirely and replaced by new persons.
Sections of the police or military forces may act to achieve their own objectives, even against the will of established dictators, including by coup d’état.
If the dictatorship is new, time is required for it to become well established.
With so many decisions made by so few people in the dictatorship, mistakes of judgment, policy, and action are likely to occur.
If the regime seeks to avoid these dangers and decentralizes controls and decision making, its control over the central levers of power may be further eroded.
Chapter Five - exercising power
Political defiance has the following characteristics:
It does not accept that the outcome will be decided by the means of fighting chosen by the dictatorship.
It is difficult for the regime to combat.
It can uniquely aggravate weaknesses of the dictatorship and can sever its sources of power. It can in action be widely dispersed but can also be concen- trated on a specific objective. It leads to errors of judgment and action by the dictators.
It can effectively utilize the population as a whole and the society’s groups and institutions in the struggle to end the brutal domination of the few.
It helps to spread the distribution of effective power in the society, making the establishment and maintenance of a democratic society more possible.
The common error of past improvised political defiance campaigns is the reliance on only one or two methods, such as strikes and mass demonstrations. In fact, a multitude of methods exist that allow resistance strategists to concentrate and disperse resistance as required.
About two hundred specific methods of nonviolent action have been identified, and there are certainly scores more. These methods are classified under three broad categories: protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and intervention. Methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion are largely symbolic demonstrations, including pa- rades, marches, and vigils (54 methods). Noncooperation is divided into three sub-categories: (a) social noncooperation (16 methods), (b) economic noncooperation, including boycotts (26 methods) and strikes (23 methods), and (c) political noncooperation (38 methods). Nonviolent intervention, by psychological, physical, social, econom- ic, or political means, such as the fast, nonviolent occupation, and parallel government (41 methods), is the final group. A list of 198 of these methods is included as the Appendix to this publication.
Four mechanisms of change
Nonviolent struggle produces change in four ways. The first mechanism is the least likely, though it has occurred. When members of the opponent group are emotionally moved by the suffering of repression imposed on courageous nonviolent resisters or are rationally persuaded that the resisters’ cause is just, they may come to accept the resisters’ aims. This mechanism is called conversion. Though cases of conversion in nonviolent action do sometimes happen, they are rare, and in most conflicts this does not occur at all or at least not on a significant scale. Far more often, nonviolent struggle operates by changing the conflict situation and the society so that the opponents simply cannot do as they like. It is this change that produces the other three mechanisms: accommodation, nonviolent coercion, and disintegration. Which of these occurs depends on the degree to which the relative and absolute power relations are shifted in favor of the democrats.
If the issues are not fundamental ones, the demands of the opposition in a limited campaign are not considered threatening, and the contest of forces has altered the power relationships to some degree, the immediate conflict may be ended by reaching an agreement, a splitting of differences or compromise. This mechanism is called accommodation.
Although the opponents’ leaders remain in their positions, and adhere to their original goals, their ability to act effectively has been taken away from them. That is called nonviolent coercion.
The fourth mechanism of change, disintegration of the opponents’ system, is so complete that they do not even have sufficient power to surrender. The regime simply falls to pieces.
Below are several of the positive democratizing effects nonviolent struggle may have:
Experience in applying nonviolent struggle may result in the population being more self-confident in challenging the regime’s threats and capacity for violent repression.
Nonviolent struggle provides the means of noncooperation and defiance by which the population can resist undemocratic controls over them by any dictatorial group.
Nonviolent struggle can be used to assert the practice of democratic freedoms, such as free speech, free press, independent organizations, and free assembly, in face of repressive controls. Nonviolent struggle contributes strongly to the survival, rebirth, and strengthening of the independent groups and institutions of the society, as previously discussed. These are important for democracy because of their capacity to mobilize the power capacity of the population and to impose limits on the effective power of any would-be dictators.
Nonviolent struggle provides means by which the population can wield power against repressive police and military action by a dictatorial government.
Nonviolent struggle provides methods by which the population and the independent institutions can in the interests of democracy restrict or sever the sources of power for the ruling elite, thereby threatening its capacity to continue its domination.
Chapter 6 - The Need for Strategic Planning
In order to help us to think strategically, clarity about the meanings of four basic terms is important.
Grand strategy is the conception that serves to coordinate and direct the use of all appropriate and available resources (economic, human, moral, political, organizational, etc.) of a group seeking to attain its objectives in a conflict.
Strategy is the conception of how best to achieve particular objectives in a conflict, operating within the scope of the chosen grand strategy. Strategy is concerned with whether, when, and how to fight, as well as how to achieve maximum effectiveness in struggling for certain ends. A strategy has been compared to the artist’s concept, while a strategic plan is the architect’s blueprint.
Tactics and methods of action are used to implement the strategy. Tactics relate to the skillful use of one’s forces to the best advantage in a limited situation. A tactic is a limited action, employed to achieve a restricted objective. The choice of tactics is governed by the conception of how best in a restricted phase of a conflict to utilize the available means of fighting to implement the strategy. To be most effective, tactics and methods must be chosen and applied with constant attention to the achievement of strategic objectives.
Tactics are always concerned with fighting, whereas strategy includes wider considerations.
Method refers to the specific weapons or means of action. Within the technique of nonviolent struggle, these include the dozens of particular forms of action
Chapter Seven - Planning Strategy
Though related, the development of grand strategy and campaign strategies are two separate processes. Only after the grand strategy has been developed can the specific campaign strategies be fully developed. Campaign strategies will need to be designed to achieve and reinforce the grand strategic objectives.
It is critical to determine the real objective of the struggle. We have argued here that overthrow of the dictatorship or removal of the present dicta- tors is not enough. The objective in these conflicts needs to be the establishment of a free society with a democratic system of government. Clarity on this point will influence the development of a grand strategy and of the ensuing specific strategies.
NB: Economics and social structures
Particularly, strategists will need to answer many fundamental questions, such as these:
What are the main obstacles to achieving freedom?
What factors will facilitate achieving freedom?
What are the main strengths of the dictatorship?
What are the various weaknesses of the dictatorship?
To what degree are the sources of power for the dictatorship vulnerable?
What are the strengths of the democratic forces and the general population?
What are the weaknesses of the democratic forces and how can they be corrected?
What is the status of third parties, not immediately involved in the conflict, who already assist or might assist, either the dictatorship or the democratic movement, and if so in what ways?
The following questions pose (in a more specific way than earlier) the types of considerations required in devising a grand strategy for a political defiance struggle:
How might the long-term struggle best begin? How can the oppressed population muster sufficient self-confidence and strength to act to challenge the dictatorship, even initially in a limited way? How could the population’s capacity to apply noncooperation and defiance be increased with time and experience? What might be the objectives of a series of limited campaigns to regain democratic control over the society and limit the dictatorship?
Are there independent institutions that have survived the dictatorship which might be used in the struggle to establish freedom? What institutions of the society can be regained from the dictators’ control, or what institutions need to be newly created by the democrats to meet their needs and establish spheres of democracy even while the dictatorship continues?
How can organizational strength in the resistance be developed? How can participants be trained? What resources (finances, equipment, etc.) will be required throughout the struggle? What types of symbolism can be most effective in mobilizing the population?
By what kinds of action and in what stages could the sources of power of the dictators be incrementally weakened and severed? How can the resisting population simultaneously persist in its defi- ance and also maintain the necessary nonviolent discipline? How can the society continue to meet its basic needs during the course of the struggle? How can social order be maintained in the midst of the conflict? As victory approaches, how can the democratic resis- tance continue to build the institutional base of the post-dictatorship society to make the transition as smooth as possible?
In planning the strategies for the specific selective resistance campaigns and for the longer term development of the liberation struggle, the political defiance strategists will need to consider various issues and problems. The following are among these: Determination of the specific objectives of the campaign and their contributions to implementing the grand strategy.
Consideration of the specific methods, or political weapons, that can best be used to implement the chosen strategies. Within each overall plan for a particular strategic campaign it will be necessary to determine what smaller, tactical plans and which specific methods of action should be used to impose pressures and restrictions against the dictatorship’s sources of power. It should be remembered that the achievement of major objectives will come as a result of carefully chosen and implemented specific smaller steps.
Determination whether, or how, economic issues should be related to the overall essentially political struggle. If eco- nomic issues are to be prominent in the struggle, care will be needed that the economic grievances can actually be rem- edied after the dictatorship is ended. Otherwise, disillusion- ment and disaffection may set in if quick solutions are not provided during the transition period to a democratic society. Such disillusionment could facilitate the rise of dictato- rial forces promising an end to economic woes.
Determination in advance of what kind of leadership structure and communications system will work best for initiating the resistance struggle. What means of decision-making and communication will be possible during the course of the struggle to give continuing guidance to the resisters and the general population?
Communication of the resistance news to the general population, to the dictators’ forces, and the international press. Claims and reporting should always be strictly factual. Exaggerations and unfounded claims will undermine the credibility of the resistance.
Plans for self-reliant constructive social, educational, economic, and political activities to meet the needs of one’s own people during the coming conflict. Such projects can be conducted by persons not directly involved in the resistance activities.
Determination of what kind of external assistance is desirable in support of the specific campaign or the general liberation struggle. How can external help be best mobilized and used without making the internal struggle dependent on uncertain external factors? Attention will need to be given to which external groups are most likely, and most appropriate, to assist, such as non-governmental organizations (social movements, religious or political groups, labor unions, etc.), governments, and/or the United Nations and its various bodies.
People living under the dictatorship may be already familiar with this concept from a variety of sources. Even so, the democratic forces should deliberately spread and popularize the idea of noncooperation. The “Monkey Master” story, or a similar one, could be disseminated throughout the society. Such a story could be easily understood. Once the general concept of noncooperation is grasped, people will be able to understand the relevance of future calls to practice noncooperation with the dictatorship. They will also be able on their own to improvise a myriad of specific forms of noncooperation in new situations.
Chapter Eight - Applying Political Defiance
In situations in which the population feels powerless and frightened, it is important that initial tasks for the public be low-risk, confidence- building actions. These types of actions — such as wearing one’s clothes in an unusual way — may publicly register a dissenting opinion and provide an opportunity for the public to participate significantly in acts of dissent. In other cases a relatively minor (on the surface) nonpolitical issue (such as securing a safe water supply) might be made the focus for group action. Strategists should choose an issue the merits of which will be widely recognized and difficult to reject. Success in such limited campaigns could not only correct specific grievances but also convince the population that it indeed has power potential.
Selective resistance strategies should concentrate primarily on specific social, economic, or political issues. These may be chosen in order to keep some part of the social and political system out of the dictators’ control, to regain control of some part currently controlled by the dictators, or to deny the dictators a particular objective. If possible, the campaign of selective resistance should also strike at one weakness or more of the dictatorship, as already discussed. Thereby, democrats can make the greatest possible impact with their available power capacity.
The initial action is likely to take the form of symbolic protest or may be a symbolic act of limited or temporary noncooperation.
Phasing resistance campaigns by issue and population group will allow certain segments of the population to rest while resistance continues.
Selective resistance is especially important to defend the exis- tence and autonomy of independent social, economic, and political groups and institutions outside the control of the dictatorship, which were briefly discussed earlier. These centers of power provide the institutional bases from which the population can exert pressure or can resist dictatorial controls. In the struggle, they are likely to be among the first targets of the dictatorship.
The degree of loyalty of the military forces, both soldiers and officers, to the dictatorship needs to be carefully assessed and a determination should be made as to whether the military is open to influence by the democratic forces.
Early in the liberation struggle a special strategy should be developed to communicate with the dictators’ troops and functionaries. By words, symbols, and actions, the democratic forces can inform the troops that the liberation struggle will be vigorous, determined, and persistent.
Defiance strategists should remember that it will be exceptionally difficult, or impossible, to disintegrate the dictatorship if the police, bureaucrats, and military forces remain fully supportive of the dictatorship and obedient in carrying out its commands. Strategies aimed at subverting the loyalty of the dictators’ forces should therefore be given a high priority by democratic strategists.
Chapter Nine - Disintegrating the Dictatorship
As was discussed in Chapter Three, obedience, cooperation, and submission are essential if dictators are to be powerful.
Withdrawal of support is therefore the major required action to disintegrate a dictatorship. Even while a dictatorship still occupies government positions
it is sometimes possible to organize a democratic “parallel government.” This would increasingly operate as a rival government to which loyalty, compliance, and cooperation are given by the population and the society’s institutions.
NB: Parallel FEMA, parallel weather and climate reports
Specific plans for the transition to democracy should be ready for application when the dictatorship is weakening or collapses. Such plans will help to prevent another group from seizing state power through a coup d’état. Plans for the institution of democratic constitutional government with full political and personal liberties will also be required. The changes won at a great price should not be lost through lack of planning.
Chapter Ten - Groundwork for Durable Democracy
The second basic principle of anti-coup defense is to resist the putschists with noncooperation and defiance. The needed cooperation and assistance must be denied. Essentially the same means of struggle that was used against the dictatorship can be used against the new threat, but applied immediately. If both legitimacy and cooperation are denied, the coup may die of political starvation and the chance to build a democratic society restored.
In the interests of maintaining internal democracy, serious consideration should be given to applying the basic principles of political defiance to the needs of national defense. By placing resis- tance capacity directly in the hands of the citizenry, newly liberated countries could avoid the need to establish a strong military capacity which could itself threaten democracy or require vast economic resources much needed for other purposes.
The effect of nonviolent struggle is not only to weaken and remove the dictators but also to empower the oppressed.
Summarization by ChatGPT
Here’s a structured summary of From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation by Gene Sharp, with direct quotes included for accuracy and emphasis.
1. Facing Dictatorships Realistically
Dictatorships often seem invincible—but Sharp highlights their vulnerability when confronted by unified, mobilized people:
“Some of these dictatorships proved unable to withstand the concerted political, economic, and social defiance of the people.” ETH Zurich Files
2. Why Not Violence, Coups, or Outside Help?
Violent resistance tends to cause immense suffering and usually strengthens the regime: “Guerrilla warfare … rarely, if ever, benefits the oppressed population or ushers in a democracy.” ETH Zurich Files
Military coups merely replace one elite with another, often continuing tyranny.
Foreign intervention is unreliable—likely to serve external interests over democracy:
“Frequently foreign states will tolerate, or even positively assist, a dictatorship in order to advance their own … interests.” ETH Zurich Files
3. The Foundations of Political Power
Sharp asserts that dictators rely entirely on societal cooperation—from bureaucracy to soldiers: “Without availability of those sources [of power], the rulers’ power weakens and finally dissolves.” ETH Zurich Files
He enumerates these as: authority, human resources, skills, ideology, material resources, and sanctions ETH Zurich Files.
4. Weakness of Dictatorships & the Power of Defiance
When citizens withdraw cooperation, regimes can unravel:
“If, despite repression, the sources of power can be restricted … the dictatorship may disintegrate.” ETH Zurich Files
Nonviolent resistance is especially effective when it targets these power structures.
5. Strategic Planning is Essential
Sharp emphasizes that unlike spontaneous protests, sustained liberation efforts require deliberate strategy:
“Strategic planning … is necessary to end a dictatorship and to achieve freedom.” ETH Zurich Files He outlines a hierarchy—grand strategy, campaign strategy, and tactics—to guide coordinated resistance.
6. Methods and Nonviolent Discipline
Nonviolent action isn’t limited to marches; it includes hundreds of tactics across protest, noncooperation, and intervention:
“About two hundred specific methods of nonviolent action have been identified.” ETH Zurich Files Maintaining discipline is crucial: violence undermines effectiveness and can erode public and institutional support.
7. Four Mechanisms of Nonviolent Change
Sharp argues nonviolent campaigns can succeed through:
Conversion – changing opponents’ minds
Accommodation – gaining concessions
Nonviolent coercion – shifting power through massive noncooperation
Disintegration – collapsing a regime by cutting its support
8. Campaign Stages & Symbolic Acts
Early, symbolic actions—like wearing a color or placing flowers—can build confidence.
Escalation then focuses on strategic noncooperation, targeting key sources of power.
Plans should cover continuity post-collapse: constitutions, transitional justice, and preventing coups.
9. Building Durable Democracy
Final work involves dismantling anti-democratic institutions and molding new ones: administrative, constitutional, decentralized — ensuring citizen oversight to guard against future authoritarianism.
Key Quotes
On dictatorships’ reliance:
“Dictators require the assistance of the people they rule, without which they cannot secure and maintain the sources of political power.” ETH Zurich Files
On strategy vs. spontaneity:
“Comprehensive strategic plans for liberation are rarely … developed; dictatorships appear much more durable than they in fact are.” ETH Zurich Files
Final Take
Sharp's manual highlights that dictatorships survive on systemic compliance. Nonviolent strategic defiance—planned, disciplined, and well-executed—can sever that compliance, weaken regimes, and enable a transition to sustainable democracy.
Notes on On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2025/08/notes-on-on-strategic-non-violent.html
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/126900/8008_FDTD.pdf
Chapter One - Facing Dictatorships realistically
"Political defiance” is nonviolent struggle (protest, noncooperation, and intervention) applied defiantly and actively for political purposes.
The term is used principally to describe action by populations to regain from dictatorships control over governmental institutions by relentlessly attacking their sources of power and deliberately using strategic planning and operations to do so.
By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority. The dictators are equipped to apply violence overwhelmingly.
Dictatorships usually exist primarily because of the internal power distribution in the home country. The population and society are too weak to cause the dictatorship serious problems, wealth and power are concentrated in too few hands.
When one wants to bring down a dictatorship most effectively and with the least cost then one has four immediate tasks:
One must strengthen the oppressed population themselves in their determination, self-confidence, and resistance skills;
One must strengthen the independent social groups and institutions of the oppressed people;
One must create a powerful internal resistance force; and
One must develop a wise grand strategic plan for liberation and implement it skillfully.
Against a strong self-reliant force, given wise strategy, disciplined and courageous action, and genuine strength, the dictatorship will eventually crumble. Minimally, however, the above four requirements must be fulfilled.
Chapter Two - The Dangers of Negotiations
The point here is that negotiations are not a realistic way to remove a strong dictatorship in the absence of a powerful democratic opposition.
The offer by a dictatorship of “peace” through negotiations with the democratic opposition is, of course, rather disingenuous. The violence could be ended immediately by the dictators themselves, if only they would stop waging war on their own people.
When the dictatorship is strong but an irritating resistance exists, the dictators may wish to negotiate the opposition into surrender under the guise of making “peace.” The call to negotiate can sound appealing, but grave dangers can be lurking within the negotiating room.
On the other hand, when the opposition is exceptionally strong and the dictatorship is genuinely threatened, the dictators may seek negotiations in order to salvage as much of their control or wealth as possible. In neither case should the democrats help the dictators achieve their goals.
Whatever promises offered by dictators in any negotiated settlement, no one should ever forget that the dictators may promise anything to secure submission from their democratic opponents, and then brazenly violate those same agreements.
“For the tyrant has the power to inflict only that which we lack the strength to resist,” wrote Krishnalal Shridharani.
Success is most often determined not by negotiating a settlement but through the wise use of the most appropriate and powerful means of resistance available.
Hitler often called for peace, by which he meant submission to his will. A dictators’ peace is often no more than the peace of the prison or of the grave.
People living under dictatorships need not remain weak, and dictators need not be allowed to remain powerful indefinitely. Aristotle noted long ago, “. . . [O]ligarchy and tyranny are shorter-lived than any other constitution. . . . [A]ll round, tyrannies have not lasted long.”
Recent history shows the vulnerability of dictatorships, and reveals that they can crumble in a relatively short time span.
The old preconception that violent means always work quickly and nonviolent means always require vast time is clearly not valid. Although much time may be required for changes in the underlying situation and society, the actual fight against a dictatorship sometimes occurs relatively quickly by nonviolent struggle.
Chapter Three - Whence Comes the Power?
Dictators require the assistance of the people they rule, without which they cannot secure and maintain the sources of political power. These sources of political power include:
Authority, the belief among the people that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it;
Human resources, the number and importance of the persons and groups which are obeying, cooperating, or providing assistance to the rulers;
Skills and knowledge, needed by the regime to perform specific actions and supplied by the cooperating persons and groups;
Intangible factors, psychological and ideological factors that may induce people to obey and assist the rulers;
Material resources, the degree to which the rulers control or have access to property, natural resources, financial resources, the economic system, and means of communication and transportation; and
Sanctions, punishments, threatened or applied, against the disobedient and noncooperative to ensure the submission and cooperation that are needed for the regime to exist and carry out its policies.
All of these sources, however, depend on acceptance of the regime, on the submission and obedience of the population, and on the cooperation of innumerable people and the many institutions of the society. These are not guaranteed.
The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is, it follows, in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.
Political scientist Karl W. Deutsch noted in 1953: If totalitarian power must be used at all times against the entire population, it is unlikely to remain powerful for long.
Niccolo Machiavelli had much earlier argued that the prince “. . . who has the public as a whole for his enemy can never make himself secure; and the greater his cruelty, the weaker does his re- gime become.”
Three of the most important factors in determining to what degree a government’s power will be controlled or uncontrolled therefore are: (1) the relative desire of the populace to impose limits on the government’s power; (2) the relative strength of the subjects’ independent organizations and institutions to withdraw collectively the sources of power; and (3) the population’s relative ability to with- hold their consent and assistance.
One characteristic of a democratic society is that there exist independent of the state a multitude of nongovernmental groups and institutions. These include, for example, families, religious organizations, cultural associations, sports clubs, economic institutions, trade unions, student associations, political parties, villages, neighborhood associations, gardening clubs, human rights organizations, musical groups, literary societies, and others. These bodies are important in serving their own objectives and also in helping to meet social needs.
If the dictatorship has been largely successful in destroying or controlling the society’s independent bodies, it will be important for the resisters to create new independent social groups and institutions, or to reassert democratic control over surviving or partially controlled bodies. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956-1957 a multitude of direct democracy councils emerged, even joining together to establish for some weeks a whole federated system of institutions and governance.
NB: Hannah Arendt in On Revolution writes about this in the context of alternatives to party politics, notes at https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2025/04/notes-on-hannah-arendts-on-revolution.html
Dictatorships in particular have specific characteristics that render them highly vulnerable to skillfully implemented political defiance.
Chapter Four - Dictatorships Have Weaknesses
Among the weaknesses of dictatorships are the following:
The cooperation of a multitude of people, groups, and institutions needed to operate the system may be restricted or withdrawn.
The requirements and effects of the regime’s past policies will somewhat limit its present ability to adopt and implement conflicting policies. The system may become routine in its operation, less able to adjust quickly to new situations.
Personnel and resources already allocated for existing tasks will not be easily available for new needs.
Subordinates fearful of displeasing their superiors may not report accurate or complete information needed by the dictators to make decisions.
The ideology may erode, and myths and symbols of the system may become unstable.
If a strong ideology is present that influences one’s view of reality, firm adherence to it may cause inattention to actual conditions and needs.
Deteriorating efficiency and competency of the bureaucracy, or excessive controls and regulations, may make the system’s policies and operation ineffective.
Internal institutional conflicts and personal rivalries and hostilities may harm, and even disrupt, the operation of the dictatorship.
Intellectuals and students may become restless in response to conditions, restrictions, doctrinalism, and repression.
The general public may over time become apathetic, skeptical, and even hostile to the regime.
Regional, class, cultural, or national differences may become acute.
The power hierarchy of the dictatorship is always unstable to some degree, and at times extremely so. Individuals do not only remain in the same position in the ranking, but may rise or fall to other ranks or be removed entirely and replaced by new persons.
Sections of the police or military forces may act to achieve their own objectives, even against the will of established dictators, including by coup d’état.
If the dictatorship is new, time is required for it to become well established.
With so many decisions made by so few people in the dictatorship, mistakes of judgment, policy, and action are likely to occur.
If the regime seeks to avoid these dangers and decentralizes controls and decision making, its control over the central levers of power may be further eroded.
Chapter Five - exercising power
Political defiance has the following characteristics:
It does not accept that the outcome will be decided by the means of fighting chosen by the dictatorship.
It is difficult for the regime to combat.
It can uniquely aggravate weaknesses of the dictatorship and can sever its sources of power. It can in action be widely dispersed but can also be concen- trated on a specific objective. It leads to errors of judgment and action by the dictators.
It can effectively utilize the population as a whole and the society’s groups and institutions in the struggle to end the brutal domination of the few.
It helps to spread the distribution of effective power in the society, making the establishment and maintenance of a democratic society more possible.
The common error of past improvised political defiance campaigns is the reliance on only one or two methods, such as strikes and mass demonstrations. In fact, a multitude of methods exist that allow resistance strategists to concentrate and disperse resistance as required.
About two hundred specific methods of nonviolent action have been identified, and there are certainly scores more. These methods are classified under three broad categories: protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and intervention. Methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion are largely symbolic demonstrations, including pa- rades, marches, and vigils (54 methods). Noncooperation is divided into three sub-categories: (a) social noncooperation (16 methods), (b) economic noncooperation, including boycotts (26 methods) and strikes (23 methods), and (c) political noncooperation (38 methods). Nonviolent intervention, by psychological, physical, social, econom- ic, or political means, such as the fast, nonviolent occupation, and parallel government (41 methods), is the final group. A list of 198 of these methods is included as the Appendix to this publication.
Four mechanisms of change
Nonviolent struggle produces change in four ways. The first mechanism is the least likely, though it has occurred. When members of the opponent group are emotionally moved by the suffering of repression imposed on courageous nonviolent resisters or are rationally persuaded that the resisters’ cause is just, they may come to accept the resisters’ aims. This mechanism is called conversion. Though cases of conversion in nonviolent action do sometimes happen, they are rare, and in most conflicts this does not occur at all or at least not on a significant scale. Far more often, nonviolent struggle operates by changing the conflict situation and the society so that the opponents simply cannot do as they like. It is this change that produces the other three mechanisms: accommodation, nonviolent coercion, and disintegration. Which of these occurs depends on the degree to which the relative and absolute power relations are shifted in favor of the democrats.
If the issues are not fundamental ones, the demands of the opposition in a limited campaign are not considered threatening, and the contest of forces has altered the power relationships to some degree, the immediate conflict may be ended by reaching an agreement, a splitting of differences or compromise. This mechanism is called accommodation.
Although the opponents’ leaders remain in their positions, and adhere to their original goals, their ability to act effectively has been taken away from them. That is called nonviolent coercion.
The fourth mechanism of change, disintegration of the opponents’ system, is so complete that they do not even have sufficient power to surrender. The regime simply falls to pieces.
Below are several of the positive democratizing effects nonviolent struggle may have:
Experience in applying nonviolent struggle may result in the population being more self-confident in challenging the regime’s threats and capacity for violent repression.
Nonviolent struggle provides the means of noncooperation and defiance by which the population can resist undemocratic controls over them by any dictatorial group.
Nonviolent struggle can be used to assert the practice of democratic freedoms, such as free speech, free press, independent organizations, and free assembly, in face of repressive controls. Nonviolent struggle contributes strongly to the survival, rebirth, and strengthening of the independent groups and institutions of the society, as previously discussed. These are important for democracy because of their capacity to mobilize the power capacity of the population and to impose limits on the effective power of any would-be dictators.
Nonviolent struggle provides means by which the population can wield power against repressive police and military action by a dictatorial government.
Nonviolent struggle provides methods by which the population and the independent institutions can in the interests of democracy restrict or sever the sources of power for the ruling elite, thereby threatening its capacity to continue its domination.
Chapter 6 - The Need for Strategic Planning
In order to help us to think strategically, clarity about the meanings of four basic terms is important.
Grand strategy is the conception that serves to coordinate and direct the use of all appropriate and available resources (economic, human, moral, political, organizational, etc.) of a group seeking to attain its objectives in a conflict.
Strategy is the conception of how best to achieve particular objectives in a conflict, operating within the scope of the chosen grand strategy. Strategy is concerned with whether, when, and how to fight, as well as how to achieve maximum effectiveness in struggling for certain ends. A strategy has been compared to the artist’s concept, while a strategic plan is the architect’s blueprint.
Tactics and methods of action are used to implement the strategy. Tactics relate to the skillful use of one’s forces to the best advantage in a limited situation. A tactic is a limited action, employed to achieve a restricted objective. The choice of tactics is governed by the conception of how best in a restricted phase of a conflict to utilize the available means of fighting to implement the strategy. To be most effective, tactics and methods must be chosen and applied with constant attention to the achievement of strategic objectives.
Tactics are always concerned with fighting, whereas strategy includes wider considerations.
Method refers to the specific weapons or means of action. Within the technique of nonviolent struggle, these include the dozens of particular forms of action
Chapter Seven - Planning Strategy
Though related, the development of grand strategy and campaign strategies are two separate processes. Only after the grand strategy has been developed can the specific campaign strategies be fully developed. Campaign strategies will need to be designed to achieve and reinforce the grand strategic objectives.
It is critical to determine the real objective of the struggle. We have argued here that overthrow of the dictatorship or removal of the present dicta- tors is not enough. The objective in these conflicts needs to be the establishment of a free society with a democratic system of government. Clarity on this point will influence the development of a grand strategy and of the ensuing specific strategies.
NB: Economics and social structures
Particularly, strategists will need to answer many fundamental questions, such as these:
What are the main obstacles to achieving freedom?
What factors will facilitate achieving freedom?
What are the main strengths of the dictatorship?
What are the various weaknesses of the dictatorship?
To what degree are the sources of power for the dictatorship vulnerable?
What are the strengths of the democratic forces and the general population?
What are the weaknesses of the democratic forces and how can they be corrected?
What is the status of third parties, not immediately involved in the conflict, who already assist or might assist, either the dictatorship or the democratic movement, and if so in what ways?
The following questions pose (in a more specific way than earlier) the types of considerations required in devising a grand strategy for a political defiance struggle:
How might the long-term struggle best begin? How can the oppressed population muster sufficient self-confidence and strength to act to challenge the dictatorship, even initially in a limited way? How could the population’s capacity to apply noncooperation and defiance be increased with time and experience? What might be the objectives of a series of limited campaigns to regain democratic control over the society and limit the dictatorship?
Are there independent institutions that have survived the dictatorship which might be used in the struggle to establish freedom? What institutions of the society can be regained from the dictators’ control, or what institutions need to be newly created by the democrats to meet their needs and establish spheres of democracy even while the dictatorship continues?
How can organizational strength in the resistance be developed? How can participants be trained? What resources (finances, equipment, etc.) will be required throughout the struggle? What types of symbolism can be most effective in mobilizing the population?
By what kinds of action and in what stages could the sources of power of the dictators be incrementally weakened and severed? How can the resisting population simultaneously persist in its defi- ance and also maintain the necessary nonviolent discipline? How can the society continue to meet its basic needs during the course of the struggle? How can social order be maintained in the midst of the conflict? As victory approaches, how can the democratic resis- tance continue to build the institutional base of the post-dictatorship society to make the transition as smooth as possible?
In planning the strategies for the specific selective resistance campaigns and for the longer term development of the liberation struggle, the political defiance strategists will need to consider various issues and problems. The following are among these: Determination of the specific objectives of the campaign and their contributions to implementing the grand strategy.
Consideration of the specific methods, or political weapons, that can best be used to implement the chosen strategies. Within each overall plan for a particular strategic campaign it will be necessary to determine what smaller, tactical plans and which specific methods of action should be used to impose pressures and restrictions against the dictatorship’s sources of power. It should be remembered that the achievement of major objectives will come as a result of carefully chosen and implemented specific smaller steps.
Determination whether, or how, economic issues should be related to the overall essentially political struggle. If eco- nomic issues are to be prominent in the struggle, care will be needed that the economic grievances can actually be rem- edied after the dictatorship is ended. Otherwise, disillusion- ment and disaffection may set in if quick solutions are not provided during the transition period to a democratic society. Such disillusionment could facilitate the rise of dictato- rial forces promising an end to economic woes.
Determination in advance of what kind of leadership structure and communications system will work best for initiating the resistance struggle. What means of decision-making and communication will be possible during the course of the struggle to give continuing guidance to the resisters and the general population?
Communication of the resistance news to the general population, to the dictators’ forces, and the international press. Claims and reporting should always be strictly factual. Exaggerations and unfounded claims will undermine the credibility of the resistance.
Plans for self-reliant constructive social, educational, economic, and political activities to meet the needs of one’s own people during the coming conflict. Such projects can be conducted by persons not directly involved in the resistance activities.
Determination of what kind of external assistance is desirable in support of the specific campaign or the general liberation struggle. How can external help be best mobilized and used without making the internal struggle dependent on uncertain external factors? Attention will need to be given to which external groups are most likely, and most appropriate, to assist, such as non-governmental organizations (social movements, religious or political groups, labor unions, etc.), governments, and/or the United Nations and its various bodies.
People living under the dictatorship may be already familiar with this concept from a variety of sources. Even so, the democratic forces should deliberately spread and popularize the idea of noncooperation. The “Monkey Master” story, or a similar one, could be disseminated throughout the society. Such a story could be easily understood. Once the general concept of noncooperation is grasped, people will be able to understand the relevance of future calls to practice noncooperation with the dictatorship. They will also be able on their own to improvise a myriad of specific forms of noncooperation in new situations.
Chapter Eight - Applying Political Defiance
In situations in which the population feels powerless and frightened, it is important that initial tasks for the public be low-risk, confidence- building actions. These types of actions — such as wearing one’s clothes in an unusual way — may publicly register a dissenting opinion and provide an opportunity for the public to participate significantly in acts of dissent. In other cases a relatively minor (on the surface) nonpolitical issue (such as securing a safe water supply) might be made the focus for group action. Strategists should choose an issue the merits of which will be widely recognized and difficult to reject. Success in such limited campaigns could not only correct specific grievances but also convince the population that it indeed has power potential.
Selective resistance strategies should concentrate primarily on specific social, economic, or political issues. These may be chosen in order to keep some part of the social and political system out of the dictators’ control, to regain control of some part currently controlled by the dictators, or to deny the dictators a particular objective. If possible, the campaign of selective resistance should also strike at one weakness or more of the dictatorship, as already discussed. Thereby, democrats can make the greatest possible impact with their available power capacity.
The initial action is likely to take the form of symbolic protest or may be a symbolic act of limited or temporary noncooperation.
Phasing resistance campaigns by issue and population group will allow certain segments of the population to rest while resistance continues.
Selective resistance is especially important to defend the exis- tence and autonomy of independent social, economic, and political groups and institutions outside the control of the dictatorship, which were briefly discussed earlier. These centers of power provide the institutional bases from which the population can exert pressure or can resist dictatorial controls. In the struggle, they are likely to be among the first targets of the dictatorship.
The degree of loyalty of the military forces, both soldiers and officers, to the dictatorship needs to be carefully assessed and a determination should be made as to whether the military is open to influence by the democratic forces.
Early in the liberation struggle a special strategy should be developed to communicate with the dictators’ troops and functionaries. By words, symbols, and actions, the democratic forces can inform the troops that the liberation struggle will be vigorous, determined, and persistent.
Defiance strategists should remember that it will be exceptionally difficult, or impossible, to disintegrate the dictatorship if the police, bureaucrats, and military forces remain fully supportive of the dictatorship and obedient in carrying out its commands. Strategies aimed at subverting the loyalty of the dictators’ forces should therefore be given a high priority by democratic strategists.
Chapter Nine - Disintegrating the Dictatorship
As was discussed in Chapter Three, obedience, cooperation, and submission are essential if dictators are to be powerful.
Withdrawal of support is therefore the major required action to disintegrate a dictatorship. Even while a dictatorship still occupies government positions
it is sometimes possible to organize a democratic “parallel government.” This would increasingly operate as a rival government to which loyalty, compliance, and cooperation are given by the population and the society’s institutions.
NB: Parallel FEMA, parallel weather and climate reports
Specific plans for the transition to democracy should be ready for application when the dictatorship is weakening or collapses. Such plans will help to prevent another group from seizing state power through a coup d’état. Plans for the institution of democratic constitutional government with full political and personal liberties will also be required. The changes won at a great price should not be lost through lack of planning.
Chapter Ten - Groundwork for Durable Democracy
The second basic principle of anti-coup defense is to resist the putschists with noncooperation and defiance. The needed cooperation and assistance must be denied. Essentially the same means of struggle that was used against the dictatorship can be used against the new threat, but applied immediately. If both legitimacy and cooperation are denied, the coup may die of political starvation and the chance to build a democratic society restored.
In the interests of maintaining internal democracy, serious consideration should be given to applying the basic principles of political defiance to the needs of national defense. By placing resis- tance capacity directly in the hands of the citizenry, newly liberated countries could avoid the need to establish a strong military capacity which could itself threaten democracy or require vast economic resources much needed for other purposes.
The effect of nonviolent struggle is not only to weaken and remove the dictators but also to empower the oppressed.
Summarization by ChatGPT
Here’s a structured summary of From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation by Gene Sharp, with direct quotes included for accuracy and emphasis.
1. Facing Dictatorships Realistically
Dictatorships often seem invincible—but Sharp highlights their vulnerability when confronted by unified, mobilized people:
“Some of these dictatorships proved unable to withstand the concerted political, economic, and social defiance of the people.” ETH Zurich Files
2. Why Not Violence, Coups, or Outside Help?
Violent resistance tends to cause immense suffering and usually strengthens the regime: “Guerrilla warfare … rarely, if ever, benefits the oppressed population or ushers in a democracy.” ETH Zurich Files
Military coups merely replace one elite with another, often continuing tyranny.
Foreign intervention is unreliable—likely to serve external interests over democracy:
“Frequently foreign states will tolerate, or even positively assist, a dictatorship in order to advance their own … interests.” ETH Zurich Files
3. The Foundations of Political Power
Sharp asserts that dictators rely entirely on societal cooperation—from bureaucracy to soldiers: “Without availability of those sources [of power], the rulers’ power weakens and finally dissolves.” ETH Zurich Files
He enumerates these as: authority, human resources, skills, ideology, material resources, and sanctions ETH Zurich Files.
4. Weakness of Dictatorships & the Power of Defiance
When citizens withdraw cooperation, regimes can unravel:
“If, despite repression, the sources of power can be restricted … the dictatorship may disintegrate.” ETH Zurich Files
Nonviolent resistance is especially effective when it targets these power structures.
5. Strategic Planning is Essential
Sharp emphasizes that unlike spontaneous protests, sustained liberation efforts require deliberate strategy:
“Strategic planning … is necessary to end a dictatorship and to achieve freedom.” ETH Zurich Files He outlines a hierarchy—grand strategy, campaign strategy, and tactics—to guide coordinated resistance.
6. Methods and Nonviolent Discipline
Nonviolent action isn’t limited to marches; it includes hundreds of tactics across protest, noncooperation, and intervention:
“About two hundred specific methods of nonviolent action have been identified.” ETH Zurich Files Maintaining discipline is crucial: violence undermines effectiveness and can erode public and institutional support.
7. Four Mechanisms of Nonviolent Change
Sharp argues nonviolent campaigns can succeed through:
Conversion – changing opponents’ minds
Accommodation – gaining concessions
Nonviolent coercion – shifting power through massive noncooperation
Disintegration – collapsing a regime by cutting its support
8. Campaign Stages & Symbolic Acts
Early, symbolic actions—like wearing a color or placing flowers—can build confidence.
Escalation then focuses on strategic noncooperation, targeting key sources of power.
Plans should cover continuity post-collapse: constitutions, transitional justice, and preventing coups.
9. Building Durable Democracy
Final work involves dismantling anti-democratic institutions and molding new ones: administrative, constitutional, decentralized — ensuring citizen oversight to guard against future authoritarianism.
Key Quotes
On dictatorships’ reliance:
“Dictators require the assistance of the people they rule, without which they cannot secure and maintain the sources of political power.” ETH Zurich Files
On strategy vs. spontaneity:
“Comprehensive strategic plans for liberation are rarely … developed; dictatorships appear much more durable than they in fact are.” ETH Zurich Files
Final Take
Sharp's manual highlights that dictatorships survive on systemic compliance. Nonviolent strategic defiance—planned, disciplined, and well-executed—can sever that compliance, weaken regimes, and enable a transition to sustainable democracy.
Notes on On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2025/08/notes-on-on-strategic-non-violent.html
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