Excerpt from From Dictatorship to
Democracy by Gene Sharp
3
Whence Comes the Power?
ACHIEVING A SOCIETY WITH BOTH freedom and peace is of course no simple
task. It will require great strategic skill, organization, and planning. Above
all, it will require power. Democrats cannot hope to bring down a dictatorship
and establish political freedom without the ability to apply their own power
effectively.
But how is this possible? What kind of power can the democratic
opposition mobilize that will be sufficient to destroy the dictatorship and its
vast military and police networks? The answers lie in an oft ignored
understanding of political power. Learning this insight is not really so
difficult a task. Some basic truths are quite simple.
The “Monkey Master” fable
A fourteenth-century Chinese parable by Liu-Ji, for example, outlines
this neglected understanding of political power quite well:7
In the feudal state of Chu an old man survived by keeping monkeys in his
service. The people of Chu called him “ju gong” (monkey master).
Each morning, the old man would assemble the monkeys in his courtyard,
and order the eldest one to lead the others to the mountains to gather fruits
from bushes and trees. It was the rule that each monkey had to give one-tenth
of his collection to the old man. Those who failed to do so would be ruthlessly
flogged. All the monkeys suffered bitterly, but dared not complain.
One day, a small monkey asked the other monkeys: “Did the old man plant
all the fruit trees and bushes?” The others said: “No, they grew naturally.”
The small monkey further asked: “Can’t we take the fruits without the old man’s
permission?” The others replied: “Yes, we all can.” The small monkey continued:
“Then, why should we depend on the old man; why must we all serve him?”
Before the small monkey was able to finish his statement, all the
monkeys suddenly became enlightened and awakened.
On the same night, watching that the old man had fallen asleep, the
monkeys tore down all the barricades of the stockade in which they were
confined, and destroyed the stockade entirely. They also took the fruits the
old man had in storage, brought all with them to the woods, and never returned.
The old man finally died of starvation.
Yu-li-zi says, “Some men in the world rule their people by tricks and
not by righteous principles. Aren’t they just like the monkey master? They are
not aware of their muddleheadedness. As soon as their people become
enlightened, their tricks no longer work.”
Necessary sources of political power
The principle is simple. 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 with, 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.
Full cooperation, obedience, and support will increase the availability
of the needed sources of power and, consequently, expand the power capacity of
any government.
On the other hand, withdrawal of popular and institutional cooperation
with aggressors and dictators diminishes, and may sever, the availability of
the sources of power on which all rulers depend. Without availability of those
sources, the rulers’ power weakens and finally dissolves.
Naturally, dictators are sensitive to actions and ideas that threaten
their capacity to do as they like. Dictators are therefore likely to threaten
and punish those who disobey, strike, or fail to cooperate. However, that is
not the end of the story. Repression, even brutalities, do not always produce a
resumption of the necessary degree of submission and cooperation for the regime
to function.
If, despite repression, the sources of power can be restricted or
severed for enough time, the initial results may be uncertainty and confusion
within the dictatorship. That is likely to be followed by a clear weakening of
the power of the dictatorship. Over time, the withholding of the sources of
power can produce the paralysis and impotence of the regime, and in severe
cases, its disintegration. The dictators’ power will die, slowly or rapidly,
from political starvation.
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.
Contrary to popular opinion, even totalitarian dictatorships are
dependent on the population and the societies they rule. As the political
scientist Karl W. Deutsch noted in 1953:
Totalitarian power is strong only if it does not have to be used too
often. If totalitarian power must be used at all times against the entire
population, it is unlikely to remain powerful for long. Since totalitarian
regimes require more power for dealing with their subjects than do other types
of government, such regimes stand in greater need of widespread and dependable
compliance habits among their people; more than that they have to be able to
count on the active support of at least significant parts of the population in
case of need.8
The English nineteenth-century legal theorist John Austin described the
situation of a dictatorship confronting a disaffected people. Austin argued
that if most of the population were determined to destroy the government and
were willing to endure repression to do so, then the might of the government,
including those who supported it, could not preserve the hated government, even
if it received foreign assistance. The defiant people could not be forced back
into permanent obedience and subjection, Austin concluded.9
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 regime become.”10
The practical political application of these insights was demonstrated
by the heroic Norwegian resisters against the Nazi occupation, and as cited in Chapter
One, by the brave Poles, Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, and many others who resisted
Communist aggression and dictatorship, and finally helped produce the collapse
of Communist rule in Europe. This, of course, is no new phenomenon: cases of
nonviolent resistance go back at least to 494 BC when plebeians withdrew
cooperation from their Roman patrician masters.11 Nonviolent
struggle has been employed at various times by peoples throughout Asia, Africa,
the Americas, Australasia, and the Pacific islands, as well as Europe.
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 withhold their consent and
assistance.
Centers of democratic power
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.
Additionally, these bodies have great political significance. They
provide group and institutional bases by which people can exert influence over
the direction of their society and resist other groups or the government when
they are seen to impinge unjustly on their interests, activities, or purposes.
Isolated individuals, not members of such groups, usually are unable to make a
significant impact on the rest of the society, much less a government, and
certainly not a dictatorship.
Consequently, if the autonomy and freedom of such bodies can be taken
away by the dictators, the population will be relatively helpless. Also, if
these institutions can themselves be dictatorially controlled by the central
regime or replaced by new controlled ones, they can be used to dominate both
the individual members and also those areas of the society.
However, if the autonomy and freedom of these independent civil
institutions (outside of government control) can be maintained or regained they
are highly important for the application of political defiance. The common
feature of the cited examples in which dictatorships have been disintegrated or
weakened has been the courageous mass application of political defiance
by the population and its institutions.
As stated, these centers of power provide the institutional bases from
which the population can exert pressure or can resist dictatorial controls. In
the future, they will be part of the indispensable structural base for a free
society. Their continued independence and growth therefore is often a
prerequisite for the success of the liberation struggle.
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. In Poland during the late
1980s workers maintained illegal Solidarity unions and, in some cases, took
over control of the official, Communist-dominated, trade unions. Such
institutional developments can have very important political consequences.
Of course, none of this means that weakening and destroying
dictatorships is easy, nor that every attempt will succeed. It certainly does
not mean that the struggle will be free of casualties, for those still serving
the dictators are likely to fight back in an effort to force the populace to
resume cooperation and obedience.
The above insight into power does mean, however,
that the deliberate disintegration of dictatorships is possible.
Dictatorships in
particular have specific characteristics that render them highly vulnerable to
skillfully implemented political defiance. Let us examine these characteristics
in more detail.
4
Dictatorships Have Weaknesses
DICTATORSHIPS OFTEN APPEAR INVULNERABLE. Intelligence agencies, police,
military forces, prisons, concentration camps, and execution squads are
controlled by a powerful few. A country’s finances, natural resources, and
production capacities are often arbitrarily plundered by dictators and used to
support the dictators’ will.
In comparison, democratic opposition forces often appear extremely weak,
ineffective, and powerless. That perception of invulnerability against
powerlessness makes effective opposition unlikely.
That is not the whole story, however.
Identifying the Achilles’ heel
A myth from Classical Greece illustrates well the vulnerability of the
supposedly invulnerable. Against the warrior Achilles, no blow would injure and
no sword would penetrate his skin. When still a baby, Achilles’ mother had
supposedly dipped him into the waters of the magical river Styx, resulting in
the protection of his body from all dangers. There was, however, a problem.
Since the baby was held by his heel so that he would not be washed away, the
magical water had not covered that small part of his body. When Achilles was a
grown man he appeared to all to be invulnerable to the enemies’ weapons.
However, in the battle against Troy, instructed by one who knew the weakness,
an enemy soldier aimed his arrow at Achilles’ unprotected heel, the one spot
where he could be injured. The strike proved fatal. Still today, the phrase
“Achilles’ heel” refers to the vulnerable part of a person, a plan, or an
institution at which if attacked there is no protection.
The same principle applies to ruthless dictatorships. They, too, can be
conquered, but most quickly and with least cost if their weaknesses can be
identified and the attack concentrated on them.
Weaknesses of dictatorships
Among the weaknesses of dictatorships are the following:
1.The cooperation of a multitude of people, groups, and institutions
needed to operate the system may be restricted or withdrawn.
2.The requirements and effects of the regime’s past policies will
somewhat limit its present ability to adopt and implement conflicting policies.
3.The system may become routine in its operation, less able to adjust
quickly to new situations.
4.Personnel and resources already allocated for existing tasks will not
be easily available for new needs.
5.Subordinates fearful of displeasing their superiors may not report
accurate or complete information needed by the dictators to make decisions.
6.The ideology may erode, and myths and symbols of the system may become
unstable.
7.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.
8.Deteriorating efficiency and competency of the bureaucracy, or
excessive controls and regulations, may make the system’s policies and
operation ineffective.
9.Internal institutional conflicts and personal rivalries and
hostilities may harm, and even disrupt, the operation of the dictatorship.
10.Intellectuals and students may become restless in response to
conditions, restrictions, doctrinalism, and repression.
11.The general public may over time become apathetic, skeptical, and
even hostile to the regime.
12.Regional, class, cultural, or national differences may become acute.
13.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.
14.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.
15.If the dictatorship is new, time is required for it to become well
established.
16.With so many decisions made by so few people in the dictatorship,
mistakes of judgment, policy, and action are likely to occur.
17.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.
Attacking weaknesses of dictatorships
With knowledge of such inherent weaknesses, the democratic opposition
can seek to aggravate these “Achilles’ heels” deliberately in order to alter
the system drastically or to disintegrate it.
The conclusion is then clear: despite the appearances of strength, all
dictatorships have weaknesses, internal inefficiencies, personal rivalries,
institutional inefficiencies, and conflicts between organizations and
departments. These weaknesses, over time, tend to make the regime less
effective and more vulnerable to changing conditions and deliberate resistance.
Not everything the regime sets out to accomplish will get completed. At times,
for example, even Hitler’s direct orders were never implemented because those beneath
him in the hierarchy refused to carry them out. The dictatorial regime may at
times even fall apart quickly, as we have already observed.
This does not mean dictatorships can be destroyed without risks and
casualties. Every possible course of action for liberation will involve risks
and potential suffering, and will take time to operate. And, of course, no
means of action can ensure rapid success in every situation. However, types of
struggle that target the dictatorship’s identifiable weaknesses have a greater
chance of success than those that seek to fight the dictatorship where it is
clearly strongest. The question is how this struggle is to be waged.
