[Revolutionary Communities] Tracing the dissemination of perennial revolutionary thought

Galen Lamphere-Englund 5/2/2011

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Introduction

The recent wave of democratic revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa surprised

and upset traditional networks of power; however, their creation was far from spontaneous

(Fanning, 2011). Although grounded in popular movement, the remarkable success of many of

the revolutions can also be attributed to a substantial corpus of revolutionary philosophy and

trainings from which young leaders benefited. Throughout history, ideas from revolutionary

authors including ancient Greek writers as well as the contemporary Thoreau and Tolstoy have

percolated into nonviolent movements across the globe: from the Indian Independence struggle,

to the Serbian Otpor, and Egypt’s April 6 movement. The relationship between writers and

applied revolutions has become even more pertinent today, as new means of rapidly exchanging

information enable a global meld of historically grounded revolutionary thought. This long-term

progression of methodology has resulted in revolutions in which “the general picture of the truth

of philosophy considered in its history over three millennia become a single present.” (Jaspers,

1950, p. 25). These are more likely to be both effective and stable in the both the long and short-

term, as evidenced by the current revolutions in the Middle East.

The evolution and assimilation of writings from other cultures in revolution is not a new

phenomena. However, the mechanisms through which said ideas are proliferated have shifted

wildly. The influence of Gene Sharp, the “Clausewitz of nonviolent resistance,” illustrates the

remarkable ability of revolutionary ideas to spread beyond the individual on a scale unthinkable

for his predecessors (Radio Free Europe, 2011). For the past 40 years Sharp has researched the

most effective means of creating nonviolent change. Drawing upon the legacy and wisdom of

Gandhi, Thoreau, and MLK, his Dictatorship to Democracy presents a 198 point guide to

transforming government. Since 1990 the text has been considered a key strategic training guide

for many of the most important revolutions around the world from Venezuela to Serbia and

Egypt.

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From a theoretical standpoint, the mechanisms governing this global circulation of ideas

can be explained from the viewpoints of Ludwik Fleck and the more contemporary Putman’s

conceptualizations of social capital and trust. Fleck’s “thought communities” are analogous to

the perennial philosophy of revolutionary action, through which ideas from individuals like

Sharp gain legitimacy via collective exchange and acceptance around the world. Simultaneously,

the ability of organizations like Canvas, spawned by the success Otpor revolutionaries in Serbia,

to provide training to revolutionary leaders around the world demonstrates the importance of

Putnam’s social capital. The “attendant norms and trust” imparted in such trainings between

like-minded networks of individuals invent the thought collectives necessary for the widespread

proliferation of revolutionary ideas to arise (Putnam, 1995, p. 665). Taken cumulatively, the case

of Gene Sharp’s influence on revolutions, while clearly not the only instigating factor, represents

a fascinating case study inside the philosophical background of perennial revolutionary thought.

Philosophical Background

The art and techniques of nonviolent revolution date back into the early Greek era,

though they likely predate the surviving philosophical canon. Holding together more than 2000

years of cumulative knowledge and thought are threads of commonality and the circulation of

nonviolent ideals. Aristophanes’s anti-war comedy, Lysistrata, written in 411 BCE, incorporates

numerous techniques including sex strikes, which have been used successfully in Colombian and

Sierra Leone within in the past 20 years. This early notion of nonviolent resistance denotes a

theme that continues throughout human history. More recent contributors to the evolving

sphere of nonviolent thought include the nineteenth century Irish Percy Bysshe Shelley, Henry

Thoreau, Mohandas Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the contemporary Gene Sharp.

These authors represent interpreters of a long-standing belief in nonviolent solutions. Defined

as a philosophy with “qualities which assure its survival through time and change, and therefore,

by generalization a permanent significant philosophy,” the philosophy of nonviolent revolution

demonstrates a uniquely universal and inclusive method of uniting the voices of disempowered

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individuals (Loemker, p. 457). A successful philosophy must “offer a unity which relates the total

plurality, in particular the unity of theoretical and practical concerns” (Loemker, p. 458). Thus,

the universal adaptation of those ideals posited throughout the philosophical and academic

writings into tangible social actions illustrate a highly successful sort of pluralistic minimalism

of ideas which survive each successive author.

This concept also offers a unique attempt to resolve the conflict between tradition and

innovation, between “ancients and moderns” (Loemker, p. 460). The synthesis of historical

action into clear, vernacular text by Gene Sharp demonstrates this drive. Sharp, a Harvard

researcher who conducted his PhD on Gandhi’s non-violent tactics, shows a clear desire to

accomplish this reconcilement through his 198-point plan for revolutionary success. Though his

theoretical texts hold a clear adherence to a historical reconciliation, his desire to bring

applicability to current context is also present in his works. This vernacular accessibility also

aligns with the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s assessments, which must be assured by the

simplicity and universal application of the principals (1867-90). This accessibility is present

from Aristophanes’s comedic interpretation of anti-war actions to Gandhi’s physical salt

marches and Otpor’s confrontational tactics against Milosevic. Perhaps this selective

assimilation of the most useful traits of each thinker’s tactics is what has allowed, in the words of

Karl Jaspers, “the general picture of the truth of philosophy considered in its history over three

millennia…[to] become a single present” in the most modern revolutions around the world

today (1944, p. 25).

This sort of selective assimilation comes into effect via the legitimizing effect of

particular thought collectives, as explained by Ludwik Fleck. He offers a concise definition of

these loose associations in his Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact: “Thoughts pass

from one individual to another, each time a little transformed, for each individual can attach to

them somewhat different associations” (As qtd. in Hecter & Horne, 2009, p. 56). This

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transformative pluralism allows for the assimilation of nonviolent tactics and philosophy across

temporal and physical boundaries. Susan Peterson notes this that this ideal is “ubiquitous

within the prose and poetry” of each author (2004, p. 11). Though clearly the entire philosophy

of each successive writer was not carried over, particular sections of each successive writer’s

ideas were assimilated into the revolutions and actions of groups across the world. The

increased spread of those ideas has come about through the groups of revolutionary leaders,

academics, and earlier thinkers whose thoughts have become legitimized through their cohesive,

and global, thought collective. The case study of Otpor shows this, as the group turned to the

writings of Gene Sharp to further their own cause. Today, because of their success use of those

ideas, the group provides trainings to leaders across the world under the alias of Canvas. Those

trainings are in turn reiterated to each revolutionary leaders country: Georgia, Ukraine,

Venezuela, Iran, and Egypt (Teodorovic, 2011). Thus the spread of ideas comes about through

the application of Fleck’s thought communities.

While Fleck’s thought collectives allow for the global acceptance of revolutionary schools

of thought, like those of Gene Sharp, the gradual establishment of Putnam’s social capital

amongst revolutionary groups has similarly acted as a mechanism for effective transmission of

ideas across the world today. Putnam’s 1993 study of local government in Italy defines social

capital as the “features of social life—networks, norms, and trust—that enable participants to act

together more effectively to pursue shared objects.” (1995, p. 665). This conceptualization of

“social connections and the attendant norms and trust” maps onto the gradual building of

networks, both virtual and traditional, between groups such as Gene Sharp’s American Einstein

Institute (AEI), Otpor, and the Egyptian April 6 movement. By taking advantage of virtual

systems of global interaction like Facebook and Twitter to communicate, followed by substantial

in-person training, these three groups have been able to build shared networks of trust and

norms that enabled them to continue to spread revolutionary ideas even farther (Rosenberg,

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2011). Otpor’s Canvas project has successfully enabled leaders in numerous countries around

the world to more successfully lead their democratic revolutions by imparting the significant

wisdom from earlier thinkers to them. However, the training would not have been effective had

international student leaders been able to shape a common vision and norms previous to the

implementation of their ideas. Likewise, it must be noted that, although Putnam’s formulation

of social capital occurred in an international form in this example, each movement influenced by

Gene Sharp’s ideas had already found some form of internal success and bonding prior to

seeking external assistance. Regardless of these caveats, the formulation of a trans-temporal and

spatial philosophia perennis via the more modern mechanisms outlined by Fleck and Putnam

enabled the success of Gene Sharp’s iteration of the classical canon of revolutionary thought as

outlined in the rest of this work.

Gene Sharp, Otpor, and Modern Revolutionary Communities: A Case Study

The synthesis and reiteration of philosophy throughout the ages is elucidated well by the

life, studies, and application of theory implemented by Gene Sharp. The introduction to his

aforementioned seminal text, From Dictatorship to Democracy, begins with a clear illustration

of his guiding motivation: “One of my major concerns for many years has been how people could

prevent and destroy dictatorships. This has been nurtured…because of a belief that human

beings should not be dominated and destroyed by such regimes” (2002, p. 1). Now 83 years old,

Sharp has dedicated more than half his life solely to the advancement and conceptualization of

nonviolent change and revolution. Following World War II, he became inspired to pursue

alternative means of ending wars and creating change in the world. He was imprisoned shortly

after for civil disobedience while protesting the Korean War (Pal, 2007, p. 34). After graduating

with his M.A. from Ohio, he began researching nonviolent action and completed a historical

documentary study of Gandhi in 1953. As he completed his PhD at Oxford while researching,

“The Politics of Nonviolent Action: A Study in the Control of Political Power” (1968), Sharp

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began actively lecturing and researching at various institutions, until becoming a research and

visiting scholar at Harvard, where he remained until forming the Albert Einstein Institution in

1983. The largely self-effacing professor also uncovered the perennial nature of nonviolent

action in his early investigations: “I discovered actions on nonviolence dating from a long time

back; Gandhi did not invent nonviolence” (Pal, p. 34). These academic studies, bound by

historical incorporation into the highly structured university thought collective led Sharp to

believe that “advancing freedom takes careful strategy and meticulous planning” (Stolberg,

2011).

The Albert Einstein Institute, so named for the scientist’s strident promotion of

nonviolent action, became a venue for Sharp to articulate his accumulation of nonviolent tactics

and strategies. Though the institute has a smaller profile inside the US, its international

presence is much more keenly felt. Indeed, the handbook Dictatorship to Democracy was first

written for Burmese rebel groups after Sharp visited Myanmar in the early 1990s at the behest of

Robert L. Helvey a retired army colonel acting as an advisor for nonviolent action groups, and a

friend from Sharp’s days at Harvard (Stolberg, 2011; Pal, 2007). That work, first published in

1993 has since been translated into 27 languages through the AEI and its funders. Sharp draws

from a remarkable background of research, while using accessible language, to provide his 198

points for democratic revolution. However, due to the wide dispersal of the text, the group has

drawn critique from groups across the political spectrum and from despotic governments

abroad. The more lucid criticisms attack the AEI’s early funding sources which include large

private donations from one of Sharp’s former students, as well as grants from the National

Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute (IRS Form 990, 2001-

08; Albert Einstein Institute, 1999). The sources of funding for the organization do raise some

legitimacy questions: if congressionally-backed groups are financing the facilitation of groups

opposing their country’s governments, does AEI stand as a non-partial organization for

nonviolent revolution, or simply as one of many similar democracy promoting organizations

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under the umbrella of US foreign policy (Ciccariello-Maher, 2008)? In many regards, while the

funding sources of Sharp’s brainchild represent cause for some concern, the actual actions of the

group assuage the motion of AEI’s supposedly sinister motives.

The best illustration of the oblique influence that Gene Sharp has played in revolutions is

the case of Otpor: Serbian for “resistance.” The student-led group successfully overthrew

Milosevic in 2000 and has since shared their successes and failures with groups around the

world. Originally incepted in 1998, Otpor was the brainchild of Srdja Popovic, a biology student

in Belgrade , and small group of student leaders. Sick of Milosevic’s genocidal rule, the group

agreed to collective lead the movement and sought means to resist Milosevic beyond marches

and rallies, which had been attempted for years to no avail. Though the group grew quite rapidly

and reached 20,000 members within a short time, the leaders “couldn’t see how Otpor could

turn that growth into the fall of Milosevic” (Rosenberg, 2011). Helvey, Sharp’s comrade from

Harvard, met with the students and gave them Sharp’s handbooks and access to the AEI’s

training. Applied nonviolent tactics requiring militarist discipline came into effect: nighttime

spray-painting, public stunts like rolling a barrel painted with Milosevic’s picture down busy

streets, and publicizing the arrests of youthful college students (Brooks, 2011). Armed with the

same drive and initiative as before, but renewed by Sharp’s highly applied tactics, Otpor

succeeded in routing Milosevic within the next two years.

Sharp’s handbooks gained legitimacy through the Fleckian thought communities of the

Serbian revolutionaries, who took the academic’s lessons to heart after their success. More

importantly, following the revolution Popovic and his fellow leaders set about enlarging that

community through methods that Robert Putnam would likely have thoroughly endorsed. The

cadre of student leaders formed Canvas, an organizing based on the teachings of generations

worth of nonviolent leaders, from the Ancient Greeks to Gandhi and Gene Sharp. By using

applied training sessions for the younger generation of revolutionaries around the world, the

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organization aims to give non-traditional powers structures additional tools to mobilize and

succeed in democratic revolutions (Rosenberg, 2011). Since its founding in 2003, the group has

worked with activists in more than 50 countries, including the leaders from Georgia’s Rose and

Ukraine’s Orange revolutions (Brooks).

The network has grown in size over the past several years, as student leaders from Egypt,

Tusnisia, Iran, and many other countries has sought training from the group. As noted by the

Balkan Focus, “to those who observed the 2000 Bulldozer Revolution that brought down

Slobodan Milošević…the protestor's [in the Middle East] tactics were eerily familiar: they were

Otpor to a T” (Miller, 2011). The creation of trust between revolutionary leaders seems to

indicate the establishment of some form of Putnam’s social capital, not bound by geographical

boundaries but overseen by social connections and political participation in similar means

across the world (Putnam, 1995). The April 6 revolution clearly illustrates the strength of this

new network and its capacity to relay accepted ideas: even though Gene Sharp had no direct

contact with the Egyptian revolutionaries, his handbooks and tactics were quoted and used

verbatim by leaders on the ground (Radio Free Europe, 2011). This remarkable capacity to

disseminate the most useful information across formerly impenetrable boundaries into

repressive regimes indicates a dramatic use of new systems of technology, such as Facebook and

Twitter, coupled with traditional networks of trust forged between grassroots leaders.

Conclusion

Despite the minimalistic pluralism of ideas that Canvas and AEI attempt to export,

neither group comes close to enabling successful revolution in all of the countries they connect

with (Rosenberg, 2011). Even the vernacular lessons Gene Sharp teased from the perennial

philosophy of nonviolent revolution, stretching from Greek rebellions to Egypt, are not always

enough to empower citizens to rise against despotic or repressive regimes. Perhaps therein lies

one of the great lessons, already realized by Gene Sharp and his predecessors:

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“Great men seem to be the cause of revolutions in the world. In truth, the people

themselves are the cause. Revolutions do not take place by accident, but obey laws as

rigid as the law governing the motions of the planets. Only we do not know those laws

and causes and, therefore, regard revolutions as accidents” (Gandhi, as qtd. in Hartman,

2003).

Outsiders to a revolution might impart valuable insights and conceptual information, but only

the citizens can take those ideas and place them into their own context. Each situation requires a

unique approach, but the synthesis of more than two thousand years’ worth of information

provided through Gene Sharp and those who draw upon similar perennial thoughts offer

empirical power that can readily assist those who are ready to rise up (Miller; Brooks, 2011).

The gradual assimilation of similar thoughts, whether incorporated through the thought

collectives proffered by Fleck, or via the ancient ideal of philosphia perennis, enables the

percolation of powerful knowledge. In the end, action is checked the realities of the world which

no single individual can overcome. As Einstein commented, “Gandhi’s development was

something resulting from extraordinary intellectual and moral forces in connection with

political ingenuity and an unique situation…I think Gandhi would have been Gandhi even

without Thoreau and Tolstoy” (1953). However, movements led by popular support and armed

with collected tactics from those who have risen before are succeeding in 2011 on a scale never

before witnessed. The remnants of Thoreau and Tolstoy; Gandhi and MLK; and, Gene Sharp and

Otopor are clear in the tactics and methodology of the unique wave of democratic thought

sweeping the world. In the Green, Orange, and Rose revolutions bearing the clenched fist of

Otpor, the names of the great men fade into the background while the people step forward.

“And this is something which is a long, centuries-and-centuries-old history that people

have tried to do, and now it looks like they are learning to do it more skillfully and more

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effectively, where people would have normally dismissed that [revolution] as [even a]

possibility” (Gene Sharp as qtd. by Radio Free Europe, 2011).

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