Alinsky and Gandhi on Means and Ends

The debate about the tactics employed at the Nurrungar anti-base demonstration
of a year ago is still raging in the pages of NVT and elsewhere.  Although at
times this dialogue has been a little acrimonious it is nevertheless
encouraging that there is such an intense focus on the meaning and the methods
of nonviolent activism.

As someone who was not present at Nurrungar, I have no desire to enter the
debate centering on the tactics employed there.  I have long been an admirer
of the efforts of the Melbourne Rainforest Action Group and, because my
research interests and sentiments are centred on Gandhian philosophy, I
particularly appreciate their efforts at bringing this version of
nonviolence-in-action into the public arena (while  appreciating that there
are other streams of not-violent activism).

Although the Burrowes/Doherty debate (NVT#11 Oct/Nov 1989  and NVT#15
June/July 1990) will possibly help entrench already existing views, it will
more hopefully provide food for thought for those who have not yet made up
their minds and perhaps provide the framework for the dialectical process from
which a clearer understanding of appropriate tactics may emerge.

The only contribution that I would like to offer to this process is to put a
possibly ill-considered quotation, which was supplied by one of the
protagonists, in context.

Doherty, in his article, points out that both Saul Alinsky and Daniel Berrigan
would adhere to interpretations of nonviolence that are quite different from
the one followed by Burrowes and MRAG.  We are then informed (almost by way of
a "throw away" line) that "Alinsky suggests that Gandhi, the great prophet of
nonviolence, would have used guns if appropriate."  And we are supplied with
Alinsky's comment that  "If Gandhi had had the weapons and the people to use
them, this means would not have been so unreservedly rejected as the world
would like to think."   

In the book from which this quotation is drawn (Rules for  Radicals p.39)
Alinsky elaborates on the point when he tells us that Gandhi's campaigns "were
a striking example of the selection of means" (p.37), and he adds that:
History, and religious and moral opinion, have so enshrined Gandhi in [a]
sacred matrix that in many quarters it is blasphemous to question whether this
entire procedure of passive resistance was not simply the only intelligent,
realistic, expedient program which Gandhi had at his disposal; and that the
'morality' which surrounded this policy of passive resistance was to a large
degree a rationale to cloak a pragmatic program with a desired and essential
moral power.  ....If he had had guns he might well have used them in an armed
revolution against the British which would have been in keeping with the
traditions of revolutions for freedom through force". 

Gandhi did not have the guns, and if he had had the guns he would not have had
the people to use the guns (p.38).

We are told that in Gandhi's circumstances 'passive resistance' was not only
possible but also "the most effective means that could have been selected for
the end of ridding India of British control."  Because he could not "expect
violent action from this large torpid mass, Gandhi organized the inertia"
(p.42).

We are further advised that "Gandhi's passive resistance would never have had
a chance against a totalitarian state such as that of the Nazis" (p.41).

Alinsky concludes this chapter (entitled "Of Means and Ends") by informing us
that: "Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question
has never been the proverbial one, "Does the End justify the Means?", but
always has been, "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"

As much as Alinsky's work with the poor and disempowered in America is to be
applauded, it must be realised that he had a clear political agenda for his
carefully selected reading of Gandhi's critics and that it is this,
presumably, that causes him to either deliberately misrepresent Gandhi or
prevents him from understanding what Gandhi stood for at all.

His book is subtitled "A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic  Radicals", and his
interpretation of the words 'pragmatic' and 'realistic' colours his analysis
of Gandhi's motivations.  Alinsky, over his long life of activism, developed
his own modus operandi but the only theoretical framework that he seems to
have produced to support it is: if it 'works' in achieving the immediate ends
sought it is good.

The ends Gandhi sought were far more ambitious than the ones Alinsky credits
him with.  Gandhi's interest was not as narrow as merely ridding India of
British control, of potentially exchanging white exploiters for indigenous
ones.  His aim was to bring about a peaceful and just society, a new India and
a new Indian.

In Rules for Radicals, completed shortly before his death, Alinsky attempts to
undercut the position of those who wish to operate in time-frames longer than
ones he seems capable of envisioning and of those philosophical opponents who
cleave more closely to what can be called the "traditional" Gandhian position
that focuses on the primacy of means.

The reference to the enshrinement of Gandhi in a 'sacred matrix' is an attempt
to preempt any possible response from 'Gandhians' by implying that they or
their supporters have not thought through matters to any great degree, that
their analysis is faulty, or worse, that they have been duped or are in some
way engaging in misleading others.

In the words of Pelton, what Alinsky attempted to do was "proclaim that all
'means-and-end-moralists' are strangers to the world of action and are passive
non-doers" (The  Psychology of Nonviolence p.252). Alinsky's selection, and
continual use, of the words "passive resistance", a phrase that was repudiated
by Gandhi early in his activist career, precisely because it could give the
wrong impression about his very active resistance to injustice, directly
serves this end.  Anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of Gandhi's life
and work knows that the premise underlying this insinuation is totally
insupportable.

Along with Aldous Huxley, who claimed that "Good ends... can only be achieved
by the employment of appropriate means", and that "The end cannot justify the
means, for the simple  reason that the means employed determine the nature of
the ends produced" (Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and
into the Methods Employed for Their Realization  p.9.), Gandhi maintained that
"The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree: and there is just the
same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between
the seed and the tree."  He added that "They say 'Means are after all means.' 
I would say, 'means are after all  everything.'  As the means so the ends. 
There is no wall of separation between means and ends." And, "if one takes
care of the means, the end will take care of itself."

Contrary to Alinsky's suggestion that Gandhi started his famous nonviolent
1930 Civil Disobedience movement, focussing on the iniquitous British tax on
salt, because he did not have the arms or the willing fighters to do
otherwise, the truth is almost the exact opposite.  Gandhi felt forced into
commencing a nonviolent campaign for the very reason that terrorism and armed
violence against the imperialists was on the increase in the country.

The 1920-1922 Non-Cooperation Movement, the earlier great campaign of Gandhi's
career, was called off by Gandhi (much to the disgust of several of his
closest followers), just when it  appeared to have some possibility of
succeeding, because of outbreaks of violence. (And, incidentally, the defusing
of situations that had the possible potential of fomenting armed uprising is
one of the reasons that Marxists generally dislike Gandhi so intensely).

Gandhi biographer Louis Fischer noted the significance of the 1922 action (the
rationale being one that Alinsky, it  appears, would not have understood) when
he remarked that had Gandhi been nonviolent by a policy of convenience, rather
than by creed, he could have championed an uprising that may have driven the
British from India:  But Gandhi would not purchase independence at the price
of national blood drenching; a free India born in murder would bear the mark
on her forehead for decades. He sacrificed the end, doubtful in any case at
the time, because bad means would poison it (Gandhi: His Life and Message for
the World p.71).

Huxley notes that the almost universal desire to believe in short cuts to
Utopia makes us less than dispassionate when looking at means "which we know
quite certainly to be abominable" (p.25). Quoting the line "All men desire
peace, but very few desire those things which make for peace" from Thomas a
Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, he adds that "the thing that makes for peace
above all others is the systematic practice in all human relationships of
nonviolence" (p.138).

It is the primary means to this important end.  Echoing Gandhi, Huxley adds: 
If violence is answered by violence, the result is a physical struggle. Now, a
physical struggle inevitably arouses in the minds of those directly and even
indirectly concerned in it emotions of hatred, fear, rage and resentment.  In
the heat of conflict all scruples are thrown to the winds, and all the habits
of forbearance and humaneness, slowly and laboriously formed during
generations of civilized living, are forgotten.  Nothing matters any more
except victory.  And when at last victory comes to one or other of the
parties, this final outcome of physical struggle bears no necessary relation
to the right and wrongs of the case; nor in most cases, does it provide any
lasting settlement to the dispute (p.139).

Huxley suggests that the golden rule to be kept in mind when ends, and the
means to achieve them, are chosen is to ask whether the result will be to
transform the society to which they are applied "into a just, peaceable,
morally and intellectually progressive community of non-attached and 
responsible men and women" (p.32) rather than merely the attainment of the
immediate goal, of say removing imperialist exploiters.

On Alinsky's other point, without going too far into the literature on the
question of a narrow cost/benefit analysis of the use of Gandhian nonviolence
in the face of totalitarian regimes, the point must be made that in Gandhi's
philosophy this question has less relevance than it may have for Alinsky. 
(The interested reader who may wish to pursue this further should perhaps
consult Gene Sharp's The Politics of Nonviolent  Action, or Tyranny Could Not
Quell Them, and A.Roberts (ed.)  The Strategy of Civilian Defence: Non-Violent
Resistance to Aggression as references rather than an essay by George Orwell,
which is Alinsky's source).

Gandhi had a complete answer for critics who doubted the efficacy of his
methods against the likes of Hitler, who know no pity.  "As a believer in
nonviolence" he could not, he said, "limit its possibilities":  Hitherto he
and his likes have built upon their invariable experience that men yield to
force. Unarmed men, women and children offering nonviolent resistance without
any bitterness in them will be a novel experience for them.  Who can dare say
it is not in their nature to respond to the higher and finer forces?  They
have the same soul as I have.

Even if psychological simulation experiments tended strongly to reject
Gandhi's underlying premise it still would not have worried him.  Gandhi
simply continued (and here is the essence of the brand of nonviolence that
places such a strong emphasis on means) that "If Hitler is unaffected by my
suffering, it does not matter.  For I have lost nothing worth.  My honour is
the only thing worth preserving. That is independent of Hitler's pity."

Alinsky's question of "Does this particular end justify  this particular
means?" is the cardinal truism for believers in violence and advocates of
"instrumental nonviolence" - the nonviolence which can be pursued merely as a
serviceable  policy.  A belief in the intrinsic value of nonviolence means 
that it will be practiced as a creed, and in the Gandhian scheme it is so
practiced.  Alinsky's proverbial question of whether the end justifies the
means is answered in the negative because the view of means as being ends in
the making is central to its doctrine.  Alinsky is correct in noting a
qualitative interrelationship: by using nonviolent means we are in the process
of creating a nonviolent future.

But then again, even in Gandhian nonviolence it is perhaps not altogether
incorrect to substitute the word 'instrumental' for 'intrinsic' if the former
is used in a far deeper and more abstract way than is usual for this term in
the usual cost/benefit analyses.  In short, such nonviolence may be
instrumental in the quest for far more than mere tangible political or
sociological results.  It points to a belief in the underlying unity of
humankind and consequently to the locating of the self in the web that is the
cosmological order of things.  In other words, it may be instrumental in the
quest for self-realization.

Nonviolence is good not only because it can work to free a country when no
other means are available, or because it is the most dependable way of
providing the foundations for a peaceful future, but also because nonviolence
can work to  'free' the nonviolent individual.  And what could be more
'pragmatic' and 'realistic' than that? (I have attempted to spell out this
final argument in an earlier NVT article. See "Nonviolence: The Other Reasons"
NVT#13 Feb/March 1990). 

Thomas Weber