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Monday, October 08, 2007

On non-violent resistance

Two theses on non-violent resistance: 1) Successful non-violent resistance is neither only "underground" (in the sense that people try to live their private lives as they want to live it, ignoring as much as possible the repression by the state) nor only "La Boétiean" (in the sense that people resist the repression openly, for example by means of demonstrations). Both ways to oppose a repressive regime supply each other and need each other. 2) There are two kinds of power: coercive power and co-operative power (see Schell). Non-violent resistance implies a clash between both kinds of power. It is the task of a theory of non-violent resistance to elaborate and explain what happens here and to relate it to the levels of resistance.
For a defense of these theses see
http://home.kpn.nl/wegweeda/Bleiker-kritiek.htm (in Dutch).

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