Introduction to Non-Violence | Page 8

liberation, the
giving of life and opportunity to an oppressed people."[24]
Later, Berkman insisted that a successful revolution must be
non-violent in nature. It must be the result of thoroughgoing changes in
the ideas and opinions of the people. When their ideas have become
sufficiently changed and unified, the people can stage a general strike
in which they overthrow the old order by their refusal to co-operate
with it. He maintains that any attempt to carry on the revolution itself
by military means would fail because "government and capital are too
well organized in a military way for the workers to cope with them."
But, says Berkman, when the success of the revolution becomes
apparent, the opposition will use violent means to suppress it. At that
moment the people are justified in using violence themselves to protect

it. Berkman believes that there is no record of any group in power
giving up its power without being subjected to the use of physical force,
or at least the threat of it.[25] Thus in effect, Berkman would still use
violence against some personalities in order to establish a system in
which respect for every personality would be possible. Actually his
desire for the new society is greater than his abhorrence of violence.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Cadoux, Christian Pacifism Re-examined, 116-117.
[22] The way in which a whole social order can differ from that of the
West, merely because it chooses to operate on the basis of different
assumptions concerning such things as the aggressive nature of man is
well brought out in the study of three New Guinea tribes living in very
similar environments. Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three
Primitive Societies (London: Routledge, 1935).
[23] Alexander Berkman, What Is Communist Anarchism? (New York:
Vanguard, 1929), x-xi, 176.
[24] Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (New York:
Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1912), 7.
[25] Berkman, Communist Anarchism, 217-229, 247-248, 290.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln represented the spirit of moderation in the use of
violence. He led his nation in war reluctantly and prayerfully, with no
touch of hatred toward those whom the armies of which he was
Commander-in-Chief were destroying. He expressed his feeling in an
inspiring way in the closing words of his Second Inaugural Address,
when the war was rapidly drawing to a victorious close:
"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness to do the
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work
we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall

have borne battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and
with all nations."
The Church and War
The statements of British and American churchmen during the present
war call to mind these words of Lincoln. At Malvern, in 1941,
members of the Church of England declared: "God himself is the
sovereign of all human life; all men are his children, and ought to be
brothers of one another; through Christ the Redeemer they can become
what they ought to be." In March, 1942, American Protestant leaders at
Delaware, Ohio, asserted: "We believe it is the purpose of God to
create a world-wide community in Jesus Christ, transcending nation,
race and class."[26] Yet the majority of the men who drew up these two
statements were supporting the war which their nations were waging
against fellow members of the world community--against those whom
they professed to call brothers. Like Lincoln they did so in the belief
that when the military phases of the war were over, it would be possible
to turn from violence and to practice the principles of Christian
charity.[27]
There is little in human history to justify their hope. There is much to
make us believe that the violent attitudes of war will lead to hatred and
injustice toward enemies when the war is done. The inspiring words of
Lincoln were followed by the orgy of radical reconstruction in the
South. There is at least as grave a doubt that the spirit of the Christian
Church will dominate the peace which is concluded at the end of the
present war.
The question arises insistently whether violence without hate can long
live up to its own professions.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] number of these religious statements are conveniently brought
together in the appendix to Paul Hutchinson's From Victory to Peace
(Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1943). For a statement of a point of view

similar to the one we are discussing here, see also Charles Clayton
Morrison, The Christian and the War (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1942).
[27] Bernard Iddings Bell has expressed the attitude of such churchmen:
"Evil may sometimes get such control of men and nations, they have
realized, that