BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
The leaflet advertising the well-attended September 30 "Peace Picnic" in Hobart said "a peaceful heart leads to a peaceful person; a peaceful person leads to a peaceful family; a peaceful family leads to a peaceful community; a peaceful community leads to a peaceful nation; [and] a peaceful nation leads to a PEACEFUL WORLD".
The implication of this message is that all we need to do to combat war is to lead a "peaceful life". This was explicitly advocated at the first rally that I attended in Perth against the 1991 Gulf War. The rally chair argued that if enough people in Australia "put peace in their heart" this would have a rebounding effect on the people around them. Eventually, the argument went, this would put peace into the heart of warmongers like then-prime minister Bob Hawke who had rushed to join the US war effort against Iraq and, once this happened, wars (like the Gulf War) would be ended.
The sentiments motivating this perspective might appear tantalisingly beautiful. However, they do not help the movement to end wars or even more generally to end the daily violence of capitalist society.
Firstly, the implications of this perspective are quite demoralising. According to this line of argument, if war breaks out, it is the vast majority of people who are responsible — for not having peaceful-enough hearts. In fact, most people do not get a meaningful say on the question of whether or not a country goes to war — so they should not be held responsible. Even more importantly, the people who are responsible — the corporate elite which benefits from war and its servants in government — should not be let off the hook.
Secondly, it ignores historical experience of how to end wars. The movement against the Vietnam War is a good example of a movement that succeeded in stopping the US war effort. Millions of people around the world actively campaigned using mass street marches and other forms of public protest to put political pressure on the governments of the USA, Australia and other countries. Over time they won support from the majority of ordinary people and eventually the imperialist governments were forced to withdraw their troops from Vietnam.
Thirdly, the focus on individual peace is, in practice, often accompanied by silence on the importance of justice — an essential precondition for any lasting and meaningful peace. At worst, it can lead to conservative apologies for the injustices of the ruling capitalist class and their agents. The appeal is made to "recognise their humanity", forgive them their crimes and certainly not to engage in any militant struggle against them.
An example of this occurred at the September 30 "peace picnic" in Hobart. A member of the Socialist Alliance took a banner to the picnic that said "No to Bush's racist war". An organiser of the picnic asked her not to display the banner on the basis that it is not very peaceful to call someone racist. The same organiser asked her not to distribute leaflets calling for a protest against the war.
Violent conflicts are not caused by a shortage of peaceful motivations and desires in the minds of individuals. The cause of large-scale violent conflicts like wars is ultimately to be found in the grave injustices of the societies we live in — the obscenely unequal distribution of wealth foremost among them.
Creating peace necessitates removing the causes of violence. There is no way to build a peaceful world unless those profound social inequalities can be overcome. However, historical experience is yet to provide even one example of a ruling class that has given up its power and privileges without a fight. This means that achieving lasting peace will require a concerted struggle.
Some activists maintain that if our side of the struggle is tainted by participation in anything violent, the possibility of achieving peace is precluded. This idea is expressed with sayings like "fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity".
Claims like this are made in the abstract without considering specific circumstances. But violent conflicts never occur in abstract. As was correctly observed by the 19th century Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, "war is the continuation of politics by other [violent] means". To understand any war it is necessary to work out what are the political issues being fought over.
Declaring opposition to all violence can never stop violence because the exploiters continually need violence to maintain their rule and the exploited and oppressed have no choice but to defend themselves against that violence. However, opposing all violence does frequently mean abstaining from actual struggles for social justice.
This is best understood with reference to real, not hypothetical, examples.
Consider the situation in East Timor in September 1999. Indonesian army-organised right-wing militia set out to kill thousands of unarmed people simply because they had voted in their large majority for independence from Indonesia.
The only moral and just response in that situation was to physically restrain those militia, forcibly disarming and incarcerating them if necessary. If there was no alternative, it would have been more moral to shoot the militia members than to allow them to continue killing thousands of civilians.
There was no "non-violent" way of restraining, disarming or incarcerating those militia. (While the militia retreated before much force was used, the arrival of Australian troops certainly represented the threat to use force — which is philosophically pretty much the same thing.)
It is obvious that the continued rampaging of the militia was incompatible with social justice and the expressed will of the majority of East Timorese. But it is not at all obvious that forcibly restraining the militia represented an "original sin" that precluded the possibility of peace in East Timor. In fact, the contrary is the case.
[Alex Bainbridge is the Hobart branch secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party.]