A man is free in proportion to his non-possession of power. And the most powerful are the most unfree.

But, insists Tolstoy, a man is free in proportion to his non-possession of power. And the most powerful are the most unfree. "The strongest, most indissoluble, most burdensome, and constant bond with other men, is what is called power over others, which in its real meaning is only the greatest dependence on them."

THERE is a natural polarity in human efforts to alter or improve the world we live in. One pole is represented by the claim that it is necessary, first, to change the circumstances which surround us, in order to permit the decencies and natural excellences of people to have play and come to the surface. The other pole has expression in the view that we must begin by changing ourselves. Once this is accomplished, it is said, the external arrangements will very nearly take care of themselves, in spontaneous reaction to the altered nature of those for whom they exist and of whom they become a social extension.
Then there are those who, using common sense, say we have to do both. Difficult questions, however, remain. For one thing, it is easier to focus attention on bad or painful circumstances. Our environment, both natural and man-made, is continually producing events which seem to call for immediate action. When the river rises we need to get out there and shore up the levees. When a government remains indifferent to conditions and relationships which lead to the starvation of thousands of children, who can deny the force of the argument that the government should be replaced, the children fed? That such conditions now exist in many parts of the world is well known; and that cruelly oppressive circumstances are endemic in a number of countries is continuously made plain by the reports of Amnesty International. Worst of all, perhaps, is the threat of war, both nuclear and "conventional," which seems to worsen from day to day, with only brief interludes of lessened pressure. If governments are left to themselves, current historians point out, they are sure to engulf the world in self-destruction; governments, it is shown, are little more than powerful instruments of corporate self-interest, immune to moral considerations, and at the same time skilled in the use of partisan propaganda. Nation-states
PEACE AND PROTEST
MANAS Reprint - LEAD ARTICLE
VOLUME XXXVI, NO. 26-35 JUNE 29, 1983
of today are virtually all "terrorists," since their acts and intentions are responsible for much of the fear abroad in the world.
What can we do?

Weighing proposed answers to this question is the content of a new book by Bob Overy, a British pacifist who has been active in the peace movements of the past twenty-five years. His title is How Effective Are the Peace Movements? the publisher, Harvest House, Ltd. (2335 Sherbrooke Street, West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3H IG6). Basing his analysis on the practice of pacifists of various persuasions, the author divides his subject into three sections, giving attention to Movements to Eliminate War, Movements to Stop Particular Aspects of War, and Movements to Stop Particular Wars. His discussion makes a very good book, of interest to all who want to contribute in some way to putting an end to war.

Speaking of the movement for non-violent revolution, along the lines of Richard Gregg's The Power of Nonviolence (1935), Overy says:

The peacemaking of non-violent revolution starts with oneself. In this it is not much different from varieties of pacifism which stress the importance of individual conduct—"Let there be peace on earth, let it begin with me." But where pacifism emphasizes "peace" as a value for the individual, non-violent revolution is harsher, placing more stress on "equality" "freedom" and "liberation," and the necessity for conflict if change is to happen. War isn't so much the only or central problem as that it reflects all structures of oppression. In a view close to the Tolstoyan, non-violent revolutionists examine how their own lives fit into the surrounding system of inequality and unfreedom: then they try to break out of patterns which reinforce that system and to build alternatives. . . .
Fundamental then to this type of politics is the ordering of one's own life, that life being the only means of making revolution which one can legitimately control. Non-violent revolutionists have
begun to combine in all sorts of collective living and work arrangements as part of their effort to build non- oppressive organizations in an "alternative society." The idea of securing political or social power within the existing society in order to do good—as with capturing power through political parties or "getting to the top of your profession"—is scorned. But the problem that new institutions in an alternative society will inevitably constitute new forms of social and political power is a constant source of ambiguity and dispute. Particular efforts are being made to develop ways of organizing and coordinating groups which do not require hierarchical leadership, but the scale of such experiments is limited at present. . . . It is a revolutionary theory which is gradualist; it highlights the build-up of revolution as a process based on the quality of life as it is lived now, rather than as some decisive or explosive event which will come some time in the future. In this respect it is a pragmatic process based on the quality of life as it is lived now, rather than geared to constantly postponed expectations of transformations to come; it is a pragmatism which tries to promote pockets of idealism.
The moral issue here lies in the Tolstoyan distinction between the two aspects of the life of every human—the side of his freedom, in which he acts according to his own perception of right and wrong, and his "elemental swarm life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him." The free man rejects the habits of the swarm when it goes against his conscience, and the same issue of decision may arise when he endeavors to act in concert with others. Interpreting Tolstoy (in The Discovery of Peace, Pantheon, 1973), Ronald Sampson writes:
Confusion arises, he says, when we wrongly transfer the notion of freedom which we rightly associate with self-regarding actions (actions of conscience) to those acts which we perform in conjunction with others and which depend not simply on our own mind and conscience but upon the contingency of other wills coinciding with our own. And the great paradox which lies at the heart of War and Peace is that the supreme example of man's unfreedom, that is to say, of his being bound by the chains linking his activities to those of others, is when a man enjoys what we term power over the lives of other men. Men seek power in order to impose their will on others, to do that which they want to do and which they want others to do, which, being in a less powerful position they fear they would not be able to do. But, insists Tolstoy, a man is free in proportion to his non-possession of power. And the most powerful are the most unfree. "The strongest, most indissoluble, most burdensome, and constant bond with other men, is what is called power over others, which in its real meaning is only the greatest dependence on them."
The significance of this principle for the understanding of history is momentous. For conventional historians regard power not at all in the sense of Tolstoy's paradox but in the way that the vast mass of mankind understand it. History is made by men of power, so historians write of the activities of statesmen, generals, kings and diplomatists, men who are visibly possessed of power. Tolstoy does not quarrel with this at the level of actuality—he does not dispute its descriptive truth. But he relegates it to the despised status of the unpredetermined, swarm-life of mankind, the life of enslaved men, living lives not free and thus not worthy of men.
There is an obvious question: Is there no part of the "swarm-life" that is tolerable for a person of conscience? Isn't it possible to be in it but not of it? Bob Overy speaks to this point:
At present non-violent revolution leaves out on a limb "non-violent revolutionists" like myself who are not part of a "revolutionary subculture" but remain in conventional settings where we live and work. Our values differ from those of our fellows at numerous points, yet if we make links and try to play an influential part at work or in the local community we become vulnerable to the criticism that we are "liberals" getting sucked into the dominant institutions. Non-violent revolution does not yet have a clear notion of what action is "progressive," that is, "going in the right direction," and what is not; it lacks an adequate theory of how to work on the "inside" and "at the margins" of the institutions it criticizes; it lacks charity (and political sensitivity) toward those who for various reasons can go with it only part of the way. Moreover, for individuals spending years of their lives in nuclear families, in suburban neighborhoods, in conventional jobs, it seems especially pretentious and even a little absurd to call themselves "non-violent revolutionaries"—and so they tend to fall back on marginally safer labels like "radical pacifist," "alternative socialist" or "non- violent anarchist"; that is, these individuals accept psychologically that they are part of an active permanent minority, rather than of a potential revolutionary movement.
Why, it may be wondered, should these distinctions and labels matter so much, or at all? They may matter a great deal to those who are endeavoring to give their movement objective definition, including standards to live up to. Could there even be a movement without such distinctions and definitions? How can we judge ourselves and one another if we don't distinguish between the right and the wrong relations with the existing society?
Yet this "absolutism" in classification overlooks the fact that in every age of transition, a great many people, while they are thinking things over, are bound to have one foot in the past and the other in the future, especially since there is always room for debate about at least some aspects of both camps. The reason why there is no clear notion of what action is "progressive" and "going in the right direction" is that decision is at first always a subjective consideration. Involved is a gradual restructuring of one's value system; and at the same time, for some, there remains a natural reticence to being labeled or classified as being on either the "right" or the "wrong" side. Identification of what is wrong with the existing society is easy enough, but defining what will be good or better may prove exceedingly difficult, especially since, as history shows, the righteous and progressive political movement almost invariably, upon gaining power, becomes an establishment which resists further change. On the other hand movements do embody the spirit, the courage, and persistence that lead to change.
This is the paradox or contradiction discussed with understanding by Bob Overy. Apparently, we need to have movements, yet the danger of externalizing their moral principles, and the conversion of those principles into shallow slogans, is ever present—a tendency that is likely to shut out the best of humans. Some remarks by Abraham Maslow concerning his self-actualizing subjects (in Toward a Psychology of Being), drawn from an early paper, have application here.
I recall my healthy subjects to be superficially accepting of conventions, but privately to be casual, perfunctory and detached about them. That is, they could take them or leave them. In practically all of them, I found a rather calm, good-humored rejection of the stupidities and imperfections of the culture with greater or lesser effort at improving it. They definitely showed an ability to fight it vigorously when they thought it necessary. To quote from this paper: "The mixture of varying proportions of affection or approval, and hostility and criticism indicated that they select from American culture what is good in it by their lights and reject what they think bad in it. In a word, they weigh it, and judge it (by their own inner criteria) and then make their own decisions."
Movements, then, we might say, arise when the signs of a condition needing remedy become so painfully evident—as for example the threat and frequency of war—that the "inner criteria" can be generalized as the stance and overt program of change. The danger, of course, is that those "inner criteria" will then be relegated to second place, with behavioral definitions of righteousness taking their place. When this occurs, the moral vision and intensity of the movement is thinned, and while the simplicities of its appeal may attract "followers," its actual strength is diminished by the lowered quality of thinking among them. In the process, self- righteousness becomes a noticeable feature in its undertakings. This, again, shuts out the more perceptive and reflective members of society. Movements, we might say, are necessary but not sufficient. Without the grounding in almost undefinable attitudes of mind, they become mere shells. Yet movements sometimes show that they have this grounding, and win widespread support from individuals of exceptional character.
Volume XXXVI, No. 26-35 MANAS Reprint June 29, 1983