A. 1.a.iii. Social and Political Writings cited in Civil Resistance Literature

Explores the concept and experience of revolution, drawing on the history of the American and French revolutions in particular, but also Russia, and develops the theme of the ‘lost treasure’ of revolutionary experience, which is the upsurge of creative and organisational energy in forms of direct democracy, and the conflict between popular political cooperation and the centralising tendencies of political parties.

Covers a range of issues, including Foucault’s interpretation of power and resistance, in accessible form (and also includes interesting discussion on the 1977-79 Iranian Revolution). See also Foucault. M., ‘Truth and Power’ in Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1991. For a brief survey of Foucault’s evolving thought see Bleiker, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics (A. 1.a.ii. Theories of Civil Disobedience, Power and Revolution) , pp. 530-73.

Essay by observer and analyst of many recent movements of unarmed resistance (see later sections). Garton Ash looks back after 20 years on 1989 in the Soviet bloc, but also other movements involving large scale unarmed resistance and culminating in negotiated agreement for a transfer of power (as in South Africa) that suggest a new model of revolution has emerged challenging older models.

Includes chapters by Moshiri on the evolving theory of revolution since Marx, including Tilly, Skocpcol and Goldstone. It also comprises Goldstone’s analytical framework for understanding revolutions, case studies of a range of violent and unarmed movements (chapters on Iran, Poland, the Philippines and the Palestinian Occupied Territories are referenced under appropriate sections later), and a concluding chapter ‘Comparison and Policy Implications’ by Gurr and Goldstone that incorporates reflections on the role of violence and nonviolence.

(Also available in other collections.)
Influential analysis of ‘post-totalitarian’ society and politics in the Soviet bloc in the 1970s and eloquent argument for individual integrity and acts of dissent by lead Czechoslovak playwright and dissident, who became President after 1989. This text inspired many activists in Eastern Europe and others round the world, including Aung San Suu Kyi, leading figure in the nonviolent resistance in Burma from 1988.

Also available in Mary Alice Waters, ed., Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, New York, Pathfinder Press, 1970; and in The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, 14 vols, London, Verso Books, 2011.

Discusses the evolution, nature and significance of the (predominantly unarmed) 1905 Revolution in Russia, and reflects Luxemburg’s emphasis on the importance of popular initiative and cooperation, as opposed to centralised party leadership – themes developed in her pamphlets ‘The Russian Revolution’ and ‘Leninism or Marxism’, both republished in 1961 under those joint titles (Ann Arbor paperback, University of Michigan Press). The standard study of Luxemburg is: Peter Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg, Oxford University Press, 1966 and 1969 (abridged edition).

Influential intellectual oppositionist in Poland from the 1960s to the 1980s argues for adhering to nonviolent methods for moral and political as well as pragmatic reasons (i.e. threat of Soviet military response to a violent uprising).

Chapter Six, ‘Duty and Obligation’ (pp. 333-91) of this extremely influential philosophical restatement of liberal principles explores in depth the circumstances in which civil disobedience is justifiable in a liberal democracy. He summarises this argument in ‘The Justification of Civil Disobedience’ in Bedau, Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice (A. 1.a.ii. Theories of Civil Disobedience, Power and Revolution) , pp. 240-55.

Concise philosophical examination of disobedience within types of democracy by scholar now better known for writings on animal rights and radical arguments about responsibilities of the wealthy to the poor. Ends by briefly applying the principles to Northern Ireland in the late 1960s.

Well-known exponent of the theory and history of resistance and revolt. In later part of book discusses whether the events in the Soviet bloc in 1989-91 count as revolutionary, and the possibility of nonviolent revolution.