Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1848)
Last week: “Mourt’s Relation” by William Bradford and Edward Winslow
It was election week in The Netherlands, and the outcome was not great. Islamophobia, xenophobia, climate denialism and right-wing politics won several seats at the center of government, more than anyone predicted. Because this is a coalition government, the hardest edges will be softened somewhat — to reach a majority, the 37 seats for the party for Freedom (PVV) must join with other parties, both to the right and center. The Green/Labor coalition also picked up +9 seats, so there’s that. Unlike in Louisiana, The Netherlands has excellent voter turnout — nationwide at 78.2%. Where I live, PVV got 21.8 percent of the votes, 10.7 percent more than in 2021. GroenLinks-PvdA (Green/Labor) is in second place with 19.4 percent.
As Thoreau says,
All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.
Power is limited by EU and UN policy — so, most of the promises made (to push out immigrants, to close the borders, to leave the EU, to close mosques, to reverse climate policy, etc.) to get the PVV so many votes cannot be implemented here. But the result is that now we are witnessing yet another government forming with hate and fear as its platform.
On the same day that the election results became clear, student activists occupied several lecture halls on campus demanding that the university divest from Shell Oil investments as part of a global movement called End Fossil.
So, a good time to talk about Resistance to Civil Government, also called On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), wouldn’t you say?
This highly influential essay — known to be read by Mahatma Gandhi and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr — was first a speech that Thoreau gave in response to the Mexican/American war, itself a campaign to expand the boarders for slavery into the Southwest. He had withheld his poll tax of $1.50 in protest for six years, and spent one night in jail.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.
I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
At the Concord Lyceum, in January and February 1848, he laid out an entire philosophy behind this seemingly small and inconsequential act of defiance. The question at the heart of the essay is: How should individuals respond when their government pursues policies that they believe to be immoral?
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.
Thoreau’s answer: Practice the 3 Rs. Reflect, resist, refuse.
First, Reflect. The Individual should follow their conscience above all laws or obligations.
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.
Second, Resist:
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
3rd: Refuse allegiance, or perhaps revolt.
“I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.”
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
This is the formula. Thoreau has little respect for the majority in a representative government. It is the wisdom of the minority, and even the individual conscience, that inspires him. The concept of civil disobedience is for a person to choose, in any relations to the state, not to blithely obey. This is not an essay about “civility” or politeness. It is about civics. Should there be unjust laws, then no matter how small the actions you take are, no matter how small you feel you are, your choice to act creates friction against the machine of state.
For example, the sit in at my campus was not huge, but it was enough to close the university building and draw representatives of the administration into the room. Maybe it does not end reliance on fossil fuel financing, but the note has been sounded, and who knows where it will resonate.
“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever”
The word, “machine” turns up 10 times in the speech. I find this fascinating — for it suggests that his theory of civil disobedience is physics.
On one level, he uses the metaphor to signify that a machine breaks if even the smallest spring or lever or circuit is broken. A grain of sand will do the trick. On another, he describes the state as a machine of war — one that is a conquering and invading army. Once put in motion, it is time to revolt.
And, he also uses the metaphor of the machine for people. He says that the state thinks of people as machines, to serve their purposes through their bodies — as jailers, soldiers, taxpayers. We are intended to be as clay, as robots. We are in Doctor Who territory here. Thoreau urges us to use our minds and moral reasoning against the state, because to have an independent mind is the first level of resistance.