WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, Monde Libertaire - Ideas and struggles: On disobedience (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 "Nonviolence is both a philosophy and a means of action" ---- André

Bernard, rebel of the Algerian war, co-founder of the magazine
Anarchisme et nonviolence, offers us a small work published by Atelier
de création libertaire, On disobedience. What words are used:
nonviolence, pacifism, passive resistance? Clearly defining the terms
used allows us to better fight or combat. Obviously André Bernard takes
up Albert Camus's phrase: "To misname an object is to add to the
misfortune of this world". Should we mobilize Henry David Thoreau and
civil disobedience? Alain Refalo for whom the term "nonviolence" remains
a mystery? According to André Bernard, "If nonviolence is often limited
to being only an imprecise semantic field, combining philosophy and
morality or religious belief, it can be declined, if we want to open our
eyes, in a multitude of actions rarely recognized as participating in
this nonviolent field". He takes us to the German anarchists including
Fritz Oerter (1869-1935), an anarchist lithographer who published in
1920 the pamphlet Gewalt oder Gewaltosigkeit (violence or nonviolence)
republished by Atelier de création libertaire. This work took a position
for a nonviolent social revolution, if not without violence.

Let us quote André Bernard again: "Here, we do not want to approach
nonviolence when it is only a "agitated philosophical wind", but when it
is physical commitment and requires imagination and courage, when it is
embodied individually, and especially collectively". This non-violence
turns away from the conventional political game, such as voting and
elections, to resort to forms of non-institutional, even illegal,
action. Let us also focus on the unspoken of the dominated, to use the
words of James C. Scott, who died on July 19, 2024.

"Always collective action"

A few dates and events since 1957 symbolize highlights. Let us mention
the Manifesto of the 121, a declaration on the right to insubordination
in the Algerian War of September 6, 1960, the Larzac struggle from 1971
to 1981, the Committee of the Badly Housed, the disobedient teachers in
2008, the action of the Earth Uprisings... "A characteristic of these
modes of action is part of a participatory articulation according to the
limits of each and every one, this always valuing collective action." In
the line of Pierre Kropotkine, in particular Mutual Aid and Ethics in
the Socialized Human Being whose violence must be channeled by culture
and education.

The chapter entitled Against the Bomb and the Concentration Camps takes
up Gandhi's action, his influence on Lanza del Vasto, but especially the
link between non-violence and the Algerian War, in particular through
the publication of the newspaper Civic Action and Non-Violence. André
Bernard relates the actions of these organized activists who experienced
internment, identity checks, and pressure from the coercive forces of
the State. Interesting to read these pages which, in addition to their
historical dimension, are of a nature to testify "that non-violence is
both a philosophy and a means of action". Some activists settled with
the Algerians in the Nanterre shanty town, some welcomed those who
refused to participate in the Algerian war, others got involved in the
fight for Larzac from the 1950s (see the book by Philippe Artières, Le
peuple du Larzac, Ed La Découverte, 2021, Reissue 2024, chronicle of
ideas and struggles of June 2, 2024). Actions consisted of the return of
summonses, road maps, military uniforms, the refusal to decline one's
identity (We are all ...). These activists were few in number but in
general enjoyed the sympathy of the population. This quick overview of
actions in France allows us to meet Louis Lecoin and his hunger strike
in favor of the status of conscientious objectors, the anarchists very
involved in these struggles like Pierre Sommermeyer, the inconsistency
of court decisions, the action of teachers. Please note that these
initiatives should not limit the reader to the 60s and 70s in France.
André Bernard invites us to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, exposing nonviolent techniques
and commitments. The last part of the book lists the main theorists of
nonviolent inspiration such as Etienne de la Boétie whose book Discourse
on Voluntary Servitude is still worth rereading, Gustav Landauer, Han
Tyner, Romain Rolland, activists such as Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma
Goldman. Others more recent: Jean-Marie Muller, David Graeber, Daniel
Colson...

An effort of choice of terms, a historical perspective, a definition of
the means of action, theoretical and militant references, this work
comes at the right time, it opens towards other works and other projects.

Let's not forget to mention the site http://deladesobeissance.fr/ to
find the chronicles of André Bernard.

* André Bernard
De la désobéissance
Ed. Atelier de création libertaire, 2024

https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=7972
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