Comment la non-violence protège l’Etat (2018)

Frankly speaking, given the situation, the vast majority of social and environmental movements have failed miserably for decades, if only to curb the social and ecological catastrophe in progress (from the sixth mass extinction to phenomenal economic inequalities and growing that characterize our time).

Most of these movements pride themselves on scrupulously respecting the principles of non-violence, which they consider to be the only acceptable method of struggle. And yet, as Peter Gelderloos brilliantly explains in this book, this dogmatic adherence to the concept of non-violence is unjustified and unjustifiable. In addition, this is one of the main reasons why they are ineffective.

By demystifying the historical figures inexorably cited by the majority of those who defend non-violence as an absolute – Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela -, by exposing the complex realities behind their achievements (often reduced to false simplisms), and by exposing the many ethical problems which arise from the absolutization of non-violence, Gelderloos offers us here an essential work which should help us to break the manifest deadlock in which militant movements are bogged down.

Far from praising unreasonable violence, this book debunks the fallacious arguments of those who assert that non-violence is the only acceptable method of fighting against the violence of capitalism and the state.