Non-Cooperation

But even though Gandhi contended rightfully that modern administrators and bureaucrats were thoroughly corrupt and evil, Gandhi did not call for retribution or violence against them. Moreover, Gandhi argued that in order for a man to “prove himself not guilty of disaffection must prove himself to be actively affectionate.” Gandhi said: “But it must be equally clear that it would be cowardly for three hundred million people to seek to destroy the three hundred authors or administrators of the system. It is a sign of gross ignorance to devise means of destroying these administrators or their hirelings. Moreover, they are but creatures of circumstances. The purest man entering the system will be affected by it and will be instrumental in propagating the evil. The remedy therefore naturally is not being enraged against the administrators and therefore hurting them, but to non-cooperate with the system by withdrawing all the voluntary assistance possible and refusing its so-called benefits.” 

Hence, even the most saintly individual in the world would become thoroughly corrupted and tainted if they were to enter into the system and cooperate with it, given the very basic nature of the system. In turn, given the nature and scope of the global crisis which the system has created and prompted, Gandhi quipped that civil disobedience and non-cooperation with the system carries less of a risk than flying an airplane. Gandhi said: “There is danger in civil disobedience only because it is still only a partially tried remedy and has always to be tried in an atmosphere surcharged with violence. For when tyranny is rampant much rage is generated among victims. It remains latent because of their weakness and bursts in all its fury on the slightest pretext.”

Gandhi added: “Civil disobedience is a sovereign method of transmuting this undisciplined life-destroying latent energy into disciplined life-saving energy whose use ensures absolute success. The attendant risk is nothing compared to the result promised. When the world has become familiar with its use and when it has had a series of demonstrations of its successful working, there will be less risk in civil disobedience than there is in aviation, in spite of that science having reached a high stage of development.”

Perhaps the system has bigger fish to fry at the moment than to clamp down on our non-cooperation and peaceful resistance against the system. As Karl Marx wrote in regards to the basic characteristics of the crisis we face at the moment which one must note is a repetition of what has occurred in the past:

“It is unnecessary to dwell on the political consequences such a crisis must produce in these times, with the unprecedented extension of factories in England, with the utter dissolution of her official parties, with the whole State machinery of France transformed into one immense swindling and stockjobbing concern, with Austria on the eve of bankruptcy, with wrongs everywhere accumulated to be revenged by the people, with the conflicting interests of the reactionary powers themselves, and with the Russian dream of conquest once more revealed to the world.” 

Hence, given the overall circumstances of international society as well as the political consequences that such a crisis will have sometime in the future, it is no wonder why non-cooperation with the system and civil disobedience carries less of a risk than flying in an airplane nowadays.