Coercion, Resistance and the Radical Side of Non-Violent Action

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the nature and ethics of nonviolent action as a type of political engagement that is distinct from civil disobedience and other favoured philosophical categories. I offer a justification for the specifically coercive character of non-violent action and identify the legitimate role it has to play not only in authoritarian states but in plausibly democratic societies. I critically interrogate Gandhi’s influential understanding of nonviolent action – or “satyagraha” – as a method that converts opponents solely through the loving, purifying force of self-suffering and an argument by Vinit Haksar that nonviolent action does not count as coercive so long as its aims are morally justified. I dispute these perspectives and offer a justification for the use of coercive tactics based on democratic, republican grounds as a means to collectively contest certain objectionable forms of political domination.