powerholders. In order to serve liberty and peace, science and technology must be redirected. Huxley recommends that scientists boycott harmful work. He also recommends action to foster positive scientific research. This could be either political action to inspect or control scientific developments, or action by scientists, for example to develop regional self-sufficiency in food and energy. These strategies are still among the most promising ones today. One additional option could be added to Huxley’s list: the development of a movement for “community science and technology,” in which people, many of whom are outside the formal corps of professional scientists and engineers, develop and promote science and technology that is relevant to community needs. [5] This prospect was not outlined by Huxley, but it is quite compatible with his vision.
Huxley’s far-reaching and perceptive essay provides an important lesson. It has no footnotes and only mentions a few sources in passing. It is an essay in the traditional sense, not a scholarly paper. In a world in which science and scholarship have become increasingly specialised, jargonised and professionalised, it is salutory to know that crucial and lasting insights can be derived from a few sound premises.
The response to
In this book I develop ideas about technology and nonviolence that can be interpreted as a development and application of Huxley’s vision. A recurring theme is that those technologies that allow people to control their own lives are the ones best suited to enabling a community to use nonviolent methods to resist aggression or oppression.
1. INTRODUCTION
Let’s begin with two bold propositions. First, methods of social action without violence can be extremely powerful — indeed so powerful as to be a possible alternative to military defence. Second, technology, which is now massively oriented to military purposes, can be reoriented to support nonviolent action.
These two propositions, if followed through, lead to two striking conclusions. First, nonviolent struggle, which is normally seen as primarily a social and psychological process, has vital technological dimensions. Second, reorienting technology to serve nonviolent struggle would involve a wholesale transformation of research directions, technological infrastructure and social decision making.
This is a quick overview of the task ahead in this book. The rest of this introduction provides a more measured approach to key ideas. It is useful to begin with weapons of war.
War has always involved suffering and death. Centuries ago weapons included swords, bows and arrows, catapults and battering rams, enough for plenty of killing. Today’s weapons include rifles, tanks, giant battleships, aircraft for saturation bombing, precision-guided missiles, landmines, and biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.[1] Some types of weapons are much more powerful than in the past, while others are entirely new. It is now much easier for military forces to kill large numbers of people. Civilians are at much greater risk than in earlier eras, in part due to the development of antipersonnel weapons such as cluster bombs.[2] The rapid developments in technology for warfare over the past few centuries have relied on the dedicated efforts of scientists and engineers.
One of the biggest problems with science and technology is their use in war. In 1975, prominent philosopher Arne Naess listed 13 “current main grievances against science” which he considered to be justified and important. Second on his list was this: “Leading scientists take part in creating new terrible and ecologically devastating ways of warfare. Scientists support any state or regime if sufficiently rewarded. Some serve the State through research on how to torture, and take part in international teaching on how to torture without organized opposition from colleagues.”[3]
In 1978, 26 individuals associated with the World Order Models Project, an initiative seeking to develop visions of and methods to achieve a better world, endorsed a statement entitled “the perversion of science and technology.” Focussing on the impact of science and technology on the Third World, the statement listed the following problem as one of the initial four points: “the employment of 50 percent of all research scientists in the world in military R&D [research and development]; a significant proportion of that number for developing the technology of mass destruction and repression.”[4]
In earlier eras, it was possible to imagine that military technologies could be a source of liberation as well as oppression. The sword and the rifle can be used not only by rulers but also against them.[5] But it is difficult to imagine cluster bombs and nuclear weapons being used for popular liberation. Modern weapons are mainly of use by governments against peoples, often against their own populations.
What is the alternative to military science and technology? The most common response of the world’s governments is to seek controls, such as treaties against biological weapons or agreements on numbers of nuclear missiles. Such reforms are welcome enough but do little or nothing to stem the development of ever more sophisticated weapons. Indeed, some critics argue that arms control negotiations serve only to regularise military races, not to halt them.[6]
Whereas most governments seek only those limited controls on weapons to which they agree, peace movements around the world have called for disarmament and totally getting rid of certain types of weapons, particularly nuclear, biological, chemical and antipersonnel weapons. Some groups and movements have pushed for complete elimination of weapons and armies. Peace movement campaigns have had some obvious successes, such as the banning of above-ground tests of nuclear weapons, and also have created a climate of opinion that has sometimes held back aggressive governments. However, peace movement campaigns have seldom dealt directly with the complex of scientific and technological operations serving military ends.
One exception to this is the movement for “peace conversion” or “economic conversion.”[7] What this means is converting science, technology and industry from military purposes to civilian purposes, especially to activities that serve human needs. This might mean converting a gun factory to a home appliance factory or shifting from research into missile ballistics to research into public transport. Historically, this sort of conversion was routine at the ends of major wars. But as military technology becomes ever more specialised, conversion to civilian purposes becomes more difficult. Converting production from military trucks to civilian trucks is not so difficult; converting production from nuclear submarines to a useful civilian technology is quite a challenge. The technological dimension to peace conversion is actually the smaller hurdle. The major obstacle is the political and economic interests in continuing military production. These interests have become entrenched since World War II, so that governments administer what can be called a “permanent war economy.”
Peace conversion is a vital part of any process of changing science and technology so that they no longer serve to sustain war and repression. But peace conversion can be only one part of this process, since it provides no alternative means of directly providing the security that is the stated rationale for, if seldom the consequence of, military forces. (The deeper driving forces behind military systems are discussed in chapter 2.)
One alternative to the military is nonviolent defence. The military option involves professional soldiers using specially designed instruments of violence to defend and attack. Nonviolent defence involves all concerned people using methods of nonviolent action such as rallies, refusals to obey, strikes, boycotts, sit-ins and setting up alternative institutions. As a full alternative to military forces, nonviolent defence is also called social defence, civilian defence, civilian-based defence and defence by civil resistance. From a nonviolence viewpoint, only some functions of the military — notably defending the core values of a society against attack — need to have a nonviolent replacement. A nonviolent defence system would not take up other functions of militaries, such as internal repression and threatening other societies.
Methods of nonviolent action can also be used in campaigns against oppression, such as the independence movement in India led by Mohandas Gandhi and the US civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. There are numerous other examples, some of which are described later.
