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Title: In Defense of Violence Author: Ted Kaczynski Language: en Topics: violence Source: Retrieved on 17. December 2021 from https://archive.md/lKZsj
When I wrote to the New York Times offering to desist from terrorism if
my manuscript were published, I promised that the manifesto would not
explicitly advocate violence, because I assumed that the mainstream
media would refuse to publish anything that did advocate violence. For
that reason, in Industrial Society and Its Future (ISIF), I understated
the probable role of violence in revolution. In reality, I think it is
almost certain that a successful revolution against the
techno-industrial system will have to involve violence at some point.
Force and violence are the ultimate sanction. When a major social
conflict cannot be resolved through compromise, the issue is settled by
physical force or the threat of it. As I argued in ISIF, paragraphs
125–135, if we try to compromise with technology we play a losing game.
The system never is and never will be satisfied with any stable
situation — it seeks always to expand its power and will never
permanently tolerate anything that remains outside of its control (ISIF,
paragraph 164). Thus the conflict between us and the system is
irreconcilable and in the end can be resolved only through physical
force. The system depends on force and violence to maintain itself —
that’s what the police and the army are for. If we revolutionaries
renounce all recourse to violence, we put ourselves at a crippling
disadvantage vis-a-vis the system. I am not advocating indiscriminate or
automatic violence; in many situations nonviolent tactics are the most
effective. But I do maintain that violence is an important part of the
revolutionary’s tool kit, and that we should be prepared to use it when
we can gain an important advantage by doing so.
The reason why the system teaches us to be horrified at violence is that
violence of any kind is dangerous to the system. The system requires
order above all; it needs people who are docile and obedient and don’t
make trouble. Roger Lane has shown that prior to the Industrial
Revolution, American society was far more tolerant of violence than it
is today, and that the emphasis on nonviolence arose in response to the
industrial system’s need for an orderly and docile citizenry. (See
Chapter 12 of Violence in America: Historical and Comparative
Perspectives, edited by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr.) Allowing
for some exceptions, the leaders of the system are quite sincere in
their rejection of violence. Though the system has to use violence to
preserve itself, it usually tries to keep the level of violence-
including its own violence — as low as it can, because violence
intensifies the social stresses that endanger the system. The “bad cop”
who beats people up is in his own irrational way a rebel against the
system. To the most rational and self-disciplined members of the
technocracy, the ideal cop is one who uses just enough force to maintain
public order and social discipline, and no more than just enough.
Most people who insist on nonviolence as a matter of principle fall into
one of three categories. First, there are the conformists — those who
believe in nonviolence because the system has successfully brainwashed
them. Second, there are the cowards. Third, there are the saints — those
rather rare people whose belief in nonviolence is motivated by genuine
compassion.
As for the conformists and the cowards, they are beneath contempt and we
need not say any more about them. The saints, on the other hand, deserve
our respect. If we accepted their principles we would in effect be
giving up the revolution, but all the same they may have an important
role to play. Through the turmoil and violence that will probably
accompany a revolution, they can help to keep alive the ideal of
kindness and compassion; and- who knows? — maybe some day they will even
have a practical effect in reducing the amount of cruelty in human
society. But by themselves they cannot win a revolution. For that, tough
fighters are needed.
That most opposition to violence in our society is merely a matter of
conformity or social convention can be seen from the way in which
attitudes toward violence vary according to the circumstances under
which it is carried out. When violence is carried out with the approval
of the system (as in war, for instance), most people take it for
granted. They are horrified by violence only when it is disapproved by
the system.
My lawyers brought a neuropsychologist, a Dr. Watson, to give me some
tests to verify that I wasn’t crazy. After the testing was done, Dr.
Watson asked me some questions about my bombings. Among other things, he
asked me how I felt about the impact of my actions on the “victims” and
their families, and he seemed rather troubled that an intelligent man
like me could kill people without feeling much guilt and without
worrying very much about the impact on the dead men’s families. But if I
had been a soldier who had killed or maimed enemy soldiers in a war, it
would not even have occurred to Dr. Watson to ask how I felt about the
impact on the victims or their families. No one expects a soldier to
hesitate in killing enemy soldiers or to worry about how the dead men’s
families feel, and very few soldiers do worry about such things. This
shows that most people’s attitude toward violence is governed not by
compassion but by social convention.
The breakdown of the techno-industrial system will almost certainly
involve widespread physical hardship. If the breakdown is sudden, it
will mean actual starvation, because there will be no pesticides and
chemical fertilizers, no high-tech hybrid seeds, no fuel or spare parts
for farm machinery, no trucks and trains to carry produce to the cities.
Even if the system disintegrates somewhat gradually over a period of a
few decades, it is almost inconceivable that the reduction of the
population and the transition to subsistence agriculture can be carried
out in a smooth and orderly way. Many people will suffer for lack of
food or other physical necessities, and under such circumstances there
is sure to be widespread social disorder and therefore fighting. Look at
history! The rapid breakdown of a civilization is almost always
accompanied by violence, and the more advanced the civilization the
greater the violence.
Modern middle-class culture is exceptional in the degree to which it
tries to suppress aggression, which is a normal part of the behavioral
repertoire of human beings and of most other mammals. Most societies
throughout human history have been more tolerant of aggression than
today’s middle class. It is true that there have been a few primitive
cultures that were strictly nonviolent, and the ideologies of passivity
and nonviolence have held these cultures up as examples to show how
violent modern society is in contrast to the noble savage. But with
conscious or unconscious dishonesty they completely ignore the far more
numerous primitive cultures that permit a much greater degree of
violence than modern middle-class morality does. For example, Derrick
Jensen, in Listening to the Land (Sierra Club Books, 1995, page 3) lauds
the Okanagan Indians of British Columbia for the fact that they never
engage in physical violence, but not a word does he say in
acknowledgement of the fact that the majority of North American Indian
tribes were distinctly warlike. Many of the tribes even cultivated war
as something noble and admirable, and fought unnecessary wars simply
because the young men wanted to win military glory. (Lest the feminists
try to blame it all on those nasty male beasts, it should be pointed out
that the men were egged on by the women. Among the warlike tribes, every
woman wanted her sons to be brave warriors, and one of the reasons why
the young men wanted to win military glory was that it made them popular
with the young ladies.)
Of course, primitive warfare was very different from modern warfare.
Today soldiers fight in order to satisfy the ambitions of politicians or
dictators; in major wars they usually are conscripted, and even if they
volunteer they generally do so only because they have been brainwashed
by propaganda. The modern battlefield is a slaughterhouse in which the
skill and courage of an individual soldier have little effect on his
chances of survival. In contrast, the American Indians fought either to
protect themselves and their families or because they wanted to fight.
Their battles were on a small scale, so that the individual warrior was
not reduced to an insignificant bit of cannon fodder. And their
conflicts resulted in none of the massive environmental damage that
accompanies modern warfare. In fact, since their wars kept the
population down, the environmental consequences were positive.
Eliminating all violence would increase our life-expectancy, but
life-expectancy in modern society is probably longer than it has ever
been in any other society, yet modern society is deeply troubled. There
have been many other societies in which life-expectancy has been much
shorter, but in which there has been far less stress, frustration,
anxiety or other psychological pain. This shows that life-expectancy is
not of paramount importance for human happiness; still less is it
important for human freedom.
I don’t want to give the impression that I consider violence desirable
for its own sake. Quite the contrary. I would much rather see people
live together without hurting each other physically, economically,
psychological, or in any other way. But the elimination of violence
should not be at the top of our list of priorities. The first priority
must be to get rid of the techno-industrial system.