The Practicality of Non-violence

Martin Luther King Jr.’s (MLK) vision of resistance has often been decried as idealistic and naive. I will examine MLK’s conception of non-violence and show that it was informed by practical considerations as much as moral, although for him these dimensions are not separate from each other.

One of the key tenets of MLK’s idea of non-violence is the primacy given to the means. “Means must be as pure as the ends,” says he. Of course, there is the moral dimension: the honesty of dedication and the pursuit of the lofty ideals of sacrifice and dignity under pressure, all the while striving for Justice and never stooping to the methods of the oppressor. He finds example of such resistance in the Bible, and this religious spirit affirms him in his path. There is however the practical side to this too. MLK is aware of the fact that the ends might not always be achieved, that the dream might not be fulfilled. In such a case, the means are the only thing they have to show for themselves. The image of the resistance matters as much as its achievements, and MLK grasped that the image of the patiently suffering and patiently resisting oppressed person would not only invoke the sympathies of the rest of the world and attract international support, but also jolt the conscience of the oppressor, and “[confuse?] evil by truth”. At the same time, the social, economic, and political conditions of the black person during that time meant that they were in no strong position to mount a positive physical resistance. The “soul force” was all they had and it was not dependent on the material disadvantages they faced. The inversion of something disadvantageous into something advantageous is of course a practical measure.

Another aspect of his philosophy of non-violence is its refusal to conflate the “evil and the evildoer”, which is to say that he has hope for the evildoer. Again forgiveness and love for one’s fellow human is something which MLK inherits from his Christian heritage. On one hand, MLK seeks to attack the power at its structure, not taking sundry manifestations of violence as the core, but only as a consequence of the structure. On the other, hope here is also a profoundly practical thing. The practicality of hope is that it is the only way forward, the only counsellor that can reconcile the bleak present with the will to change it. He must have hope in the US because the black people are inextricably tied to the US. They cannot simply go back to their “Afric shores”. More than three centuries of historical experience cannot be discounted. Considerations of mutuality are therefore necessary if some constructive solution to the race problem is to be achieved. It is suffering which has tied them together in a relationship of oppression, but it is suffering only which has the potential to release the oppression from the relationship. This may seem an idealistic position but it is as much practical as ideal. The notion of guilt and admiration for the patient resistor did win MLK and his position some support from the white community and his determination to resist did lead to some progressive measures for the advancement of the conditions of the black people in the US. What MLK proposed to do was to resolve this violence on a “constructive moral plane”, and not on the destructive “physical plane”. As aforementioned, it is very probable that violent physical resistance would have made conditions for the black people even worse.

This all is not to say that practicality was more important to MLK than his moral position. His passionate and continuous adherence and advocacy of the spiritual nature of his quest discounts such claims. What can be said, however, is that his moral position worked in consonance with his apprehensions about the physical and practical aspects of his resistance.