On the Historic Role of the Peace Movement
INSPIRATIONAL, 27 Apr 2015
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service
One can distinguish between four forms of power: military, economic, cultural and political. Military power says, “If you don’t do what I want, I will hurt you.” Economic power says, “If you do what I want, I will reward you.” Cultural power says, “If you do what I want, I will praise you, and if you don’t do what I want, I will criticize you.” Political power manipulates the other three forms of power to achieve goals.
Johan Galtung (The Peace Movement: A Structural-Functional Exploration”, in Essays in Peace Research, Vol. VI, pp. 322-42. Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers, 1988) has observed that in medieval times, all four forms of power–military, economic, cultural and political–were concentrated in a few hands of an absolute monarch and top church leaders.
The reformation (1517), with the translation of the bible into everyday language, broke the monopoly of the church over cultural power by enabling ordinary people to read the scriptures by themselves without depending on the clergy to interpret them.
The American declaration of independence (1776) broke the monopoly of the British crown over political power, an important milestone on the way towards democratization, a trend that still has a long way to go.
The French revolution (1789) broke the monopoly of the monarchy over economic power. Before, the king granted exclusive franchises to families of the nobility over certain sectors of the economy, and nobody was allowed to compete, under severe penalties. This system made possible extreme exploitation of the people and was a cause of deep misery. The bourgeois class fought for the right to free competition in the realm of economics.
Economic and Political Powers were further democratized with the abolition of slavery, the workers movement, the women’s movement and the anti-colonial movement. The environmental movement can also be seen as following the tradition of democratizing economic power, by saving future generations and nature from exploitation.
The trend towards democratization has by no means been linear. There have been many setbacks. Some of the greatest tyrannies emerged in the twentieth century. But people have a very healthy desire to govern themselves, or at least to choose the representatives who make decisions on their behalf.
Only military power is still concentrated in very few hands of heads of state, a few generals and leaders of military industries, under the pretext of the need for secrecy. They say to us, “If you knew what we know, you would reach the same conclusions as we do, but we cannot tell you.” They hold the rest of us as involuntary nuclear hostages. That is madness.
The role of the peace movement is to break that last bastion of monopoly power and wrest control over decision over war and peace from the few who now make them. To do that, however, the peace movement has to become much more constructive and professional.
______________________________
Dietrich Fischer, born in 1941 in Münsingen, Switzerland, got a Licentiate in Mathematics from the University of Bern 1968 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University 1976. 1986-88 he was a MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security at Princeton University. He has taught mathematics, computer science, economics and peace studies at various universities and been a consultant to the United Nations.
Excerpted from Dietrich Fischer’s Stories to Inspire You – TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 27 Apr 2015.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: On the Historic Role of the Peace Movement, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.