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Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. The content of the book is excellent though a bit repetitive. However, the text looks like a copy of someone's previous copy with that person's textual markings in the copy. The ink impressions are much too light. This is an important book and should be reissued in a new, clear, readable type face worthy of its content. Richard Gregg was a powerful voice in the peace movement. He was a friend of Ghandi and a lovely person. This book reveals his heart.
I recommend it to anyone who has ever wanted World Peace. Thank you, Amazon, for making it available. A bit dated but the sections on training are well worth reading. There's not enough of this kind of literature. Gregg's candid and thoroughgoing study deals not only with mere nonviolence but with nonviolent resistance, and if the title had included this keyword a much better idea of its content would've been given.
The Power of Non-violence. Martin Luther King, Jr. June 04, Full Document . From the very beginning there was a philosophy undergirding the. The idea of non-violence (passive-resistance) has always seemed beautiful but too good to be true. As a practical proposition it arouses scepticism and ridicule.
Greg was a lawyer and a consultant in industrial relations. It was during the nationwide railway strike that he became interested in Gandhi's ideas. He went to India in to study the non-cooperation movement at first hand. This book is the fruit of that study, which kept him in India for nearly 4 years, in close contact with the Indian leader. Profoundly imbued with the in Eastern philosophy that made nonviolent mass resistance so successful in India, Mr.
Gregg believes that it can be also successfully brought to bear in the West, in labor struggles as well as in civil and military disputes. He considers it in the light of biological, psychological, economic and ethical data and comes to the conclusion that while "violence might be somewhat efficient, just as the war as the Watts steam engine was somewhat efficient Nonviolent resistance is more efficient just as a modern steam turbine is more efficient.
Gregg's contribution to the subject differs from any I have previously seen in being unsentimental, solidly documented an unusually open-minded in regard to the objections to his thesis. We had meetings twice a week on Mondays and on Thursdays, and we had an institute on nonviolence and social change.
We had to make it clear that nonviolent resistance is not a method of cowardice. It is not a method of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil that he is standing against as the violent resister but he resists without violence. This method is nonaggressive physically but strongly aggressive spiritually. Another thing that we had to get over was the fact that the nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding. This was always a cry that we had to set before people that our aim is not to defeat the white community, not to humiliate the white community, but to win the friendship of all of the persons who had perpetrated this system in the past.
The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community.
A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption. Then we had to make it clear also that the nonviolent resister seeks to attack the evil system rather than individuals who happen to be caught up in the system.
And this is why I say from time to time that the struggle in the South is not so much the tension between white people and Negro people. The struggle is rather between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory it will not be a victory merely for fifty thousand Negroes. But it will be a victory for justice, a victory for good will, a victory for democracy. Another basic thing we had to get over is that nonviolent resistance is also an internal matter.
It not only avoids external violence or external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. And so at the center of our movement stood the philosophy of love. The attitude that the only way to ultimately change humanity and make for the society that we all long for is to keep love at the center of our lives. Now people used to ask me from the beginning what do you mean by love and how is it that you can tell us to love those persons who seek to defeat us and those persons who stand against us; how can you love such persons?
And I had to make it clear all along that love in its highest sense is not a sentimental sort of thing, not even an affectionate sort of thing. The Greek language uses three words for love. It talks about eros. Eros is a sort of aesthetic love. It has come to us to be a sort of romantic love and it stands with all of its beauty.
This perspective is usually connected to militant anti-capitalism. Tara Sethia, New Delhi , p. He lost this battle but won the war. This was always a cry that we had to set before people that our aim is not to defeat the white community, not to humiliate the white community, but to win the friendship of all of the persons who had perpetrated this system in the past. Ernesto Che Guevara , Leon Trotsky , Frantz Fanon and Subhas Chandra Bose were fervent critics of nonviolence, arguing variously that nonviolence and pacifism are an attempt to impose the morals of the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat , that violence is a necessary accompaniment to revolutionary change or that the right to self-defense is fundamental.
The Greek language talks about philia and this is a sort of reciprocal love between personal friends. This is a vital, valuable love. But when we talk of loving those who oppose you and those who seek to defeat you we are not talking about eros or philia. The Greek language comes out with another word and it is agape. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men.
Biblical theologians would say it is the love of God working in the minds of men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. And when you come to love on this level you begin to love men not because they are likeable, not because they do things that attract us, but because God loves them and here we love the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does.