Making change happen
Symon Hill reviews a new book on activism and nonviolent resistance to power
I approached this book with caution. I have read many books about ‘making change happen’ and been disappointed. Some consist of tortuously convoluted theories that fall to dust as soon as an attempt is made to apply them to the messiness of real-life struggles. Tim Gee’s Counterpower: Making change happen could not be more different. This is without doubt the best book on activism, and resistance to power, that I have ever read.
It combines an engaging style with impressive historical knowledge. The book’s greatest strength lies in the way it conveys ideas through storytelling. The majority of chapters are accounts of particular struggles, such as ‘How the vote was won in Britain’ and ‘How the Egyptians overthrew their president’. At times, I became so fascinated by the narrative that I absorbed some lessons about effective resistance almost subliminally. This, of course, is the point. Stories are more powerful than abstract theories.
However, the book is underpinned by a strong theoretical idea – ‘counterpower’. Tim Gee argues that ‘for every aspect of power wielded by the “haves”, the “have-nots” can wield yet more’. The ‘power of the few’ can be sustained only as long as the many do not resist it. As the book acknowledges, the term ‘counterpower’ draws on very old understandings about ‘power from below’.
Three types of power are highlighted: ‘idea power’, ‘economic power’ and ‘physical power’. Each can be met with counterpower. Instances of idea counterpower range from Chartist newspapers to Greenpeace media stunts and Nigerian anti-dictatorship songs. Examples of economic counterpower include British mineworkers’ strikes, international boycotts of South African goods and the illegal manufacture of salt in the struggle for Indian independence.
Physical counterpower includes draft resistance during the Vietnam war, the establishment of Russian workers’ councils in 1917 and the closure of coal-fired power stations through nonviolent direct action. While Tim Gee does not mention his Quaker faith, his preference for active nonviolence is clear throughout.
I felt, at times, that more space could have been given to explicitly drawing out the lessons from the examples. The chapter on the defeat of apartheid includes twenty pages of narrative – but only four pages analysing the lessons.
No theory of activism or resistance, however, could foresee the role of every unexpected event or the significant part played by luck. Tim Gee’s analysis of counterpower helps me to understand what is likely to work. In particular, his description of the three types of counterpower is a reminder that many campaigns could be strengthened by using all three instead of just one or two. It strikes me that the recent growth of nonviolent direct action in Britain, manifested through such movements as Climate Camp and Plane Stupid, has been detached from trade unionism and has largely missed out on economic counterpower.
It remains to be seen whether resistance to the government’s cuts agenda will unite movements in such a way as to use all three forms of counterpower. If it does, perhaps we can be hopeful after all. As Tim Gee puts it, if we find ways to use counterpower to undermine the power of those at the top, ‘then we are more powerful than they could possibly imagine’.
Counterpower: Making change happen by Tim Gee, New Internationalist, 2011, £9.99. ISBN 1780260327
