The Law of Love AND The Law of Violence (Leo Tolstoy)

Leo Tolstoy was a radical. In his 80s he wrote The Law of Love AND Violence, a relatively short (about 120 pages) work advocating love, non-violence and civil disobedience. Tolstoy, a very religious person, blamed the state of global affairs near the end of his lifetime on a lack of true Christians. Inequality and the enslavement of labourers by capitalists, war, murder and hate are all, according to Tolstoy, the result of an absence of the law of love.

Christianity, he believes, has love as its supreme law. He notes that Budda and Tao-Tse, as well as other "ancient religions" recommend showing "love to every human being and for people to return good for evil," but he says that Christianity is the only religion with love in a supreme position.

Like so many people at the start of the 20th century, Tolstoy believed that change was coming at any time. He describes the social organization as being "built on ice" with a "melting foundation." He scolds the Catholic and Protestant church for misleading people and creating a cult which uphold the social order, rather than challenging it. He even goes so far as to blame the working class for allowing themselves to be oppressed and abused rather than stepping away from the social order and existing in self sufficiency.

Near the end of the book, Tolstoy goes so far as to point out the governments are temporary and can easily be abolished. He does not suggest what will occur when people attempt to live without government on the grounds that he does not know, but he seems to promote the idea of an absence of government. He writes that the absence of government would also remove the horrors of government. At the same time he criticizes the revolutionaries in Russia for their use of violence, choosing to side with neither the government, the church, or the revolutionaries. (perhaps it is a good thing that this text was not published in Russia during his lifetime).

I admit, I have read very little Tolstoy in my life. At fifteen I attempted to read War and Peace but due its size, dryness and large number of characters I did not make it past the two-hundredth page. At the time I had no knowledge of Tolstoy's politics of religious sentiments. I did not encounter Tolstoy the pacifist until my first year of university. I am glad I have. Although I do not believe as Tolstoy seems to that eventually the world will be free of violence, I do like the idea of a violence free world.

Total non-violence may be impossible, but it is a utopia which we should strive to get as close to as possible. The more people who make the choice to live non-violently, the more peaceful our world will become.

Protest Camps (Anna Feigenbaum, Fabian Frenzel & Patrick McCurdy)

Protest Camps, published in 2013 is an in-depth look at the concept of the protest camp, a temporary settlement of people who have chosen to occupy a physical space as a form of protest or as a base for the organization of a wider movement. Authors Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy describe protest camps as "ecosystems" and often "a city within a city." They frequently refer to the Occupy Movments, the Greenham Common (in the 1980s a large number of women camped outside the United States airforce base in England to protest nuclear weapons for a number of years), and Resurrection City (a part of the American Civil Rights movement in the 1960s).

The authors point out that Protest Camps are about more than protest. "Camps are frequently home to do-it-yourself (DIY) sanitation systems, communal kitchens, educational spaces, cultural festivals and performances, as well as media, legal and medical facilities." They provide a forum for the convergence of ideals, movements and protest methods. Additionally, camps usually attempt to claim a degree of (although artificial) autonomy from the outside world and its governance forces.

Camps are "heterotopias" a term coined by Foucalt to describe "the notion of a space that is entangled in this world and yet extends beyond its limits." Protest camps "mirror the status quo" while trying to point or reach beyond it. This is why many camps experiment with alternative and radical forms of democracy and often social-democratic governance structures.

Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy are especially interested in the way in which people react with each other and with the environment while they are creating and living within these camps. They refer to ANT, Actor Network Theory, a "method of thinking about how interdependencies between people, groups and objects emerge and function."

One of the more unusual types of protest camps mentioned is the occupation of trees. I came across this picture showing how to secure a rope on which is easily exit your occupied tree.

I was especially interested by the "binary of the violence debate" which the authors touched on. As a pacifist, I firmly believe in non-violent protest at all times, but for many protest camps and protest movements the issue of violence vs. non-violence is problematic. As the authors point out, a group can quickly be divided over the use or absence of violence in a proposed situation.

Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (Mark Rudd)

The SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, served as one of the leading organizations in the Columbia University protests of the late 1960s. The protests and so-called liberation or occupation of Columbia began as a series of anti-Vietnam war protests, but quickly ballooned into a general protest against the building of a new University gym in Harlem (an action which the students believed showcased racial inequality), a protest against the University's affiliation with organizations that aided the war effort, a protest against American imperialism. For more radical students, like Mark Rudd, the protests and occupation of Columbia were a sign that the "revolution" was beginning. 

A mild activist at first, Mark Rudd, quickly progressed, after Columbia, from non-violent protest to violent action. In this autobiographical account, Rudd traces his involvement and leadership within the SDS from his first days attending Columbia University, to the creation within SDS of a faction known as "the weathermen," and eventually their split from SDS as they radicalized, and turned to terrorist tactics. As the title of the book suggests, Rudd, on the run from police, was forced to go underground for years. 

Rudd describes his fear and then acceptance of violence within the movement, but also describes his exit from "the weathermen," and the difficulty he had in coming to terms with life after the Vietnam war when he understood that there would be no revolution in America. 

One of the images that sticks with me from this book is, days into the Columbia occupation, when the police moved in with clubs to clear the buildings at the request of the University, Rudd relates how a number of non-violence advocates, wearing green armbands, stood outside the buildings as a sort of human wall to slow to progress of the police. Apparently they took much of the initial brunt of the attack. No one, I should think, could ever accuse those pacifists of being cowards. 

Year of the Heroic Guerrilla (Robert V. Daniels)

This 1989 publication by Robert V. Daniels only stretches about 250 pages, but Daniels manages to include Saigon, Paris, Peking, Prague, Chicago and more in his overview of the year 1968.

When I began to read this book, I was reminded of the 1977 French language documentary "Le Fond de l'air rouge," known in English as A "Grin Without a Cat." Oddly, having only seen about half the film well over a year ago, I spent a great deal of the time I was reading this book thinking about it. Pleasantly enough, I've found the complete film online and will soon see it all the way through (with subtitles to compensate for my meager knowledge of French). Like Year of the Heroic Guerrilla, "Grin Without a Cat," is an overview of revolution and protest.

Quite often books which focus on the 1960s put all, or most of their attention on the United States. Perhaps this is due to the nationality of the authors and publishing houses. Regardless, I was pleased with the content of this overview as it branched away from the United States and spent a great deal of its page space discussing movements and protests within other countries.

Roses: Their Culture and Management (George M. Taylor) (1945)

I picked up Roses: Their Culture and Management at a used bookshop last summer. I was curious, not just to see what methods of care have previously been recommended for roses, but also what kinds of roses were most prominent in the 1940's. The first thing that caught my attention upon opening the books was the symbol (shown below).

I own and have read a number of books produced during the second world war, but all of them have been titles printed in the United States, so I have never seen this insignia before, although I have seen similar symbols. This particular book was printed in Great Britain, according to the publishing information. 

Part of what attracted me to the book were the glossy pictures interspersed throughout. Many of the images are beautiful photographs of roses either on display, or in a garden. Others are less beautiful examples of diseased  and damaged roses. The images and the book as a whole are in excellent condition.