Of Means and Ends by Saul D Alinsky

Some people do not realize that what we are doing in seeking the
restoration of Biafra is a form of community organizing.  Yes, we are a
community with a community problem to solve: restoring our nation. It is
not an individual problem. It is not the problem of this group or that
group in London or in Nnewi.  It is a community problem that requires a
collective response.

In academic literature, community organizing is considered as solving a
particular problem facing a particular community of human beings. It is
variously defined in the literature, but the key idea is the existence
of a problem in a community and the gathering together of some people
from the same community to seek a lasting solution. The key concepts in
community organizing are collective action, community interest, and
self-interest.

Yes, self-interest is important because it motivates each of us to seek
solutions for problems affecting us as individuals. Each of us is
motivated to seek a way to restore Biafra because it serves our own
personal interest that Biafra be restored.

But self-interest should never be confused with community interest.

Community interest is about collective problem facing all the members of
the community of Igbo people. In this particular struggle for Biafra,
one can argue (and it is true) that our individual interests combine to
become one united interest of the community; it is about the problem
facing the entire community of Igbo people. So then, the interest of
each of us becomes equated or coincides with the interest of the
community of all Igbo people. 

Some of us have yet to realize that the problem of restoring Biafra is
the problem facing every member of the community of Igbo people – that
it is a collective problem that requires a collective response.

Unless we are seeking a private entity to be controlled and enjoyed
exclusively by one person or by one family, the strategy must be
collective to be effective.  It is a shared objective that requires a
shared sacrifice, shared strategy, shared execution, and shared reward.

This is why a document like Biafra Charter of 2007 is critical because
it gives us a collective framework with which to organize our individual
thoughts and actions and behavior as we make collective decisions that
solve our collective problems.

Saul D. Alinky is considered the father of community organizing by many
experts in the field. His thoughts on means and ends are important in
dealing with our collective Igbo problem.

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Of Means and Ends by Saul D Alinsky

We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we
are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
~ Alfred North Whitehead

THAT PERENNIAL QUESTION, "Does the end justify the means?" is
meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the
ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, "Does this particular
end justify this particular means?"

Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The end is what
you want, and the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about
social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action
views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He
has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the
possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether
they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will
work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the
immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt
and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to
play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to
bed; he who fears corruption fears life.

The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's "conscience is the
virtue of observers and not of agents of action"; in action, one does
not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with
one's individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must
always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the
individual's personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his
personal conscience has a peculiar conception of "personal salvation";
he doesn't care enough for people to be "corrupted" for them.

The men who pile up the heaps of discussion and literature on the ethics
of means and ends—which with rare exception is conspicuous for its
sterility—rarely write about their own experiences in the perpetual
struggle of life and change. They are strangers, moreover, to the
burdens and problems of operational responsibility and the unceasing
pressure for immediate decisions. They are passionately committed to a
mystical objectivity where passions are suspect. They assume a
nonexistent situation where men dispassionately and with reason draw and
devise means and ends as if studying a navigational chart on land. They
can be recognized by one of two verbal brands: "We agree with the ends
but not the means," or "This is not the time." The means-and-end
moralists or non-doers always wind up on their ends without any means.

The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the
means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves
as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive—but
real—allies of the Haves. They are the ones Jacques Maritain referred to
in his statement, "The fear of soiling ourselves by entering the context
of history is not virtue, but a way of escaping virtue." These non-doers
were the ones who chose not to fight the Nazis in the only way they
could have been fought; they were the ones who drew their window blinds
to shut out the shameful spectacle of Jews and political prisoners being
dragged through the streets; they were the ones who privately deplored
the horror of it all—and did nothing. This is the nadir of immorality.
The most unethical of all means is the nonuse of any means. It is this
species of man who so vehemently and militantly participated in that
classically idealistic debate at the old League of Nations on the
ethical differences between defensive and offensive weapons. Their fears
of action drive them to refuge in an ethics so divorced from the
politics of life that it can apply only to angels, not to men. The
standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life
as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the
world as it should be.

I present here a series of rules pertaining to the ethics of means and
ends: first, that one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies
inversely with one's personal interest in the issue.When we are not
directly concerned our morality overflows; as La Rochefoucauld put it,
"We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."
Accompanying this rule is the parallel one that one's concern with the
ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's distance from the
scene of conflict.

The second rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the judgment of
the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those
sitting in judgment. If you actively opposed the Nazi occupation and
joined the underground Resistance, then you adopted the means of
assassination, terror, property destruction, the bombing of tunnels and
trains, kidnapping, and the willingness to sacrifice innocent hostages
to the end of defeating the Nazis. Those who opposed the Nazi conquerors
regarded the Resistance as a secret army of selfless, patriotic
idealists, courageous beyond expectation and willing to sacrifice their
lives to their moral convictions. To the occupation authorities,
however, these people were lawless terrorists, murderers, saboteurs,
assassins, who believed that the end justified the means, and were
utterly unethical according to the mystical rules of war. Any foreign
occupation would so ethically judge its opposition. However, in such
conflict, neither protagonist is concerned with any value except
victory. It is life or death.

To us the Declaration of Independence is a glorious document and an
affirmation of human rights. To the British, on the other hand, it was a
statement notorious for its deceit by omission. In the Declaration of
Independence, the Bill of Particulars attesting to the reasons for the
Revolution cited all of the injustices which the colonists felt that
England had been guilty of, but listed none of the benefits. There was
no mention of the food the colonies had received from the British Empire
during times of famine, medicine during times of disease, soldiers
during times of war with the Indians and other foes, or the many other
direct and indirect aids to the survival of the colonies. Neither was
there notice of the growing number of allies and friends of the
colonists in the British House of Commons, and the hope for imminent
remedial legislation to correct the inequities under which the colonies
suffered.
Jefferson, Franklin, and others were honorable men, but they knew that
the Declaration of Independence was a call to war. They also knew that a
list of many of the constructive benefits of the British Empire to the
colonists would have so diluted the urgency of the call to arms for the
Revolution as to have been self-defeating. The result might well have
been a document attesting to the fact that justice weighted down the
scale at least 60 per cent on our side, and only 40 per cent on their
side; and that because of that 20 per cent difference we were going to
have a Revolution. To expect a man to leave his wife, his children, and
his home, to leave his crops standing in the field and pick up a gun and
join the Revolutionary Army for a 20 per cent difference in the balance
of human justice was to defy common sense.

The Declaration of Independence, as a declaration of war, had to be what
it was, a 100 per cent statement of the justice of the cause of the
colonists and a 100 per cent denunciation of the role of the British
government as evil and unjust. Our cause had to be all shining justice,
allied with the angels; theirs had to be all evil, tied to the Devil; in
no war has the enemy or the cause ever been gray. Therefore, from one
point of view the omission was justified; from the other, it was
deliberate deceit.

History is made up of "moral" judgments based on politics. We condemned
Lenin's acceptance of money from the Germans in 1917 but were discreetly
silent while our Colonel William B. Thompson in the same year
contributed a million dollars to the anti-Bolsheviks in Russia. As
allies of the Soviets in World War II we praised and cheered communist
guerrilla tactics when the Russians used them against the Nazis during
the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union; we denounce the same tactics when
they are used by communist forces in different parts of the world
against us. The opposition's means, used against us, are always immoral
and our means are always ethical and rooted in the highest of human
values. George Bernard Shaw, in Man and Superman,pointed out the
variations in ethical definitions by virtue of where you stand. Mendoza
said to Tanner, "I am a brigand; I live by robbing the rich." Tanner
replied, "I am a gentleman; I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands."

The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that in war the end
justifies almost any means. Agreements on the Geneva rules on treatment
of prisoners or use of nuclear weapons are observed only because the
enemy or his potential allies may retaliate.

Winston Churchill's remarks to his private secretary a few hours before
the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union graphically pointed out the politics
of means and ends in war. Informed of the imminent turn of events, the
secretary inquired how Churchill, the leading British anticommunist,
could reconcile himself to being on the same side as the Soviets. Would
not Churchill find it embarrassing and difficult to ask his government
to support the communists? Churchill's reply was clear and unequivocal:
"Not at all. I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my
life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at
least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."

In the Civil War President Lincoln did not hesitate to suspend the right
of habeas corpus and to ignore the directive of the Chief Justice of the
United States. Again, when Lincoln was convinced that the use of
military commissions to try civilians was necessary, he brushed aside
the illegality of this action with the statement that it was
"indispensable to the public safety." He believed that the civil courts
were powerless to cope with the insurrectionist activities of civilians.
"Must I shoot a simpleminded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not
touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert . . ."

The fourth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that judgment must be
made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not
from any other chronological vantage point. The Boston Massacre is a
case in point. "British atrocities alone, however, were not sufficient
to convince the people that murder had been done on the night of March
5: There was a deathbed confession of Patrick Carr, that the townspeople
had been the aggressors and that the soldiers had fired in self defense.
This unlooked-for recantation from one of the martyrs who was dying in
the odor of sanctity with which Sam Adams had vested them sent a wave of
alarm through the patriot ranks. But Adams blasted Carr's testimony in
the eyes of all pious New Englanders by pointing out that he was an
Irish 'papist' who had probably died in the confession of the Roman
Catholic Church. After Sam Adams had finished with Patrick Carr even
Tories did not dare to quote him to prove Bostonians were responsible
for the Massacre." {footnote 1} To the British this was a false, rotten
use of bigotry and an immoral means characteristic of the
Revolutionaries, or the Sons of Liberty. To the Sons of Liberty and to
the patriots, Sam Adams' action was brilliant strategy and a God-sent
lifesaver. Today we may look back and regard Adams' action in the same
light as the British did, but remember that we are not today involved in
a revolution against the British Empire.

Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times. In
politics, the ethics of means and ends can be understood by the rules
suggested here. History is made up of little else but examples such as
our position on freedom of the high seas in 1812 and 1917 contrasted
with our 1962 blockade of Cuba, or our alliance in 1942 with the Soviet
Union against Germany, Japan and Italy, and the reversal in alignments
in less than a decade.

Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, his defiance of a directive of
the Chief Justice of the United States, and the illegal use of military
commissions to try civilians, were by the same man who had said in
Springfield, fifteen years earlier: "Let me not be understood as saying
that there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the
redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no
such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist,
should be repealed, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of
example, they should be religiously observed."

This was also the same Lincoln who, a few years prior to his signing the
Emancipation Proclamation, stated in his First Inaugural Address: "I do
but quote from one of those speeches when I declared that 1 have no
purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of
slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right
to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.' Those who nominated and
elected me did so with full knowledge that I made this and many similar
declarations and have never recanted them."

Those who would be critical of the ethics of Lincoln's reversal of
positions have a strangely unreal picture of a static unchanging world,
where one remains firm and committed to certain so-called principles or
positions. In the politics of human life, consistency is not a virtue.
To be consistent means, according to the Oxford Universal Dictionary,
"standing still or not moving." Men must change with the times or die.

The change in Jefferson's orientation when he became President is
pertinent to this point. Jefferson had incessantly attacked President
Washington for using national self-interest as the point of departure
for all decisions. He castigated the President as narrow and selfish and
argued that decisions should be made on a world-interest basis to
encourage the spread of the ideas of the American Revolution; that
Washington's adherence to the criteria of national self-interest was a
betrayal of the American Revolution. However, from the first moment when
Jefferson assumed the presidency of the United States his every decision
was dictated by national self-interest. This story from another century
has parallels in our century and every other.

The fifth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that concern with
ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa. To
the man of action the first criterion in determining which means to
employ is to assess what means are available. Reviewing and selecting
available means is done on a straight utilitarian basis— will it work?
Moral questions may enter when one chooses among equally effective
alternate means. But if one lacks the luxury of a choice and is
possessed of only one means, then the ethical question will never arise;
automatically the lone means becomes endowed with a moral spirit. Its
defense lies in the cry, "What else could I do?" Inversely, the secure
position in which one possesses the choice of a number of effective and
powerful means is always accompanied by that ethical concern and
serenity of conscience so admirably described by Mark Twain as "The calm
confidence of a Christian holding four aces."

To me ethics is doing what is best for the most. During a conflict with
a major corporation I was confronted with a threat of public exposure of
a photograph of a motel "Mr. & Mrs." registration and photographs of my
girl and myself. I said, "Go ahead and give it to the press. I think
she's beautiful and I have never claimed to be celibate. Go ahead!" That
ended the threat.

Almost on the heels of this encounter one of the corporation's minor
executives came to see me. It turned out that he was a secret
sympathizer with our side. Pointing to his briefcase, he said: "In there
is plenty of proof that so and so [a leader of the opposition] prefers
boys to girls." I said, "Thanks, but forget it. I don't fight that way.
I don't want to see it. Goodbye." He protested, "But they just tried to
hang you on that girl." I replied, "The fact that they fight that way
doesn't mean I have to do it. To me, dragging a person's private life
into this muck is loathsome and nauseous." He left.

So far, so noble; but, if I had been convinced that the only way we
could win was to use it, then without any reservations I would have used
it. What was my alternative? To draw myself up into righteous "moral"
indignation saying, "I would rather lose than corrupt my principles,"
and then go home with my ethical hymen intact? The fact that 40,000 poor
would lose their war against hopelessness and despair was just too
tragic. That their condition would even be worsened by the
vindictiveness of the corporation was also terrible and unfortunate, but
that's life. After all, one has to remember means and ends. It's true
that I might have trouble getting to sleep because it takes time to tuck
those big, angelic, moral wings under the covers. To me that would be
utter immorality.

The sixth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the less
important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in
ethical evaluations of means.

The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally
success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of
history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells
the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be
no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a
founding father.

The eighth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the morality of
a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of
imminent defeat or imminent victory. The same means employed with
victory seemingly assured may be defined as immoral, whereas if it had
been used in desperate circumstances to avert defeat, the question of
morality would never arise. In short, ethics are determined by whether
one is losing or winning. From the beginning of time killing has always
been regarded as justifiable if committed in self-defense.

Let us confront this principle with the most awful ethical question of
modern times: did the United States have the right to use the atomic
bomb at Hiroshima?

When we dropped the atomic bomb the United States was assured of
victory. In the Pacific, Japan had suffered an unbroken succession of
defeats. Now we were in Okinawa with an air base from which we could
bomb the enemy around the clock. The Japanese air force was decimated,
as was their navy. Victory had come in Europe, and the entire European
air force, navy, and army were released for use in the Pacific. Russia
was moving in for a cut of the spoils. Defeat for Japan was an absolute
certainty and the only question was how and when the coup de grâce would
be administered. For familiar reasons we dropped the bomb and triggered
off as well a universal debate on the morality of the use of this means
for the end of finishing the war.

I submit that if the atomic bomb had been developed shortly after Pearl
Harbor when we stood defenseless; when most of our Pacific fleet was at
the bottom of the sea; when the nation was fearful of invasion on the
Pacific coast; when we were committed as well to the war in Europe, that
then the use of the bomb at that time on Japan would have been
universally heralded as a just retribution of hail, fire, and brimstone.
Then the use of the bomb would have been hailed as proof that good
inevitably triumphs over evil. The question of the ethics of the use of
the bomb would never have arisen at that time and the character of the
present debate would have been very different. Those who would disagree
with this assertion have no memory of the state of the world at that
time. They are either fools or liars or both.

The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective
means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical. One
of our greatest revolutionary heroes was Francis Marion of South
Carolina, who became immortalized in American history as "the Swamp
Fox." Marion was an outright revolutionary guerrilla. He and his men
operated according to the traditions and with all of the tactics
commonly associated with the present-day guerrillas. Cornwallis and the
regular British Army found their plans and operations harried and
disorganized by Marion's guerrilla tactics. Infuriated by the
effectiveness of his operations, and incapable of coping with them, the
British denounced him as a criminal and charged that he did not engage
in warfare "like a gentleman" or "a Christian." He was subjected to an
unremitting denunciation about his lack of ethics and morality for his
use of guerrilla means to the end of winning the Revolution.

The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that you do what you
can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments. In the field
of action, the first question that arises in the determination of means
to be employed for particular ends is what means are available. This
requires an assessment of whatever strengths or resources are present
and can be used. It involves sifting the multiple factors which combine
in creating the circumstances at any given time, and an adjustment to
the popular views and the popular climate. Questions such as how much
time is necessary or available must be considered. Who, and how many,
will support the action? Does the opposition possess the power to the
degree that it can suspend or change the laws? Does its control of
police power extend to the point where legal and orderly change is
impossible? If weapons are needed, then are appropriate weapons
available? Availability of means determines whether you will be
underground or above ground; whether you will move quickly or slowly;
whether you will move for extensive changes or limited adjustments;
whether you will move by passive resistance or active resistance; or
whether you will move at all. The absence of any means might drive one
to martyrdom in the hope that this would be a catalyst, starting a chain
reaction that would culminate in a mass movement. Here a simple ethical
statement is used as a means to power.

A naked illustration of this point is to be found in Trotsky's summary
of Lenin's famous April Theses, issued shortly after Lenin's return from
exile. Lenin pointed out: "The task of the Bolsheviks is to overthrow
the Imperialist Government. But this government rests upon the support
of the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who in turn are supported
by the trustfulness of the masses of people. We are in the minority. In
these circumstances there can be no talk of violence on our side." The
essence of Lenin's speeches during this period was "They have the guns
and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot.
When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet." And it was.

Mahatma Gandhi and his use of passive resistance in India presents a
striking example of the selection of means. Here, too, we see the
inevitable alchemy of time working upon moral equivalents as a
consequence of the changing circumstances and positions of the Have-Nots
to the Haves, with the natural shift of goals from getting to keeping.

Gandhi is viewed by the world as the epitome of the highest moral
behavior with respect to means and ends. We can assume that there are
those who would believe that if Gandhi had lived, there would never have
been an invasion of Goa or any other armed invasion. Similarly, the
politically naive would have regarded it as unbelievable that that great
apostle of nonviolence, Nehru, would ever have countenanced the invasion
of Goa, for it was Nehru who stated in 1955: "What are the basic
elements of our policy in regard to Goa? First, there must be peaceful
methods. This is essential unless we give up the roots of all our
policies and all our behavior... We rule out nonpeaceful methods
entirely." He was a man committed to nonviolence and ostensibly to the
love of mankind, including his enemies. His end was the independence of
India from foreign domination, and his means was that of passive
resistance. History, and religious and moral opinion, have so enshrined
Gandhi in this sacred matrix that in many quarters it is blasphemous to
question whether this entire procedure of passive resistance was not
simply the only intelligent, realistic, expedient program which Gandhi
had at his disposal; and that the "morality" which surrounded this
policy of passive resistance was to a large degree a rationale to cloak
a pragmatic program with a desired and essential moral cover.

Let us examine this case. First, Gandhi, like any other leader in the
field of social action, was compelled to examine the means at hand. If
he had had guns he might well have used them in an armed revolution
against the British which would have been in keeping with the traditions
of revolutions for freedom through force. Gandhi did not have the guns,
and if he had had the guns he would not have had the people to use the
guns. Gandhi records in his Autobiography his astonishment at the
passivity and submissiveness of his people in not retaliating or even
wanting revenge against the British: "As I proceeded further and further
with my inquiry into the atrocities that had been committed on the
people, I came across tales of Government's tyranny and the arbitrary
despotism of its officers such as I was hardly prepared for, and they
filled me with deep pain. What surprised me then, and what still
continues to fill me with surprise, was the fact that a province that
had furnished the largest number of soldiers to the British Government
during the war, should have taken all these brutal excesses lying down."

Gandhi and his associates repeatedly deplored the inability of their
people to give organized, effective, violent resistance against
injustice and tyranny. His own experience was corroborated by an
unbroken series of reiterations from all the leaders of India—that India
could not practice physical warfare against her enemies. Many reasons
were given, including weakness, lack of arms, having been beaten into
submission, and other arguments of a similar nature. Interviewed by
Norman Cousins in 1961. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru described the Hindus of
those days as "A demoralized, timid, and hopeless mass bullied and
crushed by every dominant interest and incapable of resistance."

Faced with this situation we revert for the moment to Gandhi's
assessment and review of the means available to him. It has been stated
that if he had had the guns he might have used them; this statement is
based on the Declaration of Independence of Mahatma Gandhi issued on
January 26, 1930, where he discussed "the fourfold disaster to our
country." His fourth indictment against the British reads: "Spiritually,
compulsory disarmament has made us unmanly, and the presence of an alien
army of occupation, employed with deadly effect to crush in us the
spirit of resistance, has made us think we cannot look after ourselves
or put up a defense against foreign aggression, or even defend our homes
and families . . ." These words more than suggest that if Gandhi had had
the weapons for violent resistance and the people to use them this means
would not have been so unreservedly rejected as the world would like to
think.

On the same point, we might note that once India had secured
independence, when Nehru was faced with a dispute with Pakistan over
Kashmir, he did not hesitate to use armed force. Now the power
arrangements had changed. India had the guns and the trained army to use
these weapons.{footnote 2} Any suggestion that Gandhi would not have
approved the use of violence is negated by Nehru's own statement in that
1961 interview: "It was a terrible time. When the news reached me about
Kashmir I knew I would have to act at once—with force. Yet I was greatly
troubled in mind and spirit because I knew we might have to face a
war—so soon after having achieved our independence through a philosophy
of nonviolence. It was horrible to think of. Yet I acted. Gandhi said
nothing to indicate his disapproval. It was a great relief, I must say.
If Gandhi, the vigorous nonviolent, didn't demur, it made my job a lot
easier. This strengthened my view that Gandhi could be adaptable."

Confronted with the issue of what means he could employ against the
British, we come to the other criteria previously mentioned; that the
kind of means selected and how they can be used is significantly
dependent upon the face of the enemy, or the character of his
opposition. Gandhi's opposition not only made the effective use of
passive resistance possible but practically invited it. His enemy was a
British administration characterized by an old, aristocratic, liberal
tradition, one which granted a good deal of freedom to its colonials and
which always had operated on a pattern of using, absorbing, seducing, or
destroying, through flattery or corruption, the revolutionary leaders
who arose from the colonial ranks. This was the kind of opposition that
would have tolerated and ultimately capitulated before the tactic of
passive resistance.

Gandhi's passive resistance would never have had a chance against a
totalitarian state such as that of the Nazis It is dubious whether under
those circumstances the idea of passive resistance would even have
occurred to Gandhi It has been pointed out that Gandhi, who was born in
1869, never saw or understood totalitarianism and defined his opposition
completely in terms of the character of the British government and what
it represented. George Orwell, in his essay Reflection on Gandhi, made
some pertinent observations on this point: "... He believed in 'arousing
the world,' which is only possible if the world gets a chance to hear
what you are doing. It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be
applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the
middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press
and the right of assembly it is impossible, not merely to appeal to
outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to
make your intentions known to your adversary."

From a pragmatic point of view, passive resistance was not only
possible, but was the most effective means that could have been selected
for the end of ridding India of British control. In organizing, the
major negative in the situation has to be converted into the leading
positive. In short, knowing that one could not expect violent action
from this large and torpid mass, Gandhi organized the inertia: he gave
it a goal so that it became purposeful. Their wide familiarity with
Dharma made passive resistance no stranger to the Hindustani. To
oversimplify, what Gandhi did was to say, "Look, you are all sitting
there anyway—so instead of sitting there, why don't you sit over here
and while you're sitting, say Independence Now!'"

This raises another question about the morality of means and ends. We
have already noted that in essence, mankind divides itself into three
groups; the Have-Nots, the Have-a-Little, Want-Mores, and the Haves. The
purpose of the Haves is to keep what they have. Therefore, the Haves
want to maintain the status quo and the Have-Nots to change it. The
Haves develop their own morality to justify their means of repression
and all other means employed to maintain the status quo. The Haves
usually establish laws and judges devoted to maintaining the status quo;
since any effective means of changing the status quo are usually illegal
and/or unethical in the eyes of the establishment, Have-Nots, from the
beginning of time, have been compelled to appeal to "a law higher than
man-made law." Then when the Have-Nots achieve success and become the
Haves, they are in the position of trying to keep what they have and
their morality shifts with their change of location in the power
pattern.

Eight months after securing independence, the Indian National Congress
outlawed passive resistance and made it a crime. It was one thing for
them to use the means of passive resistance against the previous Haves,
but now in power they were going to ensure that this means would not be
used against them! No longer as Have-Nots were they appealing to laws
higher than man-made law. Now that they were making the laws, they were
on the side of manmade laws! Hunger strikes—used so effectively in the
revolution—were viewed differently now too. Nehru, in the interview
mentioned above, said: The government will not be influenced by hunger
strikes ... To tell the truth I didn't approve of fasting as a political
weapon even when Gandhi practiced it."

Again Sam Adams, the firebrand radical of the American Revolution,
provides a clear example. Adams was foremost in proclaiming the right of
revolution. However, following the success of the American Revolution it
was the same Sam Adams who was foremost in demanding the execution of
those Americans who participated in Shays' Rebellion, charging that no
one had a right to engage in revolution against us!

Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to
justify the selection or the use of ends or means. Machiavelli's
blindness to the necessity for moral clothing to all acts and motives—he
said "politics has no relation to morals"—was his major weakness.

All great leaders, including Churchill, Gandhi, Lincoln, and Jefferson,
always invoked "moral principles" to cover naked self-interest in the
clothing of "freedom" "equality of mankind," "a law higher than man-made
law," and so on. This even held under circumstances of national crises
when it was universally assumed that the end justified any means. All
effective actions require the passport of morality.

The examples are everywhere. In the United States the rise of the civil
rights movement in the late 1950s was marked by the use of passive
resistance in the South against segregation. Violence in the South would
have been suicidal; political pressure was then impossible; the only
recourse was economic pressure with a few fringe activities. Legally
blocked by state laws, hostile police and courts, they were compelled
like all Have-Nots from time immemorial to appeal to "a law higher than
man-made law." In his Social Contract, Rousseau noted the obvious, that
"Law is a very good thing for men with property and a very bad thing for
men without property." Passive resistance remained one of the few means
available to anti-segregationist forces until they had secured the
voting franchise in fact. Furthermore, passive resistance was also a
good defensive tactic since it curtailed the opportunities for use of
the power resources of the status quo for forcible repression. Passive
resistance was chosen for the same pragmatic reason that all tactics are
selected. But it assumes the necessary moral and religious adornments.

However, when passive resistance becomes massive and threatening it
gives birth to violence. Southern Negroes have no tradition of Dharma,
and are close enough to their Northern compatriots so that contrasting
conditions between the North and the South are a visible as well as a
constant spur. Add to this the fact that the Southern poor whites do not
operate by British tradition but reflect generations of violence; the
future does not argue for making a special religion of nonviolence. It
will be remembered for what it was, the best tactic for its time and
place.

As more effective means become available, the Negro civil rights
movement will divest itself of these decorations and substitute a new
moral philosophy in keeping with its new means and opportunities. The
explanation will be, as it always has been, Times have changed." This is
happening today.

The eleventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that goals must be
phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "Of the
Common Welfare," "Pursuit of Happiness," or "Bread and Peace." Whitman
put it: "The goal once named cannot be countermanded." It has been
previously noted that the wise man of action knows that frequently in
the stream of action of means towards ends, whole new and unexpected
ends are among the major results of the action. From a Civil War fought
as a means to preserve the Union came the end of slavery.

In this connection, it must be remembered that history is made up of
actions in which one end results in other ends. Repeatedly, scientific
discoveries have resulted from experimental research committed to ends
or objectives that have little relationship with the discoveries. Work
on a seemingly minor practical program has resulted in feedbacks of
major creative basic ideas. J. C. Flugel notes, in Man, Morals and
Society, that"... In psychology, too, we have no right to be astonished
if, while dealing with a means (e.g., the cure of a neurotic symptom,
the discovery of more efficient ways of learning, or the relief of
industrial fatigue) we find that we have modified our attitude toward
the end (acquired some new insight into the nature of mental health, the
role of education, or the place of work in human life)."

The mental shadow boxing on the subject of means and ends is typical of
those who are the observers and not the actors in the battlefields of
life. In The Yogi and the Commissar, Koestler begins with the basic
fallacy of an arbitrary demarcation between expediency and morality;
between the Yogi for whom the end never justifies the means and the
Commissar for whom the end always justifies the means. Koestler attempts
to extricate himself from this self-constructed strait jacket by
proposing that the end justifies the means only within narrow limits.
Here Koestler, even in an academic confrontation with action, was
compelled to take the first step in the course of compromise on the road
to action and power. How "narrow" the limits and who defines the
"narrow" limits opens the door to the premises discussed here. The kind
of personal safety and security sought by the advocates of the sanctity
of means and ends lies only in the womb of Yogism or the monastery, and
even there it is darkened by the repudiation of that moral principle
that they are their brothers' keepers.

Bertrand Russell, in his Human Society in Ethics and Politics, observed
that "Morality is so much concerned with means that it seems almost
immoral to consider anything solely in relation to its intrinsic worth.
But obviously nothing has any value as a means unless that to which it
is a means has value on its own account. It follows that intrinsic value
is logically prior to value as means."

The organizer, the revolutionist, the activist or call him what you
will, who is committed to a free and open society is in that commitment
anchored to a complex of high values. These values include the basic
morals of all organized religions; their base is the preciousness of
human life. These values include freedom, equality, justice, peace, the
right to dissent; the values that were the banners of hope and yearning
of all revolutions of men, whether the French Revolution's "Liberty,
Fraternity, Equality," the Russians' "Bread and Peace," the brave
Spanish people's "Better to die on your feet than to live on your
knees," or our Revolution's "No Taxation Without Representation." They
include the values in our own Bill of Rights. If a state voted for
school segregation or a community organization voted to keep blacks out,
and claimed justification by virtue of the "democratic process," then
this violation of the value of equality would have converted democracy
into a prostitute. Democracy is not an end; it is the best political
means available toward the achievement of these values.

Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question
has never been the proverbial one, "Does the End justify the Means?" but
always has been "Does this particular end justify this particular
means?"

(Taken from the book: The Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky)