This is the beginning of something I hope will mature into a longer and more substantive interweaving of the dhamma and its manifestation in society. Feedback on this preliminary sketch is welcome.

To begin with, even Engels himself questioned the outright necessity of violence in socialist revolution. He wrote that communists would support, in most instances, appearances of socialism by peaceful means.

All of us contain the capacity for the poisons of hate, greed, and delusion. Only some of us, meanwhile, have the power to enact our personal poisons on a mass scale — whether you’re an investment banker on Wall Street, a fascist rallying with a Confederate flag, or a climate denier in Congress fighting sane cap-and-trade laws.

The difference between these two categories is one of power, whether power in the form of access to capital and its levers, or power in the form of the social relation of white supremacy. Power, of course, concedes nothing without a demand — and if that demand undermines the very system on which power is built, a pitched battle for control is inevitable.

The history of all previously existing society, you might say, is a history of greed, hatred and delusion of one class and the struggle against the enactment of those poisons by those most affected.

All that said, we all likewise possess the common capacity for compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and equanimity. Including the ruling classes.

It strikes me that instruction in right concentration and right mindfulness are necessary conditions to change the hearts and minds of the ruling class. So it might be a necessary component of any notional post-revolutionary society — institutionalized compassion, kindness, and forgiveness for our class enemies as an antidote to the institutionalized poisons of the capitalist era.

Likewise, of course, a new society built on sila & the brahmaviharas as guiding principles would lead to a revolutionary transformation in the minds and hearts of the population at large.

But — knowing that without struggle there is no progress — how do we get to such a society without violating the Buddha’s many injunctions not to take life? Can it be done? The Sri Lankans and the Thai have of course insisted that taking the lives of Islamic terrorists is justified in defense of Buddhism. The Japanese insisted that since ultimately there was “no one and nothing to kill or be killed,” killing the Chinese didn’t really count.

I’m not sure we can forcefully remake society in the image of the dhamma successfully — the violence wrought in any uprising would create such a raft of bad kamma that perhaps even the society built on it would only lay the groundwork for its own demise. It seems to me the best solution is the old anarchist chesnut of counterinstitutions and counterpower — something along the lines of the Triratna Community in England, writ large.

So perhaps, rather than “to the barricades,” our chant should be “all power to the sanghas!”