When “peace and order” are the watchwords of the ruling classes, any ‘peaceful protest’ is seen merely as a natural part of a system that “works” and so is stripped of much of its revelatory power. An insistence on “nonviolence” tends to reinforce the illusion that the existing organization of society is natural or peaceful while all criticism becomes aimed at the comparatively microscopic transgressions such as disobeying a police officer or looting.

But what about more thoroughgoing pacifist doctrines such as the “non-resistance to evil by force” as popularized in recent times by the likes of Leo Tolstoy? Is such a principle compatible with rioting? If not, does it provide a better alternative than the riot? I am personally undecided, but I do not, at least, think a strong Tolstoyan case can be made against rioting.

Even granting its correctness, there are two important aspects of Tolstoy’s non-resistance to keep in mind when considering it in the context of revolt against oppression. The first is that non-resistance is an invective against the use of force by the state (and against the very existence of the state). The entire hope upon which the principle of non-resistance rests is that it will result in a world in which there are no police or soldiers or property owners for them to protect. To invoke non-resistance in defense of police enforcing the law to keep the poor in their place is entirely self-defeating.

Secondly, unlike the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ghandi, Tolstoy’s non-resistance is not posited as a political tactic; and unlike my defense of riots, it is not presented as an epistemological trick or a way to reveal truth. It is instead an individual’s lifestyle choice and a duty aimed at creating a peaceful society now, in whatever degree possible, regardless of the ongoing existence of societies structured by police and soldiers. But the choice to embrace non-resistance to evil is unlikely to be made until the existing, violent structure of society is recognized.

In the final chapter of The Kingdom of God is Within You, Tolstoy describes the conditions of Czarist Russia to illustrate the violence of that system. In particular he describes the plight of peasants who resisted enclosure and other abuses by landlords (through riots and otherwise) and the soldiers who unquestioningly carried out the execution and torture of those rebel peasants.

An aspect of what I call “false consciousness” is described by Tolstoy in that chapter as “that constant, stubborn tendency of men to increase their well-being, which guides the men of our time, to become convinced that the prerogatives of the rich over the poor could not and cannot be maintained in any other way.” He describes the emergence from such false consciousness in rather mystical terms (“It is not necessary for anything new to enter into the consciousness of men, but only for the mist to disappear, which conceals from men the true meaning of some acts of violence”), but if the riots and acts of rebellion by the peasants didn’t open Tolstoy’s eyes, they are at least the best images he found with which to communicate his own awareness of the nature of feudal Russia.

What if the Russian peasants were Tolstoyan in their actions and had accepted their lot and submitted to their hunger and subjection without causing their governors any grief? Tolstoy would have been left without illustration to reveal the meaning of violence. The very insight which makes Tolstoy’s non-resistance possible itself depends on subordinate groups' assertion of their own dignity — which is almost never a peaceful affair.