On Misuses of Civil Disobedience

Leonard Levin Writes

As Paul Kurtz perceived [in “Misuses of Civil Disobedience,” DISSENT, January– February 1970], he has written about a principle—”civil disobedience”—which is intelligible only in a wider context, the context of civil society and especially democratic society. He has argued well that civil disobedience can play a positive part in the normal workings of democratic society only if it defines itself by certain characteristics which themselves grow naturally out of democratic and social-legal principles. However, his arguments can have force only for those who already accept the democratic and social principles that are the foundations from which the principle of civil disobedience is derived as a corollary. Whoever rejects those first principles is not, strictly speaking, misunderstanding “civil disobedience” and will therefor not profit from Mr. Kurtz’s instruction; he is actually on to something quite different. If the first principles are themselves in question, then let us see how and why this is so.

Mistake Number One: The abandonment of the principles of “democratic society” is not so much out of weariness with ...