Benjamin R. Tucker / Individual Liberty
Methods - Passive Resistance
It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you
throw it from the cannon's mouth.But if you can compel the enemy to waste
his ammunition' by drawing his fire on some thoroughly protected spot; if you
can, by annoying and goading and harassing him in all possible ways, drive him to the last resort of
stripping bare his tyrannous and invasive purposes and put him in the attitude of a
designing villain assailing honest men for purposes of plunder, -there is
no better strategy.
There is not a tyrant in the civilized world today who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a bloody revolution rather than see himself confronted by any large fraction of his subjects determined not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army is willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people who do not even gather in the streets but stay at home and stand back on their rights. Neither the ballot nor the bayonet is to play any great part in the coming struggle; passive resistance is the instrument by which the revolutionary force is destined to secure in the last great conflict the people's rights forever.
The idea that Anarchy
can be inaugurated by force is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by force. Force cannot preserve
Anarchy; neither can it bring it. In fact, one of the inevitable influences of
the use of force is to postpone Anarchy. The only thing that force can ever do
for us is to save us from extinction, to give us a longer lease of life in which
to try to secure Anarchy by the only methods that can ever bring it. But this advantage
always purchased at immense cost, and its attainment is always attended
by frightful risk. The attempt should be made only when the risk of any
Passive resistance and boycotting are now
prominent features of every great national movement.
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