THE LIMITS OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: A Review

I recently re-read The Death of Socrates by Plato. It is very inspiring, especially now, when many of us may be facing the same situation he faced--though with a crucial difference. Whatever distortion of the real Socrates may have been introduced by Plato or other writers, enough comes through to paint a portrait of the first true individualist in history-- the first person to be guided by his own individual conscience to do what was right, regardless of the consequences. Reading the Apology, one thrills to Socrates' intransigence in the face of the Athenian jury, his preference for death over dishonor, and his abiding faith in that divine inner voice which always impels him to do right. Confronted with a man who accuses him of foolhardiness in behaving in a manner which could bring him the death penalty, he says, "You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action: whether he is acting justly or unjustly, like a good man or a bad one" (p.54, Penguin Edition). And, "I know that I am not going to alter my conduct, not even if I have to die a hundred deaths." (p. 56) Explaining why he will not plead for his life by weeping and parading his family before the jurors, he says, "I would rather die as a result of this defense than life as a result of the other sort!" (p. 66) What noble courage, and how needed in the crisis we face today!

Crito, however, presents an apparent contradiction, so much so that the editor of this volume thinks it may not have been written by Plato at all, Plato being a man who, whatever his own prejudices (and it is generally recognized that he tended toward conservatism) at least knew the real Socrates personally. But here again the real Socrates can be glimpsed, for as the editor points out, it is an historically established fact that Socrates did not flee when he had the chance from the sentence of death imposed by the Athenian court, and drank the hemlock. In so doing, he became the founder of the tradition of civil disobedience which was formulated later by Thoreau, and carried on in the twentieth century by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. among others. And his argument is persuasive. His friend Crito urges him to flee, saying that most people will think that he really was guilty if he does not, and being Socrates he says, "Why should we pay so much attention to what most people think?" (p. 81). He argues against his friend's proposed course of action, saying, "The really important thing is not to live but to live well." (p. 87) Then he engages in a symbolic dialogue with the Laws of Athens, which can be thought of as comparable with the U.S. Constitution. It is clear that he is grateful to Athens for having given him the opportunity to be a dissenter. The crucial facts are that the Laws of Athens gave him the right to attempt to persuade his fellow Athenians by permitting him free speech. And even when he was arrested for his teachings, he was allowed to speak in his own defense at his trial. Although the verdict was unjust, it was not the Laws of Athens which were responsible, but human folly. As he has the "Laws" say to him: "You leave this place, when you do, as a victim of a wrong done not by us but by your fellow men." No better argument for government under law has ever been made.

However, the tradition of civil disobedience which Socrates founded is only meaningful in a democracy, where people have the right to dissent and to be tried fairly and publicly if they are arrested and charged with a crime. And it is rapidly becoming obsolete, for this country is being transformed from a democracy into a totalitarian state. Since President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act on October 17, 2006, we have been facing a crisis more severe than any other in our history, the Civil War, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 itself not excepted. Congress has had over a year to amend or repeal the act and has failed. If the Supreme Court, now almost half-filled with "rubber stamp" justices, does not strike down the MCA, one will not be able to engage in dissent without being labeled an "Illegal Enemy Combatant" at the mere whim of the executive branch, imprisoned and even tortured indefinitely, without being formally sentenced or tried. Most dissidents-- even Noam Chomsky as I recently discovered-- have not faced this fact yet, nor gotten beyond civil disobedience as the answer to repression.

However, a tradition exists which teaches us how to react in such a situation. This tradition goes back not to Athens but to medieval England, to the feudal notion of the relationship between lord and vassal as a contract. If the lord broke his end of the contract, then the vassal could revolt, staging what was called a diffidatio. Thus did the English barons revolt against King John, forcing him to sign Magna Carta. In the seventeenth century, this time-hallowed tradition was transformed into the social contract theory of John Locke, who gave citizens the right to revolt if the government's infringements of personal liberty were sufficiently grave. Finally, it was taken up by Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders of the American Republic, and set forth in the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence. Speaking of the American colonists, Jefferson said, "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security." Faced with the prospect of living under a government which is rotten through and through, and which would have made his dissenting individualism impossible, I'm sure Socrates would have agreed.