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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Last Updated: Sep 9, 2024 • Article History Table of Contents
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civil disobedience, the refusal to obey the demands or commands of a government or occupying power, without resorting to violence or active measures of opposition; its usual purpose is to force concessions from the government or occupying power. Civil disobedience has been a major tactic and philosophy of nationalist movements in Africa and India, in the American civil rights movement, and of labour, anti-war, and other social movements in many countries.
Civil disobedience is a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law rather than a rejection of the system as a whole. The civil disobedient, finding legitimate avenues of change blocked or nonexistent, feels obligated by a higher, extralegal principle to break some specific law. It is because acts associated with civil disobedience are considered crimes, however, and known by actor and public alike to be punishable, that such acts serve as a protest. By submitting to punishment, the civil disobedient hopes to set a moral example that will provoke the majority or the government into effecting meaningful political, social, or economic change. Under the imperative of setting a moral example, leaders of civil disobedience insist that the illegal actions be nonviolent.
A variety of criticisms have been directed against the philosophy and practice of civil disobedience. The radical critique of the philosophy of civil disobedience condemns its acceptance of the existing political structure; conservative schools of thought, on the other hand, see the logical extension of civil disobedience as anarchy and the right of individuals to break any law they choose, at any time. Activists themselves are divided in interpreting civil disobedience either as a total philosophy of social change or as merely a tactic to be employed when the movement lacks other means. On a pragmatic level, the efficacy of civil disobedience hinges on the adherence of the opposition to a certain morality to which an appeal can ultimately be made.
The philosophical roots of civil disobedience lie deep in Western thought: Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry David Thoreau all sought to justify conduct by virtue of its harmony with some antecedent superhuman moral law. The modern concept of civil disobedience was most clearly formulated by Mahatma Gandhi. Drawing from Eastern and Western thought, Gandhi developed the philosophy of satyagraha, which emphasizes nonviolent resistance to evil. First in the Transvaal of South Africa in 1906 and later in India, via such actions as the Salt March (1930), Gandhi sought to obtain equal rights and freedom through satyagraha campaigns.
Drawing in part on Gandhi’s example, the American civil rights movement, which came to prominence during the 1950s, sought to end racial segregation in the southern United States by adopting the tactics and philosophy of civil disobedience through such protests as the Greensboro (North Carolina) sit-in (1960) and the Freedom Rides (1961). Martin Luther King, Jr., a leader of the movement from the mid-1950s to his assassination in 1968, was an articulate defender of its strategy of nonviolent protest. Later the tactics of civil disobedience were employed by many protest groups within a variety of movements, including the women’s movement, the anti-nuclear and environmental movements, and the anti-globalization and economic equality movements.
The principle of civil disobedience has achieved some standing in international law through the war crime trials at Nürnberg, Germany, after World War II, which affirmed the principle that individuals may, under certain circumstances, be held accountable for failure to break the laws of their country.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Brian Duignan.
