Ward Churchill challenges the idea that one can both be a revolutionist and nonviolent. Nonviolence is essentially reformist, he believes, and revolution implies violence. I appreciate this challenge, because every day in any large newspaper we read about nonviolent action used to force policy changes and other reforms; where do we go to learn about the possibilities of nonviolent action for revolutionary change?

In the spring of 1968 France experienced a mass revolutionary insurrection that came close to toppling the government. It's the closest thing to what we're talking about that's shown up lately, because it happened in what's called an "advanced industrial liberal democracy." It's very relevant to the debates I hear now among activists.

In May students in Paris initiated a struggle for educational reform by occupying their universities and demonstrating in the streets. The police responded brutally, and word spread rapidly about the suffering of the students. French labor unions had their own reasons for discontent, and decided to go out on strike. Soon there were eleven million workers striking, with many of them occupying their workplaces. Occupation became the tactic of the moment: workers occupied giant auto factories, gravediggers occupied cemeteries, and dancers occupied the Folies Bergere.

The struggle deepened. Demands radicalized from reform to revolution, among workers as well as among students. Some towns cut off contact with the central government and began printing their own currency. President De Gaulle was forced to consult with generals of French troops stationed in Germany to make sure they were ready to come home and do widespread repression, because he wasn't confident of the reliability of troops stationed on French soil. The bulk of the students and workers were on one side of the polarization and the rich were on the other side. The question mark was the middle class: which way would it swing? Many of them were parents or friends of students and were appalled by the police brutality, and initially favorable to the students.

State-controlled TV entered the fray more fully by showing, over and over, scenes of property destruction by the students, for example dragging cars to street intersections and setting them on fire to create barricades -- a powerful message not only to property-conscious middle class people but even to workers who'd saved for years to be able to buy a car.

Also facing the middle class was the void where a vision might be: if the state was overthrown, would there be a place for them in the new society? No one could answer that question, because there was no manifesto from these new revolutionists that could reassure anyone. All the middle class could do was sit with their fears while watching flames on TV.

We know the outcome: the movement lost and the big capitalists and state won, although the shake-up did lead to some reforms. A question we activists in the U.S. might ask is: why did the students drive away their allies who were essential for their success?

There are many reasons and readers interested in this case can find it in my book. (13) The most pressing reasons for us now are:

• The students were operating in a tradition that said "revolution = violence or at least destruction" and since they'd moved to a revolutionary stance, they accepted what went with it as a package. They weren't able to be innovative about the means of revolution.
• The students didn't understand that the foundation of the French "house," its political order, was the compliance of its people, and they could win by increasing the people's nonviolent noncooperation. In 1968 they didn't have the examples of the fall of the Shah of Iran, of Marcos, of Eastern European dictatorships, and so on, so they couldn't realize that a power greater than armed struggle is people power.

The suffering of the French students and workers is not in vain if activists learn from their experience. Nonviolent action is as coercive, or more coercive, than violence in dealing with oppressors but the basis of coercion is hugely different. The coercive power of violence springs mainly from destruction: classically, destroying the army of the opponent, and these days other kinds of destruction as well. Activists using violence need to destroy, destroy, and destroy until the opponent gives up or loses its capacity to resist.

The coercive power of nonviolent action, by contrast, comes from noncooperation. The opponent's dependency on compliance bounces back against him when people refuse to "go along with the program." Even the Shah has to pack his bags; even Hernandez Martinez must flee the country. In some cases the dictatorship surrenders and in others their very apparatus dissolves, as in East Germany.

If the French students had known that their real chance to win was based on the power of noncooperation, they would not have needed barricades and property destruction-- those tactics are in much better alignment with a strategy that evolves into armed struggle.