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Tax Strike Tactics

You Can Start Now, with Full Integrity

The advantage of organizing and working together, in theory anyway, is greater force from greater numbers. But there are also disadvantages: It takes time and negotiation and coordination to get a bunch of people to act together, and usually you must find some common denominator of principle or risk that everyone can agree on. This can water down the core of what you’re fighting for until it seems less like a worthy principle than a petty grievance—and once you’ve done that, it may not seem worth fighting for.

In this way a movement risks gaining size at the expense of losing passion. Any force it gains from greater numbers it may lose from the diffuse, blunted, half-hearted effort of the individuals that make it up, or from the fact that much of their energy is expended on the organizing itself rather than on the ostensible goals of the organization.

The advantage of drawing a large crowd of half-hearted followers may not be worth the effort. It is not too hard to sway a crowd of wishy-washy people by appealing to the half-truths they already believe and being careful not to attack any of the nonsense they adhere to. But what does this get you? A crowd of wishy-washy people who are just as vulnerable to falling for the next demagogue who comes along with patronizing speeches. Instead, Hennacy recommends, we should “appeal to those about ready to make the next step and… know that these are very few indeed.”

When Thoreau was invited to give a speech, he refused to water down his message to make it palatable to all his listeners. He wasn’t aiming for the sympathy of the crowd, but he hoped to reach those one or two people who were ready to be challenged. He was amused at the response to one of his talks: The “craven priest” who had invited him to speak was “looking for a hole to escape at” and there was “an awful silence” in the audience. “But,” he reflected, “the seed has not all fallen in stony & shallow ground.”

Thoreau noted with approval that the abolitionist revolutionary John Brown had not gathered around him a large party of well-wishers and collaborators, but instead had been very selective about whom he let in on his plans:

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?—till you and I came over to him?…

The very fact that [Brown] had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. He would have no rowdy or swaggerer, no profane swearer, for, as he said, he always found these men to fail at last. He would have only men of principle, and they are few.

He quotes Brown as saying:

I would rather have the small-pox, yellow-fever, and cholera, all together in my camp, than a man without principle.… Give me men of good principles,—God-fearing men,—men who respect themselves, and with a dozen of them I will oppose any hundred such men as these Buford ruffians.

Notes and Citations