Socialist: Violence Needed for Change

Violence is necessary to transform modern society into a new, better society, Ahmed K. Shawki of the International Socialist Organization told the audience at a meeting of the Harvard/Radcliffe Socialist Forum yesterday.

Speaking to an audience of about 25 people, Shawki, an editor of the Socialist Worker newspaper, said that since we live in a society in which violence like starvation and the nuclear arms race is part of our everyday existence, violence used to better society is needed and justified.

However, Shawki said violence used in revolution can reproduce the "same features of the society we've tried to change.... What you will get in the end of the day is something similar if not worse."

However, "Revolutionary means are still necessary even in the context of Western democracy," he said.

Violence is necessary to transform Western society because of the existence of a state, with armies, courts, and police. The division of power among those with "real power, actual power, real economic power, and official power" make a transformation through government channels impossible, Shawki said.

But violence can be seen as weakness since socialism measures power in terms of "the number of workers, not in the use if violence," he said. Shawki cited Solidarity in Poland as a movement of great power because of the number of workers involved and because it recognized that it might have to "defend itself against the onslaught of a ruling class."