Limited Goals through Unlimited Resistance

Iranina blogger, Hossein Bastani, Roozonline:

Writer and political prisoner Akbar Ganji’s hunger strike is the type of event that has been absent in Iran’s pro-democracy movement in recent years. In his response to the threats of Tehran’s prosecutor that he would not be freed unless he withdrew his “Republican Manifesto”, he has threatened to continue his hunger strike. Regardless of these tit-for-tat responses, Ganji’s commencement of his recent hunger strike is a protest against the promises of the prosecutor in providing him medial treatment outside the prison. In other words, he has launched an unconstrained resistance for a specific, i.e. limited, demand. The result of this approach was that those very individuals who had rushed at night to rearrest and return him to prison, now embarked to send him out of the prison for medical treatment. They even talked of reconsidering his detention to free him. This and other results were the products of a “limited goal vs unlimited resistance” approach. READ MORE

I have borrowed this wording from Lotfollah Meysami. In his theoretic analysis, he has grouped the demands of political prisoners into four types: unlimited goals through limited resistance; unlimited goals through unlimited resistance; limited goals through unlimited resistance; and, limited goals through unlimited resistance.

In looking at the eight year record of the pro-democracy movement in Iran, one observes that not only have activists not benefited from a limited goal vs unlimited resistance, but have in fact worked for unlimited goals through limited challenges.

During these years, most of our political activists have refrained from identifying and limited their goals while at the same time providing the least amount of resistance or costs for them. A brief review of these events reveals that the various pro-democracy movements have called on for large goals, such as changes in the constitution, through very small steps and sacrifices such as few-hour sit-ins. It cannot escape notice that even these movements had ended after small gestures of conciliation or mediation. In some cases the participants or organizers themselves decided to end their measures without getting anything in return and without any explanations to the public. In the most optimistic scenarios, the rise in “realism” has been through the change from unlimited goals to small specific goals. But resistance has remained limited, still no results were attained. This is when the international movements for reform have proven that the attainment of even the smallest goals would not be possible unless there was potential for unlimited resistance. For example women’s right for medical education as a specific goal has had the long organized struggle for many years by people did not refrain from expending all kinds of social and economic costs.

On contrast, in our inciteful and impatient society even discussing the various options open to a specific goal is considered unacceptable. So the reality is that work towards big goals through small means or their potential, does not produce results.

So while since the end of the presidential elections, the question of “what needs to be done now” looms strong among political activist, Ganji’s example provides some solutions. Even though what Ganji did and accomplished was only one man’s action, it can bring many on board if understood. If the strategy of unlimited resistance for limited goals is pursued by civil society institutions, changes in society can be come reality.

This strategy can even work for limited professional goals or the demands for amending a particular law or clause. This has been a missing loop in Iran’s pro-democracy movement.