On the Mythologies and Ethics of Non-violence: What Do Murray Rothbard and Hugo Chavez Have in Common?

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the relationship between political ideology, power, and non-violent struggleas portrayed by the American thinker Gene Sharp. The means of this analysis is a comparisonand contrast between libertarian and socialist critiques of his work for the purpose of discoveringreoccurring themes. More specifically, it compares an anarcho-libertarian dialogue from theearly 1980s to socialist literature in the late 2000s. It s concludes that the fault line in bothconversations is the tension between Leninist strategic theory and the ProgressiveSubstitutionary theory of non-violence