Has a book ever caused the ousting of a dictator?

score:9

Accepted answer

I would relate your question to that of asking whether a hammer builds a house. The shortest most accurate answer is "no". A more nuanced answer requires some explanation however. A hammer doesn't build a house, just as a book has never produced societal change, because both lack two vital qualities: agency and uniqueness. The fact that both lack agency is obvious. Outside of say "Beauty and the Beast", hammers and books generally don't act without human intervention. Like previous posters have noted a book can be used as a tool to spread ideas as a hammer can be used to drive in nails and thus bring pieces of wood together.

The other point has not been noted, which is that a book is not necessary to produce societal change and a hammer is not necessary to build a house. In both cases the tools can make their respective jobs much easier, for example think of constructing a house by hammering nails with a shoe, yikes! On the other tack (PUN!), largely illiterate societies have produced movements without any assistance from no fancy book learnings, yet most of these movements only produce results (such as overthrowing dictators) by the direction of a literate minority. Such an observation would lead to Vladimir Lenin's theory of vanguardism.

Thus, no a book has never produced the impetus to overthrow a ruler, but like a hammer to building a house it would be very difficult to incite a popular overthrow of a dictator without using the guidance of ideas produced by books and pamphlets.

Upvote:3

There's a fair debate that the release of some dispatches by Wikileaks was responsible for the ouster of Ben Ali in Tunisia.

I have to say "partially responsible" though. Obviously the Tunisian people did most of the heavy lifting. But it is said that one of the things that enabled them to even think about it was the revelation that the US, far from supporting the guy, actually looked upon him as somewhat of a corrupt buffoon.

Upvote:4

From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp. It is available (PDF and audio book) free of charge from the Einstein Institute. A short description of the history of this book, From Dictatorship to Democracy, may be downloaded here. The books was written as a general non-violent manual to topple dictators.

The methods describe within the book have been used in "Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Slovenia, Madagascar, Mali, Bolivia, and the Philippines. Nonviolent resistance has furthered the movement toward democratization in Nepal, Zambia, South Korea, Chile, Argentina, Haiti, Brazil, Uruguay, Malawi, Thailand, Bulgaria, Hungary, Zaire, Nigeria, and various parts of the former Soviet Union (playing a significant role in the defeat of the August 1991 attempted hard-line coup d'etat)". It was used in many of the Arab Spring uprisings/revolutions as Arabic copies were circulated as described in those articles: Gene Sharp: Author of the nonviolent revolution rulebook and Gene Sharp: How to Start a Revolution are two articles that indicate that his work was used in Egypt during the Arab Spring. There is even a Al Jazeera talks with the quiet but influential scholar of non-violent struggle.

Upvote:6

In Russia, I think Das Kapital probably has a reasonable claim

Upvote:6

In most of Europe the publication of things in support of the Protestant Reformation would have removed the power of the pope from a country.

Upvote:6

"Slavery" wasn't exactly a dictator. But Harriet Beecher Stowe's book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is widely credited with helping to bring about the Civil War that ended slavery in the South. Even President Abraham Lincoln asked her "Are you the little lady that wrote the book that started this great war?"

More post

Search Posts

Related post