1.Individual self-interestA law is not in the individual’s interests.
2.Group interestA law is not in the interests of a particular group.
3.MoralityA law is morally wrong.
4.JusticeA law is unjust.
All defenders of civil disobedience would reject the first category as justifying
lawbreaking – to break the law simply because it does not suit your interests is to
engage in a criminal act. The second category is more complex. Marx argued that
it was in the interests of a particular group, the working class, to overthrow the
capitalist system and that as a result a classless society would be created. It follows
that it is in the long-term interests of allhuman beings that the working class should
succeed. But Marx advocated the complete transformation of society – that is,
revolution– and not merely the removal of certain laws; for him there could be no
appeal to morality, for morality is the product of existing, capitalist, society.
Civil disobedience, as distinct from revolution, must appeal to moral ideas
accessible to those who support the existing laws. The willingness of the civilly
disobedient to accept the penalties for their lawbreaking assumes that the
‘oppressors’ can be moved by their actions. Consequently, most theories of civil
disobedience rest on the third and fourth categories. However, as we will see, there
is an important distinction between breaking a law because you judge it immoral,
and breaking it because you believe it is unjust.
Although self-interest is not a justification for civil disobedience, self-interest
might well be a motivating factor. For example, the segregation laws operative in
the Southern states of the United States before the 1960s damaged the interests of
individualblacks and blacks as a group. This does not invalidate the claims of
people such as Martin Luther King that he and other blacks were morally justified
in breaking the law.
It is important to recognise how recent is the development of the concept of civil
disobedience. Certainly, political philosophers prior to the twentieth century had
much to say about rebellion, but the possibility that rebellion could be anything
other than the overthrow of the political system was not seriously considered.
Civil disobedience and political obligation
Although there is debate among political theorists about the kinds of moral reasons
that can justify civil disobedience, there is general agreement that civil disobedience
implies political obligation. Laws are broken by people who have a respect for the
law. There are different arguments for political obligation, but the prisoner’s
dilemma is useful as a way of organising our thoughts about obligation and
disobedience (see Chapter 8 on Liberalism). The resolution of the dilemma entails
an agreement to cooperate, where such cooperation will be enforced by the state.
That resolution is threatened by free-riders, who seek to enjoy the benefits gained
from cooperation while evading the costs. The image of the free-rider is of a person
who breaks the law out of self-interest. However, there are morally motivated free-
riders: submission to the state involves not only giving up self-interest but also a
degree of moral judgement. It is this which underlies the claim that civil disobedience
is only justified if it appeals to certain kinds of moral reasons – reasons shared by
(most) fellow citizens.
Chapter 19 Civil disobedience 425