Deliberate violation of the law was a big part of the colonial era protest movement here in India. While the British did leave after WW2, there could have been a thousand reasons for them to have left, and no single thing can be ascribed as a cause for their departure. So it's meaningless to ask whether civil disobedience had any effect.
Indeed, the only explicit purpose of civil disobedience was to thump one's foot and declare the colonial government illegal. Rule of law did not matter when authorities were not lawful. It was a calculated sneer at authorities to tell them that their law and order was empty and non-existent.
When I was a child in school, I simply could not have imagined anybody doing anything else, even though it was a radical course of action. But after reading some viewpoints a few weeks ago, I feel it should not have been done.
Middle class Indians largely refused to participate in civil disobedience. Upper class Indians and lower class Indians, who were the revolution, have demonized the passive middle class in history books and elsewhere. But they were doing something not entirely foolish. The following is what I have come to understand of their reasoning.
1. The British government was dishonest and corrupt in the same way Indians were dishonest and corrupt. It's a universal trait. The dishonesty and corruption is common to both private citizens and those private citizens who happen to end up becoming public officials. The Indian government which replaced the British government has been no less cruel or destructive. A government can be just a group of people who are amoral or unlawful just the way many folks in your neighbourhood are amoral or unlawful.
2. We all have to live together in between many amoral and unlawful people, and it's just as unfeasible to declare civil disobedience against many individuals. You could reject the milk from the thieving milkman, or the bread from the dishonest shopkeeper, but you still needed the milk and bread.
3. Much in the same way, to repudiate those who sell violence, whether they be a monopoly on violence or any mercenary protection is to reject that benefit of law and order, that is necessary reality of human life.
4. As von Mises wrote in Theory and History, the bridge between mind and matter has not been closed, and science does not explain human behaviour. Until the day we do, we'll just assume that man is just a social and moral construction, and his compliance to a cruel and unjust ruler is just a part of him having to live with relative peace of mind in a social setting i.e. with other people like his colleagues at work or kids at home. Keeping some kind of order, even under frivolous, deeply dangerous, hurtful and arbitrary rules, is a part of keeping those others happy.
5. There are no humane alternatives in the modern state, since replacing the British colonials, who implemented heavy protectionism, tarriffs, food distribution controls, and statutory monopolies, brought in a new Indian government, that implemented heavy protectionism, tarriffs, food distribution controls, and statutory monopolies. And the latter also threw in laws to sacrifice us to the beastly religions of Equality and Social Justice. Both have caused famines and mass deaths in both periods. Both saw middle class Indians sticking it out under quiet compliance. Unless we bring back the Old Catholic Church (that Rothbard called "often a concrete and moral authority"), the beastly amoral state is the only kind that will force itself into existence.
6. Obviously, we all have enough conscience to disobey a law that can not be obeyed under any circumstances, like a Pharoah telling you to kill your first born child, but I am deliberately ignoring such extreme cases to give a general idea.
7. The Far Left and Marxists say that man's existence itself started from disobedience against nature for survival. If man could rebel against wild predatory animals, micro-organisms that cause illnesses, and natural disasters, why not against natural society? (Obviously, government itself is often a rebellion against natural society, but the social and legal order that the government monopoly offers is not.) Like von Mises once said, social Darwinism is that other side of human evolution - not the physical one against bugs and critters, but the social one, and social order is that one creation of natural human society that came from such social evolution. It would be self-denial against human life to engage in civil disobedience and stage unlawful protests just so that your kids could see you dragged off by the police.
What do you think?
There are only two mechanisms that have any chance of success in evolving society to be more free instead of the increasing police/welfare/warfare state that the USA, England and others have become. They are:
1. Education-This is a slow process as government controls so much of education that by the time the free folks get a crack at it, the people are mostly brainwashed.
2. Civil Disobedience-Government relies completely on obedience. It can only handle a hand full of people to break the law at any time. Look at pot consumption in California. The govenrment has lost complete control and isn't going to get it back. What would happen if 2/3 of the business population just stopped paying taxes?
The most powerful government in the history of the world can not possibly win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is trying to start something in Iran. Any wide scale civil disobedience could touch a reaction that would get millions to join. For example resistance to a draft? or the wars in general?
And don't bother voting. Voting is the worst way to change the status quo as it is the political process that created it. But you can dream of a white knight candidate who is pro-freedom (Ron Paul maybe) and he could not even win a Republican nomination against the awful warfare statist McCain who most Republicans can't stand much less people who love freedom.
There is a third way which is kind of a variant of civil disobedience. That is Agorism where individuals when ever possible withdraw participation in legal activities and provide themselves their means of life through black and gray markets. There are varying levels of this beginning at those who deal only in cash purchases and refuse to pay sales taxes to those dealing in other illegal markets.
@Bogart: Are there any bigger agoristic projects or information sites or is it more of an individual "don't talk don't tell"-business?
There is like an Anarchist Wikipedia that has the best discussion of Agorism that I have seen. Here is the link:http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Agorism
Bogart, you could declare civil disobedience on the government, but how will that guarantee a culture of property rights in the civil society?
Even if the existing government were completely removed, there could still be the scope for existence of counterfeiters, fraudulent characters, extorters, and militant aggressors against property. Property violation can exist both from private citizens and government.
For example, look at the warring Hutus and Tutsis from the 1990s Congo. Human action comes from human nature, and when you have people with disregard for work, no concern for the future, pathological hatred of their fellow men, no respect for human life or peace, and preference for short-term kicks instead of working towards the future, do you really think the Hutus or Tutsis would ever exist in any peaceful division of labour or specialization?
Indeed, take that culture of property violation, and once you dissolve one aggressor against property, say the central bank or the executive government, you still have various other would-be violators left. The fact that government has dishonest crooks working in it only reflects that private citizens of individual society also include such dishonest crooks. Look at the US: the federal mercenaries who murdered fanatic cultists in Waco, the policemen who beat up innocent black men, or the counterfeiters at the Federal Reserve are just as likely to conduct those actions in private life as anywhere else. The only difference is that being in the government gives them immunity.
Civil disobedience is a deliberate breaking of the law to protest against unjust government. But the law merely reflects human passion for social order that goes far beyond the government, and the government is another entity expected to stay in its confines, even though the government and private citizens often do not. What matters is that social order is a greater ideal of high civilization that is expected to remain, no matter the change of government.
Christians in Iraq, the oldest Christian community in the world, have survived till late because they accepted the law of their conquerors. Their conquerors had little love for Christians, but Christian obedience allowed both order in Iraqi Christian society and reduced odds of violence and suppression against them. The oldest Christian community refused to call itself Christian if it ever engaged in dissident actions or disobedience of government, because Christians in Iraq had nowhere else to go, could not live in isolation from other Iraqis, and could only build on moral life by living and working with fellow Iraqis.
Education is still a better alternative, far better than the rest. Of course most will not accept your message. You only reach out to those who wish to reach out to you. But to force liberalism in a society that is not liberal is not even an alternative to consider. It's an inward, bottom-up action, not a top-down one.
I can make no guarantees about anything. Neither can any government/coercive agency. The only difference is that I cannot nor do I claim the power to aggress against my neighbors. Government claims to be able to protect my rights by violating them. All I know is that I interact with hundreds of people every day some of whom I do not even know and only the ones under government employ have the power to aggress against me.
Now about Tutsis and Hutus, do you believe the Hobbesian view that in the absence of a violent gang the children will be bad and kill each other? I subscribe to the theory that in the absence of a violent overlord that people will react by learning self protection and interact peacefully with others. I have my anecdotal example of this which is the "Not So Wild, Wild West" in the Post War of Northern Aggression era in the USA. The reality is that less than 1000 people were killed in these gun fights across a vast territory with thousands of people, very little law enforcement and a lot of freedom.(I heard numbers as low as 100) The mass majority of towns were peaceful places where people defended themselves.
Humans in previous generations created coins that were works of art to prevent counterfeiting. There are other mechanisms to do this. Government on the other hand steals my money and then uses it to protect against counterfeiters when the Federal Government in the USA (Its agent the Fed) is the largest counterfeiter in the history of mankind. In the area of Intellectual Property, individuals are responsible for protecting their property from theft. IP rules have government steal my money to protect the property of another person.
I simply believe that it's inner human nature through which good or bad things are done.
Of course a police will not help. In the rich world, the United States has both a harsh and unfair police that wrongly beats or locks up innocent people, and criminals of an extremely rotten nature as well (see those who burnt alive Chris Newsom).
Meanwhile, in Germany or Netherlands, you have neither a harsh and cruel police nor such a brutally criminal populace. The only reason is that Germans are Germans and Americans are Americans.
That long and hard means called education seems to be far more realistic in terms of assuring a safe and stable human environment.