Gene Sharp: More Anarchist than Neoliberal

In the wake of the so-called Arab Spring, early efforts to explain the events in European and US media focused on the influence of the ideas of nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp. Irrespective of the accuracy of these efforts, this led to greater engagement with his contributions to the field of nonviolent resistance. However, Marcie Smith’s (2019a) appraisal of Sharp has leveled the serious accusation that he willingly contributed to US hegemony and economic neoliberalism. Alternatively, this paper presents the complex, context-specific circumstances of nonviolence in Eastern Europe, as well as the emergence of neoliberalism from Poland’s Solidarity movement—a heavily working-class resistance struggle against state socialism—to show that reducing nonviolent revolution to being responsible for reinforcing repressive systems, and reducing nonviolent revolution to Sharp’s pragmatic turn, is a severe oversimplification. Moreover, Gene Sharp’s writings are contextualized in relation to his more Anarchistic influences, in addition to Sharp’s concerted engagement with and replication of Hannah Arendt’s analysis of revolution and violence. It is argued that these largely overlooked elements of Sharp’s work should be drawn on to transcend the dominant ‘pragmatic nonviolence’ association of his work, while informing our understanding of constructive resistance during campaigns for dignity, equality, freedom, and alternatives to the capitalist system.