A commenter named “nope” replied to my post on the Supply & Demand for Moral Accounting Engagements with two quotes:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Frederick Douglass
“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Martin Luther King.
I’ve thought about this type of criticism quite a bit: can we actually make the world a better place by sitting around and having a principled conversation about accountability systems and moral principles? It sure sounds like weak sauce, and the more momentous the issue (e.g., women’s vote, slavery) the weaker it sounds. But I don’t think the quote by Douglass and MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham jail warrant a blanket “nope” on moral accounting. Instead, they clarify its relationship to direct action.
MLK’s letter emphasizes that direct action must be tied to negotiation:
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham….Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants–for example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise….You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
Moral accounting engagements include 3 of King’s 4 steps. It is very heavy on ‘collection of the facts’ regarding injustice–that’s the bulk of the engagement. It even encourages a form of ‘self-purification. For King, self-purification was mostly a matter of encouraging non-violence; in moral accounting it is more a matter of keeping one’s attention focused on accountability systems, and avoiding character attacks. Moral accounting engagements don’t include direct action, but (unlike those King addressed his letter to) they don’t demand that activists “wait”, either.
And perhaps most importantly, moral accounting provides a framework for the type of negotiation that King used direct action to bring about. Some of that negotiation will be of the usual, interest-focused type. Two sides have some degree of power (otherwise they wouldn’t be talking), weigh their best alternatives to a negotiated outcome, search for options that improve collective welfare, and seek as big a share of that welfare as they can get. But King does not argue simply that “my side has enough power to demand change”. Instead, he makes a principled argument, which suggests he sees some value in a principle-based negotiation:
How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.
Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?
I won’t rehash the principles of moral accounting, and how they might speak to these specific complaints. But it’s worth noting that the Bookkeeping Principle speaks directly to Douglass’s claim that power concedes nothing without a demand: with power comes obligation. The powerful may not want to hear this, and it may take direct action to get them to the negotiating table. But at least you’ll have an argument from principle, as well as an argument from interest, when you get there.