QuestionsMust we always obey the law?Live not by lies: refusing to take part
Must we always obey the law?Conscience first

Live not by lies: refusing to take part

Live not by lies; personal non-participation

Alexandre Soljenitsyne 1918 · 2008Russian writer, eight years in the Soviet camps, who tells that world in The Gulag Archipelago and sees there a line between good and evil running through every heart.
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What it claims

When violence cannot be overthrown, one must at least personally refuse to take part in it: write, say or sign nothing one believes false. The choice of conscience comes before obedience to the regime.

Why

If we cannot overthrow violence, we can refuse to say, write or sign what we know is false: the lie holds only through us.

The same idea through history
Alexandre Soljenitsyne1974The text is released on the day Solzhenitsyn is arrested in the USSR. He is expelled the next day. It is addressed to ordinary Soviet citizens.
Henry David Thoreau1849Thoreau already sets out the refusal to take part in injustice (not being the agent of injustice). Solzhenitsyn makes it a more modest refusal: not saying what one knows to be false.
In short

"Live not by lies: refusing to take part" is an argument by Alexandre Soljenitsyne ('Live Not by Lies' (12 February 1974), 1974) on the question "Must we always obey the law?" (answer: conscience first). Its claim: When violence cannot be overthrown, one must at least personally refuse to take part in it: write, say or sign nothing one believes false. The choice of conscience comes before obedience to the regime. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

'Live Not by Lies' (12 February 1974)
Valid with an implicit premise

In a regime where one can neither vote, nor demonstrate, nor be heard, what can an ordinary citizen do? Solzhenitsyn answers: refuse to lie. In his view violence needs lies to look legitimate, and lies live only if everyone accepts them every day (signing, voting, repeating slogans). He therefore proposes a resistance within everyone's reach: write, say or sign nothing one believes to be false. It is not a political programme but a duty of conscience that anyone can fulfil alone.

P1Violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence; of each person it demands only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit.
P2One can escape this through 'a personal nonparticipation in lies': 'Let their rule hold not through me!'
P3It is not a matter of shouting the truth in the square, but of refusing to say what one does not think: never knowingly support lies.
P4 · implicit premiseEveryone has a duty not to be an accomplice to a lie that serves violence, even if their refusal alone does not change the regime.
Therefore when violence cannot be overthrown, one must at least personally refuse to take part in it: write, say or sign nothing one believes false. The choice of conscience comes before obedience to the regime.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Valid with P4. P1 says why lying is a link in power; P2 and P3 define the refusal; P4, hidden, makes it a duty. Points of attack: P1 (does the regime really hold by lies, or by fear and force?) and the cost of refusal: Solzhenitsyn acknowledges that 'someone will have to temporarily lose his job' and that it will not be easy. Note also that Solzhenitsyn does not ask anyone to speak the truth in public, only not to say what is false.
Analogy. A wall of bricks laid one by one: if each mason refuses to lay his brick, the wall does not rise. A single refused brick does not bring it down, but the one who refuses did not build the wall.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Max Weber (ethic of responsibility) 1919 · attacks premise 4

Weber distinguishes the ethic of conviction (acting on principle whatever happens) and the ethic of responsibility (answering for the consequences). A purely personal refusal, says the objection, protects the purity of the one who refuses without changing the system: a moral comfort.

a defender replies
We have not yet found a direct reply by Soljenitsyne in the texts.
A
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn defender of the argument · 1974 · What the text already says (Solzhenitsyn does not discuss Weber)
This refusal is the easiest way for us and the most devastating for the lies: when people renounce lies, they simply cease to exist. The argument is therefore also about consequences, not only about the purity of the one who refuses.
The debate goes on (our summary) Critics answer that the real effect of a sum of refusals remains to be proved (see the next objection).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Weber: one must answer for the consequences. Solzhenitsyn: the sum of individual refusals destroys the lie. Core disagreement: does an individual refusal have a real effect on a regime?
E
Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan 2011 · attacks premise 2

Their study Why Civil Resistance Works compares over 300 resistance campaigns (1900-2006) and finds that nonviolent resistance succeeds more often than armed struggle, mainly because it draws much broader participation. What brings a regime down, in their view, is the number and diversity of participants. Applied here (our reconstruction, they do not target Solzhenitsyn): a personal refusal, if it stays isolated, is not enough.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 2011, after the author's death (2008).
The debate goes on (our summary) Reconstructed reply (our reading): Solzhenitsyn does not propose an isolated act but a call to all: 'let each man choose'. The first step remains an individual choice. The study shows that large movements succeed; it does not say they arise without individual refusals. The debate is open.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Chenoweth and Stephan: what counts is the mass. Solzhenitsyn: the mass begins with personal refusals. Core disagreement: is the individual refusal a cause of the mass or a morally valuable act without effect?
V
Václav Havel 1978 · attacks premise 3

In 'The Power of the Powerless', Havel extends the idea: the system holds because everyone, like the greengrocer who displays a slogan he does not believe, agrees to play his part. But for Havel, ceasing to lie leads to 'living within the truth': saying what one thinks, organising, creating parallel structures. Keeping silent without lying, Solzhenitsyn's minimum, is not enough.

a defender replies
We have not yet found a direct reply by Soljenitsyne in the texts.
A
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn defender of the argument · 1974 · What the text already says (written before Havel)
Solzhenitsyn presents this refusal as a first step: whoever begins to cleanse himself will easily discern other opportunities to evade lies. The minimum is not an end but a beginning.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Havel: refusal must become a life in truth. Solzhenitsyn: refusal is the accessible minimum. Core disagreement: is the minimum enough?