Compliance is an action typically praised, but there are circumstances when it is frowned upon. In some situations, it is considered good and smart to follow the orders, whereas, in other situations, it would be complicit to comply. But when exactly does compliance become complicity?

According to Merriam-Webster, “compliance” is the act of conforming and submitting to a desire, command, or coercion, whereas “complicity” means the association or participation in a wrongful act.[1] Compliant actions, both active and passive, become complicity when a compliant action hurts another individual or when no action is performed to prevent another individual's suffering, oppression, or harm. However, compliance should not be considered complicity if a person would be harmed by not being compliant, such as obeying strict laws in an autocracy. A person's compliant behavior or financial decisions can lead to a complicit action, causing harm to other individuals. For example, being told or forced to physically harm another person, and then doing it, can be seen as compliance becoming complicity, whereas civil disobedience or tax resistance due to being a conscientious objector can be seen as non-compliance to avoid complicity. Internal and external factors also influence a person's actions in this process, as well as whether the person is acting as an individual or part of a social group.

On one hand, Stanley Milgram's social psychology experiment is a perfect example of when compliance becomes complicity due to a person's behavior that inflicts harm on another person by obeying authority. The experiment was carried out in 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major Nazi organizers of the Holocaust. Milgram sought to explore whether Eichmann and other Germans were simply obeying orders because of the power dynamics associated with the Nazi regime instead of personally wanting to commit genocide against the Jews.[2]

In Milgram’s experiment, volunteer participants were named "teachers" and would use different levels of electricity to “shock” a "learner" if they answered a question incorrectly.[3] When “shocked,” audio was played of the learner suffering in pain. In reality, no one was actually getting shocked, and the purpose of the experiment was to see if the teacher would comply with what an authority figure told them to do, disregarding the safety, feelings, and expressions of pain made by the learner. In the experiment, every teacher went to 300 volts of electric shock, and 65 percent of the volunteers went all the way to 450 volts, which, if actually administered, could have caused the death of the learner.[4]

The results of this experiment illustrate when compliance becomes complicity as some of the participants increased the voltage that could kill someone simply when an authority figure told them to do so. Teachers strictly complied with what the experimenter told them to do despite the risks and the dangers that it could cause to another person, which is complicity. Supposedly, the 35 percent of teachers who didn’t administer maximum shocks were reminded of their conscience as they heard the “screaming” of the learner.[5] However, since only a small portion of the participants allowed their conscience to kick in, when under the pressure of an authority's command, an individual’s moral compass could not be trusted and relied upon to prevent complicity in harming another. In fact, the participants only inflicted harm at the command of the authority figure because that person appeared more knowledgeable and had a higher status than the participant; in other words, the mere presence of an authority — not any other incentive — convinced the participants to follow directions no matter how much harm was inflicted on the learners. In locating the point at which compliance becomes complicity, this is especially concerning since the number of people following their conscience might drastically drop if they were faced with a reward for not doing so.

One factor that prevented compliance from becoming complicity was peer influence. Many participants stopped increasing the voltage when they became aware that other people didn’t increase the voltage, reflecting how easy it is for external social factors to influence an individual to act in a certain way. Overall, the Milgram experiment shows how ordinary people can easily become complicit in violence. It demonstrates how compliance could become complicity, and one's conscience cannot solely defeat the pressure that comes from other people. In this case, the point at which compliance becomes complicity is not when the teacher shocked the learner for the first time, but when they carried out that action for the second time, now knowing it would cause harm due to the learner's screams.

On the other hand, a counterexample of defying compliance and complicity through one's conscience comes from the famous author and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau lived during the era of slavery in antebellum America, and he was strongly against it. Hence, to not comply with a government regime that supported slavery, Thoreau decided to stop paying taxes to protest against the Mexican War, a war to acquire western lands for the territorial expansion of slavery. He understood that his civil disobedience would cause him harmful consequences, and he was right. As a result of his refusal to pay taxes, Thoreau was brought to jail for a night.

However, jail didn’t discourage Thoreau from protesting against the government in a nonviolent fashion. He wrote his essay “Civil Disobedience” in 1849 to explain how people should act together to work against unjust laws and wrongful governments.[6] Thoreau's essay, in fact, inspired both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. to act against their own governments in order to fight for their rights.[7] King acknowledged Thoreau's influence: “I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau.”[8] As a founding father of civil disobedience and nonviolent protesting, Henry David Thoreau is a model of how to resist compliance when doing so would lead to complicity.

Today, paying taxes to a government supporting immoral policy could also be considered complicit. For example, according to the modern Tax Resistance Movement and groups such as the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) and War Resistors League, some of whom support Palestine in the Israel-Palestine conflict, argue that paying taxes to the U.S. government to fund Israel is the point at which compliance becomes complicity as tax funds are being used towards an unjust war, from their perspective. Hence, many people have started doing just that, like Thoreau. After realizing that simple protests on the street came to no avail, such taxpayers have stopped paying their taxes, as they refuse to make any contributions and be complicit in the war.[9] Yet, refusing to pay taxes is a crime, a consequence that these non- payers will have to face, as Thoreau did 150 years before. Still, like Milgram’s experiment, when participants refrained from administering shocks when they saw their peers refraining, these non- paying protestors have a chance to dismantle wrongful systems that are complicit through acting together, forming a community, and defeating the system in numbers; then, there is less chance to suffer the individual legal consequences Thoreau faced.[10]

In addition to the current Tax Resistance Movement, the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act of 2021 proposes to protect people who resist war for religious purposes as conscientious objectors, and paying taxes towards such wars serves as their point of complicity. This act would ensure that taxes paid by these groups would not be used for the military. However, the effectiveness of this act can be easily challenged. If a person stops paying taxes for war, he or she is still funding the supposedly wrongful government in other ways. The tax of someone else, in turn, would be contributed to war instead of something else. So, doesn't all this maneuvering still lead to complicity?

Finally, the relationship between compliance and complicity becomes complicated when one is living in an autocracy or in a similar situation when noncompliance would lead to severe personal risks. In this case, it is normal and acceptable for one to comply to ensure his or her own safety. For example, in North Korea, the most authoritarian government in the world, people are often sent to prison without a trial for noncompliance with the government. Additionally, family members of the noncompliant person would also experience punishments, and executions are frequently carried out on people for “crimes against the state.” Thus, individual disobedience and resistance would do nothing but put one and one’s family at great risk of either execution or a long period of imprisonment.

In this situation, the only viable way of counteracting the wrongful government is to form an organization, such as SLOMR, a union that opposed the control of the Communist Party in Romania when their revolution occurred in 1989. SLOMR was able to grow in a surprisingly fast manner, catching the communists and their leader Nicolae Ceaus?escu off guard, resulting in a successful revolution that brought the nation freedom and safety.[11] However, such organizations are uncommon as many people are not courageous enough to face the risk of participating. Similarly, when an armed individual is threatening a victim, it is hard to expect anyone to stand up for that person and tell the armed assailant that he or she is breaking the law, as that would put the onlooker at risk of being shot. In many cases, a phenomenon called “The Bystander Effect” comes into play, where an individual in a group does not help someone in distress because he believes that another bystander would do so instead.[12] However, suppose the witness evades a crime scene without informing the police. In that case, he or she can be considered complicit as they would already be safe and have no reason to ignore this crime. All in all, as long as one is not at risk of life, injury, or imprisonment, complying with a wrongful act and staying silent as a bystander is complicit.

In conclusion, considering the circumstances, if an individual is living in a safe place, knowing that an action is wrongful but proceeds to carry it out anyway marks the boundary when compliance becomes complicity. Considering other circumstances when a person’s life is under threat or is in danger, noncompliance is understandable and forgivable. When compliance becomes complicity is a complicated topic that involves understanding the situation and setting, such as whether the country one lives in has freedom of the press or is facing any significant risks. In some cases, like Thoreau's, a person's individual conscience can intervene, but more effectively through real-world cases such as Milgram’s experiment, the modern Tax Resistance Movement, and SLOMR, preventing complicity is more effective when done in groups. However, it may be the actions or conscience of one person, like Thoreau, that create that initial spark of noncompliance that influences other people to follow.

Bryan Yuan is a sophomore at the Episcopal High School who enjoys studying politics and international relations. Bryan is an active member in the community, participating in the school newspaper, the History Club, and is a social studies tutor. Bryan also enjoys music, is a percussionist in the EHS percussion ensemble, and is currently learning music production.

Endnotes

[1] Miriam Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compliance https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/complicity

[2] Saul Mcleod, "Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment," Simply Psychology, November 14, 2023, https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html.

[3] Mcleod, "Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment."

[4] Mcleod, "Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment."

[5] Mcleod, "Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment."

[6] Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849, https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/uprising1313/files/2017/10/Civil-Disobedience-by-Henry-David- Thoreau.pdf.

[7] Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.

[8] Brent Powell, "Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the American Tradition of Protest," Organization of American Historians, Magazine of History, January 1, 1995. https://academic.oup.com/maghis/article-abstract/9/2/26/1035789?redirectedFrom=PDF?

[9] Lucy Dean Stockton, "These Americans Won't Pay for the War on Gaza," The Nation, April 12, 2024, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/these-americans-wont-pay-for-the-war-on-gaza/.?

[10] Stockton, "War on Gaza."

[11] Florin Abraham, "The Romanian Revolution," ENRS, August 21, 2015, https://enrs.eu/article/the- romanian-revolution.?

[12] Robert D. Blagg, "Bystander Effect," Encyclopedia Britannica, June 14, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/bystander-effect.

Bibliography

Abraham, Florin. "The Romanian Revolution." ENRS. August 21, 2015. https://enrs.eu/article/the-romanian-revolution

Blagg, Robert D. "Bystander Effect," Encyclopedia Britannica, June 14, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/topic/bystander-effect.

Mcleod, Saul. "Stanley Milgrim Shock Experiment." Simply Psychology, November 14, 2023 https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

Powell, Brent. "Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the American Tradition of Protest. Organization of American Historians, Magazine of History. January 1, 1995. https://academic.oup.com/maghis/article-abstract/9/2/26/1035789?redirectedFrom=PDF

Stockton, Lucy Dean. "These Americans Won't Pay for the War on Gaza." The Nation. April 12, 2024. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/these-americans-wont-pay-for-the-war-on-gaza/

Thoreau, Henry David. Civil Disobedience. 1849. https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/uprising1313/files/2017/10/Civil-Disobedience-by-Henry-David- Thoreau.pdf

Webster, Miriam. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compliance https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/complicity