The book Getting to Yes is IMO one of those books that everyone should read. It is in fact a best-seller approaching classic status. This book is about negotiation. The book uses examples of negotiations between countries and between large organizations, but the examples also include negotiations between two people. The authors advocate a technique called Principled Negotiation.

Principled Negotiation

Getting to Yes sees Principled Negotiation as avoiding the problems of both "hard" and "soft" negotiation. In hard negotiation, the negotiator "sees any negotiation as a contest of wills in which the side that takes the more extreme position and holds out longer fares better. He wants to win." What's the problem with hard negotiation? "He [the hard negotiator] often ends up producing an equally hard response which exhausts him and his resources and harms his relationship with the other side."

"Soft negotiation" is characterized this way. "The soft negotiator wants to avoid personal conflict and so makes concessions readily in order to reach agreement. He wants an amicable resolution." The problem with soft negotiation, from my perspective, is that the soft negotiator loses to the hard negotiator. But even if the soft negotiator is willing to lose, for the sake of having a good relationship, there is still a problem -- the soft negotiator often ends up exploited and feeling bitter.

The four basic tenets of Principled Negotiation:

1. Separate the people from the problem.
2. Focus on interests, not positions.
3. Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do.
4. Insist that the result be based upon some objective standard.

The High Moral Cause

In this sense, Principled Negotiation differs from what King and Gandhi did. In Gandhi's principles of satyagraha (that I have collected), he does not mention a high moral cause. King mentions one implicitly: "Nonviolent action is directed at eliminating evil, not destroying an evil-doer." The main point of this is one's attitude towards one's opponent, but it implies that satyagraha (nonviolent action) is being used to fight evil.

The presence versus absence of a high moral cause has a number of consequences. One is civil disobedience. One of the prominent aspect of Gandhi's and King's satyagrahas was that they and their followers broke laws and spent time in jail and prison. Getting to Yes does not mention breaking any laws and that does not seem to be part of their negotiating technique.

Gandhi and King, and their followers, also suffered. This demonstrated the importance and strength of their commitment to their higher moral cause. If an agreement is not a high moral cause, it is probably not worth suffering for it.

So, there is no question that Principled Negotiation looks different from Gandhi's satyagraha and King's satyagraha. It is also different from my internet satyagraha, which had no negotiation.

Morality

And now we come to the genius of Principled Negotiation. Tenet #4 is that in Principled Negotiation, you should insist that the result be based upon some objective standard. This invokes a moral principle: An objective standard should be used, rather than having it be a selfish contest of wills.

The examples of "objective standards" in Getting to Yes are often moral. They are not high moral causes, but the morality is there. If nothing else, there can be insistence on being treated fairly. In one example, of a man negotiating with his insurance company for how much he should be reimbursed for his car, he insisted on fair compensation.

Fighting for Hearts

Getting to Yes does not explicitly mention fighting for hearts, but the idea is there. The book constantly mentions the importance of the relationship with the people you are negotiating with -- when you are done, you want to have a good relationship with them.

Most negotiations do not have spectators. But satyagraha is also a good way of fighting for your own heart. Getting to Yes makes a similar point -- "Standard strategies for negotiation often leave people [using the standard strategies] dissatisfied, worn out, or alienated -- and frequently all three."

How does principled negotiation try to "win" yet try to maintain a good relationship with the adversary? The answer reads, at least to me, exactly like the answer for satygraha. To review, there are the four principles of Principled Negotiation:

1. Separate the people from the problem.
2. Focus on interests, not positions.
3. Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do.
4. Insist that the result be based upon some objective standard.

Let me start with #3, which is the least like Gandhi and King. Gandhi and King were fighting for a basic moral principle: That India should be free, that Afro-Americans should have equal civil rights. From their perspective, there wasn't a variety of possible solutions, there was only one: Freedom for India and equal civil fights for Afro-Americans.

However, to the extent that there were different possible ways of achieving these goals, they didn't care about the possibilities. So King and Gandhi would have been comfortable with this principle. I do not think it is a fundamental part of satyagraha; I think it is "just" a good principle of negotiating.

In contrast #4 seems to be a different way of stating one of the basic princples of satyagraha -- that you are fighting for truth, justice, and doing what is right. The minute you do this, you can see yourself as cooperating with your adversary, not competing. Second, you can conceptualize the "fight" as an exchange of information. Finally, the term "winning" takes on a new meaning. You do not give up -- no one should ever give up on the goal of doing the right thing. But you are not committed to your vision of what is right. Yes, you have a vision of what is right. If you are wrong, and if your friend/adversary can help you see a better way as a result of your fight/exchange of information, then you thank your adversary. The whole point was to exchange information to help find the truth. Getting to Yes says, "Never yield to pressure, only to principle." Implicitly, this implies that yielding is okay, but it is a yielding of position, consistent with the idea that the goal is truth and justice.

Gandhi and King had no trouble finding a higher moral cause -- it was staring them in the face. When you are negotiating, there sometimes is a moral cause. But usually, you have to do some work to find what Getting to Yes calls an "objective standard". They give examples of objective standards. But I suspect that a choice of objective standards, and usually even the generation of the objective standard will come down to a moral principle: What is fair? And when fairness does not apply, what is appropriate?

In other words, I think you enter principled negotiations with the attitude that you and your "adversary" are going to try to find the solution that is fair and appropriate. The only question is discovering that solution, and you (in theory) are working together to find it. Getting to Yes uses the phrase "objective standard", but what I think they mean is some goal transcending selfish interest.

Finally, we have principles #1 and #2. For the most part, these are ways conceptualizing the "conflict" as really being about cooperation, and trying to get your adversary to think that way to. They are also ways of being kind to your adversary.

Summary

If you want to say that Principled Negotiotiation is not satyagraha, fine. We should not quarrel over definitions. The main point is to notice the similarities -- the two are essentially using the same principles. And a minor point is that satyagraha is not dead -- people are still developing ways to use satyagraha, even if they do not use that word.