In his book Ward argues that pacifism is the ideology of nonviolent political action, and is axiomatic among progressives in mainstream North America. If he means that nonviolent action is built into the way most progressives design their national campaigns for change, I disagree.

Some years ago I was called to Washington, D.C., to consult with a large progressive coalition that had been working for legislation that would help poor and working people. Their campaign was failing, and they wanted me to help them design a series of nonviolent protests. My first question to the group of national leaders was: "Where is the rebel energy in your coalition?" Silence followed. Finally, they began reciting the story of when various militant groups had left the coalition in disillusionment. In short, there was no rebel energy left. "In that case," I said, "this will be a short meeting. You can't pull off powerful nonviolent direct action without rebel energy. You've run this campaign as a conventional lobbying operation and you can't -- at the last minute -- switch gears and become a nonviolent protest movement!"

This is only one example of many. The overwhelming commitment of most progressive leaders in North America is to conventional methods like electoral campaigns, lobbying, lawsuits, petitioning, letter-writing, public relations, and the like, instead of to nonviolent action. This has always been true. When Martin Luther King first emerged as a civil rights leader, the established groups hoped he and his nonviolent tactics would disappear: their confidence was in lawsuits and lobbying. Even the labor movement, born in militancy in the 19th century, these days prefers supporting electoral candidates to strikes.

It's understandable that Ward and I disagree on this, because we use similar words but are actually observing different things. In his book Ward uses "pacifism," "nonviolence," and "nonviolent revolution" interchangeably, even though they show up very differently in practice.

Nonviolence, or (as I prefer to call it) nonviolent action, is used mostly on a grassroots level --when people need "street heat" to achieve a goal. Demonstrations, sit-ins, occupations, strikes, boycotts: there are many methods of nonviolent action that we can read about in the papers every day, and people use them because they often work better than more conventional means such as lobbying and petitioning. The national professional opposition organizations don't build nonviolent direct action into their thinking, as I said, but grassroots activists turn to it a lot just because it often works, to save trees or get some housing for homeless people or force a change in AIDS policy or get apparel manufacturers to stop buying from sweatshops.

In the U.S. nonviolent action is used mostly by the working class and poor, more by people of color than whites, and more by younger people than by older people. While the bulk of nonviolent action in the U.S. is done by working class community-based organizations, important uses have been made by unions, lesbians and gays, people with disabilities, environmentalists, students, and others.

"Pacifism," on the other hand, is an ideology, a belief system that holds that it is immoral to injure or kill people to achieve your goals. Pacifists believe that good ends can't justify killing. Also, their understanding of cause and effect is that good ends grow out of good means, like a good cake grows out of good ingredients. They believe that both morality and good sense require that we "live the change we want to see." Probably the best-known pacifists to people in the U.S. are Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, who founded and led the United Farmworkers, and Mohandas K. Gandhi.

A huge majority of those who engage in nonviolent action in the U.S. are not pacifists. Dr. King knew very well that most African Americans who risked their lives in his campaigns were not believers in pacifism; they used nonviolent action situationally. And there are many pacifists who rarely if ever engage in nonviolent action, who rarely take to the streets or go on strike or do civil disobedience. So mixing up "pacifism" and "nonviolence," as Ward does, confuses more than it clarifies.

Mixing "nonviolent action" and "pacifism" with "nonviolent revolution" muddies the waters even more. The "Manifesto for Nonviolent Revolution", (3) the most widely-adopted statement of this position, is much more radical than most users of nonviolent action or most pacifists are willing to go. The "Manifesto" calls for an end to corporate capitalism, to the nation-state system, and to the destruction of the environment. It denounces patriarchy, racism, and other systems of social oppression. It projects a vision of a hugely different social order where freedom flourishes, economic enterprises are democratic, and humans live at peace with the planet. More radical than the Marxist-Leninists by far, the "Manifesto" seeks to learn from the failures of the Left to point to fresh and creative approaches in the future.