Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America [Paperback]

Ward Churchill (Author), Mike Ryan (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1894037073 | ISBN-13: 978-1894037075 | Publication Date: January 1, 1998

Argues that while the ideology of nonviolent political action promises that the harsh realities of state power can be transcended through good feelings and purity of purpose, it is in fact a counter-revolutionary movement that defends and reinforces the same status-quo it claims to oppose. Churchill debunks the claims of historical pacifist victories, and proposes ways to diminish much of the delusion, aroma of racism, and sense of privilege which mark the covert self-defeatism of mainstream dissident politics. An important intervention, intended to generate badly-needed debate about the issue in the progressive community.

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About the Author

Ward Churchill (enrolled Keetowah Cherokee) has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of aboriginal issues. He is a Professor of American Indian Studies, a leading member of AIM, and has also served as a delegate to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations and as an advocate prosecutor for an international tribunal convened at the request of the Chiefs of Ontario to consider the rights of the indigenous peoples of Canada. He has written or edited over fifteen books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Arbeiter Ring (January 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1894037073
• ISBN-13: 978-1894037075
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 4.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #424,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Every activist should read this book, July 31, 2001

By 

Derrick Jensen (Crescent City, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America (Paperback)

This is an extraordinarily important little book that cuts to the heart of why our movements to bring about social and environmental justice always fail. The fundamental question is: is violence ever an acceptable tool to help bring about social change? This is probably the most important question of our time, yet so often discussions around it fall into cliche and magical thinking: that somehow if we are merely good enough and nice enough people the state will stop using its violence to exploit us all. In this book the authors go through all of the arguments used by pacifists, and shoot them down, using tremendous scholarship and logic. Gandhi is often given as an example of a pacifist achieving his goal, but Gandhi's success comes at the end of a hundred year struggle--often violent--for independence by the Indians. How far could Martin Luther King Jr have gone were it not for the African-Americans taking to the streets? The authors don't, of course, argue for blind, unthinking violence, they merely argue against blind, unthinking nonviolence. A desperately important book

22 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Small but indispensable book, August 21, 2005

By 

P. Greanville "stranded cyrano" (Westport CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America (Paperback)

One of the previous reviewers sums it up very well: In this book, and pulling no punches, Churchill lays out his case against white progressives-to be precise the liberal/social democratic complacent legions of mostly well-educated midlle and upper middle class activists-who are delusional not only in the ineffectual tactics and strategies they pursue (which the ruling elites are only too happy to accommodate as per a well-scripted minuet), but in the belief that they are actually performing revolutionary acts...So, like it or not, Churchill is correct in pointing out that these liberals will do everything except assume actual risk in opposing the system..and that, being mostly interested in practicing "comfort zone" politics, they will almost invariably indulge in essentially worthless "cathartic" posturizing instead of solid opposition. By the way, the same writer is NOT correct in saying that nonviolence has achieved huge transformations. The Iranian revolution (1979) was far from a nonviolent process: the Shah had been opposed for decades by above ground and underground groups, several of which practiced armed struggle and paid a horrific price for it, while the last month of his rule saw masses of people in most Iranian cities, but especially Tehran, literally storming strong points and tanks in the streets with their bare chests and being mowed down...until more and more soldiers simply gave up and melted away or switched sides. As for the collapse of the USSR (1991), that came about as a result of complex processes that did not involve invested CLASS PRIVILEGES, as we have here and in other corporate-dominated nations. As for South Africa, the end of apartheid did not issue from a nonviolent process. Decades-long protests against the fascist legislation escalated until 1958 when the tragedy of Sharpeville occurred. Soon thereafter the government tried to suppress opposition through the sledgehammer approach of bannings and systematic "targeted repression". The first to be hit were the ANC and the PAC, but such bannings merely caused the organisations to go underground and become even more militant. The "armed struggle" therefore began in earnest in 1958 and by 1970 was beginning to affect the South African economy as greater and greater manpower was required to maintain an ever increasing army. Thus, Mandela's organization, the ANC had both a civil and a military arm, even if the latter developed after all roads to a peaceful elimination of Apartheid had proved futile, and long after the beneficiaries of the status quo had demonstrated through their unrelenting savagery that only armed struggle would move history forward. As for the much revered Arundhati Roy I do not think for a minute that she got it right in her speech in New York, where she argued "that there is no way to defeat the Empire by force and that its component parts must be isolated and paralyzed one by one." Sounds terrific and we only wish it were true, but Ms. Roy is also, like her liberal counterparts, utterly delusional. Furthermore, all the acclamation in the chi-chi salons and media precincts she's accustomed to will not change that simple fact. How does she propose to paralyze these component parts of the most heavily armed, cynical, and ruthless class privilege system in history without some form of REAL confrontation? With 2-hour candlelight vigils and some symbolic arrests which, by the way, may or may not be reported by the corporate-owned media? If THAT was all that was required to get rid of an immoral, deeply rooted capitalist system, a Nazi terror regime, a vicious landowning oligarchy as in Salvador, and so on, humanity would have moved past these filthy horrors decades if not centuries ago. As Churchill points out in his book, Nazi Germany was defeated by the massive application of force; the racist American South was similarly juridically defeated in the 1860s by massive military force, by organized all-out violence, (I say juridically because in practice it took 100 more years of struggle that saw innumerable crimes before African Americans could begin to take their rightful place among their fellow citizens)...There is not a single case in history where a deeply entrenched system of class or racial exploitation was overthrown by moral suasion and symbolic protests...If real change came about it was because force was being applied somewhere else alongside the nonviolent tracks...That's the point that Churchill is making in this book. It's a discomfiting point, but I'm afraid it is a true fact. Social change does not come cheap. Well, I could go on, but if you're a liberal I'm sure that facts will matter far less than attachment to convenient fantasies.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Review of Churchill's, "Pacifism and Pathology", June 26, 2007

By 

Miguel A. Sanchez - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America (Paperback)

Over the last few years, I have published articles about issues of US Imperialism and the social struggle movement. I came upon Ward Churchill's book "Pacifism and Pathology," as almost last minute. I had never read or taking seriously Ward Churchill's view, though I have affiliated myself as a member of the anarcho-syndicalist movement. But after reading his book, I realized my deep personnel connections with Dr. Churchill's frustrations and agony with the American social struggle movement. For some time, I affiliated myself with a social struggle movement in the University I am attending, and after almost a month I left. My reasons for leaving, where the same reasons Dr. Churchill explained in his book as the growing disorganization of these movements, and also the misunderstanding that state and private tyrannies; which have amassed great ideological confusion towards vast social and economic control, cannot be countered with the basic techniques used by the social struggle movement in the past. Indeed, Dr. Churchill warns the reader that there has been a tremendous misunderstanding with how non-violent resistance was actually used in the past. That it was a actually a mixture of both the practice of violence and non-violence, for which, if the use of non-violence was so much more tantamount, then the rewards of almost a decade and a half of resistance could not have been achieved.
Though I can connect with the social struggle movement on this university campus, it is deeply polarizing. Such polarization; I felt, was the reasons why on a number occasions they were unsuccessful in reaching out to others, and at the same time, form a coherent bases of action and influence on this campus i.e., they're not taking very seriously.
The tactics used by leaders of the social struggle movement in the United States, and even around the world, vary. I agree with Churchill on the realization that non-violent resistance can only work on a marginal basis. Indeed other countries, which implement vast terror and intimidation towards their own population, cannot rely on peaceful means to take down and tear the authoritarian political and economic system, without resorting to actual self-defense through violent means.
As the world witnesses the tearing apart of the Palestinians states, and perhaps even the fall of Palestine itself in the coming months, it is important to realize that the Palestinians; who have long tolerated state and military terror by Israel and the IDF, cannot be heard by the world through the same methodology used by American peace activists. It just does not work, and to do so, would mean the quick destruction of the Palestinian state.
But what I have to say, in a slight disagreement with Dr. Churchill, is that though the methodology of resistance to state and private terror has to change. The US cannot be won by the means of violence. Our cultural and political system is far more advance and ready for change, without the use of arm resistance and violence. Though in the media it may depict the sense of polarization and a deep divide, consensus by national polls indicate quite strikingly that the vast majority of the population is far to the left than the political and intellectual establishment wants to believe.
The means for political and social change in the US--for which, I agree with Churchill, cannot be won by the same tactics that inhibit a pathological tolerance towards the abuses that private and state systems implement on other populations and even their own. Even the possibility that these groups may be motivated for other reasons besides social change; political power, vanguard social party, all these are plausible reasons as to why Americans are stigmatized by the social struggle movement (as is the rise of the Bolshevik Party in the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party in China).
The goal of the intellectual is the most profound insight that Churchill explains. It has been a realization among many left-wing intellectuals, that the intellectual must be motivated as the tool maker and as the teacher, for which, he could impart the capacity for others to defend themselves and to act accordingly in such self-defense. His leadership is marginal at best, but his capacity to impart to others the lessons of the past and the understanding of the rich knowledge of the praxis of social change; starting with Hegel, then Marx, and many others, can be seen as the best weapon to revitalize the movement in the US. Also to realize the essential need to understand that other nations; other struggling groups, must partake their own way of defending themselves, and thus earn their capacity for a revolutionary change towards freedom and liberty.

Thank you!