Pacifism in the Twentieth Century by Peter Brock, Nigel Young, and: Challenge to Mars: Essays on Pacifism from 1918 to 1945 by Peter Brock, Thomas P. Socknat (review)

HUMANITIES 303 neo-liberals devalue human involvement in self-government. Ontario=s two experiences of >people politics= have both been failures. Is any such approach doomed? (DESMOND MORTON) Peter Brock and Nigel Young. Pacifism in the Twentieth Century University of Toronto Press 1999. liv, 436. US $15.95 Peter Brock and Thomas P. Socknat. Challenge to Mars: Essays on Pacifism from 1918 to 1945 University of Toronto Press 1999. xviii, 474. $75.00 In many ways, these books make ideal companion volumes. Pacifism in the Twentieth Century, an expanded version of Peter Brock=s 1970 book, is a cogent survey that has a remarkable knack for clarifying complex issues. It is sensitive to the issues of pacifism but does not fall into the trap that so many other similar studies do, of uncritically accepting the arguments of anti-war groups. On the contrary, Brock and Nigel Young directly address the contradictions within the movement, and the degree to which inconsistency and disunity have often been near-fatal weaknesses. Its one significant shortcoming is its bias towards pacifism in the Anglo-American countries. The movement in continental Europe or elsewhere in the world (with the obvious exception of India) is addressed only occasionally; in their determination to describe the shape of pacifism in a few countries, the authors fail to say why it languished in many others. This is where Brock and Thomas P. Socknat=s excellent collection of essays comes in. Even though it is more limited in its temporal scope, the anthology very ably fills many of the gaps in the survey. By bringing together some of the most notable scholars in the field, like Lawrence Klippenstein, Norman Ingram, Martin Caedel, and J.E. Cookson, it ranges far beyond the Anglo-American nations to examine Scandinavia, western and central Europe, Russia, India, and Japan, allowing readers to draw valuable comparative insights. Read together, the books elucidate the central dilemma of pacifism, its inability to arrive at a consistent position on war. On the surface, this proposition might seem manifestly absurd: surely pacifism means an opposition to all forms of war. In reality, the situation is far more complex. As Brock and Young make clear, the dilemma was first raised in the twentieth century by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. With this, leftwing pacifists faced a conundrum. Could they support a violent revolution if it was intended to overthrow a political order which they believed was responsible for war? A number of pacifist and anti-war groups were seriously divided over this question (including, as we learn in Lawrence Klippenstein=s fine essay, Russian Mennonites), and it proved impossible to 304 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 resolve satisfactorily. Indeed, it was still contentious during the Vietnam War, when some American pacifists concluded that the war being waged by the North Vietnamese army against American imperialism was an acceptable form of war because it was for a good cause. This questionable logic was damaging enough to their cause, write Brock and Young, but it paled in comparison to the New Left=s near adulation of the North Vietnamese army. In their determination to see this as a traditional peasant levée en masse engaged in a people=s struggle against foreign domination, they failed to realize that North Vietnam was itself a violent and repressive regime, and that its armies were >small versions of the military machines of the great empires, East and West B carefully wrought bureaucratic, military apparatuses .= In the authors= view, this was the great failure of American radical pacifism in the Vietnam era. It condemned the violence perpetrated by the United States, but condoned the violence perpetrated by the other side. Even more striking than the tendency of some pacifist organizations to admit the possibility of a good war (something for which they unfailingly decried the militarists and jingoists) has been the difficulty of maintaining pacifism in the face of occupation. Pacifism in the Twentieth Century focuses primarily on the movement in Britain and the United States, where it has traditionally been strongest; Challenge to Mars is broader in coverage, describing in a number of essays the weakness of pacifist sentiment outside of the Anglo-American bloc. Authors...