Christopher Finlay offers praise for my book but remains unconvinced that the connection between violence and freedom can or should be broken. Finlay writes that most of the proponents of ethical political violence would agree that “nonviolence is better at achieving freedom than violence.” However, nonviolence is not always better; violence is necessary and justified in certain circumstances. Notably, neither in his own book nor in his review of mine does Finlay tell us which particular revolutions were necessary. Nevertheless, he says my discussion of the signature violent revolutions of the last three centuries are “numerically insufficient” and “substantively ambiguous,” while the examples of nonviolence I recover from ancient history are “parasitical” to violent forces.

My book makes the historical judgment that the American, French, Haitian, and Bolshevik revolutions contributed much less to human freedom than is usually asserted, while nonviolent revolutions have been the primary force in advancing human freedom both in the experience of ordinary people and philosophically. In his discussion of my account, Finlay mentions that I invoke abolition and the civil rights movement but omits other critical examples such as the woman’s rights movement, anticolonial revolutions, and civil resistance movements (pp. 30-39). Although my account is meant to provide a broad stroke historical overview of the pursuit of freedom, I cite the work of social scientists who find that nonviolence is more effective than violence, that the severity of an opponent’s repression does not effect the prospects of success for nonviolence, and that nonviolent revolutions are more likely to result in democratic regimes (p. 211, fn 52).

Finlay says that the intellectual and practical contradictions I highlight in violent revolutions would have been there, even if the revolutionaries had used nonviolence. For instance, he says if the American revolutionaries had “avoided violence” they would have still owned slaves, which suggests that slavery is not a form of violence and has nothing to do with freedom. It also neglects the history of Quakers like John Dickinson, who advocated alternatives to violent revolution (16), which indeed set the table for abolition (p. 29).

Finlay attempts to reinstantiate the conventional modern interpretation that freedom in the ancient Roman republic relied upon violence. First, he argues that the withdrawal from the city by the plebs en masse was only effective because of the leverage they gained from the impending invasion of Rome. Second, the stories I interpret as modeling self-sacrifice involve killing and suicide, which is not nonviolent. Nonviolence at its best operates in close proximity to violence, confronting, co-opting, and leveraging violence to a certain extent. Yet in both the secessions of the plebs and the Roman republic origin stories violence is very specifically rejected as a means for defending freedom. Only the view that violence is the ultimate arbiter of political success and failure and the main driving force of history could lead one to conclude that the enemies of Rome were the main cause of the freedom of the plebs as opposed to the actions of the plebs themselves. Lucrecia kills herself, and Brutus and Verginius kill their own children regretfully. Killing oneself or one’s own does not fall easily into the category of violent coercion. There is certainly a violent element to the plebian defense of freedom in the republic but it is violence that is “parasitical” to nonviolence, not the other way around.

Finlay claims that my assessment of the superiority of nonviolence is a laudable but pedestrian claim. He is focused on the issue of whether or not violence is sometimes justified or might play some role in advancing freedom in certain circumstances. Although I find the collapsing of justice and necessity to be a useful way to understand realism and just war theory as akin, and Finlay’s attempt to bring freedom into the mix an exquisite representation of liberalism, I believe the three concepts should be distinguished. (In fairness to Finlay, some of these arguments are developed in my first book.)

Violence can be politically effective. That may seem obvious but it is important to keep in mind that the brand of pragmatic pacifism I am advocating stipulates this. Violence is never necessary, however, because nonviolence is just as likely to succeed (or fail) in all circumstances. The issue, in terms of political effectiveness, has more to do with the quality of the action, than whether or not it is violent. Violence is sometimes justified though, because to say otherwise is to expect all people everywhere, and at all times to be able to muster creative nonviolence.

Even when effective and justified, violence cannot ultimately advance the cause of human freedom. The capacity for freedom means creative nonviolence is a possibility in all people everywhere, and at all times (chapter 7). Liberation involves realizing this fact, both individually and collectively, thus freeing ourselves from the necessity of doing violence to others.