could never have anything to do with morality. He rejected Barth's argument to that effect as another expression of the historic flaw in Reformation theology, which led to a rigorous separation of religion from politics and thus guaranteed the brutalization of the political order. Niebuhr had no illusions about the political order, but neither did he propose to abdicate it to those whose readiness to use force was unrestrained by conscientious scruples.

His most suggestive formulation of the problem of politics, in Moral Man, took the form of a tightly constructed series of questions, each dependent on the others. "If social cohesion is impossible without coercion, and coercion is impossible without the creation of social injustice, and the destruction of injustice is impossible without the use of further coercion, are we not in an endless cycle of social conflict?" Under these conditions, an "uneasy balance of power" appeared to be the "highest goal to which society could aspire." Niebuhr's refusal to stop at that point distinguished him from most of his followers, whose realism begins and ends with an acknowledgement of the inescapable role of force in politics. His search for a way out of the "endless cycle of social conflict" linked him to his political roots in the progressive movement and the social gospel. Even after he had come to reject progressivism's faith in moral suasion— and much of Moral Man consisted of a relentless attack on the illusion that the powerful would surrender their power without a struggle—he still refused to regard politics as a struggle for power unredeemed by considerations of justice and morality. When he declared that "social cohesion is impossible without coercion," he parted company with many progressives ; but in the next clause in this series, he dissociated himself from Marxists and other revolutionaries, including radicalized adherents of the social gospel, forerunners of liberation theology today, who wished to put religion at the service of the proletarian struggle against capitalism. Unlike progressives, revolutionaries gladly accepted the need for coercion, but they refused to admit that "coercion is impossible without the creation of social injustice." They believed that revolutionary coercion would create conditions of perfect justice, or at least that the new order would represent such an improvement over the old that a few passing injustices, committed on behalf of a good cause, must not be allowed to stand in its way.

The only way to break the "endless cycle" of injustice, Niebuhr argued, was nonviolent coercion, with its "spiritual discipline against re

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