Pacifism

This article should be merged with pacifist

Pacifism is the controversial belief in achieving one's goals through actively non-violent or non-aggressive means. At the individual level, this can refer how one chooses to live one's personal life when relating to other people, such as refusing to fight other people or to own weapons of self-defense; or it can refer in a more political sense to an opposition to war and the promotion of peaceful means of settling international conflicts. In the political sense, it may combine both the personal and the political through acts of civil disobedience or refusing to participate in a war effort.

Pacifism has both a passive component (refusing to fight) and an active component (working for peace). Many pacifists may act as conscientious objectors and refuse to participate in their nation's military forces. However, many who consider themselves pacifists often interpret the doctrine in different ways. Some believe in total non-resistance to war, even if the community is in crisis. Others preach non-aggression under normal circumstances, but the right to defend under crisis. Those who advocate a philosophy of total non-violence at all levels generally have religious or moral reasons for their stance; others who advocate less stringent forms of the philosophy may also cite political or economic reasons.

Pacifism as a political strategy is often the subject of debate concerning its effectiveness. It has sometimes been successful, as in the case of Mohandas Gandhi's non-violence, which played a major role in India's independence. Critics of Gandhi's policy noted that what Gandhi advocated relied on his participants committing acts of non-violence, but that it also relied on violence by the British against them to sway public opinion. Similarly, Gandhi repeatedly advocated that Europe, from Britain to the Jews and Czechs, not resist Nazi violence; he hoped that the Nazis themselves would then see the error of their ways. However, pacifists respond that the effectiveness of violent solutions is also often just as questionable, and that wars are often miserable failures and frequently fail as a means of accomplishing political ends.

Total pacifism is controversial, and only a few religions (such as the peace churches of Christianity) advocate it. Critics of this kind of pacifism claim that being non-violent in the face of violent criminals or armies tacitly or explicitly encourages more violence. They often characterize pacifism as simply "waiting tolerantly for criminals to learn that their actions are unwise", although much of pacifism makes no such assumption.

The political theory of Green parties lists 'non-violence' and 'de-centralization' towards anarchist co-operatives or minimalist village government, as two of their ten key values. However, in power, Greens like all politicians often compromise, e.g. German Greens in the cabinet of Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder supported an intervention by German troops in Afghanistan in 2001, but on condition that they host the peace conference in Berlin - and during the 2002 election campaign forced Schroeder to swear that no German troops would invade Iraq.

This suggests that many who advocate 'non-violence' or pacifism, especially political parties that participate in government, actually advocate what is more properly called de-escalation or even harms reduction (on a very large scale). Clearly a party that writes and enforces law is not non-violent. It can be pacifist, however, by refusing participation in external conflicts, refusing to supply weapons, and sheltering refugees but not combatants. There are many definitions of such "pragmatic pacifism".

Pacifism and Religion

Opinions are divided among [[Christianity|Christians] over whether Jesus Christ advocated pacifist teachings; certain Christian denominations, known as peace churches', have tave taken the position that he did do so, and believe further that early Christianity was essentially pacifist in nature. The Roman Catholic Church, however, eventually formulated a just war doctrine, in which the use of violence or force was deemed legtiimate and necessary under certain circumstances. The Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy advocated what has come to be known as anarcho-pacifism or Christian anarchism. He argued that Christians were obligated to be pacifists, and that pacifists, in turn, were obligated to be anarchists -- since government is based on the use of force. Tolstoy was influenced by Henry David Thoreau's writings on civil disobedience. Tolstoy's own writings on pacifism and non-resistance converted Gandhi to pacifism.

Non-pacifistic religions, including Judaism, many varients of Christianity and Islam, have usually made no pretense of meaning "pacifism" by their messages concerning the great obligation to pursue peace: typically constructing rules, sometimes very elaborately defined, under which the use of aggression for the establishment and maintenance of justice may be legitimate. While usually emphasizing the inherent limitations of aggression toward accomplishing these ends, and typically warning of the risk that aggression often works contrary to its aim, force is not a fundamental contradiction of their religious principles. However, it is almost universal among these religions to absolutely reject violence as a means for spreading their religion to uncoverted peoples - a principle for which their adherents are often chastised, from within and outside their communities, on account of the occasions upon which it has been ignored. Even some of the pacifist religions and philosophies have sometimes approved the use of force in apparent contradiction of their principles, although not always by stooping to take up weapons themselves. Buddhism, for one example, has repeatedly embraced bloodshed in its generally pacific history (through hired armies or government intervention) as a "Final Solution" against heterodox opponents.