Why Pacifism Now?

Abstract

Pacifism has always been a marginal position, but only in the 20th century did it become stigmatized – i.e. dismissed and ridiculed as outside the boundaries of serious discussion. This reflected the rise of “total war”, as exemplified by the century’s two world wars, where the war making claims of the state on the individual became absolute, hence any questioning of war itself became heretical. After this century of war, our greatest challenge is not to repeat the endless aimless conflicts of the past. Pacifism’s contribution to this is partly theoretical. Through its analysis of the “war system” it debunks any thought that war can be ended by war, as the past has imagined; it can only be ended by unraveling the system itself. Pacifism’s contribution to this is practical, by placing the politics of nonviolence at the center of this task.