Christianity and the Taught of Human Love
There has never been pacifism in the world as today, when in all lands, humans are killing one another and have not learned the philosophy of anti-war. Each historical epoch has its own technique and its political form. However, it is also a unique hypocrisy. Long ago, people destroyed each other in the name of the Christian teaching on human love. In the modern era, only backward governments fight in the name of Jesus Christ.
Progressive countries each executed each other in the name of pacifism. The epic lacks satire, apart from even the most powerful weapon of satire risks being powerless. Even so, the two elements of liberation through war become powerless in the face of abomination and ignorance.
Pacifism and the Bourgeois
Pacifism has historical threads like democracy. The Bourgeoisie made a historical attempt to regulate all relations between human beings on the basis of reason. They also replaced the blind and ignorant tradition with the institution of critical thinking. Like capitalism, the guild, which was a barrier to production, was a privileged political institution. On the other hand, monarchical absolutism is a vestige of the Middle Ages.
Bourgeoisie democracy demands equality of law for free competition and the council as a method of regulating public affairs. The bourgeoisie also wants to organize national relations in the same way. However, it does clash with war, a form of solving all problems, which is a complete denial of common sense. Apart from encouraging people through ethics, it is far more beneficial to promote lasting peace.
It is a logical argument for pacifism.
The Spectrum of War
Pacifism is resistance to war and afflicted by anti-war as a means of resolving disputes, covering a broad spectrum of philosophy and spanning the belief that peace can or should resolve international conflicts. Absolute resistance to force under any circumstances also falls into another definition of opposition to pacifism. Besides being based on the principles of pragmatism, pacifism is also based on belief.
War and the use of lethal weapons and violence are morally wrong. On the other hand, pragmatic pacifism does not hold such an absolute principle. However, it considers there is a better way to resolve disputes than war. The benefits of war are definitely not worth the cost. Doves is an informal term. In a political context, it refers to people who prefer to avoid war. It is also not considered a pacifist position.
The view that war might be right could become a dove as a last resort. For instance, namely, the doctrine of legal war. The dove is also a symbol of hope for safety and peace. It is the opposite of an eagle, in addition to referring to the story of Noah’s Ark.
The Anti-military
Pacifism is also, on the other hand, the philosophy of anti-war; reality is not against all use of violence, physical force against others, or the destruction of property. Anti-military specifically opposes the modern nation-state’s military institutions rather than supporting war regardless of nonviolent principles because it believes that acts of violence can be justified. The philosophical discussion of pacifism has clarified the concept by distinguishing a general commitment to nonviolence from a narrow antiwar position.
A related term, nonviolence, has been coined by Holmes to describe the transcending position of anti-war pacifism in its opposition to violence in all its forms. Pacifism is often defined dialectically in terms of the notions of violence that are justified and found in the Western tradition of just warfare.
Pacifism and the Morality of War
It is often placed on a continuum to assess the morality of war, which includes realism, the theory of just warfare, and pacifism. The ongoing debate about the exact relationship between the philosophy of anti-war and pacifism focuses on the question of whether the just war theory begins with a pacifist presumption of war. Many authors have used just war theory to derive a version of pacifism or what is commonly described as pacifism contingent or pacifism of war.
Robert L. Holmes more emphatically states that the just war framework is flawed, arguing that the just war tradition usually ignores the central moral issue in war, namely about immorality that is considered immoral because of the massive, systematic, and deliberate killing of humans that occurs in war. In contrast to Holmes, Cheyney Ryan said that despite the tradition of just warfare and pacifism that developed through criticism, pacifism is often marginalized as an outcast tradition.
The Instance of Pacifism
In history and literature, there is a suggestion of pacifism long before the modern era. The love of all life, both human and non-human, is the central teaching in Jainism, founded by Mahavira from 599 to 527 BC, is one instance. As a unique but rare opportunity to attain enlightenment, pacifism values human life. Whatever crime may have been committed is disgusting and unimaginable.
In Ancient Greece, two examples from the Peloponic Wars are the nonviolent protests of Hegetorides, originating in Thasos, and the sex strike of Athenian women in the comedy Aristophanes Lysistrata. Based on the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus, many people think that he was a pacifist. Peace churches, the Religious Society of Friends, Amish, Mennonite, and the Brethren Church, have been pacifist churches for centuries.
The Colony of Pennsylvania, controlled by the Quakers, adopted a pacifist and anti-militaristic public policy. The colonial province for 75 years, from 1681 to 1756, was essentially unarmed and was involved in little or no warfare during that period.
The 19th Century
In the 19th century, anti-war sentiment was growing. Many of the socialist groups and movements of such a century were anti-military, arguing that war was essentially a form of government coercion on the working class. They were forced to fight and die in wars which did not benefit them, at the behest of their political masters. Their economies have never suffered on the front lines of war.
The assassination of the French socialist leader, Jean Jaurès, on July 31, 1914, and the Second International’s decision to then abandon chauvinism and militarism, and the failure to successfully oppose World War I are considered one of the socialist movement’s most significant failures.
Māori
In the second half of the 19th century, the British and colonial settlers in Aotearoa, New Zealand, used many tactics to get marks from the Māori people, including warfare. In one case, a Māori leader was so convinced that he could encourage his warriors to defend their rights without using weapons in an atmosphere where those same warriors had defeated their opponents the previous year.
Te Whiti o Rongomai convinced 2000 people to welcome war-determined troops to their village and even offered them food and drink. This peaceful leader also allowed himself and his people to be detained without resistance. The primary weakness of pacifism is an actual crime of its philosophy and anti-war, a characteristic of bourgeois democracy. Criticism only touches the surface of social phenomena.
Apart from not having the courage to cut deeper into basic economic facts, capitalist realism hopes for lasting peace based on logical harmony. It is sadder than the ideas of freedom, equality, and fraternity.
The Interpretation of Millitarism
Capitalism, while developing technical science on a rational basis, fails to regulate society’s conditions rationally. It prepares weapons of mass destruction, never even dreamed up by the barbarians of the Middle Ages. The rapidly deteriorating international situation and the rapid growth of militarism have destroyed the ground under the feet of pacifism. However, at the same time, these forces give pacifism a new life before our eyes, a life different from before.
The peace of arms represents the period of ten years before the war. The whole period was, in fact, nothing but uninterrupted warfare, a war waged in the colonies. The war took place in the lands of the weak, leading to the participation of Africa, Polynesia, and Asia. However, since there have been no European wars since 1871, despite a few sharp conflicts, the petty bourgeoisie pushed public opinion systematically to view the growing army as a guarantee of peace.
It is slowly bearing fruit in a famous international legal organization. For capitalist countries and big businesses, they have no objection to the pacifist interpretation of militarism.
The Unrealistic Achievements of Pacifism
Defined by Martin Ceadel in his book Thinking about War and Peace, pacifism is a useful term to describe those who prefer peaceful conditions to war. However, people consider that some wars might be necessary if they were to advance the cause of peace. It is a step further from conditional pacifism, which excludes war or the use of force except in very extraordinary circumstances.
Therefore, political achievements produce peace with a military defense nature if necessary for the ultimate goal of global peace. In his book entitled Ethics, Killing, and War, Richard Norman describes pacifism, which lies between pacifism and defensism. Defensism is a theory that accepts all defensive warfare and countermeasures as fair. It implies an attractive justification for war for peace that is not essential to defensism.
However, it also goes beyond the sometimes unrealistic vision of pacifism. Pacifism can resist defensive warfare if it destroys the overall harmony which may be latent in the international situation, apart from reaching into interesting territory because its powers are also not very clear.
The Basis of Interests
In theory and politics, pacifism has the same philosophy as the doctrine of social harmony and anti-war between different classes’ interests. The contradiction between capitalist countries has the same economic basis as the class struggle. Supposedly, we are ready to accept the possibility of a gradual dulling of the class struggle. In this case, the community must be able to take the opportunity to accumulate national conflicts and manage these conflicts.
With all its traditions and illusions, the guardians of the ideology of democracy are the petty bourgeoisie. During the second half of the 19th century, the petty bourgeoisie completely changed. However, it has not disappeared from the stage at the same time. On the external surface, the development of capitalist techniques has undermined the economic role of the petty bourgeoisie.
Imperialism
Universal suffrage and conscription gave them political power. Big business has not discharged the small capitalists; it is also wholly subject to the credit system. In the political sphere, the big capitalists’ representatives subdue the petty bourgeoisie by taking all their theories and prejudices and assigning them false values. It is an explanation of the phenomenon which we witnessed during the ten years before the war, when reactionary imperialism grew in size while, at the same time, the illusion of bourgeois democracy was increasing, with all its reformism and pacifism.
The big capitalists subject the petty bourgeoisie to imperialism’s aims by using the prejudices of the petty bourgeoisie itself.
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