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Concept
Anarcho-pacifism
Summary
Anarcho-pacifism, also referred to as anarchist pacifism and pacifist anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates for the use of peaceful, non-violent forms of resistance in the struggle for social change. Anarcho-pacifism rejects the principle of violence which is seen as a form of power and therefore as contradictory to key anarchist ideals such as the rejection of hierarchy and dominance. Many anarcho-pacifists are also Christian anarchists, who reject war and the use of violence.
Anarcho-pacifists do not reject the use of non-violent revolutionary action against capitalism and the state with the purpose of establishing a peaceful voluntarist society. The main early influences were the philosophies of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi gained significance. Anarcho-pacifist movements primarily emerged in the Netherlands, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States before and during World War II.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience" (Resistance to Civil Government) was named as an influence by Leo Tolstoy, Martin Buber, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. due to its advocacy of nonviolent resistance. According to the Peace Pledge Union of Britain, it was also the main precedent for anarcho-pacifism. Thoreau himself did not subscribe to pacifism, and did not reject the use of armed revolt. He demonstrated this with his unqualified support for John Brown and other violent abolitionists, writing of Brown that "The question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in which you use it."
In the 1840s, the American abolitionist and advocate of nonresistance Henry Clarke Wright and his English follower Joseph Barker rejected the idea of governments and advocated a form of pacifist individualist anarchism. At some point anarcho-pacifism had as its main proponent Christian anarchism. The Tolstoyan movement in Russia was the first large-scale anarcho-pacifist movement.
Official source
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