The Pacifisms of the Peace Movement

Since its emergence in the late eighteenth century the peace movement has been a coalition of two groups: absolutists, who reject military force in all circumstances and are what the English-speaking world normally understands as ‘pacifists’; and reformists, who work to abolish war but accept that until this is achieved force may legitimately be used for self-defence or for upholding international law and who have received the academic label ‘pacificists’. Both groups are highly variegated. Pacifists have been divided along three main dimensions: the degree of violence which makes war unacceptable, the inspiration for rejecting war, and the policy implications of doing so. Pacificists have been divided mainly on ideological grounds because liberals, radicals, socialists, feminists, and ecologists have had different explanations for war.