Carrol Cox wrote:
> "armed struggle"
> has misleading connotations outside peasant societies, in which
> "prolonged struggle" necessarily includes, at some point, "prolonged
> armed struggle."
At the same time, isn't this about conditions that are more part of the past than the present, even in the less developed countries?
>
This gets closer to what I meant --
>
> Pacifism puts makes the question of force a metaphysical choice; the
> opposite would be a theory which glorifies violence for its own sake.
> Both are idealist in that they assume the priority of thought to action
> rather than seeing thought as emerging from and making sense of ongoing
> social activity. I don't know how to label accurately the opposite of
> pacifism; only from a pacifist perspective is its opposite violence.
>
> One can also say of both pacifism and its unnamed opposite that they
> turn a question of tactics and strategy into a question of metaphysical
> morality.
>
> Carrol
Actually, when I called pacifism and "armed struggle" (in quotes because I agree it's not a good term for what I mean) twins, I had in mind a psychological unity between the disposition towards the two political approaches. I recall, all too clearly, people who flipped over from a commitment to non-violence to what they themselves called armed struggle. In both cases the commitment was essentially a narcissistic moralism. For example, in both phases they saw their activities as acts of moral witness, and said things like "I cannot stand idly by......" etc.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema