Pacifism: meaning, forms and criticism

01What does pacifism mean?

Pacifism describes a basic stance that rejects war and military force as a means of politics and stands up for peaceful ways of resolving conflict. The word goes back to the Latin “pacificus”, which the German Federal Agency for Civic Education translates as “peace-loving” and “peace-making”. It means a personal conviction, and at the same time a political movement that has organised itself in peace societies since the 19th century.

Pacifism does not mean passivity. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that for the majority of pacifists it is not about accepting injustice but about resisting it actively and without violence. Only some, Leo Tolstoy among them, held that violence should not be resisted at all.

How far the rejection goes is disputed among pacifists themselves. Some reject all violence, including in self-defence; others consider war conceivable only under very narrow conditions, or object above all to particular weapons. The distinction drawn by the peace researcher Johan Galtung in 1969 helps here: negative peace means the absence of direct violence, positive peace also means conditions in which violence does not arise in the first place.

02Where does the word come from, and who coined it?

As a word, pacifism is younger than the idea. The French term “pacifisme” was coined in the summer of 1901 by the lawyer Émile Arnaud. That is how the history of the idea published in 2026 by the Federal Agency for Civic Education in its journal “Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte” tells it.

The idea itself is much older. In the European tradition it developed alongside and in contrast to the doctrine of just war; its early adherents include Mennonites, Quakers and Christian humanists such as Erasmus of Rotterdam. In the 19th century it organised itself in peace societies and at international congresses that called for disarmament, arbitration and understanding between states.

After 1945 the atomic bomb gave the movement a new subject. In West Germany protest first turned against rearmament and nuclear armament, later against the Vietnam War and, in the early 1980s, against the stationing of new intermediate-range nuclear weapons. The timeline further down shows the milestones one by one.

03Which forms are distinguished?

Absolute pacifism rejects war and violence without exception. The Federal Agency for Civic Education describes this stance as holding that even a state under attack should not defend itself by military means but act without violence. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy places it under moral absolutism, that is, principles that admit no exception.

Conditional, or relative, pacifism is less strict. It does not rule out war in every conceivable case, but always demands a persistent search for peaceful alternatives. In philosophy some of its proponents argue from the doctrine of just war itself: taken seriously, so the thought goes, its conditions are met by hardly any real war.

Nuclear pacifism is directed above all against nuclear weapons and against a security that rests on the threat of mutual destruction. An early example is the Mainau Declaration of 1955, which warned of the danger of nuclear war. Those who think this way need not reject every form of military defence; the central question is whether a war with these weapons could be limited at all.

People often speak of radical pacifism when criticism is aimed not only at individual wars but at armament and military structures as a whole. The terms are not used the same way everywhere. What matters is where a stance draws the line.

04Which means does a nonviolent stance use?

Pacifists rely on means that do without military force: negotiation and mediation, arbitration, civil resistance, conscientious objection, education and public protest. The Inter-Parliamentary Union, for instance, was meant to deal with conflicts between states through understanding, diplomacy and binding arbitration.

Some of these ideas have entered international law. After the Second World War, according to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, pacifist principles found their way into the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The history of the idea in “Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte” also counts the human right to conscientious objection among the results of pacifist impulses.

Nonviolence and pacifism overlap but are not the same. For some, nonviolence is a principle that holds in every situation; others use nonviolent means as a strategy, because they are meant to keep conversations open and limit escalation. Philosophy therefore distinguishes a general renunciation of violence from a narrower rejection of war.

05Who shaped the peace movement?

The peace movement never had a single leading figure. Bertha von Suttner became known through her novel “Lay Down Your Arms” of 1889, one of the most successful anti-war books of its time; she took part in founding the German Peace Society and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905.

Mahatma Gandhi relied on nonviolent resistance against British colonial rule in the struggle for Indian independence; Leo Tolstoy’s “The Kingdom of God Is Within You” of 1894 had impressed him. Martin Luther King carried the idea into the civil rights movement in the United States and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

The examples show how differently the stance was lived: as journalism in Europe, as a mass movement against colonial rule, as a struggle for equal rights. In Germany it is also represented by Ludwig Quidde, Nobel Peace laureate of 1927, and Carl von Ossietzky, who received the prize in 1936, retroactively for 1935.

06Which objections are there, and how do supporters answer?

The most common objection concerns the emergency: what happens when a state is attacked or people are persecuted? Critics object that a complete renunciation of violence leaves open how people are then to be protected. In “Politics as a Vocation” in 1919, Max Weber described the distinction between an ethic of conviction and an ethic of responsibility: whoever acts politically must also answer for the foreseeable consequences of their actions.

The political scientist Herfried Münkler argues in “Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte” in 2026 that unrestricted pacifism has practically never been able to prevent war in history. He looks instead to orders that secure peace functionally rather than expecting it from people’s peacefulness alone.

Supporters answer with the consequences of war: violence breeds counter-violence, weakens societies in the long run and makes further escalation more likely. Ludwig Quidde pointed out early on that the right to defence is much abused in practice. Many pacifists therefore rely on prevention, civil conflict work and international rules, that is, on what happens before a war.

W3ltfrieden takes no position in this debate. Both sides ask about responsibility; they only draw different conclusions from it.