Editing Anarchism and violence (section)

== Anarcho-pacifism ==
[[File:Blessed are the Peacemakers.gif|alt=|thumb|right|''Blessed are the Peacemakers'' by [[George Bellows]], ''[[The Masses]]'', 1917.]]
{{see also|Anarcho-pacifism|Antimilitarism}}
Anarcho-pacifism (also pacifist anarchism or anarchist pacifism) is a form of anarchism which completely rejects the use of violence in any form for any purpose. Important proponents include [[Leo Tolstoy]] and [[Bart de Ligt]]. [[Mohandas Gandhi]] is an important influence.

[[Henry David Thoreau]], though not a pacifist himself,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Thoreau |first1=Henry |editor1-last=Rosenblum |editor1-first=Nancy |title=Thoreau: Political Writings |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QpT7MEwYy5QC&q=%22advocate%20of%20nonviolence%22&pg=PR24 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0521476755 |page=xxiv|date=1996-05-23 }}</ref> influenced both Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi's advocacy of [[Nonviolent resistance]] through his work ''[[Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)|Civil Disobedience]]''.<ref name="ppu.org.uk">{{Cite web |url=http://www.ppu.org.uk/e_publications/dd-trad8.html#anarch%20and%20violence |title="Resiting the Nation State, the pacifist and anarchist tradition" by Geoffrey Ostergaard |access-date=2010-03-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514052437/http://www.ppu.org.uk/e_publications/dd-trad8.html#anarch%20and%20violence |archive-date=2011-05-14 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

At some point anarcho-pacifism had as its main proponent [[Christian anarchism]]. The first large-scale anarcho-pacifist movement was the [[Tolstoyan]] peasant movement in [[Russia]]. They were a predominantly peasant movement that set up hundreds of voluntary anarchist pacifist communes  based on their interpretation of Christianity as requiring absolute pacifism and the rejection of all coercive authority.

"Dutch anarchist-pacifist Bart de Ligt's 1936 treatise ''The Conquest of Violence'' (with its none too subtle allusion to Kropotkin's ''The Conquest of Bread'') was also of signal importance."<ref>{{Cite web |title="Anarchism and the Movement for a New Society: Direct Action and Prefigurative Community in the 1970s and 80s" by Andrew Cornell |url=http://anarchiststudies.org/node/292 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130518071734/http://www.anarchiststudies.org/node/292 |archive-date=May 18, 2013}}</ref> "Gandhi's ideas were popularized in the West in books such as [[Richard Gregg (social philosopher)|Richard Gregg]]'s ''The Power of Nonviolence'' (1935), and Bart de Ligt's ''The Conquest of Violence'' (1937).
[[Peter Gelderloos]] criticizes the idea that nonviolence is the only way to fight for a better world. According to Gelderloos, pacifism as an ideology serves the interests of the state.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gelderloos|first=Peter|title=How Nonviolence Protects the State|year=2007|publisher=South End Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=9780896087729|pages=128}}</ref>