Figure 1.-- Pacifism was an important part of Soviet propaganda, but in fact the Soviet Union was a highly militatized state and no pacifist organization was permitted. President Putin has revived many Soviet instityutions such as military training for youth. Contrary to Marxist ideology, the capitalist countries have developed in liberal democracies with strong pacifist movements. Pacifist movements are supressed not only in socialist states like North Kora and Cuba, but in dictatorships like Putin's Russia.

Modern pacifists as in the past tend to be anti-capitalists of various political orientations. The strongly held idea is that cpitalism is the root cause of War. This is a central tennent of Marxism, that competitiin between capitalist states, likely because of colonial conflicts, would lead to War. But if you look at the 20th century, this was just not the case. World War II had nothing to do with capitalist competition and the other major conflicts had nothing to do with aggresive capitalist states or conflicts between capitalist states. Rather the major conflicts were aggressive sovialist states (of the Communist and Fascist variants) launching aggressive wars against capitalist states. Note that as the 20th century developed. The Socialists states that developed were totalitarian states. The capitalist states developed into liberal democracies. This is of course not what Marx predicted. And notably the only countries to develop pacifist movements were capitalist states. The Siocialist states used propaganda in their propaganda, but did not allow any kind of pacifist movement to develp that opposed aggression or military spending. All of this is simply ignored by much of the academic community which just blindly follows standard Marrxist doctrine. A good example of this comes from Stanford University. A professor there published an excellent study of English Quaker pacifism and gun manufacture. [Satia, Empire.] Now what is interesting here in a CSPAN3 presentation, she went on to conect war with capitalism, compleletly ignoring the fact that the only important opscifist movement have developed in capitalit countries. And when asked whst non-capitalist countries have developed pacifist movements she was completely stumped. [Satia. "Quakers".] It seems that the question had not occurred to her which is stagering with such a competent acaemedician at one of the premier American universities.

Sources

Satia, Pryia. Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (2018).

Satia, Pryla. "Quakers, Guns and the British Industrial Revolution" CSPAN3 (January 26, 2019).

Created: 3:31 AM 1/21/2019
Last updated: 3:31 AM 1/21/2019