864
PARTISAN REVIEW
for partial or complete disannament to the European attitude that has
lately come to be known as "neutralism."
Pacifism as a widespread, socially significant point of view is by no
means so natural as many pacifists imagine. Since the Middle Ages,
it
has been confined, until the present century, to isolated individuals and
minor religious sects. During this century, pacifist sentiment, partly
organized into special movements, has from time to time gained mass
influence. It has been subject, however, to great variations. Pointedly
enough, it has sunk to negligible proportions during the century's two
great wars.
The effect of modern pacifism-whether the extreme fonn of
absolute renunciation of violence, or the more limited proposals for
disannament, leagues, anti-war treaties, etc.-has been studied by a
number of scientists, and is sufficiently obvious to any observer who has
freed himself from the rhetorical prison. The primary social conse–
quence of the spread of pacifist sentiment within any given group–
class, nation, etc.-is to weaken the will and relative ability of the group
to survive. This is the case, no matter what the origin of, or philosophical
justification for, the particular brand of pacifism in question. Every social
group is necessarily engaged in a competition for survival against other
groups which seek to supplant, destroy or absorb it. Pacifism marks a
decline in the group's self-confidence, and in its willingness to use means
which are required in order to maintain its competitive position. Within
any group, therefore, pacifism must lead to a relative weakening.
Since this is the primary social effect of all forms of pacifist, anti–
war, and disannament agitation, the self-conscious political movements
of our century, in particular Communism, gradually came to realize
that pacifism could be used or manipulated as an important instrument
of the competitive group struggle for power.
If
the spread of pacifist
sentiment in a particular nation or class brings about, as it does, a weak–
ening of that nation or class, then why should not the rivals of that nation
or class deliberately stimulate the pacifist spread? To serious strategists,
the reasoning and the conclusion are inevitable.
Communism did not for some while, it is true, make such deliberate
use of pacifism as what may accurately be called a strategic weapon.
From the point of view of Communism, there were doctrinaire objections.
Pacifism was a "petty-bourgeois illusion," said Communist theory. Anti–
war and disannament movements diverted the masses from their true
task-the prosecution of the class struggle. War could be eliminated
only by the overthrow of world capitalism, and the institution of a world
