Social and political conditions of the expansion of the non-violent movement

Abstract

The non-violent movement aims at the principal elimination of violence in social and international relations and fights for this purpose with nonviolent means. Democratic liberalism created the conditions for the rise of socialism, anarchism and pacifism. Along with the process of persistent attempts towards renewal of the revolutionary objectives of the past, new theories developed during the 19th century on the left wing of the radical democratic, liberal movement, which, since the middle of the 19th century, took as socialism, anarchism and pacifism the organizational consequences. It is evident that this separation did not take place in the sense of a clear division of labour between economic questions (socialism), political questions (anarchism) and military questions (pacifism). When, in the middle of the 19th century, pacifists, anarchists and socialists organized themselves for the first time on an international basis, pacifism and anarchism counted as much adherents as socialism.