“I mean by pacifism, not the love of peace as a good to be secured by a definite form of action, but the belief that any form of social constraint of others or any violent action is in itself wrong, and that violence such as war must be passively resisted because to use violence to end violence would be logically self-contradictory. I oppose pacifism in this sense to the Communist belief that the only way to secure peace is by a revolutionary change in the social system, and that ruling classes resist revolution violently and must therefore be overthrown by force.”

—  Christopher Caudwell

Studies in a Dying Culture (1938), Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics

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Christopher Caudwell 10
British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer 1907–1937

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