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Throughout history, most [[religion]]s and [[individual]]s like [[Mahatma Gandhi]] have preached that humans are capable of eliminating individual violence and organizing societies through purely nonviolent means. Gandhi himself once wrote: “A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be the purest anarchy.” Modern political ideologies which espouse similar views include pacifist varieties of voluntarism, mutualism, [[anarchism]] and [[libertarianism]].
Throughout history, most [[religion]]s and [[individual]]s like [[Mahatma Gandhi]] have preached that humans are capable of eliminating individual violence and organizing societies through purely nonviolent means. Gandhi himself once wrote: “A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be the purest anarchy.” Modern political ideologies which espouse similar views include pacifist varieties of voluntarism, mutualism, [[anarchism]] and [[libertarianism]].
==War==
War is a state of prolonged violence, large-scale conflict involving two or more groups of people, usually under the auspices of government. War is fought as a means of resolving territorial and other conflicts, as war of aggression to conquer territory or loot resources, in national self-defense, or to suppress attempts of part of the nation to secede from it.
Since the [[Industrial Revolution]], the lethality of modern warfare has steadily grown. [[World War I]] casualties were over 40 million and [[World War II]] casualties were over 70 million.
Nevertheless, some hold the actual deaths from war have decreased compared to past centuries. In ''War Before Civilization'', Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor at the University of Illinois, calculates that 87% of tribal societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65% of them were fighting continuously. The attrition rate of numerous close-quarter clashes, which characterize endemic warfare, produces casualty rates of up to 60%, compared to 1% of the combatants as is typical in modern warfare.[http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civilization.html]. Stephen Pinker agrees, writing that “in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher.
[[Jared Diamond]] in his award-winning books, Guns, Germs and Steel and The Third Chimpanzee provides sociological and anthropological evidence for the rise of large scale warfare as a result of advances in technology and city-states. The rise of agriculture provided a significant increase in the number of individuals that a region could sustain over hunter-gatherer societies, allowing for development of specialized classes such as soldiers, or weapons manufacturers. On the other hand, tribal conflicts in hunter-gatherer societies tend to result in wholesale slaughter of the opposition (other than perhaps females of child-bearing years) instead of territorial conquest or slavery, presumably as hunter-gatherer numbers could not sustain empire-building.
==References==
==References==
# Merriam-webster Dictionary Retrieved January 8, 2009.
# Merriam-webster Dictionary Retrieved January 8, 2009.
# Hans-Hermann Hoppe, From the Economics of Laissez Faire to The Ethics of Libertarianism.
# Hans-Hermann Hoppe, From the Economics of Laissez Faire to The Ethics of Libertarianism.
# Bharatan Kumarappa, Editor, "For Pacifists," by M.K. Gandhi, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, India, 1949.
# Bharatan Kumarappa, Editor, "For Pacifists," by M.K. Gandhi, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, India, 1949.
==Sources==
==Sources==
* [[Walter Benjamin]]'s ''Critique of Violence''
* [[Walter Benjamin]]'s ''Critique of Violence''
