For many speak of non-violence as an ideal and as a form of action, it sounds like utopia, some see it as an impossible question, others as a discourse that hides inaction. What more equivocal large.
The major problems of our societies are directly or indirectly with the use (legitimate and illegitimate) of violence or threat of use, either by States, armed groups or other organized criminal groups.
Even today, in most cases, people consciously and unconsciously, based on their own purposes, dogmas or paradigms, justify the use of violence against others, either by of a group, organization, or state in any of its forms and names.
What many forget is that like that accorded to other individuals, often organized to exert force, a kind of ethical excuse for violence against others, however, no human being has, and that none of us has in reality.
Behind that is a profound ethical flaw that crosses all kinds of issues and findings, the non-recognition of self-possession of people and hence their ultimate value as individuals. You own your life and your body and your life is worth the same as any other. deny that implies that one can be master of life of others, or others may be owners of the life of us.
If we recognize the right of self-possession of each individual and thus their intrinsic value as persons, we conclude that everyone is entitled to be free of violence, yet no one, is a person or group of them, has the right to initiate violence against another under either directly or indirectly, under any justification (except in self defense). The non-aggression axiom.
For many this may sound like an argument impractical and even philosophy convoluted, but the base itself is a kind of decalogue, a truly ethical praxis, which ironically is usually seen as universal often professed but technically little everyday in our daily life.
Many will say, non-violence is utopian because there will always be violent people, crime, fraud and violence, and therefore requires the State and its monopoly power to control (Hobbes's argument that turn all without distinction).
And of course there will always be true minds more violent or criminal. However, it is also true that it is much worse if those potential criminal minds, come to have available a whole contingent of resources to carry out violence from people trained to kill or thousands of fanatical followers willing to die under his command, to arms ability to kill without discrimination.
Worst yet is when those minds have the approval or justification of other human beings to carry out their acts and violent impulses beyond self-defense, to name than it is.
Judging ethically, as we judge the actions of any individual, the actions of governments or groups that use violence in an organized way, we can see that often act in ways that exercise criminal and illegitimate violence on other people.
"The state routinely commits mass murder, which he calls" wars "and sometimes" suppression of subversion "Rothbard.
But murder for a wallet is just as abhorrent murder led to large scale, security, homeland, the people per revolution, the common good, welfare, or race.
The truth is that neither the state nor the governments and their institutions, nor rulers, nor the common people, alone or organized, as individuals or as groups, have the right to attack other individuals. That no matter what name you put their actions or defend entelechy say.
ethically Judging everyone equally, violent actions are not virtuous.
"Non-violence is not a virtue designed to encourage monastic inner peace, but a rule of conduct necessary for living in society, ensuring respect for human dignity. " Gandhi