Against Aggression非攻

The opening of 非攻上 is Mozi's most famous argument. Someone steals a peach from a neighbor's orchard, and everyone agrees it is wrong. Steal a dog, a horse, an ox: worse each time. Kill one person, and "there must be one capital crime." Guilt scales with the harm done, and everyone understands this. Yet when a state attacks another state and kills thousands, people do not call it wrong. They record it in the histories and praise it. Mozi asks: can such people be said to know the difference between right and wrong?

The power of the argument is its method. Take a principle people already accept in small cases and push it, step by step, into the large case, until the inconsistency shows. Mozi's "against aggression" is not soft pacifism. It is a demand for consistency: if harming others is wrong, then more harm is more wrong, and it does not become right because a state's name is on it.

Mozi drew a sharp line between aggression and defense. He opposed attack, taking land, wealth, and glory by damaging others. He did not oppose defense. He was himself the best defensive engineer of his age; the last twenty chapters of the Mozi are a manual of city defense. When Chu prepared to attack Song, he walked ten days and nights to the Chu capital, met the engineer Gongshu Ban, and with a belt for a wall and wooden chips for siege engines defeated nine assault plans in a row. Then he told the king of Chu that three hundred of his followers, under 禽滑厘, were already standing on the walls of Song. The attack was called off.

That is Mohist 非攻: persuade with argument, deter with defense, and make aggression not worth it.

In practice at 墨门

• The 非攻 pledge. Every Mohist signs one sentence on joining: "I will not profit by attacking others, and I will help defend those who are attacked." "Attacking" here is not limited to war. Framing a colleague, piling on someone online, bullying the weak: all count.
• The 非攻 Corps. The Community's volunteer service corps. Members train in emergency response, mediation, and basic protection, and turn out when a community faces disaster, conflict, or threat. It inherits 禽滑厘's tradition on the walls of Song: standing with those who need protecting.
• Argue first, act second. Before a chapter takes any outward action, it runs the "peach test": shrink what we are about to do down to the scale of one person, and see if it still stands. If it does not, no cause is big enough to justify it.
• Defend, do not retaliate. We organize no action against any person or group. When a Mohist or a chapter is attacked, we respond by recording it openly, explaining openly, and seeking legal protection where needed, not by striking back.

Mozi silenced the conquerors with a story about a stolen peach. We hope that before you harm anyone, you remember the peach.