Actually it's impossible by definition to beat someone with passive play. Now if they play passively and you drop a piece when suddenly they play active to win that's a different story where basically you beat yourself and then they jumped at the chance.
"It is to Petrosian's advantage that his opponents never know when he is suddenly going to play like Tal" - Spassky
Positional chess isn't about being passive, but stopping all possible counter play before striking -- the ultimate success for a positional player is to reduce his opponent to passivity. Defensive chess is about precise calculation during an attack -- neither ever aim to be passive. If you tried playing passively against a legendary positional player like Petrosian, Petrosian wouldn't waste any time blowing you off the board, take the following game where Petrosian sacrifices his queen and wins in only 21 moves.
Well, I'm sorry then. That's what I meant. Maybe I should have re worded my phase. I learned to take away counter play from a stragety book I was reading a while back
Yeah, to label positional as passive is quite wrong. In fact Petrosian made his opponents' positions passive really (at least if he was white!) while he attacked weak points. It was subtle, but it's still offense, just not directly at the king. And he would do that after taking away counterplay, because that keeps his opponents passive.