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Yes, bad me, I suggested someone actually read some of the considerable body of theoretical work which has already been done on the topic of revolution and what exactly it is.
I am an intellectual snob. Boo hoo.
All right, I'll say it differently:
Chris:
I think we should be careful how we use the word revolution, and how we react to it. A revolution in terms of art or ideas is a very different thing to one in terms of a millitary coup.
That much is obvious. The term 'revolution' is used freely and without a great deal of critical thought by many people. The Duc de la Rochefoucault used it in answering King Louis' question "is this a rebellion?" "No, Sire, it is revolution," the Duc reportedly replied, meaning: "this is the Big One, now get in the bloody carriage."
For example, look at the communist revolutions in china and russia- they both started out as being the people's outrage at an opressive government, and then in turn became an oppressive government.
This is why I would propose Ted Gurr. He would agree with your assertion (as would I) that revolutions are an expression of outrage. However, other theorists look at revolution from a somewhat greater distance and say that it is the expression of structural forces in a society. Theda Skocpol has very little to say about outrage.
It's also worth observing that the Russian Revolution was initially not nominally Communist, but became so in October after the failure of the Provisional Government. Even then, the Soviet system might well have worked - it is in many ways profoundly democratic - but it was successfully usurped by Lenin's Party. The ideology of Leninism allows a small enlightened group to educate and indoctrinate others into the revolution, something missing from Marx's formulation of revolution. In other words, the Bolshevik seizure of power can be seen as a political coup riding the instability of the post-revolutionary moment.
China is more complicated than that, and took decades, so I'm not going there. The point is that 'revolution' is a word routinely applied to a very broad spectrum of events, and looking for definitive ones is very hard. The American Revolution was a war of independence, the Russian Revolution was an uprising against intolerable conditions which was hijacked by a unique movement. China's revolution was first anti-colonial, then peasant-nationalist, and finally was stolen by Mao to make something new again.
Then if we look at feminism, we see that because it was none violent, no-one* was killed outright in it's name, and it's result has been continued better treatment of women.
This is closer to a 'paradigm shift' as described by Kuhn. It required a new way of looking at society, but didn't lend itself to a civil war for fairly obvious reasons - which is not to say there wasn't violence as a by-product. The various feminisms articulated by different thinkers and different waves have proposed different means of change, and the feminist project continues to meet with (sometimes violent) resistance. Before September 11th, there were calls for a war against the Taliban to liberate Afghan women - which would have been, as far as I know, the first feminist war (though exactly how feminist it would have been is open to question, just as the Bolshevik Revolution had questionable Marxist credentials). It's even possible to make the case that without the anti-Taliban views held by many as a result of their treatment of women, the Afghan war would have been impossible, or at least, much harder to sell when the time came.
Be that as it may, yes, you are correct that this is a different use of 'revolution', though all these can be described as 'radical social change' (Skocpol) and in terms of a change in the perception by society (or the individuals composing society) of society, what it should be, and what (whose) values it should reflect (back to Gurr and Dunne).
Chris, my apologies if I seemed dismissive of your first post, but as you see, you've touched on a rather large discussion, and it's one whose outcome ultimately determines not only the identity of this notice board but also both the analysis of political action and the methods of those who would wish to alter the political and social landscape. |
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