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Revolution is a word which Barbelith is almost drowning in at the best of times. It's also a word which has been sacred to followers of Marx ever since he proposed the notion of Historical Materialism: the Marxian world view which suggests that human history is a series of stages divided by revolutionary moments, and culminating in Socialism. For Marx, each stage of human history was defined by the economic relations therein, and the revolution represented to violent toppling of the ancien regime by a new class installing itself in the top slot. Hence Feudalism was to be overthrown by the Bourgeois, and Capitalism in turn would die at the hands of an informed and matured Proletariat - a motivated, aware entity created by the oppression by Capital.
This picture of revolution made it a thing of structural inevitability. Lenin wrote that revolutions are not made, they come. Curiously, however, Lenin was also responsible for trying to make one - he and his Bolshevik party misled a Russian peasantry desperate with famine and bloodshed, and attempted from their despair attempted to create a (pre)Communist state in which cadres of revolutionary elites could compensate for the absence of a mature Proletariat and people could be educated to the benefits of Socialism without ever having to pass through the intervening Capitalist stage.
Any number of people have tried the same trick. Mao and the Chinese Communists took a war of self-defense against Japan and created from it the slow-burning Chinese Revolution which culminated in the 'Cultural Revolution' - one of the most bloody episodes of modern statehood, in which thousands were slaughtered in an attempt to edit China to conform to Mao's 'sinified' Marxism. The French Revolution, on which Marx based his analysis, isn't nearly as clear-cut as he'd have you believe.
In fact, it's very hard to find a cold, hard 'first case' which demonstrates what a revolution is or should be. And since the lifespan of nations is longer in most cases than that of people or even theories of political action, it can be a little hard to say when it's late enough in the day to judge the success or failure of a revolution, or even whether it deserves the name.
Looking at the name, there's an incredible aspiration: not rebellion or coup d'etat, but revolution. The overturning of the world, the establishment, not of a new guard, but of a new paradigm. Popper and Kuhn's work on scientific change gives a lead in this direction: revolution is change of a fundamental kind.
The problem obviously is that everyone is a product of their time, and so too are the ideas we seek to actualise in political action. My personal picture of 'revolution' at the moment seems ambitious to me. I believe that there are several genuinely revolutionary thoughts - examples:
Non-violence - history is the map of the aggressions of states and peoples against one another. Even the internal social histories of countries and communities carries this sense. We strive to avoid it and we strive to protect ourselves from it, and the consequence is more of the same, because we are prepared to use the means of violence to assure our peace. It is contradictory and futile. It is also possible, however, that pacifism is by now impossible - that any culture which genuinely eschewed violence or at least power would be erased. Non-violence, therefore, has to be a personal choice - something else of which I approve.
Science and Medicine - the possibility of advances in longevity and life-preservation - from the bizarre and far-fetched Alcor, which might best be described as a 'lifeboat option', to the more realistic goals of biotech companies seeking cures for age-related infirmities, I believe that science has the possibility to transform our world. Again.
I'm not sure I believe that anything short of this level of radical change can produce 'revolution'. It's certainly true that there are smaller changes, strands, which could provoke considerable upheaval - the alliance of the developing world at Cancun proves that. But while that may produce a more equitable version of the world, it probably won't produce a radically different one.
The next question is whether that's a good or a bad thing. It's possible that genuine revolution is a terrifying disaster. It's also possible that minor revolutions such as new political arrangements are doomed to spiral into violence, or at least to replicate the situations which spawned them.
Barbelith itself is, in a sense, a minor revolutionary arena. Tom's attempt to generate a self-moderting community, with power distributed, has in a way become a prolonged and fascinating experiment in society and communities and their governance, of which we are all a part. One way of looking at this board is as a model for the real world. It's not impossible to imagine transfering the lessons of Barbelith to real life, certainly the dilemmas we face here are familiar. Looking at Barbelith this way, the project is an attempt to find a way of self-governing which is both free and safe - and if successful (and scalable) this would be a significant political advance.
So is it possible to generate a system to handle governance? Or is the lesson of the last decades that systems - the WTO, the World Bank, the Soviet Communist Party, US Constitutional Democracy, and so on - cannot control the ability of individuals to restate them in such a way as to defeat their aims?
What really counts as revolution? And when is it necessary or even legitimate (Lenin's October Revolution, for example, may have been a monstrous crime against the fledgling democratic government arising in February 1917)? When is the risk inherent - for most revolutions do not provide what they promise - an acceptable one?
And what does all this mean for Barbelith, and for the individuals who compose this community? |
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