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What is a revolution?
Excerpts from The Mansion of History (1976) by Carl G. Gustavson
Like so many historical terms, the word “revolution” has undergone changes
in meaning. Originally, it referred to the rotation of the heavenly bodies, the
celestial spheres, and, carrying a connotation of supernatural force, was applied in
the Renaissance to human events that seemed beyond human control.
During the seventeenth century, the word still meant a return to a natural order of
things, a natural order as regular as the rotation of the heavenly bodies. Hence the
Restoration in England in 1660 was considered a revolution, but not the Puritan
episode, which came under the label of rebellion. The Glorious Revolution,
however, was a revolution for those at the time who felt that the events of 1688 had
restored the natural order. By the time of the French Revolution, the meaning
had altered to convey the idea of revolting against tyranny, of changing the
destiny of a people by heroic, romantic deeds.
Popular usage of the word applied to any forcible overthrow of a government, for
instance by the military, has blurred its twentieth-century meaning. No one
specific definition for authentic revolution will satisfy everyone, and when
getting into specifics, several kinds should probably be distinguished. None of
the efforts in this direction seem quite satisfactory because the uniformities, as in
other areas of history, are not that uniform. Nevertheless, certain ingredients
appear to be characteristic: (1) the presence of violence; (2) a breakdown of
obedience to authority; (3) a transfer of power in the state; and (4) as most usually
conceived, major social changes. Or, in one definition, a transfer of power from
one or more social groups to other groups under circumstances of violence.
Different interpretations are held by people who range all the way from those
who believe diabolical forces are responsible for these upheavals to the fervent
devotees of the cult of revolution. For the latter, revolutions seem good in
themselves, sometimes appear to serve in this secular century the older functions of
a religious revival, a conversion and cleansing of society. Or they seem a shortcut
to the Golden Age of the future. Often uncomprehending or derogatory of other
historical processes, the devotees may regard revolution as the only effective agent
of change. “Revolution is the locomotive of history, the motive force of progress
of human society,” proclaimed a Chinese Communist leader, echoing a similar
statement by Karl Marx.
As dramatic episodes in the early acceleration of political change all over the
world, the late eighteenth-century American and French upheavals inaugurated the
modern series of revolutions. Earlier outbreaks of general political unrest,
however, had taken place . . .
The French Revolution, however, lies at the storm center of a series of
disturbances . . . Presently, the Spanish Americans rebelled against their
motherland, the Greeks succeeded in throwing off the Turkish yoke, and in 1830
and 1848 additional series of revolts occurred. Historians continue to debate
whether these all form part of a single larger phenomenon, a Western Revolution,
or not.
Most experts have considered the French and Russian revolutions the classic
examples, those that best typify the nature of revolution and which in turn
provided the models, many of the stereotypes, and much of the terminology that
prevail in large measure to this day. Crane Brinton, on the basis of a comparative
study of these two plus the Puritan and the American, tried to set up, in The
Anatomy of Revolution [1938], a model of the phases or sequences of
developments in a typical revolution . . .
This attempt at finding uniformities fits the French and perhaps the Russian
sequences reasonably well but applying them to others seems to strain the
evidence . . .
No one model can possibly explain fully the nature of revolution. Harry Eckstein
has listed twenty-one generalized causes, a variety reminiscent of the reasons for
the decline of Rome. Some focus on economic factors, some on intellectual ones,
others on political and social structure or general social processes. The reasons
range from growing poverty through alienation of the intellectuals, isolation of the
rulers, and the appearance of new social classes all the way to excessive prevalence
of ideologies. A long war (especially a lost war) may help to precipitate
revolutionary consequences. Different scholars emphasize different parts of the
process, no consistent image beyond convulsive change emerges, and therefore
any broad survey of basis processes tends to take the form of a series of
generalities . . .
One of the preparatory elements quite obviously consists of the alienation of the
intellectuals. The philosophes of the Enlightenment—Voltaire, Rousseau, and
others—helped to destroy faith in the old institutions and the habit of obedience,
while simultaneously providing justification for rebellion. Numerous stereotypes
of the French Revolution became permanent tools of future revolutionists:
freedom from tyranny; the inherent “rights of man”; the noble savage; the cult of
the future. Similarily, numerous Russian writers in the second half of the
nineteenth century attacked prevailing ideas and discussed alternatives . . .
That people rise in desperation against tyranny, that misery causes revolution,
these have always been popular notions. Along with the Golden Age of the future,
they remain the stock-in-trade of revolutionary leaders. Historians like Carlyle and
Jules Michelet (and Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities) narrated in full detail
both the misery and the tyranny, though even at that time Alexis de Tocqueville
was writing that “the French found their condition the more insupportable in
proportion to its improvement.” Had misery actually engendered revolution, the
French, after a century of genuine advances, would have been among the last
people in Europe to revolt; the Russian Revolution came after three decades of
accelerating material achievements. However, a sharp economic downturn badly
hurt some elements in France, and two successive poor harvests reduced the food
supply; the Russian suffered the agonizing ordeal of World War I. Therefore, the
tendency now is to say that a sudden discouraging setback after steady progress
may set the stage for revolution.
Quite possibly, the state of mind is as important as the actual situation, perhaps
more so. Where conditions do not encourage hope, it does not occur to people to
rise up, but the “revolution of rising expectancies” may bring on an upheaval, the
actual possibility of escape producing action . . .
Weaknesses in the regime itself undoubtedly are another indispensable ingredient
for revolution. No matter how tyrannical, a competent, resolute government
determined to stay in power is extremely unlikely to be overthrown, regardless of
how many abuses prevail. . .
Eugene Kamenka has pointed out a distinction between Anglo-American and
continental European interpretations. On the continent, where governments tended
to be rigid in the nineteenth century, economic changes are usually assumed to be
responsible for causing revolutions. The English and the Americans, accustomed
to economic and social changes within a stable political framework, have been
prone to believe the rigid regimes themselves responsible by penning up discontent
until a revolutionary explosion occurs. In terms of challenge and response, the
authorities fail to respond to changing circumstances soon enough . . .
With the breakdown of authority, one so-called revolution may consist of several
successive or concurrent revolutions. The events of 1789 had been preceded by an
aristocratic revolt (of which the Assembly of Notables is a part), and the peasants
underwent their own kind of upheaval at the same time as the events in the cities.
Then came the revolution of the extremists . . . In Russia, one revolution occurred
early in 1917 with the collapse of the tsarist regime, the Bolsheviks carried through
a second one in the autumn, and a third took place among the peasantry. In
addition, the various non-Russian nationalities waged their own struggles for
autonomy at first and then for independence.
....
Both popular and scholarly conceptions have been strongly influenced by the
Marxist appropriation of revolutionary phenomena for themselves, by their
assumption that only upheavals corresponding to the Marxist pattern are genuine
revolutions. Most people still think of the French Revolution in terms of the
victory of the middle class . . . [However] simple usage of terms like “capitalist”
or “bourgeois” versus “feudal” or “nobility,” reflecting excessive influence of the
Marxist ideas of social classes and class struggle, does not faithfully reflect the
reality of the circumstances prevalent at the time . . .
The question remains open whether a revolution must consist of lower classes
overturning an upper class along Marxist lines, especially in contemporary
societies, which have outgrown the Marxist framework—if this concept ever did
reflect the actuality of the real world . . .
Few historical processes are as suffused with street-level mythology as those of
revolution. [pp. 245-254]