Theory Flashcards
5 elements that create an “unstable social equilibrium”
VSI: Revolutions [Goldstone]
1) National economic or fiscal strain
2) Alienation and opposition
3) Widespread popular anger at injustice
4) Persuasive shared narrative of resistance
5) Favourable international relations
3 elements that make revolutions distinct from other kinds of disorder
VSI: Revolutions [Goldstone]
1) Mass mobilisation
2) Pursuit of a vision of social justice
3) Creation of new political institutions
3 factors that combine to make revolutions
VSI: Revolutions [Goldstone]
1) Rulers become weak and isolated
2) Elites begin to attack the government rather than defend it
3) People believe themselves to be part of a numerous, united, righteous group that create change.
3 factors that historians disagree on when talking about revolutions
VSI Revolutions [Goldstone]
1) Speed (example: Mao, 20+ years fighting and mobilising before taking power)
2) Violence (example: Orange Revolution in Ukraine, rapid but non violent)
3) Class (example: anti-colonial revolutions like America, all classes again a colonial power)
Hannah Arendt on freedom.
On Revolution (1965 p41)
Freedom has been better preserved in countries where no revolution ever broke out, no matter how outrageous the circumstance of the powers that be, and that more civil liberties exist even in countries where the revolution was defeated than in those where revolutions have been victorious.
Marx on the failure of the French Revolution.
According to Marx, the French Revolution failed because it could not reconcile the notions of individual rights with the espousal of universal values. Failure to reconcile these factors resulted in psychological and cultural disorientation, as the revolutionaries found that their principles, purposes, and understandings were not enough to both form and bind a new society. The resulting social, cultural, and moral disorientations resulted in the Terror.
Definition of social revolutions.
Skopal: State and Social Revolutions [1979]
Social revolutions are rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structure.
They are accompanied by class-based revolts from below.
“Revolutions are the locomotives of history”
Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850.
According to Skopal, what is unique about social revolutions?
State and Social Revolution [1979]
Basic changes in social structure and in political structure occur together in a mutually reinforcing fashion, and that these changes occur through intense socio-political conflicts in which class struggles play a key role.
In the lecture notes, what are the 4 areas of generalization for revolutions?
1) Redistribution of political power.
2) Involve popular mobilization.
3) Are done in the service of a progressive ideology.
4) Have an international context- don’t take place in isolation.
“We the old people perhaps won’t survive until the decisive battles of this forthcoming revolution”.
Lenin, Zurich 1917 - Revolutions are unpredictable.
Hobsbawm and the concept of ‘dual revolution’.
The Age of Revolution [1969]
1789: political and ideological changes of the French Revolution fused with and reinforced the technological and economic changes of the Industrial Revolution.
“The web of history cannot be unraveled into separate threads”.
Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution” - consider political and other revolutions as separate but interconnected processes (ie. industrial and political in French Rev).
“The history of all society up to now is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in short, oppressor and oppressed, stood in continual conflict with one another conducting an unbroken, now hidden, now open struggle, a struggle that finished each time with a revolutionary transformation of society as a whole, or with the common ruin of the contending classes.”
The Communist Manifesto, 1848.
“At a certain stage of their development the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production….From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution.”
Marx’s Preface to “A Contribution of the Critique of Political Economy” 1859
Marxist approach to Revolution [short]
Marx sees revolutions as emerging out of class-divided modes of production and transforming one mode of production into another through class conflict.
Aggregate-Psychological Theories for Revolution [Short]
Ted Gurr- Why Men Rebel
Revolutions are explained as being due to the occurrence in a society of widespread, intense and multifaceted relative deprivation that touches both masses and elite aspirants
Political-Conflict Theories [Short]
Tilly “From Mobilization to Revolution”
Revolution is a special case of collective action in which the contenders fight or ultimate political sovereignty over a population, and in which challengers succeed at least to some degree in displacing existing power holders.
Systems/Value consensus theory [Johnson “Revolutionary Change”]
Explain revolutions as violent responses of ideological movements to severe disequilibrium in social systems
Skopal’s method of structural analysis
To explain social revolutions then, we need to
1) Find the problematic emergence of a revolutionary situation within an old regime
2) Identify the objectively conditioned and complex intermeshing of the various actions of the diversely situate groups that shapes the revolutionary process
3) Focus both on the institutionally determined situations and relations of groups within society, and upon the interrelations of societies within world-historically developing international structures.
Benedict Anderson: Revolutions and Time
America
Took the Declaration of Independence’s omission of Columbus, Roanoke or the Pilgrims Fathers’ seriously:
“A profound feeling that a radical break with the past was occurring- the blasting open of the continuum of history- spread rapidly.”
Benedict Anderson: Revolutions and Time
France
The French Revolution inaugurated a new era with Year One, and the creation of the new French Republic on the 22nd September 1729 mean a new calendar replaced the Gregorian.
Benedict Anderson: Revolutions and Time
Russia
Bolsheviks moulded the Gregorian calendar into one that facilitated production. Traditional ‘off’ days normally used for religious purposes, were so upset that whole communities either had to work around the Soviet system or buy into it.
Charles Kurzman: Anti-Explanation Theory
“Anti-explanation means abandoning the project of retroactive prediction in favour of recognising and reconstructing the lived experience of the moment. T
Understand the experience of revolution in all its anomalous diversity and confusion, and abandon the mirage of retroactive predictability. - a variety of responses
Incorporates the unpredictability of revolution. Allows for the individual stories that cannot be reduced to sweeping statements about entire populations.
Recaptures the experience of confusion in a regime- social scientists will never be able to predict revolutions since the revolutionaries themselves don’t know what is going to happen.
Charles Kurzman: Political Explanation Summary
[The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran]
Revolutions occur when a regime relaxes its pressure and offers opportunities for successful mobilisation
In Iran, the monarch’s repression relaxed somewhat in 1977.
BUT the Islamists in Iran began their mobilisation only after the shah rescinded his liberalisation late in the year.
Charles Kurzman: Organizational Explanation Summary
[The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran]
Revolutions occur when oppositional groups are able to mobilise sufficient resources to contest the regime’s hold on the population.
In Iran, the Islamists mobilised the nationwide “mosque network” against the regime.
BUT the mosque network was not a pre-existing resource for the Islamists and had to be constructed and commandeered during the course of the mobilisation.
Charles Kurzman: Cultural Explanation Summary
[The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran]
Revolutions occur when a movement can draw on oppositional norms, ideologies, beliefs and rituals in a society.
In Iran, the revolutionary movements drew upon Shi’i Islamic themes and practices.
BUT it modified these cultural elements, sometimes drastically, to make them conducive to protest.
Charles Kurzman: Economic Explanation Summary
[The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran]
Revolutions occur when economic problems worsen, especially after a period of relative prosperity.
In Iran, the oil boom of the mid-1970s gave way to a troubling recession in 1977.
BUT this recession was no more severe than previous ones, and the groups that suffered most were not the most revolutionary
Charles Kuzman: Military Explanation Summary
[The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran]
Revolutions occur when the state’s repressive capacity breaks down and is unable to suppress protest
In Iran, the shah did not use the military to crack down definitively.
BUT the military did not break down; it continued to repress protests actively up to the last moments of the revolution.
Gerard Koch: Music in Revolution
Koch asserted that the performance of Daniel Auber’s opera La muette de Protici catalyzed the revolution in Belgium in 1830, during which the audience members burst forth from the theatre and into the streets.
Reinhart Koselleck: Is Europe too old for Revolution?
“Revolution is a term now in vogue, but it is perhaps more raddled (showing signs of age or fatigue) than its users’ would like to believe.”
Hamilton and Whig History
Just when historians thought they were on the cusp of redefining the very meaning of the American Revolution, along comes “Hamilton,” the musical. The general public, and not a few academics, have embraced the show, which reaffirms the old Whiggish narrative that the revolution set the foundation for liberal democracy.
Modern historiography has instead started to take more seriously the negative consequences the revolution had for marginalized groups
Nicholas Guyatt argues that even the most liberal-minded founders laid the foundation for segregation. [Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation 2016]
Janet Polansky: Print Culture, the American Revolution and a Global Context
Revolution without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World (2015)
Follows revolutionary-era pamphlets, letters and novels as they made their way to and from Haiti, Sierra Leone, Poland, the U.S., Russia and France.
Peoples of many different cultures, classes and genders, she argues, embraced and often transformed the meaning of “revolution” to fit their individual circumstances.But all of them shared a sense that the “age of Revolutions,” as Thomas Paine famously dubbed it, would usher in a more egalitarian world.
What emerges is in some ways a retooling of the ideological approach—but one that is more sharply attuned to the revolution’s failures. When the dust settled, a new age of nations, of empires, emerged in the revolutions’ collective wake, leaving only the promise of freedom, not its realisation.
Revolution as a human tool
The word “revolution” is a human tool. At any point in time, its meaning has shifted to accommodate those wielding it.
Keith Baker and Dan Edelstein “Scripting Revolutions” argument
One feature of revolutions transcends cultural differences- the notion of a revolutionary ‘script.’
Revolutions do not occur ex nihilo. Revolutionaries are extremely self conscious of and knowledgable about how previous revolutions unfolded. These revolutionary scripts offer frameworks for political action, and provide outlines on which revolutionary actors can improvise.
Marx rewrote the script of the French Revolution; Lenin revised Marx; Mao revised Lenin, etc.
Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0
Massive popular protests in Egypt 25th January 2011. Ghonim proclaimed the advent of “Revolution 2.0”. Revolution in Egypt a spontaneous movement led by nothing other than the wisdom of the crowd and coordinated via an anonymous page set up in the wake of the death of Khaled Saeed. Facebook as a revolutionary tool that could not be censored by the government unless they shut down the internet- which they tried to do.
The role of the internet and technology in revolution and its relationship to the longer history of the revolutionary tradition.
Sociological/deterministic accounts of revolution summary
[Edelstein and Baker Scripting Revolution]
1) Basic framework can be traced back to Marx
2) Class struggle as the motor for social change
3) Indebted to Marx’s fundamental view that the true cause of revolutions are found in socio-economic conflict
4) Revolutions fated to occur due to structural conflicts, at either the social or state level
5) Political crises are just incidental triggers.
Edelstein’s criticism of the sociological approach approach: revolutionary beginnings
“The sociological search for a single, basic process that can explain the periodic state breakdowns in Europe, China and the Middle East from 1500-1850 is a quixotic pursuit.”
Farfinkel: Why are people so focused on surprise?
- Sociologist Harold Farfinkel- why were people so focused on surprise?
- Sought to reduce their anxiety about a world that seemed out of control by assiduously generating explanations that make the world make sense again-> After the Iranian Revolution, those who had considered the upheaval unthinkable became preoccupied with understanding how they could have been so mistaken.
Four areas of influence for relationship between modernisation and revolution
1) Socio-economic modernisation: modernity is the period of historical change where time is speeding up, experience is de-centred, urbanisation, the agricultural sector and tradition are declining.
2 Ideas: Enlightenment, secularisation, Marxism -> the ‘progressive soundtrack’ of modern revolution
3) Taxonomy of revolutions- there are enough revolutions in the modern era that we can form a taxonomy, see the significance and role of factors such as empire, markets and socialism
4) Transmission and transnational- connections across borders increased in scope and possibility, which accelerates the possibility of revolution.
Historical vs. social science approach
If the defining feature of revolutions is that they are completely unpredictable, they are better studied by historians used to contingency, rather than by other social sciences, who try and drive together artificial generalisations.
Revolutions as without agency- people think they are happening when they are not, or vice-versa
- Charles de Gaulle fled Paris in 1968
- Romanian President stood on the balcony of Bucharest to address the people December 1989, not realising that the crowd wanted to kill him not celebrate him.
Why is it easier to predict war than revolution?
War is the most easily comparable event to revolution, because of the scope of their consequences, and the ferocity of their destructive impact.
War is the immediate consequence of decisions by rulers, politicians and generals- they start when someone orders their soldiers to attack. [Though Lenin not very good at this- wrote in 1913 that war between Russia and Austria, which would be useful for fermenting revolution, was hardly possible-oops].
Revolutions neither begin nor end because someone decides that they should.
More like complex weather systems than other political events- we cannot predict, nor can we recognise them while they are happening, or even after they have finished.
“an echo in the whole world is inevitable”
Rosa Luxemburg “Letter to Clara Zetkin” April 13th 1917,
“Revolution requires extensive and widespread destruction, a fecund and renovating destruction, since in this way, and only this way are new worlds born”
Mikhail Bukunin, Statism and Anarchy 1873.
[Russian political philosopher and founder of collectivist anarchist]
“A revolution is not a trail of roses…a revolution is a fight to the death between the future and the past
Fidel Castro, speech on the second anniversary of the triumph of the revolution, January 2nd 1961.
“The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal”
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom 1941
[Frankfurt school]
“A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government”
Goethe, Conversations with Goethe, 1824.
Goldstone’s definition of revolution
Revolution is the forcible overthrow of a government through mass mobilisation (military or civilian or both) in the name of social justice to create new political institutions.
The process by which visionary leaders draw on the power of the masses to forcibly bring into existence a new political order.
