Revolution? orange, spring, tweeter - Are those revolutions?

In this post I will present a cross theoretical analysis of the concept of political revolution. For this purpose I will try to shed light on how different theories explain the causality and dialectics of revolutionary movement.

When discussed about the revolution, we refer to the sudden and rapid changes occurring to the previous conditions. In this sense, the concept of political revolution speaks foremost about a sudden alteration in the social order and not necessarily about the qualitative dimension of this change.

Looking first at the Marxist school argument revolution is seen as a change of modes of production (Skocpol, 1981). It stems from class-divided modes of production, by transforming one mode of production into another through class conflict. According to Marx, the revolution is a sharp transition from one form of economic organization to a new one, in which new types of social relations are established. In this context, the transformation of the production relationships and the hegemony of the successful revolutionary class set up new forms of political and ideological organization. Consequently, according to Marx, the revolution is a class-based transformation driven from a “self-conscious … rising revolutionary class” (Skocpol, 1981, p. 8). In this sense, the revolution does not represent an elite-led act. It is rather a result of collective consciousness and will. Deepening into the Marxist theory, it becomes evident that this understanding ignores the role of leaders and elites in the process of shaping the mass consciousness.

The scholarship on aggregate-psychological theory highlights the psychological feature of revolutions. According to them, political violence takes place when the members of society start to be dominated by a shared feeling of anger and dissatisfaction of the discrepancies between their opportunities and needs, a condition known as ‘relative deprivation’. The main element of revolutions, according to this approach, is the ultimate presence of a certain form of aggression. According to Gurr, the revolution is nothing else than just one of the many manifestations of political violence. Thus, by differentiating between forms of violence in turmoil, conspiracy and civil war, the revolution is placed in the internal war category together with large-scale terrorism, guerilla wars, and civil wars. The problem of this approach is that scholars do not distinguish between purposes and means of revolutions. In this sense, history provided us with a large number of nonviolent revolutions, such as the nonviolent revolution in India or the ‘colored revolutions’ in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova.

The central argument of the political-conflict theory is based on analyzing the capacity of the challengers to mobilize the necessary material resources to be able to overturn the existing elites. According to Tilly, revolution is a special case of collective action, where the contenders fight for political sovereignty and for displacing the existing government. In Tilly’s opinion the revolution does not necessarily presume violence, which would be treated as its physical byproduct. It seems that by focusing mainly on the mobilization capacity of the contending elites, the supporters of this theory limit their attention on elite changes thus they omit from their analysis the fundamental change of the political order as a whole and with it, the existing social norms. 

Skocpol (1981) identifies social revolutions as distinct forms of political protest from other types of conflicts and transformative processes. Social revolutions are different by cumulating two types of conditions: societal structural changes with class turmoil, and simultaneous political and social transformations (Skocpol, p. 4). In this sense, she highlights the importance of the radical change of social norms and political institutions as a key characteristic which makes revolutions different form other types of social unrest. Moreover, Skocpol pays a special attention to the international context as a necessary but not sufficient precondition for the emergence of a revolution. In this sense, the scholar specifies that all modern revolutions took place in states with highly disadvantaged international position. In this order, she discusses two main relevant transnational contexts. The first is the pushing factor of the global capitalist economy, which makes societies feel that they lag behind and consequently demand for social transformations. And the second is the spread of revolutionary ideas and leadership across national borders. 

An innovative dimension in the scholarship on revolutions is introduced by Goldstone (2003). According to him, revolutions pass through different evolutionary stages, similarly to other political processes. Thus, in various historical periods they display different modes of manifestation. Goldstone draws the difference between old revolutions, which could be characterized by the presence of three elements such as sharp and progressive change in a society’s values and institutions, mass-action, and violence, and the new revolutions, which emphasize the efforts to change values and institutions, and mass actions. Hence, the post-1990s revolutions especially, do not always display success or violence. Unlike his predecessors Goldstone does not insist on the success of revolutions as a core characteristic. A revolution for Goldstone is not necessarily a finished act, the breakdown or substitution of a certain regime, but rather the attempt to do it. According to Goldstone, any act of protest or social disobedience, which is not necessarily violent or successful, can be qualified as revolution.

Kuran (1991), on the other hand, uses the term “revolution” in a narrow understanding that assumes “a mass supported seizure of political power that aims to transform the social order” (p. 13). Accordingly, the emergence of revolutions is a rational decision/behavior of masses to take advantage of the temporarily vulnerable autocracies in an attempt to overturn them. In this sense, as an advocate of the rationalist school, he looks at revolutions through the prism of cost-benefit relations. His core idea is based on the assumption that the outburst of revolutions cannot be predicted despite their high magnitudes. The unpredictability of revolutions is, as he assumes, due to the unpredictability of the individual rational decision that cannot be evaluated in advance because of public alienation and general state of ignorance (p. 30). Consequently, the chances of an individual to take part in a mass protest lie at the intersection between his private moral interests and material public benefits. Furthermore, Kuran shows that there are two factors that play the decisive role in a personal decision. First, the number of public protesters that already has joined the protest, and second, the level of internal dissatisfaction emerged as an effect of forced public conformity.From the brief analysis of the Kuran understanding of revolutions it seems that the scholar misses from consideration the role of governmental capacity to persecute protesters and to see how this pressure influences the motivations of individuals to participate in mass actions. Kuran does not consider the role of political leaders in the mobilization of mass protests. Despite mentioning that revolutions are possible only as an effect of governmental inefficiency and repressions, he nevertheless does not include this variable in his proposed testing mechanism. Finally, Kuran confuses causes with processes taking place during the revolution. Thus, focusing his attention on the rationality of individual mobilization, the scholar fails to explain what happens after the moment that protesters are mass protesting. Scott (1976) and Popkin (1979) focus their attention mainly on pre-capitalist agrarian societies looking predominantly on the social causes, which lead to a revolutionary situation. The scholars do not provide a definition of revolution as such, however they explain it implicitly. By speaking about revolutions both authors assume that they are led by subjugated social class, (in their discussed cases - the peasantry), who revolts against a higher social class, (the landowners), in order to change the system of social relations. In this sense, revolutions are analyzed as a class conflict. Nevertheless, the difference between Popkin and Scott concepts of revolution is hidden in their distinct understandings of peasants’ causes to revolt. At the first glance one could make an association between Scott – Popkin class lead approach with the Marxist revolutionary theory however they have a dissimilar argumentation and causal mechanisms.

As a promoter of moral economy theory Scott sees the village social relations as a safety net against the loss of subsistence capacity in the pre-colonialist and capitalist era. Thus, the village was a self-sufficient economic unit, which used its millenary moral values to ensure a hierarchy of authority and legitimacy among its dwellers. Even if the peasant collectivities could never reach the status of rich communities, the peasant societies refrained from revolutionary actions as their relations with landowners were tied by a multivalent relation of mutually connected interdependence and help. The discontent among peasants is triggered by the rapid impoverishment as a result of the degradation of the economic circuit, which represented an outcome of the encroachment of colonialist (capitalist) forces. Consequently, the massive peasant revolts did not represent a reaction against the exploiting class but rather against the economic degradation and dissolution of local traditions.

On the other side, Popkin - the supporter of the political economy theory, blame Scott for romanticism and proclivity to mythologization. He claims, that the revolutionary mobilization of the peasantry was not conditioned by the reaction against the new economic system, which threw them into subsistence, but rather by the dissatisfaction with the old system, which revealed its shortcomings in contrast to the new economic opportunities and chances offered by the new capitalist order. He shows that the peasants had their specific way of life not as a deliberate choice of its inhabitants but as lack of other alternatives. Consequently, the village represented a ‘corporate unit’, led by internal market mechanisms that have been imposed by the internal hierarchical stratification. The intrusion of the outsiders into the monotone and closed agrarian village decomposed the local traditional values and introduced significant modifications into economic practices. This incursion hence did not spoil the idyllic local moral values but rather gave a chance to the peasantry to escape from extreme poverty.The main criticism regarding the scholars understanding of revolutions emphasizes the difficulty to trace the trigger lying in between the process described by both scholars and the revolutions themselves. Moreover, Scott and Popkin focus exclusively on social economic causes and therefore neglect the role of individual leaders as potential vehicles of social mobilization. As Tilly puts it, relative deprivation is a not enough to cause popular uprisings. Considering that the scholars analyze exclusively prerevolutionary conditions, they miss on the evolutionary dynamics of revolutionary movements as such. Finally, the authors focus their attention only to specific types of revolutions, occurring in agrarian societies. This fact narrows down the understanding of revolutions as a universal social phenomenon.After a general analysis of the theory on revolutions Goldstone (2003), mentions that it would be impossible to arrive at a universal definition of revolutions since scholars look into particular conditions and stages of this phenomenon. In addition, the understanding of revolutions differs depending on what historical period they occurred in. In this sense, precapitalist revolutions display very different conditions and elements from the twenty-first century revolutions. Thus, he suggest to analyze revolutions as an outcome of the “loss or undermining of the conditions that maintain stability” (p. 78). Such an approach could allow for the creation of a common ground in researching the dynamics of revolutions. In this sense, it is worth questioning, should theorists strive to define revolutions as a universal term or should they be bound to particular contextual frameworks?

Finally, set of unanswered questions remains for further research: Is the mass or rather the leader the driving force of revolutions or each of the two have only limited supportive roles? Which elements of a revolution differentiate it from a transition process? Should a failed mass action against governmental authority still be considered a revolution? Or as the overturn of government be considered a revolution if this overturn did not bring significant desired social changes as in the case of Egypt?  Lastly, in approaching the concept of revolution the scholarship almost unanimously points to its progressive nature. How should then theorists treat revolutionary involutions (i.e. Bolshevik or Iranian revolutions), and how do their characteristics differ from a regular revolution?

Another good methodological question is what research method is better to aptly in order to studying revolutions. In this regard we face again the good old debate between qualitative and quantitative school. And despite many other cases the debate is clearly won by the supporters of small N. This is because the scholarship writing on revolutions did not come even close to the point of agreement on the main traits of revolutions. Thus the concept vary from author to author in their most elementary components, varying in kind (of modernization, innovation or regression...) form of manifestation (violent non violent), who is the engine (bughouse, peasant..) level of achievements (successful, unsuccessful) and so on. Thus if we paraphrase Moore argument on analyzing major historical phenomena it would sound like how many revolutions of the same kind could a scholar collect and put in his database to run the most simple regression. And how many chances that an event of the same sort would happen in the future?