The Ongoing Revolution
Rethinking Revolt as a Living, Ongoing Project
When one says the word “revolution,” there is a set of common images that probably come to mind. The angry masses taking the streets, engaging in urban warfare with the forces of the state. Hardened partisans in green fatigues dragging deposed leaders from their manors for summary execution. All very brutal, graphic stuff.
It’s not surprising, then, that those most bitterly alienated from the order which is deposed might see this vision of a revolution as, at worst, an unfortunate necessity, At the same time, in the minds of those least alienated from that same power structure, it inspires terror and revulsion.
To the former, revolution marks the end of an intolerable state of affairs; the future may be uncertain, but it can’t be worse than the present. To the latter, it marks the destruction of treasured norms of decorum and the shakeup of reliable, predictable order. Even worse, it comes along with the fear of a possibile demotion in the socio-political pecking order. Think, for example, about the abolition of titles of nobility in France following the revolution of 1848. Although the nobility was eventually restored after the revolution’s defeat, the upper crust of French society did, at least for a moment, face the threat of losing their ancestral positions of privilege in the context of violent social revolution.
The dramatic, blood-drenched vision of “revolution” is not the only example we have, though. Revolution is not necessarily a violent upheaval that will cost thousands of lives and tear society apart. This can be the case, as has happened numerous times throughout history, with revolts against domestic or imperial rulers developing into outright war in Mexico, the United States, Algeria, Angola, and dozens of other countries throughout history. However, there is nothing which dictates that revolutions must be this way. We have seen revolutions carried out that were entirely peaceful in nature.
Revolution also is not necessarily a cataclysmic event. In fact, revolution never begins or ends with transformation or outright overthrow of the state. Instead, it begins with actions taken months, or even years before the would-be revolutionaries actually move to seize power. It then continues until the revolutionaries’ vision for society is fully implemented.
Case in Point: The Cuban Experience
We can look at Cuba as an example here. While it’s been more than sixty years since Cubans overthrew the US-backed Bautista regime, the ruling Communist Party of Cuba still speaks of the Cuban Revolution as a living, ongoing political project. It’s true that the Cuban government remains a point of controversy in the US, even among self-professed leftists. However, there are a few points that are undeniable. First, that the Cuban revolutionary government is still in power. Second, that the same revolutionary spirit which propelled the people to throw off imperialism in 1959 remains widespread throughout the populace. And third, that said revolution is, in the mind of the average Cuban, still ongoing.
“Indeed, within the Cuban context, the term revolution is often used to describe an ‘ongoing state political project — event, structure, and process’,” Nina Jany explains in the University of Fribourg journal Sozialpolitik. “A project which is, up until today, under construction.”
In the Cuban example, the implication is clear: just because power has been seized, does not mean the struggle has ended. This is because the overthrow of an old order is not truly a revolution; rather it’s only the first stage of one.
We should think of “revolution” not as bloody upheaval, but as a process of the changing of course in social history. In that sense, overthrowing an old, oppressive order marks the beginning of a revolution, not its end. The true revolution lies in the process of building of a new society after the old order is cast off. It is an ongoing project that is only truly complete when it is experienced as being complete by the revolutionary subject.
Counterpoint: The Soviet Experience
It has not always been the case that socialist projects have widespread buy-in from the populace at large. Socialism, by its nature, requires widespread belief in the viability-and righteousness-of the project in order to thrive.
Although we use “capitalism” and “exploitation” as shorthand for the problems which socialist revolution intends to address, the true nut of the matter is alienation. In Marxist terms, the alienation borne of being estranged from one’s species-essence; capitalism is the mechanism by which the modern human is subjected to alienation, but alienation is not exclusive to capitalism. Alienation was experienced within pre-capitalist societies as well, and it can be experienced in post-capitalist societies, too.
One could make the case that this was why, by the mid-eighties, we began to see a rapid unraveling of order within the Soviet Union, for instance. By the era of Perestroika, the Soviet political project no longer had widespread buy-in from the populace. Thus, when the wheels began to fall off the cart, an insufficient share of the populace felt it was actually worthwhile to try and fix it. The reason for this: a critical mass of the populace had begun to experience the Soviet state as a force which facilitated their alienation, rather than alleviated it.
In contrast, the Cuban political project managed to withstand the collapse of its primary trade partner and guarantor. This is because there is genuine widespread buy-in among the Cuban populace about the state of their ongoing revolutionary project. The people are not alienated from the project, and so they feel a degree of investment in that project’s survival and eventual success. By the late-eighties, one could reasonably make the case that, for much of the Soviet population, faith in the viability of the Soviet revolutionary project had been foreclosed.
Going back to Jany again:
“Conceptually speaking, one may question whether it is even possible that a revolution may last for more than five decades. Actually, no overall definition of revolution exists. The term is contested, and claimed by different strands and movements. Since revolution can be considered as a category of self-interpretation of those who are involved in it, and since incompleteness and open-endedness are inherent to the concepts of revolution and revolutionary change, conceptual arguments for the perception of an ongoing Cuban revolution can be provided.”
Why Does This Matter?
It’s important to have a clear-eyed view of what revolution really entails. It’s not merely the overthrow of an old order, but the establishment of a new one built on the principles which propelled the revolution originally.
In my own view, thinking of revolution as an ongoing political project, rather than as a singular upheaval, is much more inspirational. First, it rejects the necessity of violence in order to achieve revolutionary aims. While some violence may be necessary, it is not the rule that it must always be so. Nowhere is it written that we need some ritual spilling of blood to consecrate the new order. Violence should be considered as necessary so long as it is direct defense of the revolution. And, if the preexisting order truly no longer has legitimacy in the eyes of the people, such violence may be quite minimal.
Second, the realization of revolution as an ongoing project dramatically broadens the scope of possibility for what revolutionary action may entail. Revolution is no longer something that happens, it is something which the revolutionary does, both before and after the throwing off of the old order.
Of course, this also raises other important questions: what, exactly, constitutes revolutionary action? How does one do revolution?
These are perhaps the most critical questions of our time. The challenges we face are substantial, and that the window of time in which we have to address them is very small. At this point, some degree of catastrophic climate damage is “inevitable and irreversible” within this century. Capitalism is a system predicated on the profit motive; on infinite growth on a finite planet. Climate change is a problem that capitalism cannot rise to meet, which means that a social revolution which puts a final end to the capitalist mode of production is a pressing necessity.
Rather than falling to despair, though, this is all the more reason why the revolutionary process must begin immediately. The good news is that, in many ways, it’s already started.
What Constitutes Revolutionary Action?
The scope of “revolutionary action” is not limited solely to picking up an AK-47 and charging off into the hills to assemble a guerilla army. The revolution is something which the revolutionary subject can do on a day-to-day basis within the confines of the existing social order. Just as the revolution continues long after the old order is dispensed, it begins long before that point.
One becomes a revolutionary by conceptualizing oneself as a revolutionary, then carrying out rightly-guided action that serves a revolutionary goal. In that way, organizing tenants to fight back against a slumlord becomes a revolutionary act. Building a labor union at one’s workplace that maintains a confrontational stance toward management is a revolutionary act. Feeding the homeless using food appropriated from corporate grocery stores is a revolutionary act. These are just a few examples among many of actions that can be revolutionary in nature.
This raises a question, though: what is it which makes an act revolutionary?
In short, I believe that the factor which makes an act revolutionary is whether that action can be built upon to divert power away from the ruling class, and toward the working class. If an act, when carried out successfully, results in the shift of some measure of power in favor of the working class, it can rightly be said to be revolutionary. If not, then it is merely political theater. A revolutionary act has the inherent power to materially change the world as a direct consequence of it having been carried out. An action which does not accomplish this is, at best, a howl of anger at the present system. At worst, it’s merely a means of assuaging one’s guilt at their position of privilege or complicity within a system that grinds human beings and the planet into fodder.
It’s not going to be an easy struggle. Revolution is not something we can achieve on an individual basis. It must be a collaborative, ongoing, living project built from the combined actions of millions of budding revolutionaries. This presents a problem, of course, as each of us has to come to revolution as an individual. It’s a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
There’s no need to wait for the revolution-it’s already here. As Marx himself observed, we have a world to win. And, it’s not a contest we can afford to lose again.
Originally published at https://arguechat.substack.com on May 16, 2022.
