Revolutions have been understood in different ways, but two primary definitions are particularly relevant. One views a revolution as “a movement that brings about the (violent) overthrow of a government,” which leads to significant social and political changes. The other defines it as a radical shift in political order, where one system is replaced by…
Category: governance
Roberto Breña: “The Age of Revolutions Under the Microscope”
“This bibliographic essay critically reviews two recent books on the Atlantic Revolutions and the Age of Revolutions: The Age of Atlantic Revolution by Patrick Griffin (2023) and The Age of Revolutions by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (2024).”
Patrick Kingsley: “Revolutions Swept the Middle East in 2011. Will Syria’s End Differently?”
“Mr. al-Assad’s stunning fall finally allows Syrians to feel the joy that their counterparts experienced more than a decade ago in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen — the four Arab countries where dictators were toppled far more quickly. Yet while those four states provided a template for revolutionary success, their trajectories since the Arab Spring…
Shafi Md Mostofa: “Injustice Paves the Way for Revolution: Lessons from Bangladesh”
“Moreover, the success of any revolution depends on the cultural preparedness of the people. Revolutions may be sparked by injustice, but their outcomes are shaped by the collective consciousness and readiness of the populace to embrace change. In Bangladesh’s case, the cultural strength of the student-led movement, and the symbolic leadership of a figure like…
Miguel Amorós: “What is Anarchism?”
“Despite the undeniably crucial role of the anarchist masses in the revolutions of the last century, no matter how much we search through classic anarchist literature, we will find few references to revolution as a means of transforming society. Because of the violent implications it necessarily contains, it contradicted the pacifist postulates of the ideology,…
Michele Garau: “The Strategy of Separation”
‘Beyond an idea of Revolution that would condemn us to be its Subjects, and in the meantime to administer the political misery that our great anticipation has in store for us. Instead, a revolutionary dynamic is something else, which we can imagine only in flashes. The cycle of riots and occupied squares that marked the…
Peter Gelderloos: “Geopolitics for 2024 on the probabilities of state power or revolution”
“We rarely know how to achieve any continuity from one generation to the next within the alienation and scarcity of capitalism, so we commit the same mistakes again and again. And under the colonial spirituality of rationalism we have forgotten that the real world cannot exist without imaginary worlds. We let capitalism do all our…
“The Revolutionary Temper” (2023) by Robert Darnton reviewed
Darnton “suggests that between the end of the war of the Austrian succession in 1748 and the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the French population underwent a series of convulsions, some as molten as others were icy, which resulted in a subtle but powerful molecular shift.”
Michael A. Allen & Julie VanDusky-Allen: “The ‘Barbie’ and ‘Star Wars’ universes”
Both “Barbie” and “Andor” are useful for those who want to understand why revolutions happen and what it takes for them to happen. Their fundamental point: Before the start of any revolution, the oppressed have to first recognize their oppression.
Kristin Ross interviewed: The commune as a form of life
“For me, Les Soulèvements de la Terre are a contemporary example of a Commune form because they have managed to create a common front, and they have created it from very different groups and people. It’s a very specific form. It’s not a political party, it’s not a class- or ethnicity-based organisation, and yet it’s…