As one of the major modes of social and political transformation, with a great influence over the developments of the last two centuries, revolutions incite much interest in the field of social studies. Traditionally the appanage of history, the complex set of phenomena identified generically as “revolutions”, has become one of the major themes of sociology ever since its inception and canonization under Marx.
More recently, under the aegis of cultural studies, a number of criticisms have appeared to challenge the traditional definition and general theory of revolution. The crevices between the major interpretational schemes seem great at a first glance. However, a certain synchronicity, due to cultural codes, still exists. The objective of this essay is to establish the synonymies of the major theories concerning revolution, and attempt to derive from this taxonomy a heuristic model usable as a future methodological tool.
Before setting out on any inquiry regarding revolution, a definition of concepts as such must be made. This is not just done in order to aid the reader, but circumscribes the field of research as well. It is at this point, I would argue, that gaps between seemingly diverging points of view and schools of thought can be bridged. I have identified, with the aid of classifications put forward by Jack Goldstone(1) and John Foran(2) , a number of prominent interpretational avenues. I will attempt to isolate their conceptual understanding of the term, and explicit the commonalities within the conceptual and methodological framework.
The first of these is the so-called “natural theory” of revolution. It sought to explain the sequence of events rationally, and isolated a number of elements common to all revolutions. These were decanted after an empirical study into the revolutions perceived as the most significant and influential, i.e. the French, American, English, Russian and so forth. Among these “laws” of revolution were the appearance of powerful groups of opposition against the regime in power, the state’s reaction to criticism through belated attempts at reform, conjugated with the inability to carry them through or silence the contesters. The pressures then result in a revolutionary transformation, and moderates seize power. They are then substituted by radicals ( who resolve the internal or external duress by brutal means; the period of “revolutionary terror”), who are themselves ousted from power by some, more conservative and pragmatic leader or group of leaders, more geared towards the preservation of the existing status quo(3)growth . This first, traditional approach explains the processes involved within revolutions, but does little to explain the causal mechanism which lays behind. For our interests, however, two elements of this type of analysis are important. The first is the perusal, however limited, of a comparative method, which is seen as the means to further understand historical processes. The second, more important, facet is that the object in question ( revolution) is seen as a phenomena which belongs to the political field, gravitating around the relationship of the state with its citizens ( or subjects).
As sociology and history converged, by virtue of the interdisciplinarity championed by the French school of historiography, theory began to take on a more structured and explicit form. Social scientists as Gurr and Davies began to devise “general theories of violence”. Especially Gurr, in his watershed work, “Why men Rebel ”(4), put forward the hypothesis of “relative deprivation”. This quite influential theorem argued that it is not meager resources, lack of adequate living conditions and access to power that produces social violence ( and as a sub-species of it, revolution). It is the relationship between the expectations of society and the state’s means to provide for them that is consequential. Davies concept of the “economic J-curve of growth”(5) postulated that even a high period of rapid economic development, combined with an inability of the institutions to keep up with development, can equal in revolution. The mental-perceptive element was introduced in the equation of social unrest, alongside political, economic, and social factors that dominated the discourse.
This line of argumentation was taken in another direction by Charles Tilly. In a number of works, culminating with his 1993 title “European Revolutions”, the American scholar developed his theory of “collective mobilization”(6) . His contention is that successful mobilization of resources (whatever they may be) by the state, or by groups of challengers, is at the core of the subject matter. He works with a derived Weberian understanding of the state, as an organization controlling the principal and legal means of coercion. Institutionalized coercion develops the state and viceversa, in response to external or internal challenges(7) . Therefore, the state, after its inception, becomes the only means with which reform, and revolutionary transfiguration of society, economy and mental mapping, can be undertaken. Within society, different polities exist, and encapsulated in them rulers and challengers. Revolution is born as a state-oriented phenomena, of multiple sovereignty, during which governments and contesters vie for the control of resources and try to mobilize the polity with them. Trust ( and expectations, as in Gurr’s theory) is one of the important resources avaiting mobilization by the actors of the conflict. By this understanding, Tilly moves toward the next category, that of structural theory. Other sociologists, such as Jack Goldstone, also added the element of demography and saw conflicts within the social structure as pivotal(8) .
A short recapitulation of the arguments presented above paints a picture in which, although differently conditioned, revolution is still understood as an occurrence manifesting itself on the stage of politics. In the case of Tilly, a sweeping comparative study was done in order to legitimize the results of the research, while Goldstone preferred the other side of the coin, concentrating on case-studies.
The structural theories’ best known exponent is Theda Skocpol. Her study of social revolutions represented a major step toward the better understanding of the field of study, although it did not by any means answer all of the posited questions in a satisfactory manner. This sociologist sees foreign intervention, economic duress, social pressure, ideology and further factors as mere variables engaged in a complex interplay within an all-encompassing system (9) . The revolutionary situation has certain rules and is born from them, due to the interaction of the above presented elements. The situation has before a finite number of options, that determine its success, and transformation into a revolution or failure, in which case it is not a social revolution. Revolution is conceptualized as a process of rapid, utter transformation of the political, economic, and mental conditions within a given society. Agency is somewhat undetermined, but the reader can discern a certain focus on revolutionary elites. Therefore, revolution is equated with an overhaul of the system as such.
Skocpol makes use of a controversial triad of case-studies, isolating the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions as archetypical. In all three cases, a structure is given which finds itself in the midst of change through economic, social, cultural and external factors. Successful structures alter their composition to make way for these mutations, however because of their unique nature, the above three could not (10) . They had, in other words one foot in one boat and one in the other, being unable to revise their socio-institutional character in accordance with internal and external pressures. Vested interests of socially dominant groups, conjugated with the propensity of social instability at the lower level ( peasant uprisings), made the system and its purveyors obsolete. An external challenge provided the usual catalyst. Revolution occurred and a radical change was enacted. Revolution signals a fault in the organization of the structure itself, a reaction to disfunctionality. Social revolutions that fail signal the validity of the structure and therefore, are not true social revolutions (Prussia, Japan, England all had flexible, adaptive structures )(11).
The outcomes of social revolutions are, according to Skocpol, normalization of social relationships. The state consolidates and rationalizes its power-structure, by means of synchronicity with the pretenses of society, as translated by the past revolution. It is at this point that I isolate one of the key elements in Skocpol’s rhetoric about revolution: the success-factor. Indeed, for the American scholar, what in the end defines revolution ( among other things) as true social revolution is its triumph. A victory that, she herself admits, is granted through the seizure and maintainment of political power(12) . It is at this point that all three points of view presented above converge.
The post-structural criticism also brought to the foreground a new element. A harsh critic of scientism, it championed a relativism that saw each case as unique, and showed disdain for all attempts at a general theory. In its more refined form, the cultural history of Chartier’s school, via William Sewell Jr.(13) , and Lynn Hunt (14) , concentrated its efforts on explaining the French Revolution as a separate event. The main focus was put on exploring political languages, cultural codes and ideological elements that gave the 1789-1815 period its unique nature. Sewell’s main argument gravitates around the continuity of political linguistic conventions from the late Enlightenment to the Jacobins, and further toward the 1848 Revolution. Revolutions cannot have a general explanation, the cultural turn argues, because of the simple fact that there are born out of a set of conditions ( the most important of which are the cultural conventions), that are specific to a certain society at a given time period. The uprooting and transferring of certain generalized elements to other areas belies the rich mental subtext that defines any phenomena.
This subjectivism is an important contribution to the field, bringing out the details of each revolution, and subjecting them to arduous scrutiny. The other significant augmentation of cultural history to the grand theory is the addition of idea of revolution as a cultural symbol. Revolution must be understood as belonging to a certain cultural area, and can be explored only as an appendix of it. The language associated with power, therefore plays a key role, in the sense of a political idiom enforced and cultivated by the state and establishment itself, in an almost Tocquevillian manner. The state, in other words, if indirectly, cultivates and sponsors revolution by not adhering to the proper linguistic vulgata.
A critical decantation of the theoretical abstracts subsumed above will isolate a number of commonalities. In all three, “natural”, “social violence”, and “structural” ( not to mention a host of others, among which Marxism is the most prominent, which I did not treat because of the lack of space), the term “revolution” is understood as a phenomenon which crystallizes in the political sphere, and it is aimed at the state. Also, most do not speak of revolution before the emergence of a modern, centralized state power ( in whichever form). Revolution is also congruent with the modern state, and is essentially viewed as modernist. If it does not occur in an overtly modern environment, it is a vehicle for modernity. In conclusion, revolution is imagined as an overtly political phenomena, a movement geared toward the state, seen as the vehicle for social, economic and other transformations. This shared Weltanschauung is due to the cultural background of the scholars, that are more or less encapsulated within an European, or rather, Occidental paradigm. The French Revolution, alongside the 1848 and the 1917 Russian events shape the imaginary of the field because of the success of the Western cultural model. This is the reason why questions of “inadequacy” vis-à-vis a theoretical model appear time and again. As the cultural turn (Sewell Jr.) proves, the historians belonging to an idiom is a hurdle that is almost un-crossable.
That is why revolution is to be treated as a conceptual vessel, a Begriff, in the sense of Begriffsgeschichte ( of Reinhart Koselleck), and understood as a linguistic and cultural convention. I therefore treat revolution as a phenomena which achieves full maturity through the political sphere due to the cultural conventions which it is interpreted through within our societal and cultural framework. The crystallization-formula of Michael Mann (15) is to be applied when conceiving a plan of comparative inquiry into the nature of revolution. An infinite number of variables can be added into the equation which results in revolution, with one personal addenda. The political and social factor cannot be deducted or removed as they form the core of the interplay within the equation of revolution. The interpretational schemes attempting to provide an explanation for the phenomena all profusely made use of comparative study. This supplies the only comprehensive means of testing the validity of the hypothetical model. “Revolution” must be conceptualized as binom, both heuristic device and cultural symbol. The political aspect and the state, in particular, cannot be excluded from a definition of revolution as a historical phenomena, precisely because of its embedding into Occidental culture as concerning those two elements. The theoretical squabble, in conclusion, represents a mere mis-en-scene of the real issue of the definition of revolution. Sectarian conflicts can therefore be bridged if historians ascribe to the realization that all researchers are bound by common cultural conventions, and set to work within their confines.
Footnotes:
1.Goldstone (ed.), Revolutions. Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Studies, pp. 2-
2.John Foran (ed.), Theorizing Revolutions, pp.5- 10
3.Goldstone, pp. 2-5
4.Gurr, Why Men Rebel?, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970, p.25
5.Goldstone, p. 5
6.Tilly, Does Modernization Breed Revolution? In Goldstone, p. 47-48 and Tilly, European Revolutions, p. 237, 241-242
7.See Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and the European States, pp. 67-95
8.Goldstone, The English Revolution: A Structural-Demographic Approach in Goldstone, Revolutions, pp. 88-103 he shows how the enclosure movement, market growth and other factors influenced the events of 1640-48
9.Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, 14-19
10.Skocpol, pp. 47-51
11.Skocpol, pp. 99-110
12.Skocpol, pp. 161-164
13.Sewell Jr., Work and Revolution in France. The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848, p.14-16
14.Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, pp. 1-19
1. Foran, John, Theorizing revolutions, London : Routledge, 1997
2. Goldstone, Jack A., Revolutions : theoretical, comparative, and historical studies, Fort Worth : Harcourt Brace, 1994
3. Hunt, Lynn, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, Berkeley : University of California Press, 1984
4. Mann, Michael, The sources of social power, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1993-1994, vol.2.
5. Sewell, William Hamilton, Work and revolution in France : the language of labor from the Old Regime to 1848, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1980
6. Skocpol, Theda, States and social revolutions : a comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1979
7. Tilly, Charles, Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990-1990, Cambridge, Mass., USA : Blackwell, 1990
8. Tilly, Charles, European revolutions, 1492-1992, Oxford, UK : Blackwell, 1993
15.Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power. Vol. II., pp. 214-253
Bibliography:
9. Zagorin, Perez, Rebels and rulers, 1500-1660, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1982
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