Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






THE THEORY OF REVOLUTIONS

Marx and Engels had a general conception of the revolution that they expected would bring about the final downfall of capitalism and usher in socialism. But their more valuable theories of revolution are found in their specific historical studies of the smaller revolutions of their own times (also, in Engels' case, in reflections on the revolutionary aspect of the Protestant Reformation). Their basic analysis is that revolutions go through various phases because of unstable coalitions among a variety of social classes. The lower classes often do the largest part of the actual destruction of the old regime by their riots and uprisings. But the lower classes tend to act in the interests of a higher, social class. In 1789 and 1848 the proletariat and the petit bourgeoisie fought the battles of the upper bourgeoisie for them, just as in the 1520s the German burghers fought the battles of the German princes against the Roman Catholic Church.

Why is it that revolutions have this peculiar quality of false consciousness and action in the interests of someone else? We have already seen some parts of the answer. The differential control of the means of the mental production results in the higher social classes being able to define what the revolution is about and who the enemies are. The workers or peasants do the fighting, but the bourgeois or the nobles tell them what they are fighting for. Also, because there is a complicated set of classes vying for power, coalitions form and interests get submerged within them. Coalitions are necessarily ideological because they need some general slogans around which they can rally. Thus, different social classes who may be at each other's throats at some time, at other moments have to rally together to defend what they believe is their common interest. In 1848, the Legitimatists and Orleanists (landowners and capitalists)

-76-

had to bury their feud because property of all sorts was being threatened by a revolutionary republic. One general principle, then, is that a coalition is held together by its enemies. Only after the enemies disappear are the partners free to fight among themselves. Similarly, the revolutionary party in 1848 was a coalition of two antagonistic classes: the lower middle class of small shopkeepers, who favored a form of capitalism, and the workers, who were pressing for socialism. These strange bedfellows were held together by their enemies, the reactionary upper classes, who threatened the Republic. The battle between these two groups was fought out in opposing slogans, both of which misrepresented the actual interests involved. The.conservatives attacked by branding all of their opponents as socialists and enemies of social order, whereas the revolutionaries had to bury their economic differences and concentrate on their common slogan of defending democracy.

Eventually the conservatives were able to mobilize more resources and to split their opponents, lopping, off the radical workers' wing of the republicans. But here another principal came into play: the danger of victory for a coalition. The lowermiddle classes, having dispensed with their allies to form a smaller group for splitting the spoils (what modern political theorists call a "minimum winning coalition"), now found themselves weakened vis-à-vis the conservatives. Power shifted to the right. But even this was unstable because the conservatives found themselves heading a republican government whose very right to exist they had just been denouncing. They were trapped in their own ideology and further immobilized by the outbreak of squabbles between the coalition members (Orleanists and Legitimatists) in their own ranks. The way was opened to yet another political force: Louis Bonaparte and his dictatorship, drawing his shock troops by mobilizing the lumpenproletariat and getting his ideological support by playing on the nationalism of the peasants. The only stable stopping place in the war of coalitions was to exhaust and discredit all the class forces.



This model of revolution emerges as a byproduct, a series of comments as Marx analyzed the history unfolding in front of him. It is not a full theory. Subsequent theorists have gone on

-77-

to examine not only the mobilization of different classes, but also the conditions that break down the state in the first place and open the way for the revolutionary crisis. We will meet these theories below.


Date: 2015-04-20; view: 1016


<== previous page | next page ==>
THE THEORY OF POLITICAL CONFLICT | THE THEORY OF SEX STRATIFICATION
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.007 sec.)