Revolutions

Jake Rudolph

Professor McCaughrin

Politics and Film 282

20 May 2012

Title

Problem: The word “revolution” borrows its political connotation from the lexicon of seventeenth century astronomers who used it to denote “’a movement revolving back to some pre-established point”’. After the French Revolution, this metaphor was taken even further, likening revolutions to stars in the ‘“irresistibility of their motion”’ as they were “driven by forces that ‘had little, if anything, to do with the willful aims and purposes of men’”. However, when observing recent revolutions of the past century, one can clearly see that leaders and organizations significantly affect the progress and outcome of revolutions, such as Fidel Castro did in Cuba, and Vladimir Lenin in Russia. Thus, the nature of revolutions has evolved not only throughout history, but also in the span of the revolutions themselves. The major question then is why has this change has occurred? What factors influenced the evolution of revolutions?

Theory: The historical approach to revolutionary theory maintains that there has in fact been no change in revolutions and that they are still spontaneous events arising from historical necessity. This approach analyzes a successful revolution by tracing causal events preceding the revolution, sometimes delving into underlying causes centuries beforehand. Historical theory further maintains that the revolutionaries’ strategy in a given revolution will not affect the outcome that has been predetermined by the cause and effect timeline of history. The problem with this approach, as historian of the French Revolution R.R. Palmer points out, is that “they explain everything but the Revolution itself”. According to James DeNardo, the historical revolutionary theory represents an outdated model for primitive revolutions, as he declares, “a theory of revolution that disregards the theory of strategy is analogous to a theory of warfare that ignores developments in...