Revolution

The relationship between power and revolution raises important questions about the nature and scope of politics, the possibilities for freedom, and the legitimacy of violence. Complicating the treatment of these questions is the historical experience of revolution and the seeming paradox between the moral failures of successful revolutions—on the model of the Russian Revolution—and the strategic failure of moral causes: the Spanish Revolution is the outstanding example.

According to Hannah Arendt's view of the relationship, genuine revolutionary action is directed toward the creation or protection of the political sphere, the space for public freedom, where power is institutionalized in a complex network of self-governing bodies (organized horizontally and vertically). On this view, most modern revolutions—the American Revolution is the possible exception—are not revolutionary at all. Wrongly equating politics with a set of social or economic demands—for particular systems of rights or social justice—revolutionaries have used violence to initiate programs of reform, usually suppressing the autonomous political institutions that establish spontaneously in the course of rebellions. The result is that they destroy the public spaces that provide the necessary precondition for freedom and in which power is properly vested.

Socialist theory provides a different view. Contrary to Arendt, socialists argue that the political ends of the revolution can be linked to other goals—economic and social—and understand power as a necessary instrument of revolutionary change, not just its object. Whether the process of transformation is defined in terms of class struggle (as Marxists would have it) or in broader terms of oppression (Mikhail Bakunin's position), socialist theory typically suggests that revolution is about the forcible removal of barriers to emancipation. Disagreement has traditionally turned on the identification of these barriers, the proper location of revolutionary power, and the means of their removal. The Leninist view, premised on the idea that the difference between schools is a matter of means rather than ends, is that revolutionary change depends on the capture of political power in the state and the effective use of the instruments of state violence to eradicate the threat of counterrevolution. The anarchist critique counterposes revolutionary change to the capture of political power: revolution consists in the abandonment of the state and the organization of networks composed of autonomous local bodies (primarily worker organizations, for anarcho-syndicalists). [Page 577]Like Arendt, anarchists argue that power is properly vested in these bodies and that self-governing associations are a necessary precondition for freedom. However, they also argue that the proper functioning of the network depends on the abolition of exploitation. Anarchists disagree about the extent to which the organizational links between revolutionary groups should be institutionalized in formal structures. Platformists (followers of Nesto Makhno, the Ukrainian civil war guerrilla) argue for such institutionalization.

Arguments about revolution and power have taken on a new significance since the protests at the 1999 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Seattle and the subsequent rise of the alter-globalization movement. Activist literature focuses on two related problems: how to sustain revolutionary movements while refusing to seize control of or enter into state power, and how to ensure that the use of violence does not compromise the realization of revolutionary goals. The experiences of the Russian and Spanish revolutions provide the historical context for the discussion of the first question. While the lesson of the Bolshevik coup is that popular revolutionary movements are prone to be sucked into power vacuums, the lesson of the Spanish Revolution is that the attempt to use power to protect popular revolution only makes revolutionaries complicit in its destruction. Some activists have argued that the pitfalls of both might be avoided by the adoption of a strategy of neglect, on the model of the Zapatista movement in the Chiapas region in Mexico. The strategy rejects futile engagement in armed struggle and suggests that the issues raised by revolutionary power might be sidestepped by encouraging popular forces to turn their backs on the state.

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