The art of revolution is an underestimated yet rather crazy political skill. To master it, one must be willing to trust no one – especially not the architects of a revolution and their narratives. In his article Slave Cubela asks: Is anyone ready to devote themselves to this art in the 21st century?
*
The art of revolution is a complex phenomenon that many thinkers, even in our own time, have underestimated. Given the mobilizing power of digital media in the 21st century, revolution may appear to be an easy undertaking, which is one reason why it often fails. Therefore, it is time to reconsider our options. What does it take to learn the art of revolution? What would it mean for the left to return to its roots and seek guidance from successful revolutionaries?
What appears to be a clever and logical move – one that is currently leading to the rehabilitation of Leninism in Vincent Bevins’s work, for example – quickly proves to be a questionable step upon closer inspection. If history is always the history of the victors, then this also applies to histories of revolution written by victorious revolutionaries.
Genuine revolutionaries?
An episode reported by journalist Arkadi Waksberg shortly after 1989 illustrates this well. A low-level clerk gave him a sixty-page folder of Vladimir Lenin quotations that the man had painstakingly compiled. Waksberg begins to read and notes:
“The collection of quotes is impressive: ‘execute,’ ‘shoot,’ ‘kill on the spot,’ ‘mercilessly eradicate,’ ‘hang by the stinking rope’… Who? The ‘bourgeois rabble,’ ‘the disgusting and vile scoundrels,’ ‘the counterrevolutionary vermin,’ ‘the imperialist lackeys,’ ‘all sorts of riffraff,’ and so on. In most cases, these are quotes from instructions, telegrams, and letters to his comrades-in-arms where he had no need to show restraint and could speak freely.”
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the Bolsheviks barely mentioned Lenin’s murderous fanaticism. Moreover, they never considered sharing their extreme friend-or-foe mentality with the global left as the key to revolutionary success. Instead, they glossed over these aspects and emphasized Lenin’s willpower, discipline, and clear strategic vision because these qualities were considered honorable for a great revolutionary.
However, it is not only the ruthlessness of the revolution that successful revolutionaries must temper for reasons of legitimacy. Many left-wing victors also felt the need to embellish their past after the revolution. Biographical research reveals the reason why. It shows that there is a fine line between entering the history of the Left as a bohemian or a revolutionary. For example, the protagonists of the Munich Soviet Revolution are still often regarded ‘merely’ as poets or bohemians today because they lost. In contrast, the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power allowed them to cast themselves as genuine revolutionaries.
Recipe for revolutionary success
Nevertheless, if one looks beyond this self-presentation, a recipe for revolutionary success emerges that has been scarcely acknowledged to this day. Put bluntly, revolutionaries have the courage to make themselves social laughingstocks through radical life choices, with no guarantee of success.
Auguste Blanqui, for example, became a legendary 19th-century revolutionary because he was politically unyielding. Yet, his subversive activities were embarrassing failures, and he was long regarded as an unfortunate figure. Karl Marx was a ‘failure’ his whole life. He could only read, write, and support his family thanks to the financial support of his friend Friedrich Engels. It’s no surprise, then, that only a few people attended his funeral. Before 1917, Lenin was seen in Zurich as ‘a Russian with grand theories and a small following.’ Few people know that Joseph Stalin was initially a poet before living a wild life as a bandit for years. Finally, Ernesto Che Guevara was a likable ne’er-do-well who roamed Latin America on a motorcycle before deciding to embark on a suicide mission with 81 other fighters that would become the Cuban Revolution.
So, when Aristide Zollberg described revolutions as “moments of madness,” he implied that they are the work of outsiders. More precisely, the art of political revolution emerges from anti-bourgeois intellectual subcultures. This also means that behind every revolutionary idolized by the left, there are thousands of futile, marginal existences: drifters and dreamers who engage in revolutionary politicking, theorizing, and provocation in vain, only to end up poor and anonymous.
Absurd social alliances
Anyone who is beginning to realize that the art of revolution is strange will be even more perplexed when examining the social forces behind revolutions. After all, it was partly absurd social alliances that helped many revolutions succeed. Once again, we must scratch beneath the surface of the respectable revolutionary narratives that successful revolutionaries love to disseminate – narratives in which brilliant strategists, progressive social classes, and precisely tailored programs are the driving forces of revolution.
However, the shady groups that actually lead to revolutions are hinted at in the famous “Revolutionary Catechism” written by Michail Bakunin and Sergei Nechaev in the mid-19th century. In this work, probably the most honest one on the subject, it is candidly stated: “Our cause is terrible, total, relentless, and universal destruction. In this regard, we must once again draw closer to the people, uniting above all with those who have never ceased to rebel – not only with words, but through their deeds. We must join the robbers, the true and only revolutionaries of Russia.”
This maxim proved decisive in the history of the Bolsheviks and the USSR. Ultimately, however, this was not real socialism, but rather ‘lumpen socialism.’ However, alliances with experts in social violence, such as soldiers and the military, are not the only aspect of the art of modern revolutions. The masses who carry the revolution to victory are atypical, sociologically speaking.
Neglected peasantry
The most striking example is the 20th-century revolutions. While the left remains fixated on the concept of the working class and the role of workers, the revolutionary class of the 20th century was clearly the peasantry – in countries such as China, Mexico, Russia, Vietnam, Algeria, and Cuba. In Mexico, Russia, China, Vietnam, Algeria, and Cuba, the rural population constituted the fighting foot soldiers in all these political upheavals.
Anyone who thinks this is of little interest today overlooks the fact that peasants passed on their extraordinary tenacity, resourcefulness, and willingness to make sacrifices to their descendants in the world’s great slums. The one major difference is that today’s explosive slum proletariat leans toward the religious right. Meanwhile, the progressive forces in these countries – whether Marxist or liberal – are looking for sincere fighters among the workers and middle classes.
This has created a bitterly ironic situation in the 21st century. While the left is taught by its leaders that revolutions have to do with hegemony, parties, and enlightened classes, it misses something simple: political revolutions need determined fighters, no matter where or how they are recruited.
As long as the left follows old revolutionary fairy tales and supplements them with liberal narratives from 1989 at best, radical history will unfold without them. This is evident in Iran, where the suburban lumpenproletariat brought the mullah regime to power and remains loyal to it to this day. The same is true in Egypt, where ‘slum fighters’ nearly brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power after the Arab Spring.
More and more, this is happening in parts of the world where these disenfranchised people, fighting for their survival every day, ensure that evangelicalism and Islamism are the most dynamic social movements today.
The return of bourgeois self-hatred?
To reiterate, the art of revolution is an underestimated yet rather crazy political skill. To master it, one must be willing to trust no one, especially the architects of the revolution and their narratives. Training succeeds only if one is willing to live life without guarantees, off the beaten path of bourgeois society and on the edge of ridicule. Only a select few manage to leave social-philosophical revolutionary frameworks behind at the right moment to recruit determined and tenacious fighters. These individuals can then step onto the grand stage of revolution. Ultimately, only those prepared to act unscrupulously, even in their memories of life and struggle, become revolutionary icons.
Therefore, it seems clear why one should not devote oneself to this art in the 21st century. Its supposed lightness is deceptive. There are no trustworthy mentors, and upon critical examination, it is repulsive, ascetic, and brutal. Despite these and other factors suggesting the demise of the art of revolution, perhaps it is still too early for a swan song. Mastering this art was never merely an intellectual matter; all great revolutionaries were revolutionaries by passion.
More precisely, the fact that so many of them came from bourgeois backgrounds suggests a widespread Éducation sentimentale, resulting in pronounced bourgeois self-hatred. Misfortune within the bourgeois nuclear family, failed education, narrow-minded environments, state repression, and feelings of shame over a comfortable life amidst social destitution ensured that, well into the 20th century, it was primarily the children of the bourgeoisie who undertook the arduous training to become revolutionaries.
Beyond small emancipations
Interestingly, however, while neoliberalism economically undermined many social achievements, the decades since the 1970s were a period of cultural libertinism for middle-class youth. Neoliberalism greatly reduced the self-loathing of the middle class by tolerating small emancipations and revolutions in every sphere of life. As a result, the arduous path to becoming a political revolutionary was rarely chosen.
Yet this era of progressive neoliberalism is coming to an end. Social anxiety is slowly but surely reaching the middle classes. A new bourgeois authoritarianism is beginning to emerge, not just in the U.S., but around the world. More and more spaces for bourgeois self-expression in art, culture, and science are disappearing. These developments could lead to a renaissance of bourgeois self-hatred and the return of political revolutionaries. Whether that would be good news remains to be seen. Still, it would be a shame if such an ancient political art form were to fade away quietly.
Note from the editors: Read also in BG “The Lost Art of Making a Revolution: Why Are Radical Political Protests Followed by Bitter Disillusionment?”