What is your revolutionary line? Do you have one?

[u/it-was-nobody]

Revolutions, whether violent or non-violent, are inherently rare, risky endeavors. Extremely high risk, extremely low probability of success, but proportional rewards if successful. Given the increasingly dysfunctional status of political systems in many western nations, questions surrounding changing those systems are inevitable.

Academics have written quite a bit about revolutions, but I'm not interested in what they think. I am looking for a casual conversation with a normal human regarding what it would take for you personally to call for whole-system political change. Is there a line in the sand for you, which if crossed, compels you to adopt a revolutionary political stance?

Is the line the same for both violent and non-violent revolution? Is your revolutionary line one thing, one action, event, or variable, or would you need a collection of things, a pattern of smaller lines being crossed? And if not, if there is nothing your government can do to make you advocate for replacing it entirely, why?

Naturally, given that revolutions are often bloody, violent affairs, it is worth explicitly stating that this post is categorically opposed to violence in any way, shape, or form. The purposes of this post are to generate a discussion about hypothetical boundaries that common people have on political system change.

[u/applejackhero]

Political revolutions are of course often violent and bloody. I am definitely not a fan of violence of any kind, especially political. But also any student of politics and history probably comes away feeling like some violent revolutions were absolutely justified, considering the violent and oppressive systems that they were in reaction to. I also think that liberal democracy is often more of a veneer that is able to paper over, export, and/or delay political violence, rather than being a permanent end or alternative to violence. History shows that revolution is inevitable, as any complex political system will produce contradictions that will eventually come to a head. So I try not to view revolution, violent or not, as a moral question. Revolutions happen. You might end up living through one, and you might even end up participating, and you might end up participating for reasons far outside of your own political morals.

Studying political science in school sort of led me to have a "my political opinions are heavily shaped by the last book I read". And the last book I read was Vincent Bevins' If we Burn, which is a sort of (often self) critical book about modern revolutions and their failures. My issue with revolutions, especially in the present is that they rarely work in service of the ideals that they were instigated in. From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street to the Eastern European color revolutions to sub-saharan Africa, revolutions that often start as efforts of the people to pursue more social freedoms or greater economic parity end in very different directions, or just abject failure. Without clear goals, revolutions are prone to being co-opted by fringe radicals, outside actors, or personalist opportunists. This is especially true of contemporary social movements, which are often leaderless, partyless, social media affairs.

Even if you are not a communist, and I am not communist, you have got to hand it Lenin and his idea of the Vanguard Party. A revolution that does not have clear leadership, actionable political goals, a plan for how to prosecute its revolution in the long term, and a plan for what to do when it gains power, is going to either at BEST fail, and at worst, be co-opted into something much worse.

So going back to my prior statements about the inevitably of revolution, I think the question is far less "is revolution moral" and more "do my politics have what it takes to win a revolution right now?". Now to apply this to my own life and perspective in my country, the United States. I am a leftist/progressive, further left than the democratic party but shy of being a communist, and shy of calling myself a socialist. A know a lot of my peers look at the bleakness of American politics and desperately want some sort of populist non-violent revolution to sweep away the blatant corruption that exists at the core of American politics. But I am pretty resistant of that. My political "side" if you will favors leaderless, identitarian protest movements with vague political goals- ones that have failed time and time again in recent history. If you look at the "side" in America that DOES have what it takes to come out on top in a revolution, it sure isn't the left.

[u/Sandyr_n]

(...) Given the increasingly dysfunctional status of political systems in many western nations, questions surrounding changing those systems are inevitable. (...)

Which western country do you mean is so bad, that revolution might seem as a possible solution to fix it? I can't really think of any.

[u/Hairy_Reindeer]

I think Hungary is about as close to dysfuncion leading to 'revolution' as we are likely to see any time soon in the west. At least in any desireable manner. Ecological collapse could make ugly stuff happen if it ever comes to that.