The Study of Revolutions

Note: this article was written by a Marxist and most of the sources/material is Marxist oriented and may not be relevant to the current Western European nationalist/ conservative revolution. I haven’t had time to review the relevancy of these works. Many of them are just Marxist propaganda and should be ignored while other works/case studies might be useful to the pan-European Conservative Revolutionary Movement. Although we, the Justiciar Knights, are conservative revolutionaries I believe that the specific approach in where we seize power will revolve around the concept/approach of a coup d’état instead of a so called “mass popular revolutionary overthrow” where hordes of people are storming the offices of power. However, certain lessons may be learned from traditional revolutionary thinking and approaches. Knowing that so many Marxists are anti-globalists, it should be our goal to contribute to create a scenario where many “Internationalist Marxists” are indirectly ideologically pacified or even join our forces, by manipulating them into changing their mentality from “internationalist” to “National Bolshevik” thought. AB

"Revolution" is a widely-used, and widely-abused, word. At its simplest, a revolution represents a situation where society transforms the state: when large numbers of people (usually) take action together in a (sometimes) successful action to change the nature of the state or (occasionally) do away with the state altogether. In this sense, revolutions (not always successful) have been an absolutely normal feature of European history over the last two hundred years, and of world history over the last fifty years or so. Revolutions are thus to a certain degree conceptually and practically distinct from military coups, terrorism and so on, which are not covered in this course.

The vast majority of contemporary states, including Ireland, Britain, the US, France, Germany, China, India, and many more, can be said to owe their existence to revolutions of one kind or another. Recent years have seen successful revolutions (Nationalist or Marxist) in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, South Africa, the Philippines, and elsewhere, as well as failed attempts at revolution, most notably in China and (arguably) in Indonesia. Revolutionary movements continue to have an important effect on society and politics in many parts of the world, most obviously in Mexico, Burma and the Arab world. There is thus every reason to expect revolutions to continue to play a significant role in world affairs in the new century.

This course sets out to do two things. Firstly, it aims to look at some concrete examples of revolution, including some of the "great" revolutions which have transformed world history as well as some less well-known ones which illustrate other aspects of the revolutionary experience. Secondly, it uses this material and other examples to cover a range of questions raised by the study of revolutions: "what is a revolution?", "why do revolutions happen?", "what happens in revolutions?", "why do some revolutions succeed and others fail?", "are revolutions legitimate?", etc. The reading list includes texts related to both themes.

Aims of the course:

This course aims to enable you to:

· Know more about the variety of revolutions past and present and the different processes involved in revolutionary situations

· Understand more about the nature of revolution, its relationship to the social order, and the issues determining the outcomes of revolution

· Think concretely about revolution and counter-revolution as skilled human activities and relate your own experience to that of contemporary revolutions around the globe and past revolutions which have shaped Irish and European society

Objectives:

By the end of this course you should be able to:

· Give an account of the processes involved in at least one significant revolution

· Explain coherently what revolutions are, when they happen and what kinds of social relationships are involved

· Argue intelligently about the normative and practical issues involved in revolutions

· Draw on the general sociology of revolutions to think about your own situation and desires

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