Social Revolutionaries

“ There is a wide diversity in social situations, from rock-ribbed stability, to entire communities teetering on the brink or plunging over the brink into the maelstrom of revolution. Such diverse situations have existed again and again during the 1750-1970 revolutionary epoch. 4. When a revolutionary situation develops, a revolutionary leader well-established in a community trembling on the brink of a revolutionary overturn may seize the reins of power and establish a regime founded on opposition principles, dedicated to another set of principles and practices. ”

“ The intensity and the direction of the social changes which radiate out from the climax of a revolutionary situation and the consequent, subsequent attempts at counter-revolution, are the outcome of active, purposive intervention by all of the social groups present at the center of revolutionary activity. ”

“ The amazing revolution which has lately taken place in the arts and sciences, as applicable to the purposes of human economy, ought naturally to give birth to another revolution of a kindred quality in the political and social mechanism of society. ”

“ We have seen that a social revolution maybe considered to be from the standpoint of the whole because, even if it only occurs in a factory district, it is a protest of men against degraded life, because it proceeds from the standpoint of the real individual, because the community against whose separation from himself the individual reacts, is the real community of men, the civic community. ”

“ The men who proposed this surrender of their rights, who had already, by joining the Tiers, done so much to accomplish the great social revolution, deserve greater consideration as a class than history has, as a rule, meted out to them. ”

“ This growth into Socialism is only another expression for the steady sharpening of class antagonisms, for the growth into an epoch of greater, more decisive class struggles, such as we have described under the name of the Social Revolution. ”

“ It is plain that even the most conservative begin to feel this, and [Pg 154] effort constantly takes more practical form; but this is but the beginning of what must be,—the inauguration of a social revolution in ideas, and one to which all civilization must come. ”

“ It should be remembered that so tremendous a social revolution as the sudden transformation of almost the whole laboring force of a large country from slaves into free men could never have been effected quite smoothly without producing hot conflicts of antagonistic interests and feelings, and without giving birth to problems seeming for a time almost impossible of solution. ”

“ You doubtless know the history of our great Revolution,—the causes that led to, the consequences that immediately sprang from it,—the terrible anarchy, the utter confiscation of wealth, and, worse still, the social disorganization that invaded every family, however humble or however exalted, setting wives against their husbands, children against their parents, and making brothers sworn enemies to one another. It was in vain for any man once engaged in the struggle to draw back ”

“ According to our definition of the term, as stated in our statement in the Assembly Bomb Case, revolution means the complete overthrow of the existing social order and its replacement with the socialist order. ”

“ It is for this great organic change, this world-wide social revolution, that the Socialists of all countries are organizing, that it may be intelligently guided, and come, if possible, in peace and order when the people and conditions have been prepared for it. ”

“ That is why a rebellion accomplished by individuals, without much idea of social reconstruction, comes much nearer being a vital action, it seems to me, than a revolution made by allied conspirators, of an organization with a well defined theory of communal happiness. ”

“ But, peaceful or violent, the great social revolution of the nineteenth century is at hand, and if fighting should be necessary the workers may at least remember the profound historical truth that ‘Force is the midwife of progress delivering the old society pregnant with the new,’ and reflect that they are striving for the final overthrow of a tyranny more degrading than the worst chattel slavery of ancient times. ”

“ The political revolutions also at that time were chiefly only communal revolutions. It was as a matter of course impossible to transform the whole social life of a great territory by a political revolution. ”

“ The class war, the push for and the resistance to some vague reorganization called the Social Revolution—such things are the natural inevitable result of the sordid moral and intellectual muddle of our common ideas about property. ”

“ The political life of the Revolution had been cut short by his military despotism, but the new social vigour which the Revolution had given to France through the abolition of privileges and the creation of a new middle class on the ruins of the clergy and the nobles still lived on ”

“ I know that in the diseased social body the forces of resistance are gathering—the Socialist movement, in the broad sense—the activities of all who believe in the possibility of reconstructing society upon a basis of reason, justice and love. ”

“ Speaking broadly, such a period in the life of any society may be described as a revolutionary situation—one in which changes are made frequently, rapidly and with far reaching consequences. In a word, the existing social pattern is in process of being turned over, turned upside down, transformed by forces which seem to operate according to their own principles and often quite independently of human intention or intervention.
Our society—western civilization—is undergoing a revolution. ”

“ The struggle against usurious capital and against the great agricultural industries which were operated by slaves led to occasional political struggles very similar to the social revolutions of our time. ”

“ Between the two lay the conquest of political power by a new class, and in this lies the essential difference between revolution and reform. Measures which seek to adjust the juridical and political superstructure of society, to changed economic conditions, are reforms if they proceed from the class which is the political and economic ruler of society. ”

“ But the leaders, even in the days before the war, had brought the idea of revolution to the masses and fostered it, and the Social Democracy had been, from time immemorial, openly hostile to the earlier, monarchical form of government, and had worked systematically toward eliminating it. ”

“ It is the idea of the revolution which has brought about that wonderful elevation of the proletariat from its deepest degradation, which elevation stands as the greatest result of the second half of the nineteenth century. ”

“ It meant that the interest of the many instead of the few, the welfare of the whole instead of that of a part, were henceforth to be the paramount purpose of the social order and the goal of its evolution. ”

“ A sudden jump from the bottom to the top of the social ladder by a few, from the lowest to the highest rung, from the rank of sergeant to that of major-general, from the condition of a pettifogger or starving newspaper-hack to the possession of supreme authority, even to the effective exercise of omnipotence and dictatorship—such is the capital, positive, striking work of the Revolution. ”

“ The grand catastrophe may come within our times. And, is it the result of any particular social condition, the action of any particular class in the social scale, the diffusion of any particular political principles? No, because the revolutionary tendencies are various, and even opposite; if republican in one place, monarchical in another; if democratic in France, aristocratic in Poland. Nor is it a particular social class wherein the revolutionary principle flourishes, for the classes which, in one country, wish subversion, in another, are firmly attached to the established order of things. ”

“ According to the theory of class consciousness, individuals or social classes are revolutionary if they adhere to revolutionary ideas, to revolutionary thought, to revolutionary ideology, to the program of the revolutionary organization. ”

“ However, in less than a generation our country, shaken to its very foundations by the great social upheavals known as revolutions, has seen its old institutions crumble to pieces and other, entirely new institutions rise in their place ”

“ The conquest of the governmental power by an hitherto oppressed class, in other words, a political revolution, is accordingly the essential characteristic of social revolution in this narrow sense, in contrast with social reform. Those who repudiate political revolution as the principal means of social transformation or wish to confine this to such measures as have been granted by the ruling class are social reformers, no matter how much their social ideas may antagonize existing social forms. ”

“ At the same time the theories and presuppositions of the Revolution, based as they were on the doctrine of the Rights of Man, took a great hold upon the imagination of the working classes and produced levelling theories whose justice seemed all the stronger, as the actual course of events seemed to demonstrate the evils which flowed from social and economic inequality. ”

“ Hence some students of history become believers in "revolution" as a beneficent social force or engine. In the case of the French Revolution, 168the passions which were set loose destroyed the whole social order, swept away all the institutions, and even destroyed all the inherited mores. It is evident that this last is what the revolutionists finally aimed at. The ancien régime came to mean the whole fabric of the old society, with its codes, standards, and ideas of right, wrong, the desirable, etc. ”

“ The revolutionary character of this period, then, pertains principally to the rapid movement of public opinion, and its action upon and through the Government. It finds its parallel in nearly every revolutionary event of modern times. A dominant power, the slaveholding aristocracy, long submitted to, attempts a glaring encroachment upon the rights of the most active and progressive element of society. The popular mind gradually rises to a clear perception and appreciation of the true nature of the conflict. ”

“ Every socialist strives for social revolution in the wider sense, and yet there are socialists who disclaim revolution and would attain social transformation only through reform. They contrast social revolution with social reform. ”

“ After visiting Germany and France, and after witnessing, with deep interest and deeper disappointment, some of the revolutions of 1848, and writing that they had failed because their promoters were not prepared to follow them up with a positive social programme, as if, he says, the mere destruction of a Bastile were a revolution, he settled in England, and learnt there, as his son assures us, that revolution itself was but a vain expedient, and that gradual reform was the only effectual method of lasting social amelioration. ”

“ History is the history of class struggles. Revolution is the culmination of the class struggle; and history, accordingly, is equally a history of revolutions, of cataclysmic epochs when the antagonisms of the class struggle flare up into revolutionary and decisive action. ”

“ These changes in society from one period to the next above it are called revolutions. Politics, art, literature, religion, political science, philosophy, education, and other institutions have all passed through changes following industrial changes in society. ”

“ The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution—particularly the Socialist idea—is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced by the "dictatorship of the proletariat"—or by that of its "advance guard," the Communist Party; ”

“ In every long and far-reaching revolution, whether undertaken in the interest of the crown, the nobility or the middle classes, we find, side by side with the seed it intended to sow, the tares of communism sprout up. ”

“ A revolution, greater than the later change which is known as the Industrial Revolution, then happened. "The production of wealth, instead of being merely a means of subsistence, became an end in itself or a means to political influence." ”

“ My purpose is to suggest, in broad outline, the principles which must animate the revolution, the general lines of action it should follow if it is to accomplish its aim- the reconstruction of society on a foundation of freedom and equality. ”

“ The task of revolutionaries is two-fold: spread the anti-imperialist movement to the working class, and develop Marxist-Leninist cadre who can integrate with the most exploited sector of the working class, the industrial proletariat. ”

“ The economic changes which are taking place, and the corresponding changes in other conditions, are bringing about a revolutionary transformation in human society, and what we have to do is to help on this development, and to prepare the way for it." [1099] "We Socialists are not reformers; we are revolutionists. ”

“ But you say we are revolutionists. Well, if we are, who made us such? Are not the labor exploiters, the monopolists, the mine, factory and workshop czars creating a revolution? They are the revolutionists. ”

“ Certainly leveling influences were at work, and the people as a whole had moved one step farther in the direction of equality and democracy, and it was well that the Revolution was not any more radical and revolutionary than it was. ”

“ In books, in pamphlets, in the resolutions of their congresses, in their speeches, Socialists in all countries have explained to the people a thousand, nay, a million times, the class-nature of this bourgeois revolution. ”