05.24.09
Modernity and revolution
Revolutions per second
The previous post on Marxism and Kantian ethics raises the issue of revolution. The problem with the leftist view of revolution is that it is about a theory, and theories are problematical, especially sociological ones. The plain fact of the matter is that the liberal revolutions that brought modern freedoms into existence were strategic historical impulses, based on ideas of right and justice. But their was no theory to predict or legitimate their occurence in advance. Somewhere there is where marxism went wrong. In fact, that was the way Marx/Engels took the matter in their actual participation in the revolutions of 1848. After that they became pragmatic and, despite what they said, worked with the issues of labor, parliaments, and legal remedies.
In any case, the question of revolution in world history is not so simple. Conservatives dogmas about slow cultural evolution are false, but it doesn’t follow that ‘revolutions’ are some talisman of historical change. Every situation is unique and must be studied.
Nonetheless the rise of modernity was notably accompanied by a new phenomenon of world history: the revolution.
But what people mean by that world changes with ideology. The liberal revolutions did one thing, while the far left of the Marxists wished to undo that with their revolutions!