Revolution

Ancient Greek (Peripatetic)

Constitutional change (metabolē) arises above all from perceptions of injustice, especially conflict over equality: the many demand equality because they are equal in freedom, the few demand privilege because they are unequal in wealth. Revolutions typically transfer power between rich and poor, and are best prevented by moderation, a strong middle class, and attention to the causes of faction. His analysis is diagnostic and preventive rather than a call to overthrow.

Politics, Book V.

Classical liberalism

Government is a trust held for the people's good, so when rulers place themselves in a state of war with the people by systematically violating their rights, the people may reclaim their power and institute a new government. This is not rebellion but a defense against those who rebel against the trust — an 'appeal to Heaven' when no earthly judge remains. The right of resistance is not a license for unrest, for people bear long abuses and rise only against a long train of usurpations.

Second Treatise of Government (1689), ch. 18–19.

Social contract / republicanism

When a government usurps the sovereignty that belongs inalienably to the people and the general will, the social compact is broken and the people recover their natural liberty. Rousseau's insistence that legitimate authority rests solely on the people's self-legislation became a founding creed of revolutionaries, even as he doubted whether most peoples were ripe for radical refounding. He warned that revolutions are dangerous and rare windows in which a corrupted people might, under a wise founder, be born anew.

The Social Contract (1762).

Conservatism

The French Revolution was a catastrophe because it swept away inherited institutions in the name of abstract rights, severing society from the accumulated wisdom of generations. Society is a partnership between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn, and legitimate change must be gradual reform that conserves as it corrects. Uprooting custom, religion, and prescription in pursuit of geometric reason unleashes not liberty but disorder, and ends in military despotism.

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

Radical democratic republicanism

Against Burke, Paine insisted that the living have no obligation to be governed by 'the manuscript authority of the dead'; each generation has the right to establish its own government. Revolution is the assertion of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man against hereditary privilege and monarchy, replacing rule by birth with representative republics founded on consent. He linked political revolution to social reform, proposing what amount to early welfare measures funded by progressive taxation.

Common Sense (1776); Rights of Man (1791–92).

Critical philosophy

Kant denied any legal right of violent revolution, holding that a people may not rightfully rebel against even a defective sovereign, since this would destroy the very condition of public right. Yet he greeted the French Revolution with enthusiasm as a 'sign of history' revealing humanity's moral progress toward a republican, rights-respecting order. Reform, not rebellion, is the lawful path, but the sympathy of onlookers testifies to a moral disposition in the human race.

The Metaphysics of Morals (1797); The Contest of Faculties (1798).

German idealism

The French Revolution was a world-historical dawn, the moment reason set out to build the political world upon thought — yet its abstract freedom, refusing all articulation, collapsed into the Terror. Absolute, undifferentiated liberty can only destroy, producing 'the fury of destruction' and death 'as cold and meaningless as cutting off a head of cabbage'. True freedom must be given concrete institutional shape, so revolution is redeemed only when its principle is embodied in a rational ethical order.

Phenomenology of Spirit (1807); Lectures on the Philosophy of History.

Liberal sociology of politics

Revolutions come not when oppression is worst but when a rising, reforming society raises expectations faster than it can satisfy them. The French Revolution did not break with the old regime so much as complete its centralizing work, sweeping away intermediate bodies and leaving isolated individuals before a stronger state. Tocqueville feared that the democratic passion for equality could culminate in a new, soft despotism rather than in genuine freedom.

The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856); Democracy in America.

Historical materialism

Revolutions are the locomotives of history: when the forces of production outgrow existing property relations, an era of social revolution begins and one class overthrows another. The bourgeois revolutions cleared the way for capitalism; the coming proletarian revolution will abolish class society itself, and 'force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one'. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains, and the aim is a classless, stateless communist society.

The Communist Manifesto (1848); The Civil War in France (1871).

Marxism-Leninism

The working class will not spontaneously achieve revolution; it needs a disciplined 'vanguard' party of professional revolutionaries to bring political consciousness and seize the decisive moment. The existing state cannot simply be taken over but must be smashed and replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which will suppress the old classes and begin the transition to communism. In the age of imperialism, the revolutionary chain can be broken at its weakest link.

What Is to Be Done? (1902); The State and Revolution (1917).

Political theory

Revolution in the true sense is not mere revolt but the founding of freedom — the constitution of a new public space in which citizens can act together and appear before one another. The American Revolution largely succeeded because it aimed at founding lasting institutions, while the French Revolution was derailed by the overwhelming 'social question' of poverty, which turned it toward terror. The lost treasure of revolution is the experience of public happiness that its councils and townships briefly disclosed.

On Revolution (1963).

Anti-colonial theory

Colonialism is a violent order imposed by force, and decolonization is therefore always a violent phenomenon that replaces one 'species' of men with another. For the colonized, revolutionary violence can be a cleansing, self-constituting act that restores dignity and forges a new people out of the wretched of the earth. Fanon warned, however, that a national revolution can be betrayed by a self-serving native bourgeoisie unless it deepens into a genuine social and human liberation.

The Wretched of the Earth (1961).