II. Why Revolution May Succeed
II. A. There are several reasons why revolution may succeed where reform has made no progress.
1. Until ca 1980 I used to think the situation was hopeless, largely because of people’s thoughtlessness and passivity and their tendency to take the easy way out. (See I.A.6, 8-14, above.) Up to that point I had never read much history. But then I read Thomas Carlyle’s history of the French Revolution, and it opened my eyes to the fact that, in time of revolution, the usual rules do not apply: People behave differently. Subsequent reading about revolutions, especially the French and the Russian ones, confirmed that conclusion. Once a revolutionary fever has taken hold of a country, people throw off their passivity and are willing to make the greatest efforts and endure the greatest hardships for the sake of their revolution. In such cases it may be that only a minority of the population is gripped by the revolutionary fever, but that minority is sufficiently large and energetic so that it becomes the dominant force in the country. See ISAIF §142.
2. Long before that large and dominant revolutionary minority develops, that is, long before the revolution actually begins, an avowedly revolutionary movement can shake a much smaller minority out of its apathy and learned helplessness and inspire it to passionate commitment and sacrifice in a way that a moderate and “reasonable” reform effort cannot do. See ISAIF §141. This small minority may then show remarkable stamina and long-term determination in preparing the way for revolution. The Russian revolutionary movement up to 1917 provides a notable example of this.
3. The fact that revolutions are usually prepared and carried out by minorities is important, because the system’s techniques of propaganda almost always enable it to keep the attitudes and behavior of the majority within such limits that they do not threaten the system’s basic interests. As long as society is governed through the usual democratic processes—elections, public-opinion polls, and other numerical indices of majority choice—no reform movement that threatens the system’s basic interests can succeed 138, because the system can always contrive to have the majority on its side. 51% who are just barely interested enough to cast a vote will always defeat 49%, no matter how serious and committed the latter may be. But in revolution, a minority, if sufficiently determined and energetic, can outweigh the relatively inert majority.
4. Unlike reformers, revolutionaries are not restrained by fear of negative consequences (see I.A.16, above). Consider for example the emission of greenhouse gasses and/or creation of nuclear waste associated with the generation of electric power. Because it is unthinkable that anyone should have to do without electricity, the reformers are largely stymied; they can only hope that a technological solution will be found in time. But revolutionaries will be prepared to shut down the power plants regardless of consequences.
5. As noted above (see I.A.15), reformers have to fight a number of different battles, the loss of any one of which could lead either to physical disaster or to conditions intolerably offensive to human dignity. Revolutionaries whose goal is the overthrow of the technoindustrial system have only one battle to fight and win.
6. As I’ve argued (see I.A.1), history is guided mainly by “objective” circumstances, and if we want to change the course of history we have to change the “objective” circumstances to that end. The dominant “objective” circumstances in the world today are those created by the technoindustrial system. If a revolutionary movement could bring about the collapse of the technoindustrial system, it would indeed change the “objective” circumstances dramatically.
7. As I’ve pointed out (see I.A.17), your proposed solution through piecemeal reform has no historical precedents. But there are numerous precedents for the elimination through revolution of an existing form of society. Probably the precedent most apposite to our case is that of the Russian Revolution, in which a revolutionary movement systematically prepared the way for revolution over a period of decades, so that when the right moment arrived the revolutionaries were ready to strike.
8. Even if you believe that adequate reforms are possible, you should still favor the creation of an effective revolutionary movement. It’s clear that the necessary reforms—if such are possible—are not currently being carried out. Often the system needs a hard kick in the pants to get it started on necessary reforms, and a revolutionary movement can provide that kick in the pants.
Further, if it is an error to attempt revolution—that is, if adequate reforms are possible—then the error should be self-correcting: As soon as the system has carried through the necessary reforms, the revolutionary movement will no longer have a valid cause, so it will lose support and peter out.
For example, in the U.S. during the early part of the 20th century, insufficient attention was paid to the problems of the working class. Labor violence ensued and provided the kick in the pants necessary to get the government to pay attention to the problems. Because adequate reforms were carried through, the violence died down;139 this in contrast to what happened in Russia, where the Tsarist regime’s stubborn resistance to reform led to revolution.
II. B. You write: “Perhaps it would be useful to focus on specific actions necessary to alter our present technological path rather than to use loaded terms like ‘revolution,’ which may alienate as many, or more, supporters of change as it would galvanize adherents. Or so my colleague suggests.”
1. Once one has decided that the overthrow of the technoindustrial system is necessary, there is no reason to shrink from using the word “revolution.” If a person is prepared to embrace a goal as radical as that of overthrowing the technoindustrial system, he is hardly likely to be alienated by the term “revolution.”
Furthermore, if you want to build a movement dedicated to such a radical goal, you can’t build it out of lukewarm people. You need people who are passionately committed, and you must be careful to avoid allowing your movement to be swamped by a lot of well-meaning do-gooders who may be attracted to it because they are concerned about the environment and all that, but will shrink from taking radical measures. So you want to alienate the lukewarm do-gooders. You need to keep them away from your movement.
A mistake that most people make is to assume that the more followers you can recruit, the better. That’s true if you’re trying to win an election. A vote is a vote regardless of whether the voter is deeply committed or just barely interested enough to get to the polls. But when you’re building a revolutionary movement, the number of people you have is far less important than the quality of your people and the depth of their commitment. Too many lukewarm or otherwise unsuitable people will ruin the movement. As I pointed out in an earlier letter, at the outset of the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Social Revolutionary party was numerically dominant because it was a catch-all party to which anyone who was vaguely in favor of revolution could belong.140 The more radical Bolsheviks were numerically far inferior, but they were deeply committed and had clear goals. The Social Revolutionaries proved ineffective, and it was the Bolsheviks who won out in the end.
2. This brings me to your argument that if the nomadic hunting-andgathering (NHG) society is taken as the social ideal, the pool of potential revolutionaries would be minimal. You yourself (same page of same letter) suggested a possible answer to this, namely, that the NHG ideal might “draw in the most committed activists,” and that is essentially the answer that I would give. As I’ve just argued, level of commitment is more important than numbers. But I would also mention that of all societies of biologically modern humans, the nomadic hunting-and-gathering ones were those that suffered least from the chief problems that modern society brings to the world, such as environmental destruction, dangerous technological powers, dominance of large organizations over individuals and small groups. This fact certainly weighs in favor of the NHG ideal. Moreover, I think you greatly underestimate the number of potential revolutionaries who would be attracted by such an ideal. I may say more about that in a later letter.