III. Necessity Of Revolution

You challenge me to present evidence that “the situation is so urgent that truly revolutionary action is demanded,” and you write: “If in fact the situation is as serious as you portray, then surely there would be other rational thinkers who would come to the same conclusion. Where are the other intelligent voices that see this reality, and likewise conclude that revolution is the only option?.” But there are two separate issues here: The seriousness and urgency of the situation is one question and the call for revolution is another.
III.A. I shouldn’t have to offer you any evidence on the seriousness and urgency of the situation, because others have already done that. You’re familiar with Bill Joy’s article. Jared Diamond and Richard Posner (U.S. Circuit Judge, conservative, pro-government) have written books about the risk of catastrophe. I’m enclosing herewith a review of these two books.141 According to a review142 of Our Final Century, by the British Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees estimates that “the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that our present civilization on Earth will survive to the end of the present century.” (E.g.: “Experiments at very high energies, perhaps a hundred times those reached by today’s particle accelerators, could create a tiny bubble which then would expand at almost the speed of light, consuming our entire galaxy for a start. In 1983 Martin Rees helped to convince physicists that no all-destroying bubble could be born inside the accelerators of those days. He now stresses the need for caution as accelerator energies grow.”)143 I don’t think your colleague will dismiss any of the foregoing people as “raving anarchists.”
The people mentioned in the preceding paragraph warn of dangers in the hope that these can be forestalled. I think there are many others who see the situation as hopeless and believe that disaster is inevitable. Several years ago someone sent me what seemed to be a responsible article titled “Planet of Weeds.”144 I didn’t actually read the article, I only glanced through it, but I think the thesis was that our civilization would cause the extinction of most life on Earth, and that when our civilization was dead—and the human race with it—the organisms that would survive would be the weed-like ones, i.e., those that could grow and reproduce quickly under adverse conditions. Many of the original members of Earth First!—before it was taken over by the leftists—were political conservatives and I don’t think your colleague could reasonably dismiss them as “raving anarchists.” Their view was that the collapse of industrial civilization through environmental disaster was inevitable in the relatively near future. They felt that it was impossible to prevent the disaster, and their goal was merely to save some remnants of wilderness that could serve as “seeds” for the regeneration of life after industrial society was gone.145
So I think there are significant numbers of intelligent and rational people who see the situation as more serious and urgent than I do. The people I’ve mentioned up to this point have considered mainly the risk of physical disaster. Ellul and others have addressed the issues of human dignity, and if my recollections of his book Autopsy of Revolution are correct, Ellul felt that there was at most a minimal chance of avoiding a complete and permanent end to human freedom and dignity. So Ellul too saw the situation as worse than I see it.
III. B. Why then is rational advocacy of revolution so rare? There are several reasons that have nothing to do with the degree of urgency or seriousness of the situation.
1. In mainstream American society today, it is socially unacceptable to advocate revolution. Anyone who does so risks being classified as a “raving anarchist” merely by virtue of the fact that he advocates revolution.
2. Many would shrink from advocating revolution simply because of the physical risk that they would run if a revolution actually occurred. Even if they survived the revolution, they would likely have to endure physical hardship. We live in a soft society in which most people are much more fearful of death and hardship than the members of earlier societies were. (The anthropologist Turnbull records the contempt that traditional Africans have for modern man’s weakness in the face of pain and death.146)
3. Most people are extremely reluctant to accept fundamental changes in the pattern of life to which they are adapted. They prefer to cling to familiar ways even if they know that those ways will lead to disaster 50 years in the future. Or even 40, 20, or 10 years. Turnbull observes that “few of us would be willing to sacrifice” modern “achievements,” “even in the name of survival.”147 Instead of “achievements” he should have said “habitual patterns of living.” Jared Diamond has pointed out that societies often cling stubbornly to their established ways of life even when the price of doing so is death.148 This alone is enough to explain why calls for revolution are hardly ever heard outside of the most radical fringe.
4. Even people who might otherwise accept a radical change in their way of life may be frightened at the prospect of having to get by without the technological apparatus on which they feel themselves to be dependent. For instance, I know of a woman in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who hates the technological system with a passion and hopes for its collapse. But in a letter to me dated August 19, 2004, she wrote: “A lightning strike on June 30 ‘fried’ our power inverter at the cabin. For three weeks I lived without electricity. …I realized how much I was dependent. I grew to hate the night. I think that humans will do whatever possible to preserve the electrical power grids….”
5. Many people (e.g., the original Earth First!ers whom I mentioned above, III.A) think the system will collapse soon anyway, in which case no revolution will be necessary.
6. Finally, there is hopelessness and apathy. The system seems so all-powerful and invulnerable that nothing can be done against it. There’s no point in advocating a revolution that is impossible. This, rather than that revolution is unnecessary or too extreme, is the objection I’ve heard from some people. But it is precisely the general assumption that revolution is impossible that makes it impossible in fact. If enough people could be made to believe that revolution was possible, then it would be possible. One of the first tasks of a nascent revolutionary movement would be to get itself taken seriously.
III. C. Your colleague insists that “the case for revolution needs to be demonstrated virtually beyond doubt, because it is so extreme and serious.” I disagree. The possible or probable consequences of continued technological progress include the extinction of the human race or even of all of the more complex forms of life on Earth; or the replacement of humans by intelligent machines; or a transformation of the human race that will entail the permanent loss of all freedom and dignity as these have traditionally been conceived. These consequences are so much more extreme and serious than those to be expected from revolution that I don’t think we need to be 100% certain, or even 90% certain, that revolution is really necessary in order to justify such action.149
Anyway, the standard that your colleague sets for the justification of revolution (“virtually beyond doubt”) is impossibly high. Since major wars are just as dangerous and destructive as revolutions, he would have to apply the same standard to warfare. Does your colleague believe, for example, that the Western democracies acted unjustifiably in fighting World War II? If not, then how would he justify World War II under the “virtually beyond doubt” standard?
III. D. Even if we assume that it is not known at present whether revolution will ever be necessary or justifiable, the time to begin building a revolutionary movement is now. If we wait too long and it turns out that revolution is necessary, we may find that it is too late.
Revolutions can occur spontaneously. (For example, the way for the French Revolution was not consciously prepared in advance.) But that is a matter of chance. If we don’t want to merely hope for luck, then we have to start preparing the way for revolution decades in advance as the Russian revolutionaries did, so that we will be ready when the time is ripe.
I suggest that as time goes by, the system’s tools for forestalling or suppressing revolution get stronger. Suppose that revolution is delayed until after computers have surpassed humans in intelligence. Presumably the most intelligent computers will be in the hands of large organizations such as corporations and governments. At that point revolution may become impossible because the government’s computers will be able to outsmart revolutionaries at every step.
Revolutions often depend for their success on the fact that the revolutionaries have enough support in the army or among the police so that at least some elements of these remain neutral or aid the revolutionaries. The revolutionary sympathies of soldiers certainly played an important part in the French and Russian Revolutions. But the armies and police forces of the future may consist of robots, which presumably will not be susceptible to subversion.
This is not science fiction. “Experts said that between 2011 and 2015, every household will have a robot doing chores such as cleaning and laundering.”150 The Honda company already claims to have “an advanced robot with unprecedented humanlike abilities. ASIMO walks forward and backward, turns corners, and goes up and down stairs with ease.…The future of this exciting technology is even more promising. ASIMO has the potential to respond to simple voice commands, recognize faces…. One day, ASIMO could be quite useful in some very important tasks. Like assisting the elderly, and even helping with household chores. In essence, ASIMO might serve as another set of eyes, ears and legs for all kinds of people in need.”151 Police and military applications of robots are an obvious next step, and in fact the U.S. military is already developing robotized fighting machines for use in combat.152
So if we’re going to have a revolution we had better have it before technology makes revolution impossible. If we wait until the need for revolution is “virtually beyond doubt,” our opportunity may be gone forever.
III. E. Here’s a challenge for your colleague: Outline a plausible scenario for the future of our society in which everything turns out alright, and does so without a collapse of the technoindustrial system, whether through revolution or otherwise. Obviously, there may be disagreement as to what is “alright.” But in any case your colleague will have to explain, inter alia: (1) How he expects to prevent computers more intelligent than humans from being developed, or, if they are developed, how he expects to prevent them from supplanting humans; (2) how he expects to avoid the risk of biological disaster that biotechnological experimentation entails; (3) how he expects to prevent the progressive lowering of standards of human dignity that we’ve been seeing at least since the early stages of the Industrial Revolution; and (4) how he expects nuclear weapons to be brought under control. As I pointed out above (see I.B.6), of all our technology-related problems, the problem of nuclear weapons should be by far the easiest to solve, so if your colleague can’t give a good and convincing answer to question (4)—something better than just a pious hope that mankind will see the light and dismantle all the nukes in a spirit of brotherhood and reconciliation—then I suggest it’s time to give up the idea of reform.