quirk
09-03-2008, 08:15 AM
Thought Experiments: How Could a Revolution Happen in the U.S.?
Considerations on a Revolutionary Situation in the U.S.: Likely Triggering Factors, Potential Political Contours
by M. Upshaw
Let’s explore and debate the conceptual framework and scenarios of this little-known article. It suggests a number of hypothetical scenarios that could trigger deep political and social crisis in the U.S. — and that could open the way toward a deep de-legimization of the state and current order.
Let’s these scenarios in light of several things:
An approach by revolutionaries of “hasten and await.” In the U.S. revolutionary political work is a process of preparation (in non-revolutionary times) for extreme and exceptional moments when acute crisis weakens the ruling structure and emboldens an emerging revolutionary people. by envisioning possible scenarios it is possible to imagine what is being “awaited” — and on that basis better grasp what is being “hastened.”
This article is twenty years old. It was written in the 1980s when the world was heavily marked by the intense rivalry of the U.S. and the Soviet Union and where the “looking glass scenario” of world nuclear war was (inevitably) one of the major extreme events that revolutionaries and the people of the world had to contend with. The world is quite different, and the scenarios of our times would be (inevitably) different in significant ways. The point here is not to assume that these scenarios apply, but that a creative process of looking forward is needed.
In recently reading a brief critique by Alan Badiou of Empire by Negri and Hardt, I was again provoked to think about how much revolutions arises from underlying structure and how much they arises from conjunctural “events.” How much can be anticipated and accumulated working on the deep divisions and contradictions of capitalism, and how much springs to life in ways that are unpredictable and unanticipated. A critical reading of this “Considerations” piece can contribute to an examination of that question (of the relationship of structure and conjuncture).
It is also worth considering how the approach raised here is different from the view of revolution articulated by various forces today (Example: the movementist line, exemplified by david Solnit, that holds that the seizure of power is unnecessary, or the view of the RCP today which places the appreciation of an irreplacable leader as a key factor in creating revolutionary situations, and so on).
Perhaps needless to say, we are posting this piece as a contribution to critical discussions — not as any blanket endorsement of specific views or analyses in the article. It was originally submitted to Revolution magazine in Winter/Spring 1987. (This was a theoretical journal published in the 1980s and 90s by the RCP Publications in the U.S.)
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/scenarios-how-might-a-revolution-happen-in-the-us/
Considerations on a Revolutionary Situation in the U.S.: Likely Triggering Factors, Potential Political Contours
by M. Upshaw
Let’s explore and debate the conceptual framework and scenarios of this little-known article. It suggests a number of hypothetical scenarios that could trigger deep political and social crisis in the U.S. — and that could open the way toward a deep de-legimization of the state and current order.
Let’s these scenarios in light of several things:
An approach by revolutionaries of “hasten and await.” In the U.S. revolutionary political work is a process of preparation (in non-revolutionary times) for extreme and exceptional moments when acute crisis weakens the ruling structure and emboldens an emerging revolutionary people. by envisioning possible scenarios it is possible to imagine what is being “awaited” — and on that basis better grasp what is being “hastened.”
This article is twenty years old. It was written in the 1980s when the world was heavily marked by the intense rivalry of the U.S. and the Soviet Union and where the “looking glass scenario” of world nuclear war was (inevitably) one of the major extreme events that revolutionaries and the people of the world had to contend with. The world is quite different, and the scenarios of our times would be (inevitably) different in significant ways. The point here is not to assume that these scenarios apply, but that a creative process of looking forward is needed.
In recently reading a brief critique by Alan Badiou of Empire by Negri and Hardt, I was again provoked to think about how much revolutions arises from underlying structure and how much they arises from conjunctural “events.” How much can be anticipated and accumulated working on the deep divisions and contradictions of capitalism, and how much springs to life in ways that are unpredictable and unanticipated. A critical reading of this “Considerations” piece can contribute to an examination of that question (of the relationship of structure and conjuncture).
It is also worth considering how the approach raised here is different from the view of revolution articulated by various forces today (Example: the movementist line, exemplified by david Solnit, that holds that the seizure of power is unnecessary, or the view of the RCP today which places the appreciation of an irreplacable leader as a key factor in creating revolutionary situations, and so on).
Perhaps needless to say, we are posting this piece as a contribution to critical discussions — not as any blanket endorsement of specific views or analyses in the article. It was originally submitted to Revolution magazine in Winter/Spring 1987. (This was a theoretical journal published in the 1980s and 90s by the RCP Publications in the U.S.)
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/scenarios-how-might-a-revolution-happen-in-the-us/