Revolutions seldom solve issues for the aggrieved. They are opportunistically leveraged by ideologues in the revolution and ends up with even more misery than prior. Revolutions are a last ditch effort. It’s the worst path, but in rare circumstances the only path.
Change has to come from within; you need people like Gorbachev.
Revolutions bring lots of bloodshed and animosity and pits friends against friends. It takes many decades to heal from that. There is also a vast and deep trail of wasted lives in its wake.
Whenever there's a revolution there's a potential counter-revolution. It's rare to be able to spike the guns with carnations, like Portugal.
> Revolutions bring lots of bloodshed and animosity and pits friends against friends. It takes decades to heal from that. There is also a vast and deep trail of wasted lives in its wake.
This is something every would-be revolutionary kid needs to internalise and ask themselves if they are really ready for. The cost is huge and mostly borne by vulnerable other people.
Portugal's carnation revolution is a clear example that change has to come from within.
The man behind the coup was General Spínola, the man in charge of Portugal's fight against independence movements in Portuguese guinea. Prior to the revolution he wrote a book on how the war was unwinnable to pressure Portugal's ruling dictatorship into a political solution, to which the ruling Portuguese dictator refused. Consequently a couple of coups were attempted and when they finally succeeded the dictator surrendered and General Spínola took over as interim president of Portugal, enactig the political changes he defended such as ending fighting and jump-starting a transition to a democratic regime.
Meanwhile, the dictatorship's single-party parliament already included groups of representatives, such as Sá Carneiro's liberal wing, who were not only openly against the dictatorship but also openly advocated for a transition to democracy.
You can't get more internal than that.
This is one of the points emphasised by [0| I call it the 3.5% talk]. The argument is that nonviolent peaceful "revolutions" are not only more successful in toppling regimes, they also make it easier to build a new one.
Just because the treasonous colonists took up arms against the King (after many years of trying other means), doesn’t mean that a zoning issue, a gerrymandering concern, a dissatisfaction with the Electoral College, or a debate over UBI should move quickly to armed revolution if the first response isn’t to your liking.
I think the aversion to violence has made us complacent and resistant to change, expecting progress to always be positive without any struggle or hardship may mean we not only not get the change we need, but also violence will inevitably boil over or will be prolonged over a longer period of time, the cost of which will not be realized until after the fact.
How long will the Israel/Palestinian conflict go on for? How long will crony capitalism vs crony communism go on for? How long will we continue to be present in the middle-east militarily?
Conservative dogma is what causes revolution when no change is allowed within the current societal structure.
But if, on the other hand, the state you are fighting will not flinch before brutally suppressing any dissent and murdering hundreds, thousands, or even millions (such as is the case from the imperialists in South America to the Chinese government in Tiannamen), then no peaceful marching will save you, you need to be ready for physical struggle if you want change)
> the Britons had lines they did not cross, they did not send tanks or imprison and murder leaders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre ; Ghandi was arrested repeatedly and spent several years in prison. https://www.mkgandhi.org/arrestofmahatma.htm
Possibly the main reason the Empire was abandoned was its physical untenability and expense after the war, along with pressure from the United States.
"Non-violent protest" as practiced today by "progressive" groups is the most useless form of protest you can do.
What they did have was a busted economy after WW2, no access to international credit and a treaty with the Americans that was forcing them to decolonialize. The ongoing independence campaign (mostly paused during the war) put them in the position of "double down or fold" and they chose to fold. I think people overestimate the element of ethical embarrassment.
As posters above argued, revolutions present copious opportunities for being hijacked by bad actors/ideologues, and very rarely produce anything other than more suffering than in the original conditions. There is strong quantitative evidence to back this, check out the report from the NECSI.org website.
Best I can tell, the significant upside of revolutions is they change the distribution of suffering, brining it to those who had before benefited, even if overall everyone suffers. I suspect this is the emotional allure of revolution, sticking it to those who have been sticking it to you. This is really a primate thing, studies with monkeys have shown that they’ll allow harm to themselves to get back at those they view causing or benefiting from an inequitable situation (as I recall the study had something to do with grapes).
Real change that produces progress requires consistent engagement over many years (know your representative, etc), individual responsibility and personal sacrifice (start a community group and build relationships, etc.), and compromise. Underlying it all is building and cultivating trust - trust is the foundation of healthy societies.
I think all those things are undermined by our current circumstances in society. These include the physical structure of communication media (social media), economic pressures most people experience (who has the time to start a community group when they’re trying to win at the grind), and current ideological climate. The first two are unconscionable and clearly encouraged directly or indirectly by and for the sake of the economic power holders’ interests. This last one however is insidious and in the interest of ideological power holders’ interest. Folks like you suggest that there’s a way to have your cake and eat it too - just get angry and violent enough and poof there’s your solution, no hard work needed. This kind of, forgive me for using these words but, self serving immaturity occupies the intellectual space and crowds out people coming to terms with what’s required for real change, progress, and suffering-reduction.
Edited: for language/spelling and to add the last two paragraphs.
I think this view is too simplistic; many ideas of a better society are simply incompatible with change "within the system", since the system itself, they argue, inherently fosters the tendencies they're against.
>Real change that produces progress requires consistent engagement over many years (know your representative, etc), individual responsibility and personal sacrifice (start a community group and build relationships, etc.), and compromise.
Does it? Why? What's the evidence to back this up? Consider that, for example, not a single petition made to the English government through their own petition schema has actually accomplished anything. This "know your representative" stuff doesn't even apply to non-violent changes of power. Do you think Gandhi succeeded because he got to know his representative, or he was open to compromise on Indian independence?
>This kind of, forgive me for using these words but, self serving immaturity occupies the intellectual space and crowds out people coming to terms with what’s required for real change
The intellectual space is currently occupied by near-pervasive liberal egalitarianism, and liberal egalitarians suggest that the way things are right now (systematically) is just fine.
The truth is that your anti-revolutionary model assumes that the goals sought by would-be revolutionaries can be accommodated within whatever system they protest, but this is manifestly untrue, and the history of both violent and non-violent revolutions shows as much. It is also shockingly ignorant of revolutions from inside the system itself against the people - the industrial revolution being one (think of the violent enclosure movement in Western Europe on behalf of the State).
Also, what do you think about "The success of nonviolent civil resistance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w ?
They've met with UK Sec. of State for Environment [2]. Exactly what the OP advocates.
Majority of Britons now believe that climate change is more pressing than Brexit [3]
And so on.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48126677
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPtAKjhT02s
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMGqP5rP8v8
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/26/climate-...
That just means we're not going to do very much about either of those! Although grid decarbonisation has been a great quiet success so far. It's just that nobody seems to want to take credit for it and push on further.
If 'violence' has been re-defined to the extent that mis-gendering someone is an 'act of violence' (https://everydayfeminism.com/2017/01/misgendering-trans-peop...), then you could certainly argue that ER have acted violently.
EDIT I see I'm being downvoted. Are we not allowed to have a conversation about re-defining words and being intellectually consistent with the re-defined meaning?
It seems these days that the word 'violence' has been re-defined such that it no longer requires there to be any abusive physical contact between the perpetrator and the victim. As such, merely using words that may cause an individual some emotional discomfort is considered an act of violence.
I don't agree with that definition, and for me abusive physical contact is the defining characteristic of violence. But if that's the general consensus now then that's what I'll use. We can't have a debate if we're all speaking a different language.
Given that 'violence' no longer requires any physical contact, one could make the argument that some of the activities that ER have engaged in could be considered violent. The many ER road-blocks have very real consequences for all the people who are unable to go about their daily lives without being disrupted. When ER blocks a bus full of people in traffic, it's distinctly possible that those people were on their way to job interviews, doctors appointments, meetings with long-lost relatives, charity fundrasiers or any number of other things. This kind of disruption might easily cause significant emotional distress, I would argue at least on par with the emotional distresss suffered by an individual being mis-gendered. So why should one be considered violence and the other not?
That's not even getting to the topic of Ambulances being caught up in ER road-blocks, which has been documented numerous times. ER even address that issue explicitly in their FAQ (https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/faqs/). They attempt to hand-wave this problem away by saying that ambulances can be re-directed away from the road-blocks. It hardly needs to be said that time is often a critical factor when an ambulance is transporting a patient to hospital. The additional time spent avoiding ER activists could easily be the difference between life and death. Is this not a form of violence?
By your own definition, the answer is clearly no.
One definition of violence appears to be used when describing ER as 'non-violent'. But another, very different definition of violence appears to be used when declaring that mis-gendering someone is an act of violence.
My answer to this is to insist on the 'proper' definition - the one you yourself prefer - and to push back whenever the term is misused (I find this is generally done as a smearing tactic).
The alternative is to yield ground and to start saying 'physical violence' whenever one means 'violence'.
It is the intentional or willful mis-gendering that is being argued in that link as being an act of violence.
Indeed, for an individual, Mass movements, rarely change things. At an individual level, voluntary dropping out is a solution. Reduce the revenue you contribute to the system. Starve it.
There's no nonviolent way outside the system because the police are violent if you actually inconvenience the system (which marches don't do but occupations do).
The problem basically is the fetishization of nonviolence.
Revolution can change the system.