Author Archives: Adly Templeton

Radicals in a Democratic Society

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Partially in response to Professor Malekzadeh’s post,

Part of the question Professor Malekzadeh describes is simply that the democratic reforms enacted by Allende were too moderate. But moderate compared to what? Election results show that Allende’s reforms were roughly in the center of Chilean political thought, and, therefore, from a political theory perspective, Allende was acting approximately how he should be in a Democatic society. To engage in immediate radical communist reforms would be to violate the will of the people.

Is the problem that we haven’t seen Communist reforms accomplished through Democratic means elsewhere? We talk a lot in class about how small a percent of a population it takes to enact a revolution. Communism is, after all, an inherently radical ideology. It seems likely that we cannot ever find a situation where a majority of the electorate would support (the same) radical reforms.

Part of the problem here is that Democracy, especially, by design, constitutional Democracies, are designed to be inherently moderate methods of enacting change, while Revolutions are of course inherently radical. It seems possible that Democracy can very rarely successfully enact a radical policy such as Communism.

Of course there is also a conflict between a hypothetical communist state and the present institutions in a Democratic society. Part of communist ideology is the focus on Communism as an “End of History”. To continue operating Democratically, Allende would have had to not only run continual elections but also to prepare for the eventuality that a communist regime might leave power, and to preserve institutions accordingly. It’s possible that this is simply incompatible with Communism.

Defining a civil war

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One of the recurring themes through this class is how hard it is to define a revolution. This difficulty is not only because there is a general lack of agreement, but also because the definitions we do somewhat agree on are based less on objective political facts and more on impossible-to-see forces or attitudes. Most of the definitions put on the board on Wednesday involve some sort of subjective factor. To call something a revolution is not only a descriptive label but also a judgement.

In comparison, civil wars can be defined purely by looking at the political facts of a situation. An operative definition might look something like this: “A prolonged war fought between two entities which were previously one state”. While one might disagree about some of the edges of this definition, there doesn’t seem to be a need to expand this definition to include more subjective elements. That is, it’s a comparatively boring definition.

The contradiction is that, in some sense, civil wars and (separatist) revolutions seem to be so interconnected. Look at the example in class of the American Civil War. We define the American Civil War in particular, and, in general, a section of a country attempting to secede as a civil war (provided that there is in fact a prolonged war).  And we label a successful break as a revolution. Then is the only difference between these two concepts the success or failure of a war. How do we reconcile this with the greater significant we place on the definition of a revolution.

Sell-out or part of the system

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For my blog post, I’m focusing on an episode of a television show which depicts this same sort of commercialization and incorporation of art: “Fifteen million merits”. The television show depicts a dystopian society where people ride bikes all day to earn money, which they spend on various forms of entertainment. The protagonist meets a girl and falls in love with her singing voice. He uses his entire life’s savings to purchase her a ticket to a spot on a futuristic equivalent to “America’s got talent”, hoping that she will get discovered and turned into a celebrity, and is distraught when she is offered, and accepts, a job making pornographic videos instead. Upset at the system, the man goes back to the bikes and earns enough merits for another audition on the same show. On live television, he draws out a sharpened shard of glass, and, threatening to commit suicide, demands that the audience listen to an impassioned rant against the system, urging the audience to reconsider their lives. The judge, apparently impressed, offers him a weekly television show. The last scene of the episode sees the protagonist, finishing a recording of a similarly passionate rant, places the shard of glass into an ornate case and goes back to an apparently luxurious life. Other workers, still working hard on their bikes, watch his video and receive an emotional fix.

The question which has always struck me when watching this episode is how? How did the system manage to so thoroughly support his message?

The more boring explanation is raw capitalism: the protagonist, however strong his convictions may have been, was always willing to ‘sell out’ for a good enough offer. But there is something about this interpretation that rings false: the man’s determination was consistently presented as real, not cynical: he was very willing to go through with suicide to get his message out there.

The other interpretation is more disturbing. The protagonist, even when recording a mass-distributed television show, did feel and express authentic emotions. It was the system itself that was so resilient that it was able to incorporate any emotion, including the emotion of revolution against the system, and, by working it into it’s framework, incorporate it any grow stronger.

 

(My apologies for the late blog post: I looked for an email, but I didn’t realize that it was posted on here when we didn’t get an email about it)

The spark and the fuel

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Revolutions are often tied to flashy causes. There is a certain human appeal to this narrative: we like to pin the cause of a large-scale event, such as the arab spring, with the self-immolation of an otherwise unnoteworthy fruit vender. There narratives have a particular irresistible human appeal, and, in a sense, it is true that the arab spring can be traced back to one fruit vendor. But if that fruit vender had set himself on fire in the middle of times square, would that have caused a revolution to sweep America? That seems unlikely. So was there some preexisting conditions in Tunisia that lead into a revolution, but the fruit vender was needed to spark the fire?

This might look like another instance of the classical ‘great man’ vs ‘trends and forces’ historical argument. However, this is a distinct case, for the simple reason that the men involved are usually not great in any ordinary sense of the word. The fruit vender had, presumably, neither any special talents nor any special political power which would allow him to affect the events of history under normal circumstances. He was, however, great in another sense of the word: that is, he was extraordinary. Very few people choose to light themselves on fire. Is that not a form of greatness?

And yet that greatness through mental pathology, while it might have significant impact, is not nearly as rare as the conditions which lead to revolution. Once the situation in a country has progressed to the point where a suicidal fruit vender can spark a revolution, the country will rarely be pulled back from the brink before some spark comes along.

 

The allure of chaotic events

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One of the great enduring debates among historians is the question: “Is history deterministic?”. That is, are the great historical events and eras the inevitable conclusion of long-running grand trends and forces? Or simply the result of many chaotic dice rolls? Put another way, was the start of world war one caused by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, or by the complex alliance system in pre-war Europe?

Whatever the answer to this question when it comes to the rest of history, revolutions feel distinct in this regard. That is, revolutions are so alluring because they feel particularly chaotic.  For one moment in history, the power structures holding a nation in place are lifted. The result is incredibly fast change: more changes occur in a year during a revolution than during a century of gradual reform within existing institutions. And while we might accept gradual change to be inevitable, rapid change feels chaotic.

Yet it is worth examining where this belief comes from. Are revolutions especially chaotic, or do they just feel that way? We can trace the causes of any revolution to grand trends and forces as easily as we can for any historical event. And the outcome of a revolution is rarely especially surprising once it starts. But in order to start a revolution, the participants have to buy into the idea that this is a moment where anything is possible, when a normally invulnerable regime can be overturned. And they have to successfully convince others of this idea. What if our human fascination with revolutions is just the result of us falling for their propaganda?