Author Archives: Joshua Greenzeig

Tactical “Strategery”

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For me, it is hard to dissociate Allende’s tactics, strategy, and faith in liberal democracy from the political context around him. I agree with Jake that violent struggle to bring about change in Chile would have been unwise. With a considerably stable history of democracy throughout the twentieth century and with demands that did not outright require the overthrow of government, violent struggle would have destabilized the state, antagonized a military class already predisposed to be against Allende’s goals, and–most importantly–would have left Allende with the task of rebuilding a state alongside implementing reforms that, based off of electoral results, were not ubiquitously desired.

With a military campaign that appears, at least on its face, doomed, how might have Allende better implemented his policy? As had been stated countless times throughout class and the readings, Allende had little effective control over his military even before the coup. Despotism thus would seem out of the question since the best apparatus for authoritatively controlling state was not under his direct control. Gradualism provides an alternative; though just as Jake noted as well, such a strategy might have “stripped Allende of his revolutionary status.” This prompts me to ask, why do we care about such status? Throughout case studies this semester, we as a class have come across countless individuals and actors whose revolutionary desires superseded the development of an effectual avenues for redress. The lack of ideological coherence amongst the various leaders of Haiti’s revolution has in part left Haitians with an ineffective state. Mao, Lenin, and Stalin all saw the needs to build the state and its economic, political, and social capacities before they could realistically implement socialist reform. To me, this question boils down to a cost benefit analysis of liberal democracy against some form of more authoritarian socialism. Rooted in gradualism and public participation, liberal democracy may be a tenuous and slow route; however, smashing states and rebuilding them to the liking of a cohort of revolutionary individuals elicits way more fear from me.

You say you want a Revolution? Did you mean Civil War?

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Distinguishing between civil wars and revolutions is tough because implicit in the question of how they differ is that they always differ. Danielle’s point in class that all “revolutions are civil wars but not all civil wars are revolutions” was incredibly poignant and encapsulated where I fall on the issue. If I accept the argument many of my peers are putting forward, that revolutions have an ideological underpinning, then certainly many civil wars constitute revolutions.

It is hard to divorce the belligerents in some of the most famous civil wars from their ideologies. How many times do we hear about how the American Civil War was a “battle for state’s rights,” “the abolition of slavery,” “to preserve the Union,” or any other statement that one might find in a textbook? Invariably, talking about the conflict forces us to understand the ideologies that created it in the first place. In the case of the United States, victory was achieved by the North whose actions and policies advocated for a significant departure from the way the government used to conceive of rights and their relationship to the state. Certainly, this would constitute a revolution (since government changed and an ideology was involved).

Besides ideas, civil wars can be fought over stuff too. Does this not make them revolutionary? Part of me thinks not since there is a desire for something is not explicitly linked to an ideology. But fighting for access to something or to prevent a group of people from getting something is inherently the product of an ideology that privileges a resource. If two factions fight over access to a water source (a civil war we may very much see in the future), then the logical extensions of the simplistic formulation of the belligerents’ positions are that some people deserve access to something and others do not. This sounds a lot like a boiled down version of any political justification for revolution.

Perhaps because of convention there should remain a basic distinction between the two, but for the purposes of an in depth examination, they seem ever more similar.

Gramsci, meet Hippies and Hipsters

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As in most fields, the rise of the internet and computing technology has upended the music industry in unfathomable ways. Over our lifetimes, the power record companies held over musicians and their work has dissipated into thin air; however, new forces such as Spotify  and Apple music (or any other streaming platform) have established an entirely new hegemony within the industry. Think about it, how much music do we really pay for anymore?

The flat monthly fee many of us (myself included) pay for access to a streaming service leaves artists making less than one cent per single stream of their work. Despite neglecting fair compensation for artists and their work, streaming on the internet has become the standard unit of the music industry. Just about everything an artist does today is designed to help them maximize the amount of clicks on their content. Record label offices once dedicated to getting music on the radio, on television, or in the movies are now hubs of social media experts whose mission is to increase their artists’ followers. Artists themselves fall prey to the “common sense” created by the industry’s shift that devalued music by simply giving away tons of free content to remain fresh in the feeds of whatever social media app they want to increase their presence on. The popularity of streaming platforms and their consumer friendly costs have established a hegemony upon the music industry in which the actions of artists are sharply circumscribed by the market’s desire to maximize access to musical content while minimizing its cost.

There are bands and artists that buck these trends to an extent. Perhaps counter hegemonic, jam bands like Phish, the Grateful Dead, and young bands like Vulfpeck represent a possible challenge to consensus and the integrity of “the horizon of the taken-for-granted.” Phish and the Dead cultivated large fan bases dedicated to enjoying live music that looks, sounds, and feels different every single night that forces fans (though they oblige willingly) to put money directly in the pockets of those they love. Vulfpeck’s brilliant 2014 album of all silence called “Sleepify,” released with a message telling their then small fanbase to stream the album during their sleep to fund a free tour, grossed over $20,000 before Spotify took the content down (more than enough to fund the short tour).

However, its tough to say if these are truly counter-hegemonic actions because they have been absorbed by the music industry. Phish and the Dead’s willingness to let fans tape and distribute shows (first through analog processes but later through the early internet in the 90s) is the very basis of streaming services now. Vulfpeck mastered crowd funding long before it started becoming more popular. Maybe the willingness of the industry to usurp their methods should be a measure of success for these counter-hegemonic practices. However, it also suggests that the industry’s hegemony over the masses is more powerful than previously understood since it can continuously adapt its practices to maintain profits while appeasing listeners.

 

Inevitability, Revolutions, And a Touch of Cynicism

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I do not like the concept of anything being inevitable. To an extent, revolutions (or any other past event) seem destined to occur because–well–they did occur. But even the things this class has thus far identified as making a revolution successful are so circumstantial despite appearing across multiple case studies that they should not be treated as part of a universal pattern.

While the case of Iran presents us with an unstable regime making poor long term decisions, it took the shady death of Ayatollah Khomeini’s eldest son, a long, public mourning process, and the political will of individuals to turn such protected processes into agents of political change in order to spark revolution. In Haiti, it took a unique set of social and economic circumstances that placed large amounts of slaves (many of whom were belligerents recently in Africa) alongside a free black population that was treated unequally from its white counterparts along with a revolution back in France to make change viable. Though these descriptions are simplistic and generalize the narratives, they begin to demonstrate how revolutions are products of situationally unique circumstances.

However, such a feeling is hard to reconcile with arguments like Camu’s, which appeal to a latent universal liberal humanity that part of me wants to exist. Yet Haiti proves all to quickly that belligerents on the same side of a revolutionary war can have vastly different interests and motivations. While linked by experience and race, free blacks in Haiti and the elite black class in general saw a post 1791 Haiti that was far different than the image rebelling slaves had. As Jake said in his blog post, the events that prompt revolutionary action are far too “fluid” to categorize them as binary.

I’m curious–and this is cynical–about the extent to which the language of revolution (in the moment) is clouded in universalism as a political ploy to gain support. Do we hear this language because the interests of revolution are far more selfish in nature and thus less accessible to a population large enough to make needed change happen? Is this rhetoric responsible for how we think about revolutions?

Alluring Associations

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The narrative of recorded history centers on large scale change. The clear “before” and “after” that revolutions create on timelines helps humanity organize its histories in ways that make logical sense. But this has also impacted the way in which people define what a revolution truly is. Within the context of larger human histories, revolutions (in the way social scientists use them to periodize) function as a clear break between what came before and what comes afterwards. Thus, revolutions are automatically associated with substantive, high effort, and potentially costly change. The allure of revolutions and the trepidation most feel about joining them comes from this association.

One result of this association is that revolutions become moments rather than movements. The ease with which social scientists can point to revolutions as the agents of change alters conceptions of what it means to be revolutionary and the actions associated with it. This is not to say that everything can be revolutionary, but more that nothing is revolutionary until its impacts can be properly contextualized within the dichotomy of before and after. Within this framework, revolutions are powerful forces with perhaps the greatest levels of potential social, economic, and political agency. The association between agency and revolution can play off of larger desires for progress and change, justifying why the concept of a revolution is so alluring to observers.

But if revolutions appeal to the types of progress that help define the narrative of human existence, why is there so much reluctance to actively join them? Perhaps there are greater realities about the success rate of social/political revolution? Maybe the demands of reality exceed demands for substantive change? Are revolutions just like the classic New Year’s resolution of going to the gym that many make but never follow through on because their lives get in the way? Whatever the answers may be, Tocqueville’s musings on democracy perhaps best highlight one way in which the association of revolution with dramatic human change has altered the perception of what it means to join one or be revolutionary. He stated that democrats (participants in a democracy) “love change, but dread revolution,” stemming from a careful abstention of “touching what is fundamental” to society because doing so would alter the very institutions that permit democratic change. Yet, it is obvious that what it means to be an American today is fundamentally different than what it meant in 1840 (when Tocqueville wrote) or 1776, meaning some revolutionary change occurred despite the willingness of the population.

The association of revolutions with massive change and the ways in which they are used to periodize make it easy to think of them as moments in human history with magnified consequences rather than processes that are a product of human agency.