Revolutions are made of this Eric
Clapton - "This Has Gotta Stop"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNt4NIQ7FTA
On Revolution
When is the right time for a revolution and
how should it be achieved?
To the first
question, there are two answers: The ideological one and the practical one.
Both answers are quite simple to state, yet not so easy to detect.
Ideologically, a revolution should happen when the nation is ruled by a tyrant
or when leaders’ incompetence is damaging it. Practically, a revolution should
happen when there is more to be gained than to be lost. The truth is actually
both: A revolution should happen if the nation is tyrannical or incompetent and
their is more to be gained than to be lost.
It may be easy to
say this, yet it’s not as easy to determine when those conditions have been
reached. When are leaders tyrannical? When are they incompetent? When do you
know you have more to gain than to lose?
I’ll start with the
first and easiest one: When do you know you have more to gain than to lose?
This one is simply mathematics yet oft times, revolutionaries overlook it. They’ll
oust their leaders with the belief that “things could not possibly get any
worse”, then things actually do get worse. Evaluate: What services does the
government provide? Is there justice in the nation? Who are our enemies and how
would they react to a civil war? Can we keep the nation supplied in food,
water, fuel and other goods without the current government? In the end, what
good is it to get rid of a tyrant just to starve to death? Or to replace
incompetent leaders with even worse ones? So, all the variables must be taken
into account before engaging in a revolutionary act. As the saying goes, “Out
of the frying pan, into the fire” would not be a good thing.
Next, how do you
know your leaders are incompetent? This is seen through calamities; famines, military
disasters, pandemics, immense criminality, financial crashes, etc. Yet, these
events could be completely out of the hands of the leaders: Even the most
competent leader can’t predict, prevent or end natural disasters which can lead
to these issues. However, one can tell if they had prepared for such
eventualities, how they react to such events, if they acted for the good of the
nation rather than their own when those incidents happened. It goes back to the
“profits/losses” equation: Can
you tell with relative certainty that different leaders would have handled the
situation better? If so, then it’s time for a revolution, e.g.
Afghanistan and the economy.
Finally, detecting a
tyrant is more difficult than you’d imagine. Even the most benevolent of
leaders will have to take decisions which will harm a minority to help the
nation. To these people, the leaders will appear as tyrannical. Yet here is the
key, isn’t it? If the decisions always harm as few people as possible while
benefiting as many as possible, then they’re clearly not tyrannical. So, we can
define a tyrant as a leader who takes decisions which benefit a minority to the
detriment of the nation at large. We can thus state the following:
“If leaders are taking decisions which benefit a minority
to the detriment of the nation OR if different leaders would definitely be
capable of taking better decisions AND there is more to be gained than to be
lost from a revolution, then it is time for a revolution.”
Yet how can a
revolution be achieved?
People think revolution
and they inevitably think “violence”, yet it is not always necessary. In fact, most revolutions are
non-violent, we simply call them something else: elections. Yet there
are other kinds of non-violent revolutions. I’ll examine three types: The violent revolution, the
election and the quiet revolution.
The violent
revolution is the one people have in mind most of the time when they think
about revolution. Yet, it is the least desirable: A violent revolution brings
about death and destruction. Simply put: The losses incurred by a violent
revolution are great and thus will likely outweigh the gains. Still,
undesirable does not mean unnecessary. To know if a violent revolution is
necessary, ask yourself two questions:
1. Is a revolution
necessary?
2. Is it impossible
to have a non-violent revolution?
If you answer yes to
both of these questions, then it’s time for a violent revolution. The first step here would be to
obtain the collaboration of people who know how to engage in violence, namely
the armed forces and the police forces. This is not always possible, yet if it
can be achieved your victory is assured and in fact will be far less violent.
When obtaining their collaboration however, make sure they have the same goal
as you, namely improving the nation. This is difficult to achieve and can only
be done through ideology, yet it can be done.
We’ll go over the
first and best known type of non-violent revolution: elections. Whether you’re
a democracy or any other kind of republic, it is possible to remove the current
rulers and replace them with others through an election. Rather than explain
such a well-known process, I’d rather touch on when it’s time to go for
something else. Namely, when the voting pool gets limited to candidates which
are all incompetent or tyrannical. The obvious answer here would be to present
candidates which are neither, yet this is not always possible. So, when all candidates are
incompetent or tyrannical and it is impossible to present a candidate which is
neither, it is time to abandon elections as a viable option.
The other method I
would like to propose is one which was witnessed in my society, and actually in
quite a few others: The quiet revolution. The quiet revolution happens when the
entirety of the population (or so close as to make no difference) stops
listening to what the authorities say at once. This works best if the enforcing
bodies, namely the military and police, collaborate with the population. In
this case, citizens need to build new, alternate power structures to replace
the old ones, to compete with them. As time passes and the new, better power
structures actually do their job, the old leaders’ authority will wane and the
revolution will be achieved. However,
a quiet revolution requires a very homogeneous population which is in agreement
with the abandonment of the power structure. It is a hijacking of authority, so
to speak.
To give a specific
example, let’s imagine a government has an office of roads. They manage roads.
They do it badly. Now, a citizen says “I’ll make my own office of roads!”,
receives donations from citizens and actually starts doing the job the old
office of roads wouldn’t do. Eventually, people stop paying their taxes to the
office of roads and instead start paying them to the new one. The old gets
replaced with the new in a non-violent way. As said, this is only possible if
you have the collaboration of enforcing agents. If the old office of roads
tells the cops “GO ARREST THAT NEW OFFICE OF ROADS” and they listen, then it
becomes impossible to achieve a quiet revolution.
So, before violence,
you should attempt elections or hijacking authority.
There is much more
to be said on revolution, and I suggest you read up on it because it will
unfortunately be very important in the coming years. People need to understand
that revolutions are necessary, yet they also need to ask themselves two
questions before doing so:
1. Is it worth it?
2. Can we do it
without resorting to violence?
If we can educate
people in this matter, I am convinced we can avoid many horrors in the near
future. Denying the legitimacy of revolutions will not prevent them from
happening; it will only prevent people from learning how to achieve them
properly.
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