This is a huge question, but perhaps this will get you started. Let us begin with the earliest work, The Communist Manifesto.
In short—and The Communist Manifesto is a short work—Marx and Engels argue that the bourgeoisie, which they define not as middle-class people but what we would call the "one-percenters," those who own the means of production, are locked into an inevitable struggle with the working classes, the people who actually produce the things that keep society afloat. They say that the working class, the proletariat, will inevitably stage a violent revolution, overthrowing the bourgeois. To Marx and Engels, nothing short of a violent revolution will achieve proletariat goals, which, as they write,
May be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
By the abolition of private property, they do not mean taking the house or plot of land or stuff that you and I might own: they mean state ownership of the means of production—they want the state to control the big industries and financial institutions for the benefit of everyone.
Marx and Engels contend that ideology is key to a successful revolution: the proletariat must be taught to see bourgeois ideologies as lies or distortions that serve ruling-class interests. The working class must understand the true nature of a communist revolution. They point to the example of the mass uprisings at the end of the feudal period as doomed to failure because the common people lacked sufficient grounding in a new theory or ideology of organizing society: the peasants crudely held to ideas like "leveling," which were not sophisticated enough to usher in a new revolutionary order.
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt writes that totalitarian regimes are "revolutionary": she means they represent a radical break with authoritarian regimes of the past. Her two chief examples are Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. She argues that to maintain power, the new ruling class must create a state of constant revolution or churn from the top. Violence (terror) is integral to totalitarianism, as is ideology (propaganda), and violence also is a chief way the state maintains control of the population.
Both Marx and Arendt ground themselves in European thinking and focus on revolution in a European context. Fanon turns to revolution in former African colonies. He complicates the revolutionary narrative by stating in his first chapter, “Concerning Violence,” that it is the colonizer who brings violence to the colonized. The colonizer makes violence an integral part of the colonial system. Fanon argues, therefore, that those colonized can do one of three things: absorb the violence (be victims), visit the violence on other, less powerful members of their own community, or turn it against the European colonizers. He advocates the latter, saying this is the responsible course of action.
Fanon fears that peaceful attempts at compromise with the former colonizers will dilute the drive for genuine independence from the former overlords. He points specifically to the Republic of Gabon, which won independence from France in 1960. The country became independent but did not change its relationship with France: the new native ruling elite simply allowed France to continue to exploit the country's people and resources. Fanon sees this as unacceptable, as the country might as well still be a colony.
Fanon argues that newly-freed colonies should not imitate or admire the European mindset or see it as the only form of "civilization." Instead, change must come from below, from the poorest sections of society, which have not been contaminated by European education.
All three thinkers, at least in these works, strongly associate revolutions with violence, and they see violence as an inevitable part of the successful overthrow of the old order. All three also see revolution as a new way of organizing society. They therefore find a new way of thinking, a new ideology, as vital to a successful revolution. To Marx and Fanon, successful revolutions come from below when the masses throw off their chains. To them, nothing will change if the "new boss" thinks the same way as the "old boss." Arendt, speaking specifically about totalitarian revolutions (which are not what Marx and Fanon have in mind), finds that a constant revolutionary churn emanates from the top of the new society rather than the bottom, keeping everyone off-balance and in a state of flux.
Friday, July 10, 2015
What is the relationship between revolution and violence? What is the relationship between revolution and ideology? What constitutes a revolution? Provide specific examples from Marx's Communist Manifesto, Arendt's Origin of Totalitarianism and Fanon's Wretched of the Earth.
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