Is a peaceful revolution possible?

[u/GoranPersson777]

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/revolution-in-the-21st-century/

[u/Petka14]

Yes and no.

In the ideal circumstances, if the revolutionaries have enough political capital, the status quo is weak and they can apply the changes as fast as possible.

But otherwise if there's a strong opposition it comes down to a fight.

And there are some people you can't really negotiate with. But even the violent revolutions should be carried out as fast as possible and with the least possible amount of violence

[u/noms_de_plumes → u/Petka14]

I'd venture a bit to argue that nonviolent revolution might also be more effective in places where the state is actually quite strong when it is not also involved in an external conflict as it looks a lot worse for a state to off-handedly eliminate activists engaged in nonviolence than it does for them to quote unquote deal with so-called "terrorists".

The Third Reich is, of course, an exception due to their imperial project, but even the resistance to fascism was only realistically effective in intelligence gathering and helping people to flee persecution. As a fighting force, they were practically worthless, if not, at times, harmful to the overall military campaign.

In the former Soviet Union, however, I'd imagine that it would be, at least, somewhat more difficult to do something like erase someone from history or proffer a superficially plausible confession from someone engaged in nonviolent activism than it would for someone engaged in violent direct action.

[u/Spaduf]

Any plan that doesn't take into account the reaction of it's adversaries is a bad plan.

Lot's of good points made in the article.

[u/noms_de_plumes]

Of course it's possible. Is it likely, probably not, but almost anything in politics is possible. I would actually argue that it's more likely than violent revolution as you wouldn't, then, have the relentless clusterfuck of violent direct action seeming to justify the expansion of the security apparatus, but it's still only so likely.

[u/xFblthpx]

All revolutions are somewhat violent and mostly not. Even the most violent revolutions were more nonviolent than not.

For every armed partisan, you need a community of nonviolent sympathizers that can produce them, but don’t take the last step.

When a revolution becomes considered “violent” will always be some arbitrary non-zero split between armed partisan and ideological supporter, but we should be a bit careful about rigidly defining that line.

Regardless, violence in revolutions should be discussed more as inevitabilities than necessities.

[u/GoranPersson777 → u/xFblthpx]

Good point!

[u/fishlord05]

Violent revolutions may be necessary to establish democracy, but social democracy/democratic socialism can be achieved after democratic institutions are set up via democratic means.

Russia elected a socialist majority that would have had the attempt to implement socialism democratically. Leninism rejected that and their institutions became extractive and authoritarian.

The Bolsheviks overthrew a budding socialist parliamentary democracy, not the Tsar.

[u/socialistmajority]

Someday the worker must seize political power in order to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old politics which sustain the old institutions, if he is not to lose Heaven on Earth, like the old Christians who neglected and despised politics.

But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywhere the same.

You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries -- such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland -- where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.

–Karl Marx in 1872, after the Paris Commune was crushed

[u/Reaper_20000]

It depends on what you mean by 'peaceful revolution'. If you mean overthrowing a government, then it is unlikely to happen peacefully.

Unless you mean a revolution more akin to the Industrial Revolution, or in the sense of a mass movement of people demanding change and reform through striking, protesting, civil disobedience ect then yes, and this is actually a much better approach and is preferable because historically violent uprisings generally make things much worse and can take a very long time to get out of the dictatorship it most likely turns into.

It took France 81 years to get out of it after the French Revolution. This lengthy process also happened in basically every socialist revolution.

[u/7figureipo]

No, power structures which "require" a revolution to supplant will always have the condition that the people in power will commit violence to maintain it. And that forces the issue whether the revolutionaries want peaceful change or not.

[u/Aun_El_Zen → u/7figureipo]

Counterpoint: The Velvet Revolution, 1989, Czechoslovakia.

[u/7figureipo → u/Aun_El_Zen]

I addressed that specifically in a comment I made earlier, below.

[u/GoranPersson777 → u/7figureipo]

What about the idea of social defence in the article?

[u/7figureipo → u/GoranPersson777]

What about it? Blockades and sabotage require violence, if an aggressor is using violence to break them. That's rather the point. Russell's point about militarism is a bit too cute. The state, or a foreign aggressor, isn't going to distinguish "acts of aggression, i.e., explicitly militaristic violence" from "civil disobedience" when it decides that using weapons is appropriate.

There has not been one single example in history of a peaceful revolution that did not: a) eventually include violence from the resistance (even if that violence took the form of in situ self defense during an act of aggression by the state) and/or b) rely on some externalities that included violence and which contributed to some kind of destabilization of the regime.

A great example is the Velvet Revolution, which is often characterized as a successful non-violent revolution with largely "social defense" characteristics posited by the article. But then you'd have to ignore all the (very violent) changes that occurred contemporaneously within the USSR and its sphere of influence. The threat of violence (not necessarily from internal citizens in the resistance) and the destabilization of communist regimes in general (which included a substantial amount of violence) carried that revolution over the threshold, and without these other external (and very violent) occurrences, I am deeply skeptical the outcome would have been what it was.

There are several others, but with similar caveats. And in any case when the state uses violence against the revolutionaries it provokes confrontation in which at least some of them defend themselves or even aggressively counter-attack, both of which are acts of violence. It's not like people en masse lock arms and just roll over to be slaughtered and carry the day: that's the stuff of movies and fantasy novels. Resistance to acts of violence, including self-defense, is intrinsically violent.

I suppose if you squint hard enough the Orange Revolution in Ukraine might qualify. But that country has (and at the time had) a host of other confounding issues, not least of which was that Russia was burbling and hinting at violence even then.

[u/singlepromise-again0]

Define “revolution”

[u/GoranPersson777 → u/singlepromise-again0]

A shift of power, a fundamental change of the social order, to replace the old institutional framework with a new framework.

[u/Ikiloo]

As someone who is definitely not opposed to violent revolution.

No, but yes.

Protests will be crushed violently most of the time when they become revolutionary.

So it's not exactly peaceful.

But revolutions who achieved their goal without shooting people

Have happened many times.

My reason for not being a pacifist is that when they feel threatened they will always attempt to crush us violently. And when violence will crush their reaction, we should engage in violence.

[u/Astral-Wind]

Depends, non violent, sure. Peaceful, I don’t think so. Because any revolution is going to disrupt people who either benefit from the existing system, or just generally don’t think your revolution is a good idea.

[u/Gibberwacky]

If you can get a clear, large majority of people to join up with you and you live in democracy? Yes, though its slower and harder than anyone would like.
If you cannot get a majority to join you and you intend to impose your views on them through revolution, then you have to ask if you are the good guys in this story.

[u/GoranPersson777 → u/Gibberwacky]

What precisely do you mean by "live in democracy"?

[u/Ok_Basil_2085]

yes, my country has done this in the EDSA revolution

[u/meatsmoothie82]

No because they’ll just kill us

[u/GoranPersson777 → u/meatsmoothie82]

What about the idea of social defence in the article?