Revolutionary wave

A revolutionary wave is a series of revolutions occurring in various locations in a similar time period. In many cases, past revolutions and revolutionary waves may inspire current ones, or an initial revolution inspires other concurrent "affiliate revolutions" with similar aims.[1][2] Historians and political philosophers have studied the causes of revolutionary waves, including Robert Roswell Palmer, Crane Brinton, Hannah Arendt, Eric Hoffer and Jacques Godechot.[3] The concept is important to Marxists, who see revolutionary waves as evidence that a world revolution is possible. For Rosa Luxemburg, "The most precious thing … in the sharp ebb and flow of the revolutionary waves is the proletariat's spiritual growth. The advance by leaps and bounds of the intellectual stature of the proletariat affords an inviolable guarantee of its further progress in the inevitable economic and political struggles ahead."[4] However, the phrase also has been used by non-Marxist activists and writers, including Justin Raimondo and Michael Lind, to describe numbers of revolutions happening within a short period of time.[5][6] Various examples of revolutionary waves are cited.[7]

Periodisation

There is no consensus on a complete list of revolutionary waves. In particular, scholars disagree on how similar the ideologies of different events should be in order for them to be grouped as part of a single wave, and over what period a wave can be considered to be taking place - for example, Mark N. Katz discussed a "Marxist-Leninist wave" lasting from 1917 to 1991, and a "fascist wave" from 1922 to 1945, but limits an "anti-communist wave" to just the 1989 to 1991 period.[8]

Pre-19th century

19th century

20th century

Protests against the Vietnam War in Vienna, Austria, 1968

21st century

See also

References

  1. Mark N. Katz, Revolution and Revolutionary Waves, Palgrave Macmillan (October 1, 1999)
  2. Nader Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran, Cambridge University Press, 2011 p. 74, 83, 87, 90, 94, 96, ISBN 0-521-19829-1, ISBN 978-0-521-19829-5
    • Colin J. Beck, Dissertation submitted to Stanford University Department of Sociology graduate Ph.D program, March 2009, "Ideological roots of waves of revolution," ProQuest, 2009, p. 1-5, ISBN 1-109-07655-X, 9781109076554.
    • Note: Colin J. Beck also wrote The Ideological Roots of Waves of Revolution, BiblioBazaar, 2011, ISBN 1-243-60856-0, 9781243608567
  3. Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke, quoted in Tony Cliff Rosa Luxemburg, 1905 and the classic account of the mass strike in Patterns of mass strike, International Socialism 2:29, Summer 1985, p.3-61.
  4. Justin Raimondo, The Revolutionary Wave: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?, Antiwar.com, January 28, 2011.
  5. 1 2 Michael Lind, Vietnam, the Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict, Simon and Schuster, 2002 p 37 ISBN 0-684-87027-4, ISBN 978-0-684-87027-4
  6. Colin J. Beck, "Ideological roots of waves of revolution," p. 161.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Mark N. Katz, "Cycles, waves and diffusion", in: Jack A. Goldstone, The Encyclopedia of Political Revolutions, pp.126-127
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Colin A. Beck, "The World-Cultural Origins of Revolutionary Waves: Five Centuries of European Contention", Social Science History, vol.35, no.2, pp.167-207
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilson, "What Makes a Revolution?", Ceasefire, 30 September 2014
  10. Michael M. Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968
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