Revolution Redux…

Sorry to barge in uninvited, but I’m interested in this topic too.

What sort of “empirical data” are you looking for? To my mind the work of Charles Tilly on revolutions and social movements is probably a good place to start. But one could also look elsewhere; see, e.g., the work on transitions to democracy (many of which could be understood as revolutions in your sense of the term, even if they are not called revolutions). See, for example, the classic work of O’Donnell and Schmitter (especially their “Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies”, written in the 80s but still surprisingly useful as a guide to even recent transitions, partly because it has had some practical influence; I recall O’Donnell saying that their book had been read with interest by Eastern European activists in the 80s).

O’Donnell and Schmitter’s work is also interesting for another reason: they make a normative argument, along with their empirical work, that modern transitions from authoritarian rule ought to use peaceful methods (given the overwhelming concentration of the means of violence in the modern state), and that all such transitions face certain moral dilemmas that they ought to resolve in particular ways. They do not question the right to “revolt” - in fact, they take it for granted that authoritarian rule is normatively undesirable and people have a right to democratic rule of a certain kind - but they do argue for only certain methods and causes, and any discussion of a general “right to revolution” might benefit from that sort of discussion.

More generally, having skimmed your paper very briefly, I think the idea of a general right to revolution, even as you define it in your paper, is probably too broad to be made good sense of. Historically speaking revolutions are multifarious phenomena, symbolically but not causally coherent (i.e., to call something a revolution has practical consequences in the models people draw on and the reactions of political authorities, but there isn’t necessarily a single underlying phenomenon for which we can specify necessary and sufficient conditions). Even if we restrict ourselves to speaking about revolution as the extralegal and relatively quick change of institutions still seems too broad, since such changes can happen by a variety of means, not all of them apparently morally justified. Is the right of revolution a right to the use of certain violent means (e.g., those associated with the great revolutions of the 19th and 20th century, like the Russian Revolution) in the overthrow of particular political regimes? Wouldn’t it then be better to ask about the right to the violent overthrow of a regime? Moreover, is it merely a right to reject the current institutions, without a clear idea of what is to come next? (E.g., is a transition from a morally unjustified regime, such as the Shah’s Iran, to another, let’s say the Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime, justifiable even if either of the end-points so to speak are not? That appeared to be Foucault’s position by the way). Or should it be conceived as a right to move from unjust institutions to just institutions by extralegal, but morally justified means? (This is what you seem to argue, but this would mean that the moral justification of revolutions could only appear post facto, I guess, depending on whether the end result is more just than the starting point; and it would seem to make many actual revolutions morally unjustified).

hello xavier -

thank you very much for your very useful list of empirical study on revolution.

i should note that a right to X does not entail a right to take any means to get X. thus, whilst everyone may have a right to democratic governance, it hardly follows that everyone has a right to revolt in order to attain the democratic governance to which they have a right.

your points at the end of your comments i take to be in the spirit of my call to return to an open discussion about whether revolution can be justified. i aim to re-open discussion about the conditions under which parties can take extra-legal measures to overthrow political authorities. if we agree that it is possible that in some instances parties have such a right, then i would like us to discuss what those instances might be.

in short, you are taking up the call i am making in this paper - discussing the problem of revolution, which is something analytic philosophers have not discussed for some time. so, i thank you for being the first person i have converted!

best,
mns

Hi Matt,

I take your point that a right to X does not entail a right to all the means required to get X. But the confusion is likely to bedevil any discussion of the right to revolution, since it seems to me that revolutions are understood as primarily means to ends, so a right to revolution ends up being conceptualized as the right to use certain means (extralegal, potentially violent means) to achieve certain ends (e.g., democratic government, transformation of the structure of social relations, etc.), but these ends are potentially independent of the means used to achieve them.

So I guess what I was trying to get at is that it seems better to focus on the specific extralegal means that may or may not be justified in particular contexts, rather than on a general right to revolution. For example, we might argue that in some conditions (a high-capacity repressive state, to use Tilly’s terminology) the only justifiable extralegal means to change that state are protests, civil disobedience, etc. (in fact, the only means likely to work); in other conditions (a low capacity, undemocratic state) perhaps armed insurrection might be justifiable, or it might not.

Relatedly, it seems to me for example that consequentialist arguments about (the undesirability of) revolution focus on a particular (historically important, but far from unique) “model” of revolution - revolution as the violent seizure of power by a vanguard party or armed insurrection. But if we call revolts like those in Eastern Europe in 1989 “revolutions” (as many people do) then clearly a different consequentialist calculus comes into play. So the set of means we understand to be part of the “repertoire” of revolution matters (at least for consequentialist arguments).

Best,

Xavier

Matt, here’s a question (not having read your paper, for which I apologize) about the interpretation of the “right to revolution” as problematic in the way Xavier is concerned about. Would it help to be careful in setting out just what form that right takes? Here I’m thinking, for example, of the Hohfeldian distinction between a claim-right and a liberty-right. My impression (not having read this literature) is that somehow the “right to revolution” may be (problematically) understood as some sort of claim-right, which brings with it various entailments of enforcement, entitlement, and so on which it seems we might want to dodge. Construing it as a liberty-right, however, simply indicates the lack of a moral obligation not to exercise the right. On this reading, saying a people (or whomever) have a “right to revolt” would simply be a way of saying they are under no moral obligation not to revolt. That negative claim is significant, however, against a backdrop in which one marker of legitimate political authority is supposed to be the authority to obligate by law. The presence of the liberty-right to revolt would then track the absence of that distinctive marker of political authority — it would be a substantive claim about political obligation. Would that be of any help?

Matt,

Thanks for the paper, which I’ve only skimmed for now and very much look forward to reading. I was a bit surprised that you did not at least mention or cite R.G Peffer’s acceptance of what he terms one of two basic normative political positions of Classical Marxism, namely, “that socialist revolution, if necessary and sufficient to effect the appropriate transformations [to democratically self-managed socialism]–is *prima facie* morally justified.” Inspired by Rawls, Peffer outlines four (lexically ranked) principles of justice whereby we assess if a government or socioeconomic arrangements are such that people have an obligation to invoke their right of/to revolt against a government or make a revolution to transform socioeconomic arrangements. (See his somewhat neglected book, Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice, 1990).

I’m also curious as to whether or not you would endorse the following summary by Elster of Marx on revolution which I find persuasive, especially the point about the *counterfactual* nature of Marx’s argument, which most folks today forget, ignore, or are simply ignorant of:

Marx’s theory of communist revolution was not simply or strictly about the immiseration of workers and to the extent that it was, we need to keep in mind the important distinction between “relative” and “absolute” immiseration, which means workers need not be impoverished, just that they remain exploited vis-a-vis capitalists. The *causes* of the communist revolution were thought to be alienation, economic crises, exploitation and the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production. The *outcome*, in Elster’s words, is described as “permitting the full and equal self-realization of individuals.” As to the *process* itself, this bears upon the motivation of workers inasmuch as it is tied to the formation of class consciousness and class struggle. Again, Elster: “On the one hand, Marx was so persuaded of the necessary advent of communism that he neglected to explain how the various *reasons* for introducing it could also have *motivating* efficacy. On the other hand he tended to see all the defects of capitalism as so intimately connected with one another that he did not bother to sort them out from another.” As for the point about relative immiseration: “By and large, Marx did not condemn capitalism on the grounds that it led to increased misery in the sense of lower levels of consumption or, somewhat more generally, a lower standard of living. True, he wrote in terms of glowing indignation about the conditions of the English working class, but not to suggest that they were getting worse. His standard of comparison was counterfactual, not actual. He compared the fate of the workers in actually existing capitalism with what it would be under more rationally organized relations of production. Lack of need satisfaction has been an inescapable fact for most people throughout history. It becomes scandalous only when the objective possibility emerges of a society in which the full and free use of one’s powers is in the reach of all. Similarly, the suboptimality of capitalism with respect to technical change did not mean the innovations were coming to a stop. On the contrary: the fall in the rate of profit made the capitalists innovate at an ever more frenetic pace. Rather, the point is that capitalism itself creates the conditions under which another system can perform even better. Alienation and ‘the contradiction between productive forces and the relations of production’ are defined as gaps between what is actual and what is possible. Alienation, broadly speaking, is predicated on the basis of a possible better *use* of the productive forces, and the contradiction on the basis of a possible faster *development*.”

[Incidentally, and alas, I’m not related to Guillermo O’Donnell above. And although my formal training is in what is (misleadingly) termed Religious Studies, I do teach in a Philosophy Department (as an adjunct instructor) and have taught “Political Thinking” (essentially, a course on the history of Western political philosophy) in our college’s Political Science Dept., hence my interest in such matters is both avocational (i.e., personal) and professional.]

Thanks much for the extended comment. You are right that I ignore Peffer and I should include discussion of him. I most certainly will take a look.

I cannot get into the Marx exegesis here, although for the record I believe he had an underdeveloped theory of revolution. Needless to say, he thought that revolution could sometimes be justified. Note that philosophical anarchists pretty much say it can never be justified (or take it to be so obvious when it is justifiable that it’s not worth comment). This is the position with which I take issue.

Mark’s point is very useful. I am concerned with, roughly, the general assumption that there is nowhere except in obvious cases an undefeated or not-overidden Hohfeldian liberty-right to revolt. There might be a claim-right under certain circumstances, but that is too bold a thesis for me to want to recuperate.

Best,
mns

The remark about philosophical anarchists puzzles me. Since (I take it) it is constitutive of philosophical anarchism to maintain that there can be no legitimate political authority, wouldn’t that entail a universal liberty-right to revolt? Whether revolution is justified might be a stronger claim; it might not be justified (on some broader notion of what justifies revolution) even if it were permissible (say, you had good reasons for belief that revolution would be catastrophic — worse than the existing regime — for those whose lives it touched). But the liberty-right would remain intact on the PA view in any event, wouldn’t it?

Hi Mark -

I wrote about an undefeated or not-overridden liberty-right. Phil anarchists all say that we have a liberty-right but then offer a bevy of reasons that are supposed to count against or override the grounds provided by the presumptive liberty right to revolt.

So yes - you are absolutely correct: the question is about justification. And, I think that the paper talks mostly in terms of justification, although i cannot be sure since i haven’t looked closely at it at least since the semester started. (it’s a draft i wrote in a drunken tear during one lousy week this summer.)

-matt

Any drunken week in which you get a paper written would, I think, be a good drunken week.

well, it’s got to be a good paper. This one is not so good - but I was happy to be drunk when I was writing it! In fact, a drink now wouldn’t be totally out of place…

…

Ahh, now that I am juiced up, let me restate the problem so i can make it clear:

there once was a lot of talk about revolution. now there isn’t. why not?

well, many seem to think that despite all the problems in the world, revolution, however noble, just can’t ever be justifiable, at least in many meaningul cases. so, we should concern ourselves with other matters.

i query in the paper the claim that revolution is not justifiable in many, many cases.

in fact, my suspicion is that revolution is justifiable in a LOT of cases. for example, a revolutionary movement to overthrow the Chinese government might be justifiable.

all the talk about what Marx thought is, to my mind, beside the point: the question is whether analytic philosophers today are taking up this question. i am aware that Marx had a position on revolution and also aware that Lenin, Luxemborg and Trotsky all had positions on revolution.

But did Rawls?
Or Nozick?
Or Dworkin?
Or Sen?
Or G.A. Cohen (even when he was a no-bullshit Marxist)?
Or Elster (ditto)?
Or Elizabeth Anderson?

Or any other of the major political thinkers in analytic philosophy over the past 30 years?

Well… the philosophical anarchists - see especially Simmons - did have a position, namely that revolution is wrong for consequentialist reasons.

But how good is that argument? It turns out to have some unfortunate entailments, as I argue in the paper.

Hi Matt — I’ve just read your paper. Some late-night comments on it:

1. Overall, I agree with the thesis — it seems to me to be absolutely right that revolution can often be justified, although my sense is that I have a somewhat more restricted take on its justifiability.

2. If you’re framing the paper as asking a question that is being ignored in the literature, then I think you should spell out what Kavka and Nielsen say about revolution, as referenced in fn 2. However, while it is interesting to wonder why revolution doesn’t get much airtime in political philosophy, my sense is that it’s better to get straight to the substantive question at hand: “The Standard View holds that revolution is rarely if ever justified. I’ll argue that the Standard View is mistake …” The meta-questions about what has been happening, or not happening, in analytic philosophy are of secondary relevance.

3. On pp. 8-9, and perhaps throughout: you might want to distinguish between authority and legitimacy more clearly. Otherwise, if philosophical anarchists reject the legitimacy of the state, and if reform doesn’t abandon the “authority of the target institution’s rules,” then philosophical anarchists could not be reformists. What’s more, philosophical anarchists with ambition (e.g. to overthrow the global meat paradigm of consumption and replace it with universal veganism), will turn out to be revolutionaries even if their chosen weapon were the leaflet, since you define a revolutionary as someone with (i) radical ambition and (ii) no recognition of authority. But, of course, the point of the discussion of Simmons is to say that even philosophical anarchists are not usually revolutionaries. Anyway, the distinction between authority and legitimacy gets a bit unclear, esp. later on from p. 11.

4. I’m supposing that legitimacy and authority should be distinguished anyway, since I can accept that X is the relevant decision-making entity in a domain, and be guided by its rules in practice, without thinking that X is entitled to be that decision-making entity. Plus one could think that X’s practical authority was morally justified without being a moral entitlement — e.g. “someone has to save us from a Hobbesian anarchy, so it’s justifiable that this gang with guns do that, but if another bigger gang came along then ….” This seems much more than epistemic guidance, but less than an acknowledgment of legitimacy.

5. Similarly, if the question concerns the revolutionary overthrow of the government, then we have reason to use the sense of legitimacy that concerns the entitlement of the government to make decisions on behalf of a society, and not the sense of legitimacy that concerns the citizen’s duty/weighty reason to obey the government’s rules. Disobedience could conceivably be justified in a number of cases where revolution was not, so disobeying rules we have a weighty reason to obey is not really the issue.

6. I’m a bit confused by the middle paragraph on p. 25. OK, so I have a very boring view of legitimacy — governments get it by being democratically elected and by governing in a manner consistent with that democracy; that’s the source of their entitlement to govern. Now if we did have a government that was legitimate in this way, wouldn’t its entitlement to govern create a very very strong moral reason against replacing it with some other decision-making entity? Revolution is not justifiable just when the regime is illegitimate, and could conceivably be justifiable even when it is. But if democracy creates an entitlement on the part of a group of people to decide where to build the roads and how much to tax the rich, surely this creates a very significant block to justifiable revolution. If you’re entitled to your car, by having paid for it, that’s a very significant block to justifiably giving it to someone else.

7. I thought the problem about the infringement of sovereignty on p. 26 was neat in a tricky sort of way.

8. I agree with the rejection of the consequentialist argument. As a very loyal and disciplined erstwhile member of the ANC, I have to recommend Mandela’s statement from the dock at the Rivonia trial on this point, because it precisely addresses both the risks of using violence and the risks of not using violence — inaction being regarded as potentially more catastrophic. Consequentialism cuts both ways. (Incidentally, is the apartheid case supposed to be one that the Standard View finds obviously exceptional, or would it be a case where the Standard View rejects revolution? Because it wasn’t really obvious to many anti-apartheid people inside SA during the early 60s, after the Sharpeville massacare, but it seems to me that some revolutionary violence was justified.)

9. I think the bulk of the next draft should be dedicated to working out the positive view more thoroughly — giving criteria for when revolution is justified. i don’t know how far the two arguments at the end do this.
…
Oh and I wouldn’t mind throwing a paper like this together during a boozey week. You must have been mixing your drinks with Red Bull.

I’m not sure if it amounts of a _position_ on revolution or not, but Michael Walzer discusses revolution a fair amount in his early collections of papers _Obligations_ and _Radical Principles_. I’ve not read the particular papers so can’t say if they are any good or even directly of interest, but they might be worth looking at.

Hi Matt

Re: authority and legitimacy. I was thinking of accepting an authority in terms of something like adopting a Hartian internal point of view to the rule of recognition. This is a non-moral attitude, and it seems to me to be the most promising way to characterise the distinction between reformists and revolutionaries. Revolutionaries take epistemic cognisance of the prevailing social rules, but they don’t adopt the internal point of view towards them qua legal rules. (I can’t remember what HLAH says about revolution — I don’t have the concept in my notes to CoL and I think I left my copy of it in Blacksburg).

If authority is taken as the genuine moral right to rule, and if philosophical anarchists reject such a right, then philosophical anarchist with radical ambition turn out to be revolutionaries on your definition. But you want to highlight the possibility of those who say: “look, we’ll work with the system, and play by its rules, and try to reform bits here and there, for X, Y, and Z reasons — but we completely reject the idea of the state having any *right* over us, or our having any specific *duty* to it.” It could be that some folk think that even this is an insult to our autonomy, and it may be that others favour a more discriminating particularism, but I still think that you may want a fairly basic way to distinguish between someone’s views about legitimacy and their views about whether the state is the source of practical norms.

… I’m being informed by my local source of practical norms that I have to go out. Later.