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SOC1: Political Power — Revolutions, What to do in an intro - Coggle…

- - - - Revolution process:
        
        Centred on alliances and splits, bandwagon effects and turning points and the volatility of revolutionary ideas arising from the social organisation of full time political militants
        
        an example above all others of social dynamics in contrast to comparative statics, a process of sudden, dramatic social change.
      - Object of study:
        
        Russian revs of ‘05 and ‘17 as they were in progress and deemed that they were a non-legitimate form of change insofar as the source of legitimate power is the authority of military commanded a community of fate organised for foreign war.
        
        military-centred theory of the modern state
      - Focus:
        
        Shows what kinds of institutions and beliefs facilitate or impede changes from one structure to anothe
        
        Focus deeply on what revolutions reveals about the character of state power
      - Causes
        
        In contrast to the earlier paradigm, which saw revolutions as surging up from below, contemporary theory sees causality as initiated from above, with a state breakdown
        
        a combination of geopolitical strain and financial crisis; the state lose their instrument of coercion, their prestige and their ability to pay their bills and especially their own personnel
      - The role of actors
        
        The elite splits over how to respond to the crisis
        
        Typically this takes the form of reformers willing too undertake major changes in order to restore finances, against a privileged class who resits paying for the cost of reforms.
        
        Social movements take advantage of the state crisis and elite split in order too mobilise around their own grievances
      - In relation to Marx
        
        Revolutions are now seen as structural opportunities (same as Marx ish) Weber is critical of Marxism but closer to Marxian paradigm than to the state-breakdown paradigm and goes beyond class interests and discusses the governmental structures favored by these various interests
      - On ideas
        
        Revolutionaries and liberals are intensely attuned to ideas
        
        Revolutionaries and liberals are intensely attuned to ideas
    - - why (great) revolutions will become rarer in democracies
        
        because “the majority of the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by a revolution, but they continually and in a thousand ways feel that they might lose by one.”
        
        With more than half of the countries in the world being labelled ‘democracies,’ Tocqueville’s account regarding democracy in America could now (almost) be applied worldwide.
      - Equality of conditions:
        
        While Tocqueville underlined the volatile and rapid changing aspect of American social life, he is convinced that revolutions will become rare as a result of the growing equality of conditions.
        
        Yes, Marxists and liberals understand the sources of inequality differently but...
        
        Like the Marxist view, Tocqueville believed that revolution is the manifestation of people suffering from social inequality, as shown by the French Revolution that he witnessed.
      - How equality of conditions relate to revolutions
        
        the development of the American society means that it has become increasingly materialist, with Tocqueville noting that the average American citizen prioritises instant gratification and short-term goals, revolutions threaten their property.
        
        That is the reason why Tocqueville argued that “not only are the men of democracies not naturally desirous of revolutions, but they are afraid of them.”
        
        this observation could be scaled up insofar as the growing middle-class in a trend that is seen in almost every country in the world.
        
        H. Mendras has highlighted the process of the ‘averaging’ of the social stratification in France between 1965 and 1985 with his spinning top theory.
      - Nuances in America:
        
        that there has been some uprisings in the US, such as that of the Capitol riots in 2021,
        
        but this is to be expected according to Tocqueville since he underlined “the difficulty in shaking the majority in an opinion once conceived, or of drawing it off from a leader once adopted” but also the fact that “the Americans are constantly modifying or abrogating some of their laws, they by no means display revolutionary passions.”
        
        That is likely the explanation as to why the Capitol riots have never escalated into a full-scale revolution but it did lead to the introduction of new laws, notably regarding voters’ rights.
    - - Today with democratic governments having multiple institutions to keep each other in check or different lobbying groups pushing for different agendas.
        
        diffuse popular discontent, channelling it to institutional channels
      - note that the liberal argument that liberal democracies are more resilient in times of crisis does not mean that they are immune to any crisis.
        
        It might be the case that democracies can more easily absorb and diffuse popular discontent in the immediate aftermath of crises. But what happens if the crisis persists? After 2-3 elections citizens might become disillusioned with all mainstream/systemic alternatives; and then they might be willing to follow radicals telling them that “liberal democracy” is just a sham, an elite conspiracy robbing them from their agency and their rights.
- - - - capitalism leads to major financial crises, because of its inherent structural contradictions.
        
        For Marxists the 2008 crisis is a crisis of this type, and some expect that there are more severe crises to come, which will make revolutions more likely.
        
        Though it remains to be nuanced that capitalism did prevail over the 2008 crisis by implementing the lessons learnt from previous crises such as the one of 1929
        
        BUT THEN AGAIN....Marxists and many realists think that these policies sow the seeds for a more severe next crisis.
        
        even before COVID international indebtedness was higher than the pre-2008 levels that led to the 2008 collapse, and after COVID the problem has multiplied further.
      - Rising inequalities also play a part in making revolutions possible today:
        
        Still referring back to the 2008 crisis to make their argument for the persisting polarisation of social divide
      - Party tensions
        
        Still 2008, should just tale that as a case study at this point
        
        With various kinds of radicalism being on the rise
      - still hard put to say that these movements have managed to achieve what the Communist Manifesto promoted: the state still exists, and inequalities still persist.
    - - K. Kumar
        
        “the conditions, and to some extent the language, that made the classic revolutions of the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries both conceivable and possible have been changing. The major objective fact is the growing interconnectedness of the world, or globalisation."
        
        This statement undermines the global reach of a socialist revolution advocated by Marx since the world has become increasingly interdependent through trade (flow of financial and human capital)
      - Liberal argue against
        
        does not not focus on the socialist or international character of the revolution,
        
        but on the unwillingness of the masses to back radical changes in the ownership structure of society
        
        This will be seen with arguments from Tocqueville about the rise of the middle classes and the liberal democratic institutional structure that act as safety valves to popular discontent
- - - - Statists give more weight to structural opportunities,
        focusing on how the actions of state institutions allow or hinder revolution.
      - Social Movement Theorists give more weight to agents of change, especially those who pressure the state from the outside.
      - Social realists abolish this dichotomy or scholastic
        fallacy. By highlighting structured agency, they avoid
        imagining structure as a stage backdrop and agents as stage players; they try to maintain the integrity of entire drama; they move from why change happens to how.
  - - - The state is a constellation of
        institutions. It is an objective, concrete structure.
      - A regime, on the other hand, is the outcome of institutional interactions, a reflection of their power balance at any given time. It is therefore an ongoing process
      - State institutions, according to Bourdieu, conserve and extend “the trace of previous struggles”
- - - - Because power had become too smart
        and sophisticated to be entirely upturned.
      - With power so diffuse and invisible, there is no longer a central hub to conquer or a ruling class to topple.
    - - everyday resistance: multiple, minor, continuous transgressions and subversions – to which power eventually adapts and evolves.
      - disruptive practices: the quiet encroachment of the
        ordinary, the weapons of the weak, and other daily actions.