Whatisrevolution?

[Rx]
ByNathanCoombs[1] ThefollowingisanadaptedsectionofmyPhDthesis.Sinceitisunlikelytomakeitinto thefinaldraft,andastherehaverecentlybeenaseriesofonlinedebatesastoaccording towhatcriteriawecantermtheuprisingsinNorthAfricaasrevolutions,Ireleaseitnow in the hope that it will serve to advance theoretical clarity on the issue or at least provokefurtherreflection. What is revolution? Such a simple question, but one that unleashes a manifold of entangledtheoreticalconsiderations.Itisnotadequatetoseektodeterminethenature of this nomination solely through its invariant characteristics like masses on the streets, governments falling, and new leaders rising to power. All these are ultimately tooambiguoustoserveasanything morethantheloosestschematic,which thenfalls apart when active subjectivity enters the theoretical scene. For a Marxist if the bourgeoisieremaininpowerthisnegatesanyproceduralsemblanceofarevolution.For a liberal democrat, the survival of cliques from the old nomenclature deflates the democraticrevolution.Whicheverwayitisexamined,oncloserinspectionthereisnot single set of characteristics that will serve to unite all around a common conception. On the other hand, neither is it satisfying to sophistically divide up revolution to fit individual preferences a you have your revolution, and Ill have mine approach. Whatisratherneededisaninvestigationintotheconditionsfornominatingapolitical event as a revolution; resources for which I believe can be found in Alain Badious philosophy with his introduction of the term event into the theoretical toolbox. The following discussion thus considers the relationship between event and revolution withinBadiousphilosophy,andfurtherextrapolatesuponthisthemeinorderthat,by wayofatheoreticalparabola,thequestionofthemeaningofrevolutiontodaymightbe broughtintosharperfocus. AlainBadiouandexUCFMLcomrade,SylvainLazarus,considerrevolutionan exhaustedterminthecontextofthecontemporarypoliticalimpasse.YetsinceBadiou hasmarkedanumberofrevolutionsaskeyexamplesofevents(theFrenchrevolution, the Chinese cultural revolution, etc.), this has led to a conflation of revolution with event in some readings of his philosophy. Most seriously, this confusion resulted in ToulaNicolapoulosandGeorgeVassilacopolouscharging Badiou withinfidelitytothe

retreatofthepoliticalevent[2]bywhichtheymeanBadiouromanticisestheeventin bad faith, knowing full well the implications of the end of the global, revolutionary movementinthelate1970s.Tountanglethisclaimoneneedstobeattentivetothefact thatastemptingasitmightbetodrawaonetoonecorrespondencebetweentheterm revolution and event, even if what is and is not a revolution is defined according to criteria in line with Badious idea of the event they still do not match precisely. It is thereforeworthclarifyingthisrelationshipinmoredepth. We firstly have to differentiate our concept of revolution from its use in the academic typologies produced by the likes of Samuel Huntington and Theka Skocpol.[3]Revolutioncannotbedefinedinamannerconsistentwithpositivist,social science.Thenotioniscontradictory;wewouldhavetoaccepttheideaofastaticsocial world that can be measured, tested and predictions made; whereas, our first axiom regardingrevolutionsisthattheycannotbefullypredicted:theyintroducenoveltythat reconfigures the sense of what is possible. Like in Badious discussion of the event, despitealltheassociationswemighthavewithrevolutionsayintheFrenchcasethe stormingoftheBastille,theTerror,andsoonthesetermscannotdefinerevolution initsentirety,foriftheyweretooccuragain(withnonewelementadded)theywould notcomposerevolution,butjustrepetition(orasanitisedhistoricalrecreation).Butat the same time, we need to insist on keeping event and revolution as separate terms, despite the similar way in which they are conceived. The term event operates as an idea, whereas a revolution, on the other hand, is the name given to a concrete set of factual occurrences. In the case of the Russian revolution, for instance, the rupture of the revolution arguably spans from February 1917 to the end of the Civil War in 1921. One should not consider this period itself as a single event, though, even if we could consider it as one revolution. Different subjectivities have always named events at different sites in this sequence: the February revolution (which all can affirm, except the extreme reactive figure of the recalcitrant monarchist), the Bolshevik October seizureofpower(thepoliticalFallaccordingtoliberals),thedissolutionoftheSoviets (for leftcommunists the Bolsheviks first counter revolutionary action), or the extinguishing of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 (for anarchists the moment demonstrating the necessity of resistance to the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and transitional socialism). The splits issuing from the events within the revolutionledtotheeventspromulgationthroughtheloyaltiesofsectstotheopening upandclosingdownofpossibilitieswithintherevolution.

Thus,in renderingthe possibility for splitsliketheseintoformallanguage, we want to make the distinction that a revolution has to be both a revolution (a term of itself, much the same as how Badiou constructs the matheme of the event) and also must contain at least one event thought separately from the revolution itself. We can proposeanextremelysimplemathemeforrevolutionalongtheselines: Rx={Rx,ex} ex={xX,ex} Here an invariant R (revolution thought as a loosely determined ahistorical invariant)iscoupledwithanevent,ex,inturncomposedbyBadiousmathemeshown underneath.But whatdetermines thisinvariant R?Thereis nootherrecoursethanto conjecturethattheinvariantofrevolutionisonlyaniterationofotherrevolutions:the sequence that gives sense to its terms. So the invariant R of the Russian revolution is determinedinsofarasitrepeatscertaintraitsofearlierrevolutionssuchas,forinstance, theFrenchrevolution,whichinturnrepeatshistoricalrevolutionsprecedingit. For subjects within the event horizon of the 20th centurys revolutionary sequencearevolution,Rx,however,hastobebotharevolutionandcontainanevent our first axiom, should you choose to adopt it. In contrast, for nonsubjects viz. this horizon, revolution contains only the evental site, X, and the term revolution simply describes this historical repetition of the accumulated traits observed in revolutions past.Consequently,inthisconceptionofrevolutionwehavenonovelty,signifiedbyex, tobeaffirmedbyasubject.Whereasrevolutionforsubjectswithintheeventhorizonof the 20th centurys revolutionary sequence is denoted as Rx to emphasise the novelty introducedthroughtheevent(usingthesymbolismofderivedsetsimpressionistically), for nonsubjects (positivist social scientists, say) Rx denotes that revolution only need coupletheinvariantofrevolutionwithaspecificsite: Rx={(Ry,Rz),X} OrtorenderintoplainEnglish:foranonsubject,aspecificrevolution,Rx,issolelythe sum of what is known of revolutions past framed alongside the evental site X. This expresses particularly well nonsubjects inability to perceive anything more than

contingent spatial and temporal variants in each revolution, and also the positivist, social science methodology, which conceives revolution by cumulatively adding the features of each past revolution to just modify the definition andconcept. It gives no indicationofwhatclassesarevolutionasarevolutionotherthanitbearingsimilarities topastrevolutions,resultinginaneverwiderarrayofdefinitionsbywhichrevolutions mayfitthecriteriaofequivalence.ThekaSkocpolfacedthisprobleminthelate1970s, when she was forced to invent new categories to divide the term (political vs. social revolutions)inordertopoliceitsgrowingubiquitousness.Itneveroccurredtoherthat it could be her subject position as expressed through social science discourse that necessitated splitting the set as it grew ever larger. And still, by trying to neutralise revolution within the sociological framework, the proliferation Skocpol sought to curtail continued unabated as researchers sought to apply the structural theory of revolution to an increasingly diverse set of cases, with the result that: Two recent surveys of revolution list literally hundreds of events as revolutionary in character.[4]Andaddinganideologicaltwisttoboot:whereasthegreatrevolutions hadallledfairlydirectlytopopulistdictatorshipandcivilwars,anumberofthemore recent revolutions including that of the Philippines, the revolutionary struggle in South Africa, and several of the anticommunist revolutions of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe seemed to offer a new model in which the revolutionary collapse of the old regime was coupled with a relatively nonviolent transition to democracy.[5] That is, of course, because all the abovementioned revolutions were not revolutions (Rx)fromtheperspectiveofasubjecttothe20thcenturysrevolutionarysequence. Whatdoesthistheoreticaldetouronrevolutionreveal?Itdemonstratesthatif revolution is perceived to have reached an end, we need to take that not literally to mean that there are no longer any revolutions, as in the invariant phenomena of a popularuprisingthattopplesagovernment.Itisratherthatoncerevolutionsnolonger takeplacewithinthesequenceofMarxism,orinthecontextofanynewsequence,the term collapses to its nonsubjective definien. As Lazarus concludes: Revolution belongs as a category to the historicism that is fuelled by both defunct socialism and parliamentarianism,because,historicismkeepsaplaceforthewordrevolutionin postsocialistparliamentarianismfollowingthefalloftheBerlinWall.[6]Wearenow in a position to understand the relation of Marxism to revolution to event. If Marxism is the sequence which creates an event horizon dividing subjects and non subjects across the 20th century, it is only from inside that event horizon that we can

talk of a last revolution as Badiou, a Maoist, considers the Cultural revolution. No matter how much his ontology might be in contradiction to Marxist dialectics, it remains the case that only as part of the Marxist sequence can he declare the end of revolution;and,indeed,onlyaspartofthatsequencedoeshistheoryoftheeventmake anysense.Takeawayrevolution,andallyourareleftwithistheIdeaoftheevent:Rx= {R,ex}ThuswehavetorepudiateNicolapoulosandVassilacopolouschargeofBadious infidelity to the retreat of the revolutionary event; on the contrary, on the event horizon of the Marxist sequence, Badious theory of the event can only make sense within the context of the retreat of that revolutionary sequence. Only with the continuation of the invariant R in the absence of the creative ruptures of events does the event idea become subtracted from revolution to an extent that it can be seen as theoreticallydiscreet. AsBadioudescribes revolution: theworditselfliesatthe heart ofthesaturation.[7]HisresponsetotherecentuprisingsacrossNorthAfricaprovides further confirmation of this. Badiou considers them symptoms of the present intervallic period: succeeding the period where revolutionary logic and an idea for transformation were united (in 20th century Marxism presumably). [A]n intervallic period [is] where the revolutionary idea has not been passed on to anyone, and in whichithasntyetbeentakenup,anewalternativedispositionhasnotyetbeenbuilt discontent exists but it has no structures, it can only draw power from a shared idea. Its power is essentially negative (make it go away). This is why the form of mass collectiveactioninanintervallicperiodistheriot.[8]Riot,note,notrevolution. Two notions of revolution have therefore been identified: a nonsubjective,

positivistidea(Rx),andasubjectiveidea(Rx).Whetherwearetoconsiderrevolutions accordingtothistheoretictypologydependsupontheextenttowhichwesubjectivate ourselvestoaffirmingtheconditionsofarevolutionaryeventasitwastakeninthe20th centuryonethatdemandednotsimplyrepetitionoftheformoftheinvariantR,but theexperimentationanddrivefornoveltyinreorderingsocietyindicativeofthosegreat politicophilisophicoaestheticorupturesofthelastcentury. [1] Nathan Coombs is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations,UniversityofLondon.HisresearchprojectisprovisionallyentitledTheEvent: a speculative genealogy. He is coeditor of the Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies. Hisfirstbook,TheBritishIdeology,isforthcoming2011.

[2] Toula Nicolapoulos and George Vassilacopoulos, Philosophy and Revolution: BadiousInfidelitytotheEvent,CosmosandHistory:TheJournalofNaturalandSocial PhilosophyVol.2,No.2(2006) [3] For a comprehensive study of mainstream social science revolutionary theory see Jack A. Goldstone, Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory, Annual ReviewofPoliticalScience4,(2001),139187. [4]ibid.,142 [5]ibid.,141 [6] Sylvain Lazarus, Lenin and the Party in Lenin Reloaded: Towards a Politics of Truth, eds. Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis and Slavoj Zizek (Durham: Duke UniversityPress,2007),262263. [7]AlainBadiou,TheCulturalRevolution:TheLastRevolution?Positions13:3(Duke UniversityPress,2005),483. [8]AlainBadiou,AlainBadiouonTunisia,riots&revolution,wrong+arithmetic(2 Feb2011)http://wrongarithmetic.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/alainbadiouontunisia riotsrevolution/(Accessed3Feb2011)