The word "Revolution"

In school you are always told that a revolution is a change from one form to another, usually of government. You are usually told that a Revolution is a good thing and that its a change that 'had to happen' because the people wanted it. You are never told that, revolutions, are dirty bloody battles between groups of people. The people as a whole, never want a revolution. A faction of the people, want a revolution, the whole never wants a revolution, if they all agreed it would not be called a revolution.

The beatles sang about a Revolution, as if a revolution were the best solution to any problem in the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf-Q2rDd6Tw

What is a revolution?

From Wiki Pedia:
A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a turnaround") is a significant change that usually takes place in a short period of time.
Aristotle described two types of political revolution:
1) Complete change from one constitution to another.
2) Modification of an existing constitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution

What kinds of revolutions are there?
Alexis de Tocqueville differentiated between
1) political revolutions
2) sudden and violent revolutions that seek not only to establish a new political system but to transform an entire society and
3) slow but sweeping transformations of the entire society that take several generations to bring about.
One of several different Marxist typologies divides revolutions into pre-capitalist, early bourgeois, bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic, early proletarian, and socialist revolutions.
(Ibid)

I suppose Revolution is only as good or bad as the action to which it is attached, so lets take a look at a few "Revolutions" that have taken place in History, and see what we can decifer.

I will choose one for this blog, and continue on with others in later blogs.

Today I will discuss the French Revolution, only because my mother has been reading up on it and sharing with me, and therefore I cannot get it out of my head.

Next I may choose the Bolshevic Revolution, as that is currently my favorite.





Watch the video, it's pretty good, what the strange mysterious female sounding voice doesn't mention is that some of these - common people - didn't want this "revolution".


"...and never heads enough..."
"Domestic carnage, now filled the whole year With feast-days, old men from the chimney-nook, The maiden from the busom of her love, The mother from the cradle of her babe, The warrior from the field - all perished, all -Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks, Head after head, and never heads enough For those that bade them fall."
William Wordsworth

"The French Revolution had opened an era of intense politicization. Perhaps the most significant characteristic of the dawning modern world, and in this respect it was a true child of Rousseau, was the tendency to relate everything to politics. In Latin America, every would-be plunderer or ambitious bandit now called himself a "a liberator"; murderers killed for freedom, thieves stole for the people."Paul Johnson"Modern Times"

"What we learn from the study of the Great [French] Revolution is that it was the source of all the present communist, anarchist and socialist conceptions."Prince Petr KropotkinRussian naturalist, author and soldierwriting in 1909 on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution

From another blog I found -
"Stalin and Hitler could say the same in recognizing their debt to the concept of "the Sovereign" of Rousseau and its mystical identification with the people. 200 years later we have only millions and millions of innocents murdered in the "name of the people," etc. ad nauseam."



Was the French Revolution a bloody battle for power? Supposedly in the name of 'the people' when really is was in the name of those who saught power?
Were the people made to believe through propaganda techniques that they wanted something they didn't want?

I don't know, I do like to look into the darker side of history.

Is the French Revolution, or any Revolution, ever by the collective people? Or are they always propagandized. Do 'the people' ever think for themselves collectively?
Is that even possible?

Well, thats all for now.