Social or Political

By Richard Trotsky

        A few days ago while watching the evening news there was a segment in which Bernie sanders was interviewed by a reporter from ABC. I was unable to watch the interview however the reported posed a question to Mr. Sanders that mentioned something about a political revolution. I began to ponder this comment, and realized that the majority of people are unaware that there is more than one type of revolution. There are in fact 2 types of revolutions, one of them being political, and the other being social.

        Unless an individual has had some education in sociopolitical theory and political sociology, whether it be self learned or acquired from being taught, they will have no knowledge of this, nor the differences between them. The underlying differences are as contrasting as night and day, and in this post I will briefly explain both, and argue why one should not, and can not be classified as true revolution.

        The type I refer to in the latter is that of a political revolution. A political revolution is simply just that, nothing more than a drastic change in the membership of a government, or some form of change in the form of government itself, for example moving from a capitalist form to a pseudo-socialist form (I say pseudo-socialist form due to the existence of governments that openly call themselves socialist, yet maintain the characteristics of capitalism and therefore cannot be truly described as socialist).

        It does nothing whatsoever to change the social structure of the nation affected, as often the political revolution is undertaken by the national military force or populist group that do not represent the interests of the workers. When these groups come to power, there may be slight improvements in social structure to appease the people, however property relations remain the same. The wealthy still control the production of goods, distribution of capital, and still maintain their influence on the body politic.

        Essentially it amounts to simply a changing of the guard, basically nothing more, nothing less. We have evidence of this historically in the various “revolutions” that have occurred in the 20th and more contemporary, early 21st century. While the regimes may have changed, nothing further had, the elite still retained their control over government, and the people, unfortunately, still suffered.

        The other form of revolution is that of a social revolution, and in contrast to the political revolution, the social revolution drastically changes the political landscape and property relations (when I say property relations, I’m referring to control of production, finance, agriculture, any large corporation or financial institution that is controlled by a select few, not the local small stores). In a social revolution, control of the generation of wealth is wrestled out of the hands of the elite, and places in the hands of the masses.

        A social revolution actually performs to actions, it changes the membership of government, and it also changes how wealth is generated and ultimately distributed. It provides the absolute best chance the workers have for ending their plight at the hands of the elite. The ultimate goal of any revolution is to initiate change in government, essentially for the better of the masses, but can we truly describe a revolution that is strictly political, and only regime change a genuine revolution?

        I say no, we cannot, and therefore a political revolution should not even be considered a true revolution, as in essence it does not meet the criteria socially to be defined as one. Furthermore, it is nothing more than a charade aimed at soothing the anger of the masses by ousting the current members of government, it goes no further than that.

        There happen to be individuals who subscribe to the school of thought that a social revolution should in fact be a bottom up revolution, without the need of a vanguard party (an actual political party aimed at leading the revolution and building a strong revolutionary body), however I must disagree. If a social revolution is without any form of platform, or plan on how to reshape property relations, then the revolution will proceed to a certain point and possibly ultimately cease, most likely to be defeated by counter-revolutionary forces that will undoubtedly be amassed by the elite aimed at retaking control.

        A vanguard party is necessary in ensuring that the social revolution can come to full fruition, as it will have the necessary “roadmap” as I’ll call it to ensure the continuation and fulfillment of the revolution. If the vanguard party is not present, and you simply have a mass of revolutionaries with no platform, it could very well result in the stagnation of the revolution as there would be no plan in place on how to facilitate the revolution coming full circle. I’ll consider doing a more in depth analysis in the future, however, issues in my personal life prevent me from doing so at present, and my ultimate goal with this post was to highlight the differences between the 2 forms of revolution.