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Current Events » in reply to Are you serious? I have difficulty believing a person could be that ignorant.

The sociology of revolution
Mary Anne — (archived)

Hi, Matt--

It's easy for us who have access to food and medicine and information to be irate that those who have limited to no access to those necessities will not rise up and throw off the yoke of those withholding said necessities.

Look with me, if you will, at a few vignettes from the history of revolution.

American Revolution: led and supported by an educated, prosperous middle class.

English Civil War: led and supported by an educated and prosperous class of merchants who were also religious dissenters (and who, incidentally, founded Boston, MA, as a refuge from the Stuart monarchs).

French Revolution: led and supported by progressive aristocrats and an educated and prosperous middle class in a nation that had the highest per capita standard of living in continental Europe.

Russian Revolution: led and supported by the educated and prosperous urban intelligentsia, merchant (middle) classes and minor aristocracy. Co-opted and overthrown by a Bolshevik coup within a year.

Prague Spring: led and supported by progressive Czech government officials and the educated and (for a Communist nation) prosperous adventurous newborn small business people. Crushed by Russian tanks before it had a chance to catch on.

The Solidarity strikes in Gdansk, Poland: led and supported by educated, stubborn, courageous skilled workers and trade unionists with reasonably secure incomes. Reached a negotiated settlement.

You will observe that hunger, ignorance and ill-health are not hallmarks of those who resist. This is the lesson that state terror has learned: an impoverished, ill and ignorant population may not support its government, but hasn't the tools to mount an effective resistance movement. It is also a lesson that George Marshall and his staff understood very well when they cast a cold eye on the bombed-out, terrified, malnourished landscape that would become Cold War Europe. People can only stand up for themselves when they can stand up. Food, medicine and education are the first and most basic supports for free speech and free enterprise.

Those who have to spend all their intellectual, emotional and economic capital surviving haven't much left to foment revolution. Imagine a new way of life? They can't even imagine tomorrow.

Mary Anne

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