What can the study of revolution tell us about the preconditions and the processes of political
Fidel Castro once said ‘a revolution is not a bed of roses . ... a revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past. ... It is a struggle not only for political legitimacy, that old regime failed to create by its inefficiency, but an attempt to change economic, psychological, and social aspects of the society. ... ‘A regime, an established order, is rarely overthrown by a revolutionary movement; usually a regime collapses of its own weakness and corruption and then a revolutionary movement enters among the ruins and takes over the powers that have become vacant’ Revolution is a struggle for power that is created by the old regime. Revolution, in order to be successful, has to change the conditions of the pre-revolutionary order to promulgate legitimate political change and development. Thus, the study of revolution, from the point of view of this paper, is concerned with the inefficiency of the old political order, as well as a struggle to re/establish through the (violent) process of political change and development, a new order, that is legitimate in the eyes of its citizens. ... Eventhough, revolution without violence is possible, it is highly unlikely to achieve a sudden political change without a violent process. Thus the role of violence, when studying revolution, is of vital importance. ... Many scholars have examined the role that violence has played in revolution. ... Even thought some authors disagree to which extent violence is used and justified, most agree that initial violence is necessary to bring about political change. Arend argues, ‘Only when change occurs in the sense of a new beginning, where violence is used to constitute an altogether different form of government, to bring about the formation of a new body politic, where liberation from oppression aims at least at the constitution of freedom can we speak of a revolution. ... To summarise Johnson states that ‘ true revolution is…the acceptance of violence in order to cause the system [the political, social, and economic forces] to change…’ (Johnson, 12) Violence is a tool that serves to change the system, but the agents of this violence are the citizens of the society. ... Use of violence by the masses is a harbinger of political change and development (Rejai, 9) Political violence is created by what Rajai classifies as long and short-term factors. (Rajai, 23) Long-term factors are the preconditions of the pre-Revolutionary society. ... Meanwhile, both long and short-term discontent can spark up violence in the society and create a revolution. Feliks Gross, as well as others categorises the use of violence into four main categories— typologies of the revolution. Gross, in chapter three of his study, states that there are four types of revolutions— ‘revolution from below’; ‘revolution from above’; ‘combined seizure’; and ‘palace revolution’. ... Revolution from below is a revolution of mass movement . ... It occurs from the accumulation of long-term discontent within the society that can suddenly explode with an attempt to bring forth a political as well as social change. ... ‘Revolution from above’ is different from ‘revolution from below’ in that the use of violence is restricted to a very small ‘outside’ group. ... The main feature, however that distinguishes ‘revolution from above’ to that from ‘below’, is that the new ruling elite has no intention of introduce social change. ‘Revolution from above’ is a struggle for the political authority not to change conditions for the public. ... Example of such revolution have been demonstrated in Nazi Germany (1933) and Iran (1978-1979) ‘Combined seizure’ is characterized by the combination of the two revolution mentioned above.