Authors: Bogdanor
Summary: In just over 1000 words, this entry defines revolution and distinguishes the concept from counter-revolution, discusses the term's Italian origin, analyzes Karl Marx's contributions to our current understanding of revolution, and concludes by considering varying approaches to the political analysis of revolutions.
The term revolution was first used in late fifteenth-century Italy, and derives from the astrological expectation of sudden fate reversals due to particular conjunctures among the planets. In contemporary popular usage, revolution denotes any violent overthrow of a government. But the term is used in a more restricted sense by social scientists, to indicate a regime change accompanied by a significant reconfiguration of the social, economic, and political order. Counter-revolution, on the other hand, denotes the anticipation and reversal of such major changes.
Revolution got its current academic meaning from Karl Marx. According to Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie, the dominant class in capitalist society, would be overthrown by a social revolution that would bring about the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Marx's writings and ideas were based largely on observations drawn from the French Revolution. Subsequent revolutions, including the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions, have not followed Marx's predictions.
Lyford P. Edwards and George Sawyer Pettee, two American sociologists, consolidated the view of revolution as a social rather than a political phenomenon. Crane Brinton, a historian, strengthened this view, as did Theda Skocpol. Barrington Moore, on the other hand, using a Marxist comparative historiography, explains why some states experience social revolutions while other states have very different experiences.
The entry concludes by identifying some of the difficulties encountered in analyzing revolution as a political phenomenon.