Revolutionary

A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates for, a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective to describe something producing a major and sudden impact on society.

Definition

The term—both as a noun and adjective—is usually applied to the field of politics, but is also occasionally used in the context of science, invention or art. In politics, a revolutionary is someone who supports abrupt, rapid, and drastic change, usually replacing the status quo, while a reformist is someone who supports more gradual and incremental change, often working within the system. In that sense, revolutionaries may be considered radical, while reformists are moderate by comparison. Moments which seem revolutionary on the surface may end up reinforcing established institutions. Likewise, evidently small changes may lead to revolutionary consequences in the long term. Thus the clarity of the distinction between revolution and reform is more conceptual than empirical.

A conservative is someone who generally opposes such changes. A reactionary is someone who wants things to go back to the way they were before the change has happened (and when this return to the past would represent a major change in and of itself, reactionaries can simultaneously be revolutionaries). A revolution is also not the same as a coup d'état: while a coup usually involves a small group of conspirators violently seizing control of government, a revolution implies mass participation and popular legitimacy. Again, the distinction is often clearer conceptually than empirically.

Revolution and ideology

According to sociologist James Chowning Davies, political revolutionaries may be classified in two ways:
#According to the ''goals'' of the revolution they propose. Usually, these goals are part of a certain ideology. In theory, each ideology could generate its own brand of revolutionaries. In practice, most political revolutionaries have been communists, socialists, Islamists, syndicalists, anarchists, or nationalists.
#According to the ''methods'' they propose to use. This divides revolutionaries in two broad groups: Those who advocate a violent revolution, and those who are pacifists.

Anarchism

Era Golden, aka Secretary Era, is an example of a contemporary anarchist revolutionary ( anarcho-syndicalist). They quoted Sergey Nechayev but changed the pronouns to gender neutral in order to symbolically represent the inclusive nature of contemporary anarchist movements. They argue that anarcho nihilism is not a good representation of the values held by anarcho-communists generally both throughout history and in the modern day. Secretary Era argues that the quote is an accurate depiction of the type of person and experience that creates an anarchist revolutionary. Anarchist movements tend to feature utopian ideology.

Subcomandante Marcos is an example of utilizing insurgency to advance a movement to remove what they perceive to be tyranny from power but ultimately the ideology and the individual seek to build rather than destroy, whether it be coalitions or institutions.

From Secretary Era's Revision of ''Catechism of a Revolutionary'':

"The revolutionary is a damned individual. They have no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of their own. Their entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion - the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, they have severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. They are its merciless enemy and continue to inhabit it with only one purpose - to destroy it."

From an interview with Subcomandante Marcos:

''“In our dreams we have seen another world, an honest world, a world decidedly more fair than the one in which we now live. We saw that in this world there was no need for armies; peace, justice and liberty were so common that no one talked about them as far-off concepts, but as things such as bread, birds, air, water, like book and voice.''”

Subcomandante Marcos and others often use insurgency and guerilla tactics to obstruct political opposition and remove hegemonic groups from power. utilize insurgency Ultimately the ideology and the individual seek to build rather than destroy, whether it be coalitions or institutions.

Most anarcho-communist movements share this characteristic, but anarchism is a simple principle of opposition to hierarchy and is therefore idiosyncratic with many other ideologies, whether positive or negative in their outlook.

Communism

According to Che Guevara,''Killer Images: Documentary Film, Memory and the Performance of Violence'' by Joram ten Brink, Joshua Oppenheimer, Columbia University Press, 2012, page 84 "the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a true revolutionary lacking in this quality."
According to the Marxist Internet Archive, a revolutionary "amplif esthe differences and conflicts caused by technological advances in society. Revolutionaries provoke differences and violently ram together contradictions within a society, overthrowing the government through the rising to power of the class they represent. After destructing the old order, revolutionaries help build a new government that adheres to the emerging social relationships that have been made possible by the advanced productive forces."

See also

*American Civil War
*1911 Revolution
*American Revolution
*Armchair revolutionary
*Conservative Revolution
* Counter-revolutionary
*Counterculture of the 1960s
* Cuban Revolution
*Cultural Revolution
* February Revolution
* French Revolution
* German Revolution of 1918–1919
*Iranian Revolution
*Irish revolutionary period
*Mexican Revolution
* Nicaraguan Revolution
* National syndicalism
* October Revolution
* Permanent revolution
* Philippine revolution
*Reformation
* Revolutionary movement
*Revolutionary movement for Indian independence
* Revolutionary nationalism
*Revolutionary socialism
* Revolutionary song
*Revolutionary terror
* Revolutionary wave
*Russian Revolution
*Spanish Revolution of 1936
*World revolution

References

External links

Castro: Revolutionary as Celebrity
– slideshow by ''LIFE'' magazine

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