Even after two years of rebellions the whole world was—again—surprised when Gezi Park got occupied and a Brazilian mass movement fought for social change. None of these uprisings were predictable – at least no-one bragged retrospectively to have predicted them. But revolutions in general raise not only the question of their predictability but also of their recognizability once they have started to begin. The uncertainty of so many spectators about whether the processes they were watching on TV really qualified as “revolution” is not without historical antecedent. Oftentimes, and probably because it is nicer this way, revolutions have been identified where they did not occur, though the reverse delusion is recorded as well. One month before the Russian February Revolution, Lenin predicted: “We, the old, will possibly not live to see the decisive battles of this upcoming revolution.” And Shlyapnikov, the leading Bolshevik in Petrograd, said even after the arrival of this “upcoming revolution,” on February 27, 1917: “We have no revolution and won’t have a revolution any time soon. We have to adapt ourselves to a long period of reaction.” It is precisely in their unlikeliness that we find a first commonality between these various rebellious movements of 2011. Generalizing this criterion of unlikeliness alone, a revolutionary moment might—paradoxically—be likely even in Germany.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 00:14:08 +0000
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