thinkers like RosaLuxemburgor, for that matter, LeonTrotskywere
accused of revisionism for suggesting methods alternative toLenin’sfor
communist revolution. Most modern forms of Marxism might be accused of
revisionism in this way, and it remains a highly selective and value-laden
concept. Non-Marxist writers have taken over the concept to describe any
later, and alternative, theory or account where there had previously been a
generally-accepted version. So now there are, for example, revisionist theories
about thecold warby Americans who are less convinced than previous
writers of the purity of US foreign policy in the 1950s. However, the most
important ‘revisionism’ in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that
concerning the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, a number of historians
having sought to deny the existence, or deprecate the importance, of the
Holocaust. This indicates the way in which revisionism is used not only to
indicate later alternative theories, but especially those which serve to pour
doubt on comforting original certainties.
Revolution
The early use of the term revolution referred to the ‘turning around’ of
political power and was applied to restorations of monarchies as well as to their
overthrowals; analogies could be made to astrology’s revolution of the stars and
to the turning of the wheel of fortune. The common feature, however, is
clearly a process of change. Revolution is, of course, often used allegorically to
refer to any wide-ranging change in society, one instituted, perhaps, by
scientific or technological change, but in political science the primary meaning
must be the deliberate, intentional, and most probably violent overthrow of
one ruling class by another which leads the mobilized masses against the
existing system, not only vastly altering the distribution of power in the society,
but also resulting in major changes in the whole social structure. As such it is
quite different from acoup d’e ́tatwhich simply replaces one set of rulers with
another, with no crucial ensuing alteration of the overall political and social
scene. This full-blooded form of revolution (which also excludes similarly
great socio-political change as a result of defeat in war or success in an anti-
colonial uprising) is, almost by definition, a result of class conflict. It is also very
rare. The great revolutions in world history are few: the French Revolution,
which led to the creation of a middle-class controlled republic instead of an
aristocratically-controlled monarchy; the Russian Revolution, replacing a
tyrannical monarchy with an authoritarian and even more totalitarian populist
e ́lite; the Chinese Revolution which replaced a corrupt oligarchical republic
with a dictatorship; and only a handful of others. There are periods in history,
however, when several countries collectively go through so sudden and
dramatic a change in both their actual governmental forms, and the publicly
Revolution