A Revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution?

Distinguishes a revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution?

A revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution have changed as new events have come forth on the stage of world history. Through the 1980s, most writers on revolution focused on the “great revolutions” of England (1640), France , Russia , and China . Although scholars admitted that other events, like the Mexican and Cuban revolutions , had valid claims to be great revolutions, the foremost influential comparative studies of revolution from Brinton to Skocpol dealt mainly with a couple of European and Asian cases. Skocpol's definition of great social revolutions—“rapid, basic transformations of a society's state and sophistication structures accompanied and partially carried through by class-based revolts from below”—was taken as standard.

 A revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution ignored such matters as revolutionary ideologies, ethnic and non secular bases for revolutionary mobilization, intra-elite conflicts, and therefore the possibility of multiclass coalitions. This was intentional, for none of those were seen as central features of revolutions. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the dominant approach to revolutions was structural analysis, rooted in Marxist historical perspectives during which the action of capitalist competition on class and state structures produced class-based conflicts that transformed society.

 

Skocpol's work capped what I even have called the third generation of revolutionary analysis (Goldstone 1980). therein work, a series of students including Moore (1966), Paige (1975), Eisenstadt (1978) and lots of others expanded on the old Marxist class-conflict approach to revolutions by turning attention to rural agrarian-class conflict, state conflicts with autonomous elites, and therefore the impact of interstate military and economic competition on domestic political change. This work, during which revolution was attributed to a conjunction of multiple conflicts involving states, elites, and therefore the lower classes, was a serious improvement on simple descriptive generalizations, like those of Brinton (1938), or of analyses that rested on such broad single factors as “modernization” (Huntington 1968) or “relative deprivation” (Davies 1962, Gurr 1970).

 

From the 1970s through the 1990s, however, the planet saw a number of revolutions that challenged the class-based understanding of revolutions. In Iran and Nicaragua in 1979 and within the Philippines in 1986, multiclass coalitions toppled dictators who had long enjoyed strong support from the world's leading superpower, the us (Dix 1984, Liu 1988, Goodwin 1989, Farhi 1990, Parsa 2000). In Eastern Europe and therefore the Soviet Union in 1989–1991, socialist and totalitarian societies that were alleged to be impervious to class conflict collapsed amid popular demonstrations and mass strikes (Banac 1992, Dunlop 1993, Oberschall 1994a, Urban et al 1997, Beissinger 1998). The Iranian Revolution and therefore the Afghan Revolution of 1979 proudly proclaimed themselves as religious struggles, not based totally on class issues. A revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution and therefore the host of anticolonial and antidictatorial revolutions within the Third World , starting from Angola to Zaire, became so numerous and affected numerous folks that the parochial practice of defining revolutions in terms of a couple of cases in European history plus China became untenable (Boswell 1989, Foran 1997b). additionally , whereas the “great revolutions” had all led fairly on to populist dictatorship and civil wars, variety of the newer revolutions—including that of the Philippines, the revolutionary struggle in South Africa , and a number of other of the anticommunist revolutions of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe—seemed to supply a replacement model during which the revolutionary collapse of the old regime was including a comparatively nonviolent transition to democracy.

In response to those events, theories of revolution evolved in three directions. First, researchers sought to use the structural theory of revolution to an increasingly diverse set of cases, well beyond the tiny number of “great” social revolutions. These included studies of guerrilla wars and popular mobilization in Latin America ; studies of anticolonial and antidictatorial revolutions in developing nations ; studies of revolutions and rebellions in Eurasia from 1500 to; A revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution , studies of the Islamic revolution against the Shah in Iran; and studies of the collapse of communism within the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe .

 

Second, partially propelled by the above-noted works, which found in these new cases a strong role for ideologies and diverse multiclass revolutionary coalitions, there emerged direct attacks on the “third generation” approach. Scholars involved greater attention to conscious agency, to the role of ideology and culture in shaping revolutionary mobilization and objectives, and to contingency within the course and outcome of revolutions Important new comparative studies of revolutions demonstrated the importance of those additional factors in recent events .

 

Third, analysts of both revolutions and social movements realized that a lot of of the processes underlying revolutions—e.g. mass mobilization, ideological conflicts, confrontation with authorities—have been well studied within the analysis of social movements. Indeed, a number of the more extensive and radical social movements that involved major changes to the distribution of power, like the international movement for women's rights, the trade union movement , and therefore the US civil rights movement, were revolutionary within the risks taken by activists and therefore the institutional restructurings produced by their efforts. Thus, a replacement literature on “contentious politics” has developed that attempts to mix insights from the literature on social movements and revolutions to raised understand both phenomena.

As a results of these critiques, the straightforward state- and class-based conception of revolutions advanced by Skocpol not seems adequate. an enormous range of events now claim our attention as samples of revolution, starting from the fascist, Nazi, and communist transformations of countries within the first a part of this century to the collapses of communist regimes at its end; from the idealistic revolutions of America and France at the top of the eighteenth century to the chaotic revolutionary wars in Africa at the top of the 20 th . A revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution , Two recent surveys of revolution (Tilly 1993, Goldstone 1998c) list literally many events as “revolutionary” in character. Nonetheless, these events still have a standard set of elements at their core: (a) efforts to vary the political regime that draw on a competing vision (or visions) of a just order, (b) a notable degree of informal or formal mass mobilization, and (c) efforts to force change through noninstitutionalized actions like mass demonstrations, protests, strikes, or violence.

 These elements are often combined to supply a broader and more contemporary definition of revolution: an attempt to rework the political institutions and therefore the justifications for political authority during a society, amid formal or informal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized actions that undermine existing authorities.

This definition is broad enough to encompass events starting from the relatively peaceful revolutions that overthrew communist regimes to the violent Islamic revolution in Afghanistan. At an equivalent time, this definition is robust enough to exclude coups, revolts, civil wars, and rebellions that make no effort to rework institutions or the justification for authority. It also excludes peaceful transitions to democracy through institutional arrangements like plebiscites and free elections, as in Spain after Franco.

 

Types of Revolutions

Revolutions are distinguished sometimes by outcomes, sometimes by actors. Revolutions that transform economic and social structures also as political institutions, like the French Revolution of 1789, are called great revolutions; people who change only state institutions are called political revolutions. Revolutions that involve autonomous lower-class revolts are labeled social revolutions , whereas sweeping reforms administered by elites who directly control mass mobilization are sometimes called elite revolutions or revolutions from above . Revolutions that fail to secure power after temporary victories or large-scale mobilization are often called failed or abortive revolutions; oppositional movements that either don't aim to require power (such as peasant or worker protests) or specialise in a specific region or subpopulation are usually called rebellions (if violent) or protests. A revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution , Despite these differences, all of those revolutionary events have similar dynamics and characteristics (McAdam et al, in preparation).

 

Revolutions don't always feature an equivalent set of key actors, nor do all of them unfold within the same way. Popular mobilization could also be primarily urban (as in Iran and Eastern Europe), feature extensive peasant revolts (Wolf 1969), or involve organized guerrilla war. Huntington (1968) acknowledged that major revolutions show a minimum of two distinct patterns of mobilization and development. If military and most civilian elites initially are actively supportive of the govt , popular mobilization must happen from a secure, often remote, base. within the course of a guerrilla or war during which revolutionary leaders gradually extend their control of the countryside, they have to create popular support while expecting the regime to be weakened by events—such as military defeats, affronts to national pride and identity, or its own ill-directed repression or acts of corruption—that cost it domestic elite and foreign support. Eventually, if the regime suffers elite or military defections, the revolutionary movement can advance or begin urban insurrections and seize the capital . Revolutions of this sort , which we may call peripheral revolutions, occurred in Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Zaire, Afghanistan, and Mozambique.

 In contrast, revolutions may start with the dramatic collapse of the regime at the middle (Huntington 1968). If domestic elites are seeking to reform or replace the regime, they'll encourage or tolerate large popular demonstrations within the capital and other cities, then withdraw their support from the govt , resulting in a sudden collapse of the old regime's authority. In such cases, although the revolutionaries take power quickly, they then got to spread their revolution to the remainder of the country, often through a reign of terror or war against new regional and national rivals or remnants of the old regime. Revolutions of this sort , which we may call central revolutions, occurred in France, Russia, Iran, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

 A revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution , A variant of elite/popular mobilization dynamics is that some revolutions combine these types in several stages. within the Mexican and Chinese Revolutions, the old regimes initially fell during a central-type collapse; the Huerta and Nationalist regimes that first consolidated power were themselves overthrown by a peripheral mobilization.

 Recent events suggest yet a 3rd pattern of revolution, a general collapse of the govt , as occurred within the totalitarian states of Eastern Europe and therefore the Soviet Union . In these countries, the state socialist regimes maintained firm control of rural and concrete society through the party apparatus. When a mixture of elite-led reform efforts, changing international alignments (the economic advance of capitalist countries, the Soviet Union's peace talks with the us , and Hungary's open borders allowing mass German emigration), and popular strikes and demonstrations undermined the resolve of communist leaders, the whole national state apparatus rapidly degenerated. A revolutionary movement from other social movements? How far do you consider the Cuban revolution a ‘successful’ revolution , Although there have been sometimes major confrontations within the capital cities , the critical popular actions in several cases were taken by workers faraway from the capital—such as coal miners within the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and shipyard workers in Gdansk in Poland—or by urban protestors in other cities, like Leipzig in East Germany .

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