Can there ever be real political change without bloodshed?
Revolution vs Reform
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Burnley123 · 41-45, M
There can be but the most dramatic ones have involved a fair share.
Those with wealth and power will often (well always) resist violently when other mechanisms of social control break down.
Those times of major political change without violence have involved non-violent direct action and/or powerful union movements achieving evolutionary change. I'm thinking of FDR, the suffragettes and the Attlee Labour government. Even then, it can only go so far: achieve a class compromise, and concessions, not an overhaul. Voting matters but that alone can't ever achieve significant progressive change without other social forces. Also, those gains can (and largely have been) rolled back.
For those anti-leftists ready to pile on me, please understand that it needed a series of revolts to end feudalism. Look at the impact of the English Civil War (a partial revolution), the American War of Independence and especially the French Revolution. You wouldn't be able to vote or have significant rights without these events.
It's still worth campaigning for social democratic reforms and maybe that is the other thing possible. However, I've come to the conclusion that actual socialism could never be achieved by a pacifistic strategy. It just can't.
Ralph Miliband's essay on the 1973 Chile coup is worthwhile if harrowing, reading.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1973/10/chile.htm
Those with wealth and power will often (well always) resist violently when other mechanisms of social control break down.
Those times of major political change without violence have involved non-violent direct action and/or powerful union movements achieving evolutionary change. I'm thinking of FDR, the suffragettes and the Attlee Labour government. Even then, it can only go so far: achieve a class compromise, and concessions, not an overhaul. Voting matters but that alone can't ever achieve significant progressive change without other social forces. Also, those gains can (and largely have been) rolled back.
For those anti-leftists ready to pile on me, please understand that it needed a series of revolts to end feudalism. Look at the impact of the English Civil War (a partial revolution), the American War of Independence and especially the French Revolution. You wouldn't be able to vote or have significant rights without these events.
It's still worth campaigning for social democratic reforms and maybe that is the other thing possible. However, I've come to the conclusion that actual socialism could never be achieved by a pacifistic strategy. It just can't.
Ralph Miliband's essay on the 1973 Chile coup is worthwhile if harrowing, reading.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1973/10/chile.htm