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Some Perspectives on Revolution 66 SOME PERSPECTIVES ON REVOLUTION Thomas B. Grassey For many years people in the United under "peace with honor," it is possible States argued that the outcome of the to see why our counterinsurgency effort Vietnam conflict would have critical failed. implications for the future of freedom The paragraph has an odd ring to it. everywhere. The familiar argument ran: There is something strange-and'in that If the Communists were victorious, strangeness we may find at least part of Western security would be weakened; the answer to the question, "Why did but if the Communists were defeated in our counterinsurgency efforts fail?" Try Vietnam, we would have met "The reading the paragraph again, substituting Third Challenge," "Wars of Liberation," revolution for insurgency and counter­ and convinced the enemy that he could revolutionary for counterinsurgency. not succeed in world conquest by What I wish to examine, therefore, is proxy. not Vietnam but the fundamental con­ The insurgency in Vietnam finally ceptual errors of which Vietnam was has reached its conclusion. Perhaps now, merely a symptom. For if we mis­ more than a decade after American conceived the situation, our loss might combat units were introduced to help a not be as ominous as we had feared; if, friendly government deal with an ex­ however, our misconceptions con­ ternally supported insurgency and 3 tributed to or even caused our failure, years after those forces were withdrawn we must correct them before they are repeated. *This essay is based on a lecture given in How we define situations, what August 1975 at the Naval Amphibious labels we attach to realities, which School, Coronado, California. words we use in thinking about the 67 problems we face greatly influence our be the results of a constitutional process judgments and behavior. If we are be­ (Hitler's 1933 accession to power) or a witched by false labels, we will make successful reform movement (U.S. bad decisions. And one of the most women's suffrage). The truly essential disastrous false labels currently in our element in revolution is the rejection of national vocabulary is "counterinsur­ governmental legitimacy: the deliberate gency." Of course, it is not an acciden­ and explicit denial of the government's tal false label; Americans are deeply right to enforce its rules and laws. So a opposed to being "counterrevolution­ revolution is an organized, popularly aries." So we almost invented this odd based attempt to alter radically the word and deliberately applied it even to existing political structure, usually by places where it was wildly inappropriate violent and always by illegal means. (the "meat and potatoes" cases of our Of all the myths about revolutions, counterinsurgency courses have been the most prominent American miscon­ Vietnam, China, Cuba, Algeria and ception is that their cause is material Malaya). Unwilling to think about deprivation-poverty, hunger, bad "counterrevolution," we labeled all our health and overcrowding. History does activities "counterinsurgency" and be­ not support such a thesis, but instead came literally unable to discriminate offers Jlotable exceptions. In 1958 Cuba between an insurgency and a revolution. had a large middle class and one of the It is time to recall that distinction. highest per capit~_ incomes in Latin "Insurgency," a word used mostly in America. It should have been one of the international law, is defined as "a revolt least likely candidates for revolution in against a government, not reaching the the Western Hemisphere if the "depriva­ proportion of an organized revolution, tion" thesis were true. Although grind­ and not recognized as belligerency." ing poverty is endemic to India, that Since "insurgency" is defined relative to country has not experienced a revolu­ revolution, what is a revolution? tion since achieving independence. The A revolution may be distinguished Poles and Hungarians had incipient revo­ from a coup d'etat, foreign invasion, lutions in 1956 although they enjoyed military seizure of power, rebellion, and higher standards of living than their insurgency by several indicators. The quiescent bloc neighbors. Historians most obvious is that a revolution has agree that the American Revolution did sizable (though not always majority) not result from material want. It is true organized popular support. It aims at a that poverty is a prominent feature of redistribution of political power, al­ most societies facing revolution; but the though social, economic and cultural difference between correlation and changes may accompany this shift. It causation is one which we Americans usually involves violence; some writers persistently ignore in justifying foreign (including Frantz Fanon, Regis Debray aid, planning military civic action pro­ and Karl Marx) consider violence essen­ grams, sponsoring the Peace Corps, and tial to a revolution, but they confuse a studying revolution. usually necessary tactic with a defini­ Curiously, the notion that material tion of the goal. "Nonviolent revolu­ deprivation causes revolution is purely tion" is not a contradiction in terms: Marxian. Marx thought his great "dis­ Gandhi led one such revolution in India, covery" was that economics determines and Lenin surprised himself by coming the structure and processes of every close to a nonviolent Bolshevik revolu­ society. tion in Russia. However, revolutionary The general conclusion at activities must be illegal or the changes which I arrived ... may be briefly in society, no matter how radical, will summed up as follows: In the 68 social production which men Durkheim, Lasswell), after considerable carry on they enter into definite research, have concluded that the cause relations that are indispensable of revolution is frustration. We en­ and independent of their will; counter graphs and tabular charts, these relations of production cor­ "curves of rising expectations," mea­ respond to a definite stage of sures of individual discontent and social development of their material anomie, and useful or obscurant powers of production. The sum theories of cohesion and social break­ total of these relations constitutes down. Brian Crozier begins his book: the economic structure of society Frustration is the one element -the real foundation, on which common to all rebels, whatever rise legal and political superstruc­ their aims, political ideals or social tures and to which correspond backgrounds. ... What, then, is definite forms of social conscious­ frustration? For my purpose, it is ness. The mode of production in simply the inability to do some­ material life determines the gen­ thing one badly wants to do, eral character of the social, politi­ through circumstances beyond cal, and spiritual processes of life. one's control. 2 It is not the consciousness of men One may readily agree that a revolu­ that determines their existence, tionary is frustrated, but this is not a but, on the contrary, their social markedly useful distinction since almost existence determines their con­ all human beings are in various ways sciousness. At a certain stage frustrated. Moreover, many of these ... the material forces of produc- theories are simplistic blanket notions tion in society come into conflict that barely cover the heroic dedication with the ... property relations one finds among revolutionaries. John within which they had been at Paul Jones' crew, Washington's Valley work before .... Then comes the Forge army, and Nathan Hale were period of social revolution.! "frustrated." Algerians who were Marx believed that, by its very na­ brutally tortured by French para­ ture, capitalism must lead to greater and troopers resisted because of "the dis­ greater disparity between the rich few parity between goal visualization and and the impoverished masses, with goal achievement." Ho Chi Minh was a worse and worse material exploitation revolutionary for 60 years because he of the laboring class. Finally, and in­ experienced severe social anomie, and so evitably, the oppressed will rise in revo­ forth. Since social scientists are reluc­ lution against the world's rich to abolish tant to make implicit value judgments private property and establish the class­ by using words like "good," "bad," less, Communist society. Although "right," and "wrong" (a scientist "ob_ Americans often accept and promulgate serves facts," he does not "make moral this strictly Marxist idea that poverty, judgments"), and due to our own pre­ hunger and bad living conditions cause occupation with material wealth, we revolutions, the fact is they do not. have all but forgotten the classical po­ Conversely, despite our national pre­ litical theory upon which America was occupation with material wealth, revolu­ built. tions cannot be prevented merely with "The masses of men make revolu­ better food,. housing, clothing and tion," Aristotle wrote, "under the idea health care. Marx was wrong, and so is that they are unjustly treated.,,3 Jus­ this American myth of what causes (or tice, for Aristotle, consisted of treating prevents) revolution. equals alike and unequals differently, Some social scientists (e.g., but in proportion to their relevant 69 differences. This supports the idea that people feel unjustly treated to a severe all men are equal in a fundamental sense degree, and not because of poverty, (the right to be treated justly), yet it frustration or even glaring social in­ allows for dissimilar treatment based on equalities. John Adams understood this inequalities among men. We are not point. He knew that the American obliged to hold that justice requires struggle was not really over taxes or the treating everyone alike, so that all of us king's policies or various acts of Parlia­ must receive identical amounts of food, ment. The issue was sovereignty, the clothing, housing, education, entertain­ right in justice of a people to govern ment and honors. But we are required themselves, and Adams wrote: to show that some relevant difference The Revolution was effected between persons justifies the privileges, before the war commenced. The benefits and burdens each is assigned. Revolution was in the hearts and Thus a ship's captain is entitled to minds of the people ...
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