Technique of Revolution
NOMAD, MAX
Technique of Revolution The Seizure of Political Power. By Feliks Gross. Philosophical Library. 398 pp. $6.00. Reviewed by Max Nomad Author, "Rebels and Renegades," "Apostles of...
...refused to make to the peasants...
...The entire history of Mao Tse-tung's campaign proves incontrover-tibly that, for all his Marxian "proletarian" verbiage, his movement won because, as Gross puts it, "the Communists offered the Asian intellectuals a goal and a social role...
...Submit like sheep to the majority will...
...Yet elsewhere Gross shows very clearly how this sort of disregard of the interests of the peasantry inevitably results in the defeat of the rebels who are striving for power...
...What, then, is the minority to do...
...In practice, of course, this "goal and social role" meant that the educated and semi-educated declasses seized the important, administrative jobs while the peasantry, with whom they had accomplished the revolution, got nothing...
...and the Chinese Revolution...
...It is a pity that Gross neglected to point out the reason Mao could win the complete support of the peasantry, while Chiang Kai-shek saw his peasant soldiers persistently deserting to the Reds...
...Gross feels that an escape from this cruel dilemma is to be found in "an advance toward economic democracy," toward a more equitable distribution of income...
...it might have been more appropriate to refer to this group as the "declasses," the term which the great 19th century rebels, such as Blanqui and Bakunin, used...
...Gross quotes long passages from an appeal by the Chinese Communist party which show its great interest in absorbing large numbers of intellectuals and semi-intellectuals into the fold...
...However, these oversights notwithstanding, the book constitutes a very valuable addition both to contemporary history and to the sociology of revolutionary movements...
...In his conclusion, Gross deals with the role of those whom he calls the "Catalinarians," the "young power-hungry intellectuals and their fellow travelers who are dissatisfied and unable to find emplovment...
...A valuable contribution to this branch of knowledge is Feliks Gross' The Seizure of Political Power, a serious analysis of the technique of revolutions, examined in the light of the outstanding revolutionary events of the last 150 years...
...Government: Chiang, unlike Mao, refused to make concessions to the peasants by relieving them of their debt burden...
...What if a majority votes to expel Protestants or Catholics, or to exterminate Jews, or to abolish civil rights...
...combinations of revolutions from above and uprisings from below, such as the Bolshevik Revolution of October-November 1917 and the Fascist, Nazi and Peronist revolts between 1922 and 1944...
...It was Chiang's stubborn solidarity with the financial interests that worked directly into Mao's hands and added 600 million slaves to the Soviet orbit...
...This was the very concession which the Polish rebels, mostly petty noblemen who hoped for aid from Napoleon III...
...Considering that the term "Catalinarian" is as a rule used in a deprecatory sense by the sated "ins" against the hungry '"outs...
...One of the most interesting sections of the book deals with the Chinese Communist revolution...
...It is inevitable that a book so crammed with facts should include some inexactitudes...
...Gross also fails to make sufficiently clear the fact that the struggle in China was basically a conflict between the starving and unemployed lower-middle class intellectuals and semi-intellectuals (largely college graduates and undergraduates) who supported the peasants on the one hand, and the officeholders and Army generals who were allied with the bankers and big merchants on the other...
...Reviewed by Max Nomad Author, "Rebels and Renegades," "Apostles of Revolution" EVER SINCE THE French Revolution, the struggle for power and the violent seizure of government has been a favorite subject of historians and political scientists...
...A classical example is the attitude of the Polish peasants, who...
...Although Gross points to several factors important for the understanding of political movements leading to revolutions — social and economic conditions and the personalities of the leaders of the movement — he is primarily concerned with the theory of social actions, with the strategy and tactics of revolutionary movements and with the consolidation of power...
...The bulk of the book is devoted to three major periods of revolutionary conflict: pre-Communist revolt in Russia from 1825 to 1917...
...The majority, in times of emotional tensions, may accept totalitarian ideas...
...Recapture their rights by force or violence...
...When he goes on to consider the problems of democracy, Gross, though a staunch defender of democratic methods, is stumped by the implications of democratic majority rule...
...The explanation is quite simple, and has often been pointed out by certain liberal members of the U.S...
...The democratic concept of legitimacy.'' he says, "is based on the concept of majority rule...
...The principles of freedom, however, guarantee the rights of dissenting minorities...
...revolutions from the top, such as the attempted seizure of power by the military conspiracy of the Decemberists in 1825...
...the spy Azev was not the "leader of the revolutionary party," but the head of the terrorist branch of the Social Revolutionary Party...
...it may decide to destroy or expel all dissenters...
...Gross distinguishes four main types of violent transfer of power: revolutions from the bottom, such as the Russian Revolution of February-March 1917...
...including both the struggles for power within the USSR and the seizure of control in the satellites...
...Communist strategy and tactics from 1917 to 1956...
...and palace revolutions, a number of which have taken place in Russia since the death of Stalin...
...For example, George Sorel, the author of Reflections on Violence, was not an anarcho-syndicalist, but a philosopher propounding in a very unorthodox way some of the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism...
...There is no doubt that such a remedy may allay the tensions resulting in the majority giving its support to totalitarian rabble-rousers, but what is to be done when it is already too late, and when the enemies of the liberty have already won power in a "democratic" way...
...during the insurrection of 1863, at first helped the rebels against the Tsarist regime, then switched their support to their '"hereditary" enemy, the Russians, as soon as the latter freed the peasants and gave them the land...
Vol. 42 • August 1959 • No. 30
