Since the French Revolution, the first violent modernist revolution, there’s a recurring pattern: the people who start the revolution are rarely the people who survive once power finishes consolidating.
The French Revolution itself was arguably a bourgeois or early capitalist revolution. It pitted the rising middle class against a rent-seeking aristocracy and dismantled feudal privilege in favour of legal equality, property rights, and market participation. In that sense, despite being revolutionary and sharing many of the same ideas that would propogate to the Marxists, it wasn’t anti-capitalist at all. It was part of capitalism’s emergence.
What failed, however, wasn’t capitalism so much as modernist political reasoning applied at revolutionary speed. Once legitimacy stopped being inherited and became ideological, loyalty replaced tradition, and deviation became dangerous. Many people outside normal social boundaries were swept up in revolutionary enthusiasm, only to be executed during the Reign of Terror when the new regime needed stability instead of disruption.
The same structural pattern appears in the Russian and Chinese revolutions. Early on, broad coalitions are tolerated because they help destabilize the existing system. Once power is secured, those same differences become liabilities.
The same thing happened under German National Socialism. In its early phase, the movement showed tolerance toward certain fringe groups. Once power was consolidated, that tolerance disappeared very quickly.
Marx later absorbed the unresolved failures of the French Revolution into his theory, but the modernist assumption remained: grand narratives are just, “we” possess objective truth, and those who don’t share it must be corrected in service of an inevitable telos. Once that assumption is in place, the same historical resonances tend to repeat.
There is value in recognizing a structural feature of modernist revolutions, of which communist revolutions are prime examples. They are permissive while tearing something down and restrictive once responsible for maintaining their own system. Focusing only on early phases misses how these systems behave over time.
And so, consider the idiots presently tearing down Minneapolis. Useful idiots, the sort a Stalin or a Hitler or a Mao would make use of in the early days. Once the revolution is over, the new powers that be have no use for revolutionaries, and in fact such revolutionaries are dangerous -- likely to engage in another revolution, you understand. It's been happening for centuries, revolution after revolution, but the useful idiots don't read, so they don't know the historical precedent. Robespierre ultimately experiences his own guillotine blade, assuming they even get that far. Until that moment, useful idiots believe the guillotine is their ally and will never turn on them.
Ironically, unlike the Jacobins and the Marxists and the National Socialists, there is no revolution in America. They're just tools of one part of the establishment butting heads with another part of the establishment. Once election season is over and the midterms are over, there's no place in the palace for them, just a return to ignominy.
The French Revolution itself was arguably a bourgeois or early capitalist revolution. It pitted the rising middle class against a rent-seeking aristocracy and dismantled feudal privilege in favour of legal equality, property rights, and market participation. In that sense, despite being revolutionary and sharing many of the same ideas that would propogate to the Marxists, it wasn’t anti-capitalist at all. It was part of capitalism’s emergence.
What failed, however, wasn’t capitalism so much as modernist political reasoning applied at revolutionary speed. Once legitimacy stopped being inherited and became ideological, loyalty replaced tradition, and deviation became dangerous. Many people outside normal social boundaries were swept up in revolutionary enthusiasm, only to be executed during the Reign of Terror when the new regime needed stability instead of disruption.
The same structural pattern appears in the Russian and Chinese revolutions. Early on, broad coalitions are tolerated because they help destabilize the existing system. Once power is secured, those same differences become liabilities.
The same thing happened under German National Socialism. In its early phase, the movement showed tolerance toward certain fringe groups. Once power was consolidated, that tolerance disappeared very quickly.
Marx later absorbed the unresolved failures of the French Revolution into his theory, but the modernist assumption remained: grand narratives are just, “we” possess objective truth, and those who don’t share it must be corrected in service of an inevitable telos. Once that assumption is in place, the same historical resonances tend to repeat.
There is value in recognizing a structural feature of modernist revolutions, of which communist revolutions are prime examples. They are permissive while tearing something down and restrictive once responsible for maintaining their own system. Focusing only on early phases misses how these systems behave over time.
And so, consider the idiots presently tearing down Minneapolis. Useful idiots, the sort a Stalin or a Hitler or a Mao would make use of in the early days. Once the revolution is over, the new powers that be have no use for revolutionaries, and in fact such revolutionaries are dangerous -- likely to engage in another revolution, you understand. It's been happening for centuries, revolution after revolution, but the useful idiots don't read, so they don't know the historical precedent. Robespierre ultimately experiences his own guillotine blade, assuming they even get that far. Until that moment, useful idiots believe the guillotine is their ally and will never turn on them.
Ironically, unlike the Jacobins and the Marxists and the National Socialists, there is no revolution in America. They're just tools of one part of the establishment butting heads with another part of the establishment. Once election season is over and the midterms are over, there's no place in the palace for them, just a return to ignominy.
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