Revolution is NOT war and the rules that indicate when one should go to war, declare victory or defeat are not the same as the dynamics that govern when a populace will revolt.
In the comments to haremoor's Sun_Tzu: "The Art of Occupy", SquirrelWhisperer said:
SquirrelWhisperer's Three Rules for War (0+ / 0-)
Before beginning,1) Define the objective in terms that an eight-year old boy can understand.
2) Define victory, so that you'll know when to stop.
3) Define defeat, so you'll know when to stop.No objective, no possibility of success.
and I replied:
Those are the Rules of War rather than Revolution. (0+ / 0-)
In a Revolution, the populace simply knows that the status quo is intolerable. When you reach that point, events take their course and the outcome is unknowable.If war is politics pursued by other means, then revolution is a singularity.
If we follow SW's first rule as applied to various revolutions, retrospectively:
American: Get rid of the British.
French: Get rid of the Monarchy.
Greek: Get rid of the Turks.
Russian: Get rid of the Tsars.
Iranian: Get rid of the Shahs.
Arab Spring: Get rid of the Dictators.
Usually there is no generally accepted and coherent step two of what to do once someone has been gotten rid of, which is the great risk with revolutions, and which allows them to get highjacked by Napoleons and Bolsheviks.
Where are we today? Have we gotten to the point of saying:
Get rid of the corporations, the banks, the rich, the inequality, the political system, the economic system?
Whichever it is, we need to get rid of someone or something and the devil take the hindmost.
Revolutions are even riskier than war precisely because you cannot set conditions a priory. It is a throw of the dice with the lives of millions or billions in the balance.
The status quo is intolerable. Time to throw the dice.
Follow me below for an expansion on that.