On the Meaning of the Word “Revolution”
Artistic rendition of Haitian soldiers fighting for their independence
There is a word, “revolution.” It gets used a lot. A pretty little word. Strong and radical. REVolution. Rev-AH-lution. Revo-LOO-shun. Rev-OH-lution. So many fun combos. Good in a speech. Good in a chant. Good on a poster. It makes you sound so diehard, so committed, so badass.
And on its own? It’s meaningless.
How many brands are able to use the word “revolution” without fear? Revolution Beauty, a skincare company. Revolution Games, an IT provider. rEvolution, a sports marketing agency. “Revolution” might leave a speaker’s voice in the same breath they use to tell you to vote for a center-right Democrat. “Revolution” might appear in “radical” art or music created by a trust fund kid in a punk phase, a drugged up stepping stone between childhood and the board room. A mediocre film might be described as “revolutionary” because it dares to imply the unheard of sentiment, “war is bad sometimes,” with no solution proposed on how to stop said sometimes-bad war.
Revolution is not a thing that we should allow to be taken from us or diluted. This is not a word that can be exchanged for another. It has no proper synonym. It has a younger sister, “rebellion,” but she is the lesser of the two. Rebellion is subordinate to revolution, a necessary precursor, a part of the whole, but it is no substitute. There are many rebellions, there are few revolutions.
To hold onto revolution we cannot squint in examining what it is. No one is forcing you to call for revolution, to refer to yourself as a revolutionary, but if you are going to continue to do so you must not cut your revolution with water. Clench your fist and take it straight, or do not take it at all.
Revolution is not a shift in language. It is not a moment’s reprieve from pain or a vacation from oppression. Revolution is not a little more space to run around or a single greedy politician losing re-election. It is not a tiny amelioration of a systemic problem or a nice law, even if it really helps. Revolution is not the padding of chains with velvet, it is the turning of those chains to ash.
Revolution is wrenching the social and economic order until it’s twisted upside down. Revolution scales the towers of the mighty and splatters their flesh upon cracked pavement. It is a blasphemy to the old world, seeking out all that was once hallowed to make profane. It stalks the halls of the overlords, unarmed save for dirty hands made strong by toil and blood-seeking eyes. It seizes the house of the rich and throws them to the masses. It wins over the children of the businessmen, the war mongers, the rapists of the earth, it teaches these children to consume their fathers. It walks with an audacious, furious, snarling, cracked-nail, split lip, unforgiving, hateful sort of stride. It has forgotten nothing and forgives less. It is hate and love forged into a spear aimed at the heart of empire, unconcerned with any obstacle, scoffing at criticism and complaint, throwing naysayers to the flame alongside oppressors, leaving history in shredded scraps, ready to build something new from the mangled flesh of the old world that lies writhing at its feet.
THAT is revolution. It is the politics of shattered systems reshaped into unrecognizable forms that look abominable to the old rulers and are salvation to the many. It is a belief in the capacity of the people to take history into their hands and make it theirs REGARDLESS of opposition, REGARDLESS of tactics required.
Revolution pays no attention to moralistic scolding. It knows the truth about the ones who wag their fingers. These moralizers said nothing as the bombs fell. They turned away and made a face at the sea of exposed, pleading faces on every street. They discouraged harsh words and rude gestures as boiling oceans swallowed islands older than humanity. They did nothing but shake their heads and post a hashtag at concentration camps before returning to their self-satisfied amusement. Why should revolution listen to such types? They will get out of its way or join the old rulers among history’s chaff.
Don’t mistake me. Revolution is not an uncaring thing. It cares and loves in a way no isolated individual ever could. It is the fused care of the masses, their desperate toiling hours, their unpayable medical bills and parking tickets and evictions. It is the muffled cries in prison cells and the feeling of a dead fetus going rotten in their stomach. It’s the imposition of a name that isn’t theirs, the foul breath of a superior in their ear, the rattling of a rifle in a school hallway. It is the feeling of summer growing hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter and fucking hotter. It is a beach coated in a film of oil and not seeing a single firefly on a June evening in the south. It is money they earned and desperately need stripped away and transformed into images of parents collecting their childrens’ bomb-strewn limbs into plastic bags. It is kicked-in doors by white men in black masks and the taste of teargas on the street they grew up on.
It is the cumulative caring about the suffering of yourself, and your family, and your friends, your community, your people. And it is you learning your community is bigger than you realized. An ocean of people, families, friends. A community of hundreds of millions. Your conception of who is part of your people growing and growing until that community is a class. An oppressed, lost, alienated, thrown-aside, lonely, furious class chained in the dark, sweating for scraps, watching the stitches of history tear under the weight of a dying system and deciding not to wait, to rip them in its own way. For every chain to shatter, to enter the stage, to fucking fight.
To carry out revolution.
Revolution is hate. And it is love. And it is explicitly a total overthrow of the social and economic system, anything less is reform. To do this, we must win our war. Our class war.
And class war will be painful. For everyone. But it has already begun, it cannot be avoided. It was the rulers who declared war. Now you fight, or you lose.
I don’t intend to be on the losing side.
