Revolution and Ideology
According to sociologist James Chowning Davies, political revolutionaries may be classified in two ways:
- According to the goals of the revolution they propose. Usually, these goals are part of a certain ideology. In theory, each ideology could generate its own brand of revolutionaries. In practice, most political revolutionaries have been either liberals, republicans, democrats, nationalists, socialists, communists, fascists or anarchists.
- According to the methods they propose to use. This divides revolutionaries in two broad groups: Those who advocate a violent revolution, and those who are pacifists.
The revolutionary anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Sergey Nechayev argued in Catechism of a Revolutionary:
The Revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion—the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy...
Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara said this about revolutionaries: "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force."
Read more about this topic: Revolutionary
Famous quotes containing the words revolution and/or ideology:
““I suppose with the French Revolution for a father and the Russian Revolution for a mother, you can very well dispense with a family,” he observed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“The ideology of this America wants to establish reassurance through Imitation. But profit defeats ideology, because the consumers want to be thrilled not only by the guarantee of the Good but also by the shudder of the Bad.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)