How the Great Revolutions happened, Part 1 – The English Revolution begins

http://www.counterfire.org/article/how-the-great-revolutions-happened-part-1-the-english-revolution-begins/
Date Written:  2024-10-28
Publisher:  Counterfire
Year Published:  2024
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX25373

It is not great individuals, but mass action which drives history, argues Dominic Alexander in a series on the Great Revolutions from England in the 1640s, France to 1917 in Russia.

Abstract: 
-

Excerpt:

Revolutions don't happen simply due to high levels of popular discontent, although that is a necessary condition. They happen when a system enters crisis, with the ruling class unable to find a way to solve it. When rulers are divided amongst themselves, unable to agree on how to stabilise society or adapt to new social conditions, this is when popular movements are able to make a decisive impact.

Sometimes states are notably weak, and revolutions appear to be relatively easy to accomplish. This was the case, for example, in Germany and Italy during the post-Napoleonic years from 1815 to 1848. Both nations were fractured into a patchwork of small states that tended to lack either legitimacy or capability.