Why Great Revolutions Will Become More Rare 11-9-2010 (Part Two)

 Stability and inertia mean more than social justice or whatever would be the Communist rally cry. People want to keep what they have got - psychology applies here. I see a revolution happening here only when the powers-that-be threaten us with complete loss - they want to pauperize us, to use a phrase of Warren Zevon's. 

I also see the influence of stability and inertia in the lack of democratic commotion in China and Singapore. More education and more affluence will not necessarily create a Lenin or a Mao. Democracy has separated from capitalism; the two are not identical or complimentary. Someone with more time and resources should go over Marx and de Tocqueville and detail where their predictions went wrong.

I have always held America's financial position in the world will cause other countries to do everything to avoid a revolution here. A revolution turning our economy into a crater would take the rest of the world with it. If any revolution were to occur here in my lifetime, I would bet on an effective worldwide economic regulatory body. Think of it: Georg W. Bush as father of real world government.

[I am far less sanguine now looking out at China and Russia and Iran. sch 11/8/2023.]

Back to de Tocqueville, I suggest reading this chapter and then go back to his chapter on ambition. I think he misses Bonaparte; that his is a Romantic idea of revolution.

...It is believed by some that modern society will be ever changing its aspect; for myself, I fear that it will ultimately be too invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices, the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and circumscribed; that the mind will swing backwards and forwards forever, without begetting fresh ideas; that man will waste his strength in bootless and solitary trifling; and, though in continual motion, that humanity will cease to advance.

Chapter XXI: Why Great Revolutions Will Become More Rare

Maybe de Tocqueville knew we would all be hamsters on a wheel, but I believe that when we know about the wheel, we can get off of it. I think this is the same theme Albert Camus wrote about in The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel. I see the same thing in my recollection of Joseph Heller's Something Happened. 

I gave up trying. I wanted only to be swallowed up by the earth. I think there are people out there wanting to be more than an economic cog, who believe there can be found a solution to the inhumanity of American lives.

sch