The word ‘revolution’ enjoys a special place in our political vocabulary. It is associated with events that shaped the modern world – the English Revolution of the mid-17th century, the French Revolution of 1789, the revolutions of 1848, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Chinese Revolution beginning in 1927. In each of these, the word refers to a sudden transformation. Above all, it signifies a radical change of regime – most commonly involving a shift from monarchy to republic. But if the word ‘revolution’ is often used in this specific sense, it has not always been confined to this single register of meaning. Two important new works both argue this case. Both exhibit impressive range and subtlety. 

Dan Edelstein’s The Revolution to Come takes us from periods of upheaval (stasis) in ancient Greece through the French and Russian Revolutions, pointing to a dramatic shift in the understanding of revolutionary change that emerged in the 18th century. Originally denoting a destructive breakdown, the word came to stand for abundant promise. According to Edelstein, this change captures a defining difference between ancient and modern politics. From Thucydides to Machiavelli, the state was a means of preserving the common good against the threat of civil implosion. However, by the late 18th century (in the writings of the Marquis of Condorcet, for example), revolution pledged perfection in the future.

Besides political change, revolution also came to mean economic and social transformation. The ‘Industrial Revolution’ is probably the most obvious case in point. The ‘Financial Revolution’ is another, less notorious instance. But equally, many political revolutions brought with them social and economic change. Constitutional revolution in 17th-century England was paired with extensive religious conflict. The Russian Revolution likewise involved more than a change in the form of government; it transfigured the structure of society and the management of the economy. Indeed, as Donald Sassoon is at pains to point out in Revolutions, Marxist revolution intended to achieve comprehensive socioeconomic reconstruction.

Both Sassoon and Edelstein emphasise the optimism of revolution. Both also underline the scale of disappointment. They arrive at this position from different starting points. Sassoon is the leading chronicler of the history of socialism, with a string of major studies in European history, covering topics as diverse as communism, capitalism, fascism and the ‘culture’ industry. In the 1990s, Eric Hobsbawm anointed him his sole legitimate heir. Like Hobsbawm, Sassoon is a cosmopolitan bourgeois intellectual, polylingual and deeply cultured, though unlike Hobsbawm he is a product of the 1960s, not the 1930s. However, despite this massive difference in formation, Sassoon shares with Hobsbawm a paradoxical trait: although historically a committed partisan of the Left, Sassoon mercilessly exposes the shortcomings of his own tribe.

Edelstein, by comparison, is a liberal sceptic, immune to the temptations of the revolutionary Left. The most inventive intellectual historian of the French Revolution of his generation, he is the author of brilliant studies on human rights, the Enlightenment and the Terror. Unlike Sassoon, he does not remember 1968 as a moment of possibility. On the contrary, he argues, it was the beginning of the end. Yet notwithstanding his roots in 1960s revolutionary socialism, Sassoon in fact converges on much the same viewpoint. The ‘age of revolutions’, he concedes, has come to a close.

Edelstein sets that summary judgement in an epic context. He begins his story with the revolutionary origins of the Peloponnesian War. It was mutual hostility within the Greek city-states that drove this inter-state conflagration. Famously, on Corcyra, domestic feuds reached fever pitch, leading to ‘a world turned upside down’. He quotes Thucydides, later translated by Thomas Hobbes: ‘There was no length to which violence did not go.’ As a consequence, Thucydides’s text, and later classical opinion, greeted the prospect of revolution with alarm. Constitutional change (metabolē) ought to be managed with a view to staving off disorder.

A central figure in Edelstein’s narrative is the Greek author Polybius, whose Histories charted the fortunes of the Roman Republic as it rose to greatness. Our term ‘revolution’ derives from his phrase for the cycle of constitutional change (anakuklōsis) in which one political system is succeeded by another in a process of perpetual metamorphosis: monarchy turns into tyranny, tyranny into democracy and so on, in an endless spiral. Revolution entered modern European languages via translations of this technical term. In the process, it acquired two distinct senses: on the one hand, it meant the succession of regimes, and on the other, the violent contestation driving periodic change.

In the Polybian tradition, which was still operating in the American colonies deep into the 18th century, the art of politics involved arranging the levers of power with the aim of securing the state against revolution. With the advent of 1789, however, this conception underwent abrupt alteration. Events in France raised expectations of a ‘transfigured future’, thus associating revolution with a golden age to come. According to Edelstein, this kind of hope was a product of Enlightenment ideas of progress. Among its most effective propagators were leading Enlightenment philosophes – including the abbé de Saint-Pierre, Voltaire, Turgot and Diderot.

These figures largely thought of revolution in terms of a process of ongoing cultural reform. Over time, they conjectured, societies would improve thanks to moral and intellectual advances. It was assumed that behaviour would bend towards justice as science strove for truth. However, as Edelstein notes, this expectation had polarising consequences: the ‘enemies of progress’ were accused of blocking forward momentum. After 1789, when revolution was again identified with deliberate intervention, this polarity was embodied in rival partisans of change: revolutionaries confronted counter-revolutionaries.

Edelstein argues that this confrontation bred the kinds of institutionalised violence characteristic of modern revolutions. In 1793 in France, and after 1917 in Russia, the state was used to prosecute a militant agenda for change that was hostile to rival visions of the future. The idea of ‘revolutionary government’ was born. It was further theorised by Marx and Lenin. Now the state was charged with speeding the passage to a better world while sacrificing immediate peace and prosperity. Officers of revolution waded through blood with the aim of securing long-term deliverance.

Sassoon is also alert to this aberrant logic, which for Edelstein is integral to modern revolution. For Sassoon, the engine of progress typically veers into a frenzy of destruction. Hopes of a watershed are dashed by the mounting cost of change. He cites the anti-revolutionary Jacques Mallet du Pan’s famous observation that, ‘like Saturn, the revolution devours its children’ – revolutions are basically counter-purposive. Yet Sassoon is also aware of the intricacies any such judgement must involve. A setback in the short term might lead to benefits in the longer run. Equally, choices can be counterproductive in a variety of ways.

Sassoon recalls Hannah Arendt’s remark: ‘To our sorrow … freedom has been better preserved in countries where no revolution ever broke out.’ The suggestion is that revolution is only ever a malevolent detour. This, however, depends on the timeframe within which an assessment is carried out. From the perspective of 1660, the English Revolution was futile: a deposed monarchical government was restored. On the other hand, looked at from the vantage point of 1688, it could be deemed a success: a parliamentary system was entrenched. Sometimes revolutions deliver a second-best result: although Leninism never evolved into genuine socialism, it did industrialise a hitherto agrarian Russia.

Given these complex considerations, the historian of revolution is obliged to develop an appropriate temporal horizon within which to evaluate the dynamics of change. Sassoon decides that Fernand Braudel’s longue durée will not do, because revolutions need to be studied in measurable increments. Equally, consequences need to be weighed up over decades rather than years, since outcomes are only revealed in the fullness of time. Sassoon therefore endorses an intermediate perspective in which a period of up to half a century might be relevant, but not a number of epochs strung together.

Applied to England, the United States and France, this outlook shows that success came in the end. In the aftermath of revolution, each of these countries settled down into durable stability while progressively liberalising their regimes. Similarly, over the long term, China lifted millions out of poverty, settling for socialism with ‘Chinese characteristics’. It is true that an authoritarian government presiding over a market economy is remote from the original Maoist project. But it is also hard to argue that China should reverse its course. Two steps forwards with one step backwards still counts in the eyes of history as an advance.

Nonetheless, Sassoon is inclined to argue that the effort was not ultimately worth the price: progress can just as well be achieved without catastrophic losses. To illustrate his point he contrasts the smooth history of Japan with the wayward path pursued by Russia. Sassoon’s book is haunted by the aftermath of ‘really existing socialism’. A central part of his thesis is that the Soviet programme of government failed, leaving capitalism standing.

This brings Sassoon to his final question: has capitalism proved itself to be ‘immovable’? He concludes, with Marx, that there is nothing constant under this form of economic life, that it is ‘constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society’. However, as Sassoon knows, recognising that capitalism is forever changing does not imply that it’s going to disappear.