[A] lot of work on revolutions is just regurgitation of the American and french, both of which tell us little. And most is meaningless today.
For some background I would recommend these:
- Goldstone’s Short Introduction
- Goldstone’s Revolutions
- Brinton’s Anatomy of Revolution
- The IRA Handbook
- Search google for “revolutionary handbook” (most are there)
- Poole’s Tactics of the Crescent Moon
- Creveld’s The Culture of War
Culture is important because what you think is winning is what you feel is winning and what you feel is winning is a cultural norm NOT a truth.
One response to “Books on Revolutions”
I’m a wee bit cautious about revolutions. We wish to replace an incompetent, untruthful, and corrupt elite with a benevolent aristocracy, transparency, and rule of law. How do we make certain that we do not get a peasant’s revolt like the one in Cuba in which property is simply confiscated and the new boss is worse than the old boss? If “Kill the Kulaks!” becomes a rallying cry, I wonder if I might be considered one of the Kulaks rather than one of the peasants? Whom shall we choose to rule us? I was driving to work this morning when it occurred to me that ebay is a fairly decent governing body. Philosophy is a branch of mathematics, therefore governance is a branch of engineering. One must consider all of the feedback loops in a system and evaluate the stability of the system to set up a capable governing structure. Ebay is most profitable when it enforces truth telling in all transactions. Of course ebay is not sovereign and ebay will not hang you in the public square for selling stolen motorcycle parts–it simply kicks you out. What if ebay were sovereign? It seems like silly larping, but we could do worse than rule by ebay. Who shall enforce the law after the revolution?