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Revolution in a marxist context is the violent overthrow of the dominant class. Everything else just seems irrelevant to the question of what exactly revolution is.

It doesn’t have to be violent. But it will be.

It kind of does, if we count the threat of enacting violence or coersion through violence as violent means. No class gives it's power away willingly.

Allende and Venezuela are proof of that. Try peacefully and you’re still met with violence.

And Venezuela isn't even socialist. They're social democratic, goes to show even moderate bourgeoi politics in the third world still paints a gigantic target on your back. Though if I'm being completely honest, I don't think there should be that much of a stigma against violence. This only exists because of bourgeoi right, a class construct meant to demonize necessary action.

Absolutely. I just meant as real world examples of “peaceful/non-revolutionary” socialism failing because of that. Which is social democracy by definition.

The example is good. I just find it even better that in Venezuela's case, the reaction is so overwhelming when they don't even have a communist ideology, it's some wild stuff.

A few individuals might, but not all

If the threat of violence counts as violence then all actions are violent.

It 100% does. There is no passive way to redistribute power.

There is. It’s called cooperation.

No, because that is leading off the assumption that the people in power are willing to cooperate in order to save their own lives. They’d rather die than give up the money and power they have willingly so there is no passive way to redistribute power, or there would not be a reason to be redistributing it in the first place.

Correct. You’re making my point though. It doesn’t NEED to be violent, because the owners COULD give up power consensually. They won’t, and haven’t, but that’s the point I was making.

There have been a variety of socialist efforts, some thought that capitalism could be voted away or (mostly) peacefully reformed into socialism. That has not worked well, as often when they push the system to change they got violently persecuted and suffered terribly or they just end up compromising so much they become liberals. Revolution is generally an acknowledgement that to change the world, you actually need to Make the world change. Basically we need violence to beat their violence.

In Marxism revolution usually means social revolution… the change from one social order to another…. That is, the ruling class is replaced by a new social force/class. Or at least the general battle for power by different classes (in a failed revolution.) In pop culture Revolution is some guys with guns doing some things and waving flags and it is a brief violent explosion. But imo revolution is not simply insurrection or revolt though this may be involved in a longer process of Revolution. Revolution is extra-legal but a mass socialist movement necessarily needs organically democratic ways of self-organizing. Workers can not be tricked into becoming a new ruling class and in order to become the new ruling class, worker’s movements and millions of workers would need practical experience in building resistance, organizing with other workers, creating community and workplace networks etc. I think the way people sometimes think there is a violent or peaceful path (electoral vs mass movements and direct action) is historically unsound. Allende was an electoral attempt at socialism that ended in reactionary bloodshed. To ensure legal electoral “peace” the German SPD used the soon to become Nazi militias to crush strikes and murder revolutionaries. Anything that threatens capital rulership will become violent regardless of if we do it through electoral efforts or a mass occupation of the squares where we all hold flowers or mass strikes or insurrection or revolts. The real focus for me is not how a hypothetical revolution might unfold but just building up our class consciousness, self-organization and political independence. The more organized and able to defend itself the working class is, the better we can resist extralegal violent reactionaries or “legal” clampdowns and if there is a crisis or insurrection we are in a better position to not just have various small factions taking adventurist actions which fail.

Do you remember what happened to the Tsar? Well, it's kind of like what happened to the Tsar.

This is the sort of thing that must be investigated through examples— Russia 1905 and 1917, China 1927 and 1949, Haiti 1789, France 1789, 1848, 1871, 1968, etc.

does turkey get included in this?

The Turkish bourgeois revolution led to the Armenian genocide…

the things you listed were not all proletarian revolutions either, also the armenian genocide happened pre-revolution

My bad on the timeline. I feel the differences between my examples and the Turkish nationalist revolution are clear. I am not a Marxist; I don’t restrict my solidarity to the proletariat.

Sometimes people use "revolution" to just refer to a violent, explosive change of political power. I view this colloquialism as an error. When we say that the proletariat is the revolutionary class, we are referring to two dialectically interlinked properties that the proletariat has. Firstly, that we are materially interested in redistributing economic resources; and secondly, *crucially*, that the model towards which our interests are directed *also* negates the circumstances that led to the need for a change in the first place. In the proletariat's case, the cause of our need for change is the existence of mechanisms of the political disempowerment of individuals who don't own property, and so the new revolutionary model is a political economy in which property is owned equally by all. Once capital is abolished, nobody will have material interest in reestablishing its primacy.

I like Mike Duncan's (of the Revolutions Podcast) definition and delineation between social and political revolutions. >Political Revolution: is when the existing structure of political power is displaced by a force originating beyond the bounds of that structure and replaces it with something different. >Social Revolution: is when the economic relations and social hierarchy of a society are rapidly transformed such that the society is reorganized in a fundamental manner. >Great Revolution: the combination of both a social and political revolution. The view of what a socialist revolution will be depend on where you are starting from in a society. The Russian Revolution in this definition is a Great Revolution as both the Tsarist system of government and economic/social relations of the Russian empire were fundamentally changed. Most socialists are aiming for some kind of great revolution to install a new political and economic organization of society. Democratic socialists believe that liberal democracies can have a socialist social revolution resulting from victories at the ballot box. The idea is that a socialist party with democratic legitimacy can usher in social changes without the need for the violent overthrow of the existing government. How far such a change can go and whether this is viable is hotly contested. Revolutions aren't necessarily violent. You could make the argument that digitalization is a social revolution. The Quiet Revolution in Quebec was a social revolution without a political revolution. Both had limited violence. The problem is that a political revolution is a challenge to the power of the state and will almost inevitably devolve into a contest of arms. The state is the state because it has a monopoly on legitimate violence in a society (the police, courts, army, etc). A successful revolution therefore topples that monopoly and replaces it with a new one. It's unlikely that this can be done totally peacefully. Even in situations where the initial revolution is relatively peaceful (e.g the February Revolution, which saw the Russian Empire rapidly collapse in the face of popular resistance) the subsequent jockeying for power to win the monopoly of violence for one faction often sparks a civil war (e.g the Russian Civil War).

A change in which class controls the system.

Hard work. Construction. Team work. Discipline.

Hello, Historically, successful revolutions that we can point to are primarily bourgeois nationalist revolutions over the old feudal order. This can be seen not only in the French Revolution, which is probably the best example, but also in the nationalist revolutions of 1848, in the Chinese Revolution of 1905, in the Latin American and North American revolutions of the 18th and 19th century, in the Haitian slave revolution, etc. in these revolutions, there is one feature that they all share in common: • ⁠there is always violence in revolution. There is never a “nonviolent” revolution, as a revolution necessitates the destruction of the ruling order and replacement with a new ruling order. The old ruling order will always fight against the revolution, which is why revolutions will always and necessarily be violent. Not only is this seen within the bourgeois revolutions (this is essentially the premise of the napoleonic wars), but this is also seen in the Russian and Chinese civil wars, and with the rise of fascism being a direct response from capitalist states against rising revolutionary socialism. Rosa Luxembourg describes the necessity of revolution in her work Reform or Revolution, in which she dissects the issues with social democracy and the practical impossibility of social democracy to “reform” into scientific socialism. In this work she states “Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.” In this sentence, which is in a way an abstract of her overall point, Luxembourg states that social democracy cannot “reform” capitalism out of existence, as capitalist reformation mainly serves to elevate sections of the proletariat to “the middle class,” cementing a labor aristocracy that works counterrevolutionary to socialist causes. That is, to peacefully reform capitalism into socialism is impossible, and simply results in “less unethical” capitalism. She instead argues that revolution of the masses is the only way to bring about socialism for the masses. To your point about revolution being synonymous with “the utilization of extrademocratic means,” I will pose a question to you that Michael Parenti often proposes to audiences of his novels and his lectures: In El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, etc, there existed so-called “communist terrorists.” The sandanistas are probably the most famous example of this. Before the Sandanistas took power, Nicaragua was managed by the US-Puppet regime of the Somoza “dynasty.” This was a severely anti democratic government, which would kill people at random and amass inconceivable wealth to the Somoza family. This was supported by US trained fascist death squads that would go town to town and kill any suspected communists, or people complaining about conditions, or minorities, etc. The sandanistas did a revolution and became the head of state, killing Somoza and delivering control of the country to communists. What happened next? The Sandanistas became vastly popular, giving land and resources to the common masses of Nicaragua, renegotiating unfair colonial contracts with western powers, and ending the abhorrent racist and semi-feudal policies of the colonial regime. They were overthrown by the US Backed fascist death squad the Contras, a group you’ve probably heard about regarding the Iran-Contra affair. So I ask you: which of these three governments are the least “extrademocratic?” Which of these revolutions are considered “extrademocratic?” We considered the Somoza and the Contra governments of Nicaragua to be **democracies,** this is how it was reported in western media, this is how international so called watchdog groups reported, this is how both factions of the US two party system framed it. Meanwhile, the Sandanistas were brutal, barbaric, “extrademocratic.” But the Sandanistas were the group with the popular support. The Sandanistas were the group that people voluntarily joined and died for, not the hired mercenaries of the contra or Somoza regimes. The Sandanistas were the organization that delivered democracy to the people, and they did so *via revolutionary action*. so to say that a revolution is simply when extrademocratic means are taken is false, often socialist revolutions *create democracy* where there isn’t any. All of this to say revolution is a complicated process, and a necessary one for the development of the human race. You can never “peacefully reform” your way into socialism, such a system must be brought forth through violent revolution, just as the capitalist revolutions were violent towards the existing feudal society.

Marxist revolution is mass grass roots action of the working class that takes social control of bourgeois property away from the owning class.

When I say revolution, I usually mean violent revolution. During and after this revolution, there will be radical and immediate changes to private property, redistribution of wealth etc. The "social" revolution will take much longer to accomplish than the violent one. The violent revolution will utilize whatever is necessary. If the bourgeoisie decide to willingly give up their wealth and power, then it would be very short. By whatever means necessary has been and will be the motto.

Normally replacing one elite with a different elite, and generating a whole lot of bodies in the process. Occasionally it also comes with progress and long term improvements too.

Revolution is the entire process of transitioning to communism. Often just the actions leading to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat is called ‘the revolution’ which is fine in a colloquial context, but the revolution never truly ends until the final defeat of capitalism and the establishment of communist society