My Review of Dan Edelstein's "The Revolution to Come: A History of the Idea from Thucydides to Lenin"

 To the Barricades

 

Stanford Professor Dan Edelstein has written a very academic intellectual history of the idea of political revolutions. To the ancients up to the time of the French Revolution the whole idea of revolution was disturbing. It meant a useless cycle of destruction as society moved from tyrannical to mob rule with nothing being accomplished.

 

From Professor Edelstein I learned of Polybius a Greek historian writing in the time of the Roman Republic. Polybius endorsed the idea of a “balanced constitution” that distributed executive, legislative and judicial power, sounds familiar. His writings greatly influenced the founders of the American republic. Edelstein views the American Revolution as “radical conservatism” designed to “preserve the state.” This produced the American constitution which to the frustration of the extreme right and the extreme left forces policies into the center.

 

All of this changed with the French Revolution where the idea of progress took hold. The belief in progress meant that a revolution could bring about a glorious future and instead of having a balanced constitution it excused dictatorship in the hope that it would bring about a better world to come. To Edelstein, dictatorship was not an exception, but rather a feature of modern revolutions. Starting with Napoleon in 1799, to the Latin American caudillos of the early 1800’s, to Lenin, Mao, and Khomeini.

 

This is a hard book for the lay reader, but for those interested in the idea of revolution it is well worth slogging through.