Anderson: How Can a Revolution be Successful?

In a recent essay,* Perry Anderson describes the different ways in which a political revolution can be successful. First, he adopts the definition of a state provided by Weber as the exercise of a monopoly of legitimate violence over a specified territory. Second, he then indicates the various ways in which one of those conditions can be broken and, hence, a revolution be said to have been successful.

The first way is for revolutionaries somehow to destroy the legitimacy of the rule of the existing regime so that no resistance is offered. Anderson offers as an example of this the Iranian Revolution that saw the end of the regime of the Shah. The level of discontent with the regime was so great that the army remained in the barracks when the people took to the streets because they saw no reason to provide support.

The second way is to break the existing state’s monopoly of violence and to destroy its legitimacy thereby. This works much more effectively if the coup or revolution is able to work quickly and the exchange of power takes place so swiftly that outside intervention is not possible. In the past, external intervention took quite some time to come into being and so the pace of change could be comparatively leisurely. Today, as the attempt to oust Hugo Chavez in Venezuela shows (but not the counter-example of Honduras), massive and immediate media attention can sometimes reverse the violent acts of a minority interest. The removal of the last Chinese Emperor or the 1932 Revolution in Siam that brought down the Absolute Monarchy are additional examples of this type of change.

The third form of revolution is to challenge the territorial integrity of the state. This may be classified as a Maoist strategy: the revolutionaries take over tracts of territory, with the consent of the population or at least the majority of the population, and then erect a parallel state with its own laws, norms and claims to legitimacy. The legitimacy provided by recognition by the outside world is crucial in determining the success of the revolution. For example, several ethnic minority groups in Burma (Myanmar) have established their own parallel states and with force hold off the Burmese army. People within these territories live as if they were part of a free or at least autonomous state away from the hated Burmese domination. Yet no outside power, neither China nor the USA, is willing to recognize such states since it might lead to outright civil war and large numbers of deaths, in addition to other political reasons. Until that happens, those revolutions will not be considered successful.

Anderson, Perry, “Two Revolutions,” New Left Review, No.61 (January-February, 2010), pp.59-96.