Book Review: You Say You Want a Revolution? Radical Idealism and Its Tragic Consequence by Daniel Chirot

To discern the dynamics of major revolutions and to answer why revolutions led to pure conflicts, the author traces the grassroots in the appalling nature of most revolutionary outbreaks over the last centuries. Daniel Chirot, in You Say You Want a Revolution, offers a cogent analysis of how political elites react to institutional crisis in revolutionary contexts, leading to a new form of extremisms and conflicts. This offers a critical analysis of major revolutionary outbreaks in light of terror, chaos, and war in most case studies. Chirot presents a detailed depiction of consequential revolutionary outbreaks starting from the French revolution of 1789 as the iconic representation of a modern violent revolution to Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik and also the Chinese and Iranian revolutions. Notwithstanding the ideological differences of most revolutions, he picks on various points of similarity between French, Soviet-Marxist Leninist revolution and most contemporary uprisings to highlight what he claims is the inevitable demise of idealistic utopias in the midst of revolutionary movements.

Initially highlighting the way that revolutionary impulses are both ‘internally’ and ‘externally’ triggered, the author in the initial chapters introduces four acts of ‘revolutionary tragedies’ to answer how repressive extremism advances in lieu of peaceful revolutionary outcomes. To Chirot, revolutions take place as the major decision makers miserably fail to tackle political quandaries, preparing the stage for inexperienced elites to seize absolute power. Second, as revolutions precede, counterrevolutionary impulses result in civil war and domestic contentions. This encourages authorities to uphold more ruthless repression to sustain their power sources. Furthermore, Chirot claims, revolutionary idealism leads leaders to adhere to ‘unworkable ideas’ through the established repressive apparatuses to urge people to pursue their unpragmatic plans. Finally, revolutionary tragedies are followed by revolutionaries’ rigid and idealistic doctrines which would roughly tolerate any opposite voices (p. 9–10).

After examining the innumerable evidence, juxtaposing the catastrophe reminiscent of most revolutions in light of extremism, idealism and corruption, Chirot attempts to scrutinize the origin and outcome of revolutions respectively in two main categories. First, the continuous persistence of stubborn autocracies or the lack of incentives in elites for piecemeal reforms in social and political institutions. Second, the demise of liberal and moderate forces in response to the rise of extremist voices after the revolutions. To run his cohort analysis, highlighting the failure of liberal demands for reform and the rise of civil war and foreign intervention during the structural changes, he exposes that the radical revolutionaries are roughly controllable by domestic moderate forces. Since the extremist figures stick to bloody and radical manoeuvrings, not only through repressive acts, but also by threat of counterrevolution, so as to solidify their power in the system (p. 35). He proceeds by inquiring why revolutions are most often followed by the surge and then collapse of more moderate forces. In France (1789), as an illustration, reformists (1789–1791) were ostensibly muted as moderate enlightenment liberalists disintegrated and church inflamed division among civilians. Likewise, in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II in face of the Bolsheviks in 1917 failed to seize and maintain the powerful institutions. Therefore, the author finds more similarities than differences in comparing the nature of revolutions in suffocating the antirevolutionary voices and liberal reformists for justifying bloody sacrifices under the pretext of idealism and extreme nationalism in most revolutions (p. 117).

To Chirot, revolutions are anti-institutional and anti-reformist. Thereby, the post-revolutionary demands for reformism and idealism largely degenerate in corruption and coups. To corroborate these stances, the author indicates that the total decadence of post-revolutionary utopian mirage, would later justify ‘corrupt autocracies’ and ‘one-party’ totalitarianism (p. 107). Hence, he encapsulates the essence of the book, where he mentions that while the revolutionary aspiration in Russia and France led to autocracy, hyperinflation, and crude nationalism; conversely, in Britain, which Chirot views favourably, elites could safely shift an agrarian society into an urban state and gently articulated their latent revolutionary aspirations to moderate and civilized social demands. For him, the key for sustainable political changes lie in five aspects: respecting individuals’ rights, promoting democratic capacities to tackle significant dilemmas, enhancing the capacity of the market economy, invigorating educational and knowledge based sites, and ultimately, encouraging reforms in light of traditional institutions to sustain solidarity and respect (p. 125–128).

Thus, the author discusses extensively the harrowing outcomes of revolutionary outbreaks in the form of one-party dictatorship, and bureaucratic and elite corruption. However, Chirot overlooks a range of discussions on the origin of revolutions and the demand for social recognition, as well as their root in social conflict. Nevertheless, the author provides a comparative analysis that considers a good range of case studies of revolutions that will be of interest to readers even if they do not accept the entirety of Chirot’s thesis.