Introduction

IN THIS CHAPTER I intend to challenge the usual interpretation of the ‘Kun regime’ (Seton-Watson and Seton-Watson 1981: 365) as merely an import of the Leninist model to Hungary, and Kun himself, as, in Robert Seton-Watson's words, ‘Lenin's Magyar lieutenant’ (ibid.: 354). That view neglects the regime's inner social basis, its intellectual foundations and the rather wide social support which undoubtedly existed at the beginning of the Soviet Republic, even though it had diminished and then disappeared by the end. The proletarian dictatorship was not just Béla Kun's regime: its basis and its matter, so to speak, was social democracy, and a handful of Communists tried to give form to this matter. The Bolsheviks themselves regarded the Soviet Republic as an unhappily mixed form of government, Communist and socialist.

The consideration of the 1918 bourgeois revolution, led by Count Mihály Károlyi, and the 1919 proletarian one as two phases of one single revolutionary process may be helpful to the proper evaluation of the role played by the Social Democrats in these events. Afraid as Hungarian intellectuals were of unleashing the unknown forces of revolution, they could not get away from the idea that the events were following (and would follow) the inherent logic of the 1789 French revolution. Károlyi's retrospective account is typical on this point. In a speech delivered to parliament in February 1918, he voiced his growing fear of revolutions in Hungary and around the world (Hajdu 1958: 28). After the so-called ‘chrysanthemum revolution’ at the end of the war, he doubted that the way he had assumed power could be interpreted at all as a revolution. On the other hand, he painted a revolutionary portrait of his peers, describing the Social Democratic leader Zsigmond Kunfi as Danton and the Lower House president and clergyman János Hock as the abbot Sieyes – so that the arrival of Tibor Szamuely as a Bolshevik Saint-Just, accompanied by a terrorist squad, was perfectly in tune with Károlyi's ideas and fears (Károlyi 1982: 153, 170, 186). Social Democrats shared Károlyi's views on the escalating revolutions. On 8 January 1919, during a meeting of the workers’ council, the socialist leader Sándor Garbai proposed the establishment of a pure socialist government.

ATTEMPTS TO DECLARE an end to the era of revolutions have proved as futile as the efforts to develop a consensual model for their study. Unexpected turns of history have brought revolutionary phenomena back to attention and, at the same time, have raised fundamental questions about definitions and demarcations in the field. That applies, in very different ways, to the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the collapse of Eastern European Communist regimes a decade later. In both cases, aspects indicative of a properly revolutionary dynamic (such as the exceptionally high level of popular mobilisation in Iran, or the liquidation of an entire ideological, political and economic order in Eastern Europe) seemed to combine with more disconcerting features (hierocratic politics in Iran, proposed adaptation to an older and globally dominant order in Eastern Europe). More recent developments have also underlined how far the mythologisation of revolution can outrun real history. The changes brought about by the ‘Arab Spring’, at first grossly exaggerated by Western liberals and radicals alike, now appear very insignificant. Only two cases can at all be claimed as evidence. In Tunisia, a fragile parliamentary regime still faces unsettled questions about the place of Islam in political life; as for the upheaval in Egypt, where the military state seems to have survived and given its main rivals just enough time to stalemate themselves, the only question is whether we want to describe the whole process as abortive or illusory. Another example is the imagery of ‘colour revolutions’ in post-Soviet states. The events in question did not amount to more than skirmishes within the ranks of unstable power elites, and the main reason for mythologising them is that it helps to justify a revival of cold war politics. But such vicissitudes may also serve to remind us of further sides to the problematic of revolutions. The revolutionary imaginary is a significant part of the story, and not only because of its impact on revolutionary processes; its disembodied offshoots include sectarian subcultures and quixotic adventures as well as geopolitical masquerades of the kind just mentioned.

The following discussion does not aim at a broad overview of current debates. Its main purpose is to highlight some basic points of dispute in the historical and sociological research on revolutions;…

PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL Revolutions and/or transformations belong to the classical agenda of social inquiry, as well as to the most prominent real and potential challenges encountered by contemporary societies. Among revolutionary events of the last decades, particular attention has been drawn to the changes that unfolded at the turn of the 1990s and brought the supposedly bipolar (in fact incipiently multipolar) world to an end. The downfall of East Central European Communist regimes in 1989 and of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the beginning of a new era, originally characterised on the one hand by the relaxation of international tensions and on the other by the ascendancy of Western unilateralism.

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Soviet collapse prompts the authors of this book to reflect on revolutions and transformations, both from a long-term historical perspective and with regard to the post-Communist scene. The social changes unfolding in Eastern and Central Europe are not only epoch-making historical turns; their economic, social and political aspects, often confusing and unexpected, have also raised new questions and triggered debates about fundamental theoretical issues. Moreover, they have had a significant impact on developments elsewhere in the world, in both Western and developing countries.

In another context, military actions of the United States after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 have also had a major and controversial impact on the global arena. More recently, the economic crisis that began in 2007–8 can be seen as a historical watershed; it caused a series of breakdowns and provoked demands for social and political transformation, so far unfulfilled. The wave of protests and mostly abortive revolutions, known to optimists as the Arab Spring, is certainly not unconnected to crisis dynamics in the centres of the world economy, but it also reflects regional trends of a specific kind. Finally, internal and external transformations linked to the rise of new powers (such as the BRICS group, to which we could add Turkey, Indonesia and Mexico, and possibly others) are altering the patterns of international and global relations.

All these processes have unfolded within the framework of unchallenged global capitalism, whose reproduction on an expanding scale involved multiple economic, political, ecological and civilisational transformations.

KELLER: WERE REVOLUTIONS only a passing fad? Prior to the beginning of modernity, it was impossible to speak of revolutions in the true sense of the word. What if modernity has changed so much that the concept of revolution is again becoming meaningless?

Dvořáková: I have often asked myself the same question. Revolution introduces radical change and dismantles certain barriers blocking the way forward, and yet the system is always newly institutionalised in one form or another (and sometimes completely contrary to the goal and values of the change that has been heralded). The question is whether there is still room for ‘reform’ within the framework of a particular system. I would say that there is. The liberal democracy and social market economy we have created are, if anything, a caricature. Root-and-branch change is essential, if only so that further (revolutionary?) changes in society are not based on caricature, but are derived from the pursuit of fundamental values and goals.

Hrubec: Classic modernity can definitely claim a monopoly on the concept of revolution in the strict sense. Ever since Copernicus, we have had a modern notion of substantial change, which has come to be characterised by the word ‘revolution’. Socially and politically, this change needs to involve a mass movement or a popular or civic insurrection in the way we associate with the French, American or Russian revolutions. One of the preconditions, then, is mass society, but in the West – not least in our own peripherally Western country – this has become fragmented and splintered in recent decades. We can add to that the institutionalisation of crises, resulting in frequently less dramatic, but bureaucratically more regulated and longer-term propensities for crisis than in the past. In this sense, it is true that, in some societies, this precondition for modern social and political revolutions to be feasible has faded somewhat.

Nevertheless, the pre-modern stages of human history had their own functional equivalent of revolution in a broader sense, in practice and in theory, in Western societies at least from the time of ancient Greece. The point is that revolution is associated with radical change which, as a rule, is not only quick, but also often violent and unconstitutional.

STRONG PERCEPTIONS OF crises have been in the making since the 1970s. The plurality of crises results from dynamic transformations of politico-economic, societal and environmental conditions. Numerous highly problematical consequences of the transformations are produced and reproduced. The crisis of industrial civilisation, related to both social and environmental limits, can be illustrated by a critical analysis of empirical phenomena reflecting the ‘creative destruction’ brought about by the ‘capitalist perestroika’ over the last forty or so years. Policies adapting to these crises decisively shaped the ‘neoliberal turn’ of Western societies, responding to economic, social and technological changes in ambiguous ways: they combine deregulation with new modes of control and certain civilising efforts. In this context, the global expansion of ostensibly free-market capitalism, accompanied by relocations of industries and new directions of technological innovation, has played a key role; to put it another way, the present configuration of capitalism is both conducive to crises of social and environmental reproduction and able to frame responses to them. This configuration affects global civilisational dynamics, now headed either towards further degradation of humanity and the planet or to the generation of something new. To radicalise the issue, the question is whether a revolutionary transformation of both capitalism and civilisation could be on the horizon.

Transformations and risks in global civilisation

It is necessary not only to address the growing problems linked to social changes, but to do so with due regard to their increasingly global dimensions and repercussions. In the late 1960s, the Czech philosopher and sociologist Radovan Richta and his research team formulated an analysis of social and human aspects of the technological and scientific revolution with particular emphasis on its social and human dimensions. Their famous book Civilisation at the Crossroads (the most widely translated Czech publication in the social sciences) was an exemplary case of civilisational analysis, in some ways anticipating the crisis atmosphere in the 1970s (Richta 1967). They were writing about ‘civilisation at the crossroads’ in light of a new transformation of productive forces, based on scientific discoveries and leading, as they argued, to a scientification of society. Almost half a century later, we can still link up with their attempt to locate social transformations and possible alternatives within a global civilisational context, and to grasp the cognitive and technological basis of the latter.

Problems of economic and political transition

CHINA'S SOCIALIST ECONOMIC reform began in 1978. Its history can be divided into three stages. The first lasted from 1978 to 1992, and was mainly characterised by the introduction of a system of contract responsibility system, as well as the use of monetary incentives. The second can be dated from 1992 to 2001; its chief characteristic was the introduction of a market system, regulating the productive activity of enterprises through market information. The third stage began in 2001, and is still in progress; its defining feature was the joining of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and a more general linking up with the trends of globalisation. The logic of China's socialist economic reform necessitated the move from the first to the second stage, that is the replacement of hierarchic central planning by central planning combined with the market. At the same time the principle of allocation has been changed from allocation according to contribution to a combination of this rule with allocation on the basis of inputs to production (including capital). In connection with these two changes, the problem of social security has become more acute.

The transformation of productive ownership

The problem of public ownership was already apparent at the first stage of the reform, and as soon as the new system of contract responsibility was set up, the problem of property rights arose both in rural and urban areas. After the beginning of the second stage, that is from 1992 onwards, China's economic development was faster than in the first stage due to the activation of markets; however, the market system caused serious difficulties for public property (that is, the state-owned and collective-owned enterprises); simple monetary incentives, which could serve as lubricants for the first stage of reform, did not work, or even thwarted their original purpose in the second stage. Monetary incentive motivation, combined with contract responsibility, is limited by unclear property rights.

In rural areas, where property rights to land belong to collectives, family contract responsibility has – in some contexts and in different areas – been slowly replaced by sub-contract procedures and concentrated in the hands of a few families. This is one way for peasants to deal with collective property rights and the limits they impose on contract.

Introduction

THE YEAR 2014 was an especially turbulent one on the Indian political scene. From the Aam Aadmi Party's forty-nine-day rule in the Delhi State Assembly to the landslide victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the general elections in May, routines of the political system have been broken and its patterns overturned. By capturing the public imagination and creating a new voting bloc, the Hindu nationalist BJP managed to become the first political party since 1984 to secure a clear parliamentary majority with 31 per cent of the vote and 282 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. Ideologically, the success of the BJP is even more important: it marks the end of Nehruvian secularism and socialism as the founding principles of an independent democratic India, and their replacement with the more exclusive concepts of cultural nationalism and economic neoliberalism.

The aim of this chapter is not to analyse the immediate causes of the BJP's electoral success, but rather to explore the conditions which enabled Narendra Modi to grab power in such a triumphant way. Can we interpret his achievement not only as a victory of a well-elaborated political campaign but also as a result of deeper transformational processes in Indian society which have taken place during the last two decades? In this chapter we shall explore the mutually reinforcing processes of economic neoliberalisation, cultural nationalism and low-caste assertion which occurred in Indian politics in the early 1990s. Although none of them has brought a true revolutionary change in organisational structures, could we consider them as a trigger of the rearrangement of Indian polity and society, crowned by the recent electoral successes of Narendra Modi's BJP? Is it even possible to perceive these processes through the lens of the Gramscian concept of passive revolution, declared inapplicable by Sudipta Kaviraj in his classic essay almost thirty years ago?

Multiple revolutions

Since independence, India has gone through several transformational processes which have altered the social order in truly revolutionary ways and have been described in various terms in Indian historiography. Green revolution is the first of these, referring to the changes that took place in Indian agriculture during the 1960s.

Brazil: a recent and weak democracy

IN BRAZIL, POLITICAL participation is a recent phenomenon, overcoming a long tradition of apathy among the population with regard to politics. Although a National Health Council was created in 1930 and some national conferences on specific issues, in which citizens participated directly, had been held since 1941, these were local experiences, with sporadic activities and few people involved. In the late 1970s, still under the military dictatorship (1964–85), social movements and some organisations like churches and professional bodies began to demand what they called a ‘right to participate’ in the control of the state and the decision-making processes of public policy. Although their demand was unsuccessful at that time, popular councils were created in some cities. These experiences of voluntary participation were generally parallel, external and opposed to state agencies. In many segments of society, however, there was a growing desire to have more voice and influence in public affairs, even if the concepts were very different about how this right would be implemented.

A landmark for these aspirations was a national health conference that took place in 1986, soon after the return to democracy. It emphatically recommended the creation of a national health assistance system, with the direct participation of government agents, health care professionals and users of the new system. The implementation of this recommendation was the embryo of a new participation space called the public policy council. The Federal Constitution from 1988 created many different instruments to involve stakeholders directly in the formulation and management of specific policies by foreseeing direct participation in them. It paved the way for claims of power-sharing in many different areas, totalling around thirty articles that encouraged experiments in participatory public management. In addition to these policy councils, conferences continued to be held, and in 2001 mandatory participation in the masterplans of cities, expanding the formal channels of participation, was introduced.

Probably the best known mode of participation is participatory budgeting. It was first implemented in Porto Alegre in 1990 and quickly expanded to involve around 170 cities in Brazil (Ribeiro Torres and Grazia 2003). Although it is often associated with the Workers’ Party, participatory budgeting was implemented by local governments from various political currents.

CAPITALISM HAS UNDERGONE a number of important transformations and challenges. Wars, depression and imperialism created the socialist revolutions of the twentieth century. But within the West, capitalism responded to these problems with Keynesian solutions, creating an expanded social contract and growing middle class. Perhaps with the fall of the Soviet Union capitalism became drunk with victory. But alongside its triumphalism, capitalism was reaching its own limits of expansion within the Keynesian model. Without an external threat, capitalism was free to focus on the wage structures and social benefits that restricted corporate profitability. The middle class had reached their limits and the working class had overreached theirs. Neoliberalism, led by financialisation, transformed capitalism into an updated model of its pre-Keynesian existence. Austerity, the export of jobs, privatisation and attacks on unions overwhelmed the working class.

The Washington Consensus was not just about the United States. In reality it was a capitalist consensus developed as an economic and political strategy by the emerging transnational capitalist class (TCC) (Sklair 2001; Robinson 2004; Harris 2008). Capitalism was rapidly transforming from a nation-centric system into a global structure of accumulation and power. Austerity in the developed North and structural adjustment programmes in the developing South resulted from a break with industrial-era national capitalism by a hegemonic TCC.

The democratic dialectic

The bourgeois democratic revolutions in the US and France were based on a revolutionary alliance between the capitalist class, craftsmen, workers, farmers and peasants. This created a historic dialectic that encompassed a contradictory and tension-filled relationship, but that nevertheless allowed for the incorporation of popular demands into capitalist society. As a result the working-class opposition has always existed inside the capitalist dialectic to produce democratic outcomes. These movements took shape not only inside the factories, but also as social movements that have encompassed the demands of women, minorities and other identities.

Antonio Gramsci's theory on hegemony best explained the twin aspects of consent and coercion that have characterised bourgeois rule. While force and violence was always present, consensus was the main tool of more developed capitalist societies (Gramsci 1971). This contradiction, built into the very origins of political institutional structures, produced the flexibility that allowed capitalism to adopt and continue to evolve.

THE CONFLICTS AND revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East during the last few years have multiple causes; among the main but not always most visible ones, we can surely list excessive use of resources, environmental limits to population growth and consumption, and the resultant long-term inability of these countries to supply their inhabitants with food and drinking water from domestic reserves. Egypt, the world's top wheat importer, is an obvious case in point.

According to Terazono and Saleh (2013: 2), the Egyptian government had to back down in 1977 when riots broke out following a rise in the prices of staple foodstuffs, and since then food subsidies have been a sensitive issue. When the food crisis of 2007–8 made wheat more expensive than ever, many families had to rely on subsidised bread, and army bakeries helped to maintain supply.

The situation worsened in 2010 when, due to the drought and extensive burning of cornfields, Russia banned the export of wheat in order to reserve its supply for its own inhabitants. Wheat prices – and consequently the price of staple food items – increased to such an extent that riots broke out not only in Egypt (Palazzo 2014) but also in other North African countries reliant on its import. These riots destabilised the whole region and in many areas grew into a real Hobbesian war of all against all. The subsequent regime change in Egypt has not improved the situation. The liberalisation of the political system worked in favour of fundamentalists whose leader became the first democratically elected president of Egypt. However, this provoked resistance from the secular opposition supported by the army and so in 2013 the military regime in the country was restored. We might talk, then, of one revolution in 2011 and another in 2013, although the latter could be considered as a counter- revolution (Beránek 2013). The production and sale of oil, which has been the source of foreign currency for the purchase of wheat, is decreasing; therefore, the riots continue. Since 2010, Egypt has spent most of its foreign reserves on importing wheat, which it has not been able to grow because of the lack of suitable farmland and water for irrigation.

Perhaps nothing seems clearer to us and more pervasive in our lives than ethics. We live constantly with a sense of our obligations and duties, and with whether we have failed or succeeded in living up to them; and it is generally not considered bad form to remind others of their own. We are taught from our earliest ages that it is important that we “be good” or “do the right thing.” Unlike some concepts that can be difficult to understand, ethical norms seem to be readily cognizable. Indeed, we believe they need to be of such a form that virtually anyone can follow them. Of course, at the same time that we recognize how pervasive ethics is in our lives, we also recognize that there are many complicated ethical questions that do not seem to lend themselves to easy answers. Yet, for all the potential difficulty in finding some answers, we seem readily able to comprehend the nature of those difficulties in a way that would not be true of, say, a problem in theoretical physics. And although we at least sense that complicated ethical theories may occupy the time of philosophers, we also believe that philosophers are considering matters we generally understand, and which are not themselves simply products of the philosophers’ own reflections. Ethics is something real for us all, not a theoretical construct. It would still be of concern to us even if ethical theorists did not exist.

Whatever else might be said about ethics, then, its universality is palpable. We have phrased this last sentence carefully. We are saying that ethics is of concern to all of us—not that it should be, or that the world is a better place when it is, but that it is in fact of concern to all of us. The first question, therefore—and, we would venture to say, the last, as well—is simply: What is it about which we are so concerned?