The term ‘internationalism’ came about in 1860’s after Marx’s ‘First International’ and later on Marxism was ‘the heart of 20th century revolutions’. Paradoxically, although the idea of Revolution is international, it proclaimed the abolition of internationalism in the sense of differences between states and nations. For the Marxist tradition, the consequences of changes that revolutions cause, as well as the way that the international system facilitates that change is more significant, while revolutions in particular states have occurred at distinct moments, they have been produced by crises of International origin.
Reflecting back on the American and /French revolution and their relationship with international relations, it is a truism the fact that the link was obvious and coherent. The revolution in American ‘did not create the political structure of the United states, but it did gave a focus to the inchoate mixture of prejudice, philosophy and reflections upon experience’, which helped shape its later and contemporary policies and international affairs. The idea that ‘a state was legitimate to the extend that it was responsible to the needs and interests if its people, and the need for greater morality and democracy in the conduct of international affairs’ were established. Yet certain isolation from the international community and a struggle for higher security followed, leading to an effort for power over its competitors in the 20th century. This combined with its revolutionary origins, made the United States paradoxically an ‘unusual member of the international’ society as Armstrong believes.
The Revolution in France, although the element of nationalism was much greater that its international concern, it did ‘pose a fundamental challenge to international society’ by the way it was conducted and also the ideas and principle it reflected. Ideas and principles that in some extend threatened the international society and its foundations upon the ‘sovereign state’ principle that was established after the Westphalian system. Revolution in France helped to establish a new modern principal culture and also changed the tangible since then meaning of the metaphor ‘Revolution’; a far-reached example can be Burke’s Reflexions on the Revolution in France (1790), where he implied that by the new standards, ‘England’s ‘Glorious Revolution’ was not a revolution at all’. Amongst more, the revolutionaries, writers and spokesmen, in the rest of Europe were suggesting that a clear distinction between ‘peoples’ and their governments, should be made and claimed ‘that ‘peoples’ owed a higher loyalty to the revolution than their own government’. Moreover, the existing international law tended to be overlooked and appeals to the natural laws commenced. International legitimacy nevertheless, was not affected negatively from the revolution and the dominant-legitimate power remained on the monarchs, to be exercised rightfully and in accordance of general agreed principles.
At the same time, the revolution became able to employ all the means necessary for a total war, as it occurred in the lavée en masse of 1793, leading to some extend to the far-reached but arguable point of view, that the revolution represented a political structure and a legitimate body and authority by itself; an ‘equally clear-cut decision-making process’, that abolished the former structure of authority as Howard suggests, that could be perceived by foreign observers as ‘effective, stable, and cohesive’. It can be argued that, the more contemporary the examinations of revolutions in history, the more the concept of revolution affect the international system, but also the international system’s effect on the concept of revolution is witnessing respective growth. Also as the contemporary the revolution, the more ‘exported’ in terms of values and ideas it is. As Halliday points out, ‘the American and English revolutions did little to actively promote the revolution abroad’. By contrast, the French and the Russian revolutions that followed were in sense, committed to promote the revolutionary internationally and especially inside Europe. French revolutionaries tried to promote change abroad, and after ‘October 1917, the Bolshevik leadership was convinced that was both possible and obligatory for the revolutionary regime to do all it could to promote revolution on a world scale’.
Indeed the revolutions of 1917, and in particular the October revolution of Lenin’s Bolshevik, later Communist party, was exported and occurred that way, to have a significant effect on the international system. The revolution I Russia ‘owed its legitimacy and even raison d’ être to a doctrine represented the most systematic and comprehensive denial of the validity of all the basis tenets of the Westphalian structure’. However as the revolution progressed, Armstrong points out, that was ‘based on an ideology that represented itself as the antithesis of the state, and had take the concrete form of a state’. Coalescing the above with the replacement of authority in the French revolution, that was claimed in the earlier part of this essay, a logical link is formed, leading to the mere conclusion, that revolution, depended on the size and mobilisation of rebels, is a substitute of a legitimate kind of political structure or instrument, flexible in form and material to represent authority, the state, the army etc. According to the fact that Marxists conceive history, not as a series of random events but as a single process governed by its own inner laws, the above conclusion although it can be perceived farthest it may be proved to be a cliché.
In fact Karl’s Marx legacy was the starting point for the Russian revolution of 1917. A struggle between the state and the working class; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Marx’s philosophy passed through Engel and later Lenin, to a wider spectrum of intellectuals of the time, laying the foundations for revolution. From its ground rules this revolution had to be international. As Engel, optimistically, claimed:
‘…revolution will take place simultaneously in all the civilised countries… it will also exercise a considerable influence upon the other countries of the world and will completely change and much accelerate their former course of development. It is a world revolution and will therefore have the whole world as its arena’
Moreover, as Marx and later Leon Trotsky believed, the revolution should be permanent to all the dominant countries of the world, so the bourgeoisie that could encircle it, could not be able to destroy it.
One of the main objectives for the Bolshevik revolution, was to create ‘a society based on complete equality’ where, as Marx believed, while men like Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, were not individuals who personally strove to be equals of other people. To make revolution and create an entirely new society requires remarkable individuals with greater than usual hardness, vision, ruthlessness and intelligence, characteristics which all those early Bolsheviks possessed in abundance. And yet, the type of society they where striving to built sought to abolish the ambitions and characteristics that they, themselves possessed.
Concerning the conduct of its international affairs, Lenin sought to enhance the co-ordination with the revolutionaries of the advanced countries, and mostly with the Chinese communist regime, in the fight against imperialism. The aftermath of the revolution, formulated a new view in international relations. The Soviet Union ‘was an embattled island of socialism in a world dominated by capitalist powers’, engaged into a struggle that changed the world view for the next 73 years, and even today still affecting decision making and popular social movements.
Therefore, as Halliday comments, ‘whatever their particular national or international origins, all revolutions therefore produce an ideology that in addition to calling for international transformations of societies, also proclaims it self a permanent to the international sphere as in some sense, ‘international’ or ‘global’’. The revolution so far pointed out the need for an international vision and enhanced that legacy with revolutionary theories and the ideal of communisms, making the struggle fro victory over capitalistic regimes, the starting point of many of the revolutions to come after the First World War; even though Marx wrote in his Communist Manifesto (1848) that revolutions is a common characteristic of capitalist societies.
The advance of Modernity and the revolutionary start of the 20th century, introduced a historical period with major social and political upheavals that made the impact of revolution much more profound on international relations, while radical transformations were introduced in the existing form of revolution itself. For example, ‘by any definition that requires rupture, armed struggle and a decisive transfer of power’, Tilly claims, ‘revolutions were extremely rare in Europe between 1945 and 1989’. With the only candidates for the term revolution, being the Communist take over of Eastern Europe, the independence movements in Cyprus, the Greek civil war and the Portugal’s change in leadership. Tilly believes that armed conflict, guerrilla or conventional wars etc. cannot be defined as revolutions. He states also that military coups, do not qualify ipso facto as revolutions, since they often occur without a true passage through multiple sovereignty and with mo more armed struggle than a show of superior force. Armed conflict and war are also closely connected with revolutions for Halliday. ‘War and revolutions are two formative processes of international history’. For revolutionaries war was the instrument, ‘for the revolutionary attainment of power’. Leaders as Trotsky, Mao and Tito, commanded large armies, and for one of the pure rebels in our times, Ernesto Che Guevara, ‘there is no deeper experience for a revolutionary than the act of war’, while from all, only Castro is known for his direct ‘bullet-ranging’ campaigns in Cuba. However, guerrilla wars as they appear to many rebel situations all over the world in the 20th century, ‘is by no means an exclusive instrument of revolutionary regimes’. Such conflicts in China (1949), Bolivia (1952), Cuba (1959), Zanzibar (1964), Iran (1979) and Nicaragua (1976) are the main contestants for the title of revolution in it newly defined form. These ‘third world revolutions’ as Halliday characterises them, had ‘considerable influence on the over all balance of international relations’. Also in the era of the cold war, the international community witnessed fatal threats due to the internationalisation of such revolutions, as it happened with the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). The way that regional factors within revolutionary and non-revolutionary countries affected foreign policy and combined with the way states interact with each other, lead to the understanding of how those small, domestic revolutions are affecting international relations. These kinds of revolutions it is argued that distress great international powers that are striving to maintain their status quo. That happens with ideological challenges but also a range of methods on how revolutions are conducted. Due to this fact, but also the idea which was reflected in the writings of Hedley Bull, that great powers are committed to maintain international order, numerous interventions on such domestic conflicts- revolutions occur, with the USA holding the lead.
Gorbachev’s ‘Perestroika’ was the last of the revolutions of the 20th century, according to the view of revolutions and their transformations, discussed earlier in this essay. Perestroika, ‘not the first nor the most radical programme of economic reform in communist countries’ put an end to the old communist way of public administration. On its aftermath, capitalism found space to expand over communism and spread its values and ideas in a rather disputable way.
From the above brief study of the broad concept of revolution, the relationship between revolutions and international relations was underpinned. Resuming the above, it has been proven that revolutions pose a clear challenge in the international system in terms of balance of power, state legitimacy, and sovereignty (which extends to the legitimacy and sovereignty of the international system), social and political structures, ideology but also foreign policy making. It was identified how classes and social movements can be transnational actors on the spread of revolutionary thoughts and practices, and how domestic revolutions, can affect the international system. Liberal Democracy has now, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, formed a more ‘stable’ international system – or at least it is destined to form- and some say that revolutions now it is an improbable phenomenon in developed industrial societies. But Halliday believes that ‘even for the liberal democracies we are making what is in historical terms an optimistic and reasonable, but uncertain prediction’. I am sure that there are more to come. After all it is Human Nature.
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