On 2010-10-13, at 12:27 AM, Miles Jackson wrote:
> On 10/12/2010 09:23 PM, Somebody Somebody wrote:
>> Miles: After the active minority succeeds, the rest of the population conform to the new social reality.
>>
>>
>> Somebody: Is that what you're still aiming for? A new revolutionary order that folks just "conform" to? That sure worked the last couple dozen times around.
>
> I'm just describing what has happened in the past. I guess you can ignore the evidence if you like.
The historical evidence in fact suggests otherwise - that the majority of Russians, Chinese, Cubans, Vietnamese, Nicaraguans, Iranians, etc, were not neutral and unaffected, but welcomed the overthrow of the old order because they favoured the breakup of the landed estates and other large concentrations of property, an end to extreme social inequality and class oppression, national independence, and the other reforms embedded in the programs of the revolutionary movements. All of these movements functioned underground so the extent of their mass support could never be readily apparent. The incumbent regimes and supporting imperialist powers naturally denied the popular basis of these movements in order to justify their fierce repression against them.
Disillusion and resignation ("conformity") - a sense that the goals of the revolution had not been attained or had been betrayed - set in later, but it was not characteristic of the generation which participated in the insurrection and civil war, during the so-called "heroic period" of these revolutions.