counter-revolution

"In case of an attack on the Petrograd garrison by the counter-revolutionary forces, the cruiser Aurora is to protect herself with tugs, steam-boats, and cutters."

Order 1218, given by the Military Revolutionary Committe, Sept. 25, 1917, in response to a request by the Aurora crew as to how to respond to an order from the Kerensky government to leave the capital and join the fleet.

Revolutions are the seizure of power by one class in society from another. Unless the class previously in power has been eliminated or otherwise neutralized, it will naturally seek to regain power. In some cases, as in the February, 1917 Russian Revolution a general revolution by all the classes against the one in power can be so unprepared for the assumption of power that it in effect forces a counter-revolution. This situation is actually quite common.

Trotskys theory of permanent revolution addresses this tendency by formulating a model of class struggle specifically designed to ensure the ultimate breakdown of the class system and the nation-state system whose raison d'etre is said struggle.

Part of the dialectic of human material advancement, counter-revolutions set the stage for the next revolution and are a normal part of historical progress until that epoch in which progress has become a thetic part of human society universally.

"Class" normally, in this context means an economic/power group in a society but can also refer to other groupings.

To be considered a counter-revolution, a structural change in a social order must be in chronological proximity to it's dialectical partner. So for example, the establishment of the Roman Imperium by the Julio-Claudians cannot be considered a counter-revolution relative to the establishment of the Roman Republic.

Counter-revolutions are generally movements of the Right, as Revolutions are generally movements of the Left, though this distinction can be muddied or even reversed as in the cases of the first of the Buonapartes and the restoration of the English monarchy, respectively.

Some example counter revolutions:

• The Restoration of the Egyptian polytheistic theocracy in the 19th dynasty.
• The Counter-Reformation
• The Restoration after the English Civil War.
• The Establishment of the Empire by Napoleon after the French Revolution.
• The Restoration of Louis Napolean after the 1848 revolution.
• The suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871.
• The Karensky government after the February 1917 Russian Revolution.
• The Russian Civil War after the October 1917 Revolution.
• The Spanish Civil War.
• The American Conservative movement in response to the social ferment of the 1960s and the New Deal.

We note in passim, that in science, our religion of practical reason, there are no effective counter-revolutions as that body of common public knowledge is monotonically progressive, once a given paradigm has achieved consensus it can only be replaced by one which has greater rational force.