Since at least the French Revolution, the word "revolution" has signified some sort of teleological progress towards whatever the revolutionaries considered to be the end-point of world history, be it the realization of the Rights of Man or the dictatorship of the proletariat. But linear progress is of course entirely alien to the meaning of the word, which is "to revolve"; clearly a fuse has been blown in our language.
This linguistic anomaly is a result of a change in the conception of politics which has not been matched by a change in the terms we use to talk about it. Platonic philosophy was based on the recurrence of all things through a natural cycle of growth and decay, a process Aristotle also interested himself in. Plato implied that the change from oligarchy to democracy to tyranny and then back to the start again took place in a predetermined cycle, whereas Aristotle disagreed; but both saw regime change as a never-ending process because nothing in the world was abiding. "Revolution" is a word fit to describe this process.
Modern western politics, on the other hand, is based on the idea that there can be constant progress and that man can construct political structures which will last indefinitely because they are the best structures. You hear a lot of talk about whether the rest of world is old enough to buy its one-way ticket to the "democratic revolution", but little appreciation that there might be an unwelcome return journey not only for them, but for the rest of us too. We ought to remember the original meaning of "revolution" when contemplating the breathtaking strides we have taken in political and economic life; it might be our turn to revolve again sooner than you might think.
BrevityQuest07