(2:17 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Freedom isn't free

Why speak of "revolution" [...]? In order capriciously to oppose the current discredit of this word? Why not? Ideology can always benefit from being shaken. But also: don't we have the responsibility of thinking the decision that opens onto the very possibility of deciding? Now which word has carried this thought, in a privileged way, through two centuries? And which word could replace it after two centuries? Enough has been said about how much "revolution" was a turn toward nothing, or even another turn of the screw. This is true--but this is also a mockery of history. Revolution brings to light common freedom, freedom's being-in-common, and the fact that this being, as such, is given over to decision. We cannot, despite everything, think this word differently. For a long time, the case of reform has been heard, and the more reform there is, the less anything changes. Revolt is a prisoner of the despair that produces it. Revolution does not at all exclusively signify the taking of power by a political faction. It signifies, or at least it signified: the opening of decision, the community exposed to itself.

I know that Fascism and Nazism were also revolutions, as were Leninism and Stalinism. It is therefore a question of revolutionizing revolutions. I understand all too well that this "pirouette" might not be appreciated. But what should we say and do if it becomes no less true that we must again, despite everything, decide to break with the course of things entirely decided? What should be said and done if the intolerable is always present, and if freedom has to make itself more and more skittish, more and more unbridled?

How can we think "revolution" without assault divisions or commisars of the people, and even without a revolutionary model (but on the contrary, as a reopening of the question of model itself)? After all, the word matters little--but we still have not thoroughly thought through all that "revolution" gives to be thought. Above all, people continue to die of hunger, war, drugs, boredom. A middle class continues to be generalized with its scruples relating to "technology," masking us from what is in the process of becoming class warfare.

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