The Third Revolution : Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era

The Third Revolution #2

by Murray Bookchin

'A major American political philosopher' San Francisco Chronicle'His books are of crucial importance' New ScientistThis project is a comprehensive account of the great revolutions that swept over Europe and America during the past three centuries. Throughout, the emphasis is on the popular movements that propelled the great revolutions to radical peaks, the little-known leaders who spoke for the people, and the liberatory social forms to which the revolutions gave rise. In the vast scope of this work, Murray Bookchin combines the social background and key events of the great revolutions. Throughout, the emphasis is on the popular movements that propelled the great revolutions to radical peaks, the little-known leaders who spoke for the people and the libertatory social forms to which the revolutions gave rise. The three volumes of The Third Revolution form a dramatic ensemble that encompasses hopes and social conflicts of past eras, as well as prospects for the coming century.This second volume of Murray Bookchin's stirring three-volume history of popular movements in the revolutionary era is one of the most comprehensive accounts of nineteenth-century revolutions that we have today. Opening with the transition from Jacobinism to socialism, the book explores the little-known Revolution of 1830 in France; the Lyons Insurrections of 1831 and 1834, where the red and black flags of socialism and anarchist were first raised; the revolutions of 1848; and the Paris Commune of 1871. The transition from radical craft movements, prevalent in the early part of the century, to Industrial working class movements is carefully traced and dramatically recounted. A vivid narrative of the Firstand Second Internationals brings the century and volume 2 to a close. This insightful account of a century of revolutionary upheavals is indispensable for an understanding of the lessons of the revolutionary past and their bearing on the future.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

420 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1998

About the author

Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics, philosophy, history, and urban affairs as well as ecology. In the late 1990s he became disenchanted with the strategy of political Anarchism and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called Communalism.

Bookchin was an anti-capitalist and vocal advocate of the decentralisation of society along ecological and democratic lines. His writings on libertarian municipalism, a theory of face-to-face, assembly democracy, had an influence on the Green movement and anti-capitalist direct action groups such as Reclaim the Streets.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Continuing where Vol. 1 left off, Murray Bookchin spends considerable amounts of time carefully documenting the composition of the French proletariat after the Great Revolution, and its subsequent evolution up to, and slightly after the Paris Commune of 1871, rightly so, one might add. The very nature of revolutionary struggle has evolved considerably after the Jacobin terror of 1793-1795. The emergence of Marxism, and the coagulation of anarchist activity around syndicalist praxis is deserving of an entire book, yet Bookchin manages to synthesize with incomparable genius the emergence of these two ideologies whose shadows still loom on the anti-capitalist struggle to this day.

The major events treated in the book are: The French Revolution of 1830, 1848, and that of 1871. All interspersed with fascinating analysis of the context of the proletariat, and of the main libertarian ideas at the time. The book finishes with a brief history of the first, and second Internationale with their impact on the French, and German socialist movement, thus paving the way for the third volume of this series.

What I find most intriguing about this text is the thesis that the revolution of 1848 had a much stronger economic class character than that of 1871, in the context where the Paris Commune is held up as the paragon of working class struggle: Friedrich Engels having it called "this is what the dictatorship of the proletariat looks like", and Peter Kropotkin making it the starting point in his exposition of what is to become anarcho-communism in his seminal work The Conquest of Bread.

[Cybermilitia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rus devrimini anlatan kitap, tam anlamıyla çelişkili fikirler yumağı. Bookchin'in tutacak tek program olarak iddia ettiği "şehirlerde sendikalist, köylerde narodnik" program zaten Stalinizmin ta kendisidir. Obschina'ların Kolhoz'lara, sendikalist fabrikaların Stakhonovizme ne kadar benzediğini kesinlikle farketmemiş Bookchin. Çünkü bu ikinciler "zorla" ya hani.

Köylülerin obschina geleneğini inanılmaz abartmış. Üstelik verdiği rakamlar %20 civarı toprağın böyle işletildiğini göstermesine rağmen.

Bürokrasinin rolünü kesinlikle anlamamış. Zaten kitapta doğru dürüst geçmiyor bile.

Chekanın ilk zamanlardaki rolünü anlattığı parçalar tamamen mit. Açıkçası stalinist dönemi almış ve yaklaşık 10 yıl geriye yerleştirmiş.

Devrimin çöküşünü kendi şemasına uydurabilmek için yokluk ve kişiliklere indirgemiş. Oysa olağan troçkist şema bile bundan daha iyi açıklıyor.

[Lady · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent historical analysis of american agrarian communities (rural radicals). lacking in indeginous peoples who were on the land during these times.