Autopsie de la Révolution

La petite vermillon #312

by Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul est un auteur davantage connu pour ses ouvrages consacrés à la technique, à la religion ou à l'histoire du droit que comme penseur politique. Dans ce présent livre, Jacques Ellul part du point de vue de la liberté humaine pour mener une analyse historique qui pense que l'homme peut s'arracher aux déterminismes sociaux et naturels. C'est dans une perspective morale et politique qu'Ellul aborde le phénomène révolution. Il distingue et relie révolte et révolution, en rappelant que la révolte est d'abord instinctive alors que la révolution procède d'une théorie et d'une organisation. Toutes deux se faisant soit au nom d'un passé idéalisé, soit au nom d'un avenir radieux - mais c'est toujours l'ordre établi qui est visé.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Baptised Catholic, Ellul became an atheist and Marxist at 19, and a Christian of the Reformed Church at 22. During his Marxist days, he was a member of the French Communist Party. During World War II, he fought with the French Underground against the Nazi occupation of France.

Educated at the Universities of Bordeaux and Paris, he taught Sociology and the History of Law at the Universities of Strausbourg and Montpellier. In 1946 he returned to Bordeaux where he lived, wrote, served as Mayor, and taught until his death in 1994.

In the 40 books and hundreds of articles Ellul wrote in his lifetime, his dominant theme was always the threat to human freedom posed by modern technology. His tenor and methodology is objective and scholarly, and the perspective is a sociological one. Few of his books are overtly political -- even though they deal directly with political phenomena -- and several of his books, including "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" and "The Technological Society" are required reading in many graduate communication curricula.

Ellul was also a respected and serious Christian theologian whose 1948 work, "The Presence of the Kingdom," makes explicit a dual theme inherent, though subtly stated, in all of his writing, a sort of yin and yang of modern technological society: sin and sacramentality.

Reviews

[John Lussier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellul examines the idea of revolution historically, sociologically, and theologically, asking what revolution and what it means in an era almost determined by technological efficiency. Is revolution even possible, and if so to what ends? Ellul finds that hegemony of the state and technique has made revolution their own tool. For a revolution to take place against either both would need dismantled.

[John Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of Ellul's investigative works are worth reading. That probably encompasses most of his writing. What actually makes a revolution? What happens with revolutions? Are they meaningful? Are they worth it? Wherever you are on the political spectrum, Ellul will no doubt challenge your dearly held notions and beliefs.