Revolutions as disasters of misconceived political projects of social mutations

Abstract

The study reviews the book You say you want a revolution? Radical idealism and its tragic consequences by D. Chirot (Prince­ton, Princeton University Press, 2020) and, at the same time, ad­vances a viewpoint on social revolutions based on Thoreau’s im­perative of the separation from evil. Why most social revolutions have dangerous and painful consequences while their promoters claim that the revolution will alleviate human suffering and will bring happiness? The study identifies more sources of the tragic consequences of revolutions than the radical idealism as suggest­ed by Chirot. In contrast with the ideological, structural and in­dividual violence of communist revolutions shaped by Marxist conception the study explores the value of Thoreauvian’s heuristic for the achievement of peaceful, non‑violent revolutionary changes. Self‑reliance i is assumed to be a vital engine of peaceful revolution­ary changes.