Why isn’t a revolution happening?
Why isn’t a revolution happening? Fars News Agency has released a video where they interview people, asking them if a revolution is underway. The people laugh and say no. Is Fars News Agency spreading falsehoods? Or, as is typical of conservative media close to power structures, are they manipulating interviewees to impose their own perspective on the audience? Or is it truly the case that no revolution is occurring?
The 3.5% Idea
Is protest and dissatisfaction a sufficient condition for a revolution, or is it merely necessary? Can the recent protests in Iran lead to a phenomenon called revolution, similar to what happened in 1979? Does a revolution happen spontaneously, or is it orchestrated? At the start of the public protests, there was reference to the 3.5% rule, which suggests that the success rate of non-violent protests is twice that of armed conflicts, and movements that involve 3.5% of the total population have never failed to bring about change.
Proponents of this theory cite many successful examples in modern world history, likely including the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Regardless of whether all these protests reached 3.5% of Iran’s total population, which seems unlikely, the diversity and spread of these protests have overshadowed the sheer volume of participation compared to similar instances of tens or hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. However, it appears that one must also view the phenomenon of revolution from another perspective.
Dissatisfaction is not the reason for a revolution’s success
Mehdi Tadini, a political researcher and translator in the field of liberalism, who has translated several books by Hannah Arendt, has an interesting idea. His discussions, which are relevant to Iran’s current situation, contain important and overlooked points in the historiography of the Iranian Revolution. He believes that the occurrence of a revolution is based more on positive reasons than negative ones.
According to him, theories that explain and describe dissatisfaction with a political structure or governance are often conflated with theories of revolutionary success, while revolutionary theories should explain why a revolution succeeds, not why dissatisfaction leads to success. However, we have always been confused in this area, replacing the reasons for dissatisfaction with the reasons for success.
There is a significant gap from the emergence of dissatisfaction, meaning negative reasons, to the success of a revolution, meaning positive reasons, which existing theories and reasons do not explain. People’s dissatisfaction and the behavior of the political regime, corruption, and repression can all create dissatisfaction, but not a revolution. So, how does a revolution occur, or more precisely, how does a revolution reach fruition or success?
Negative reasons do not make a revolution
Tadini believes that contrary to some theories or common beliefs, a revolution is something that is made, not something that just happens. Those who believe that negative reasons and dissatisfaction are the factors behind a revolution think that a revolution happens, meaning that the level of dissatisfaction reaches a point where it naturally leads to a revolution. However, Tadini argues that this is not the case at all. The main factors of a revolution are the positive factors, and these positive factors are the revolutionaries themselves. A combination of a series of positive and negative factors, in a hierarchical and prioritized manner, leads to a revolution.
In criticizing theories that consider only negative factors as the cause of a revolution, Tadini says some believe that one of the reasons for the revolution was the repression carried out by the Shah. But if we look back at history, we realize that the revolution occurred when the political space had opened up and the intensity of repression had significantly decreased. In other words, the revolution was due to the weakness of the repressive apparatus, not its strength. Or they say the revolution was a political project of foreign powers, or some economic theories cite economic disparity and uneven development as the reasons for the revolution.
However, according to Tadini, an examination of economic indicators before the revolution, such as inflation rates, gross national product, and per capita income, shows that the situation was not such as to lead to misery that would result in rebellion and revolution. In contrast, after the revolution, we have repeatedly experienced inflation rates above 30% and negative economic growth. He further explains that in the slogans of the revolutionaries, economic slogans were either absent or, if present, were very marginal.
What were the positive foundations of the 1979 revolution?
Tadini believes that a revolution is a positive matter, so its main reason must also be positive. Tadini says, contrary to the view today that people knew what they did not want but did not know what they wanted, he argues that, in fact, people consciously knew what they wanted. Perhaps what they wanted was very idealistic and unattainable, but ultimately they wanted to achieve something. He says in the hierarchy of revolutionary events, positive factors are primary, and negative reasons are secondary. But what were the positive reasons for the revolution?
Tadini says that cultural and religious factors, as well as three powerful ideologies—Marxism, republicanism, and Islamism—played a positive role in creating the Iranian revolution. These ideologies had programs and manifestos and clearly moved towards revolution, meaning they positively drove the revolutionaries forward. Tadini believes that these factors had no connection to the performance of the former regime and did not influence the change in these ideologies’ perspective towards the Shah.
According to Tadini, if the 1979 revolution occurred, it was because three groups of revolutionary elites were active, dedicated, and capable in the field, without whom the revolution would not only have been impossible but also the ability to attract the masses would not have existed. According to Tadini, those who believe that a revolution just happens remove the historical actor from the theory, and ultimately, in his view, negative economic and social reasons rank third, and negative political factors such as repression and closing spaces rank fourth in the priority of a revolution.
The revolution wouldn’t have happened without the love for the Imam
Tadini, however, sees the main explanation for the success of the 1979 revolution not in the hatred of the Shah but in the love for Khomeini, in Khomeini’s charisma and the people’s devotion to him, and believes the explanation of the revolution should be found in the Imam’s own words. According to him, without this ability and power of consensus in Khomeini, the political structure of the regime at the time, even in the absence of the Shah, could have quickly suppressed the existing forces. But this massive wave of infatuation and devotion was so great that other forces like the remnants of the regime’s elite class and the army saw themselves as losing the field and quickly vacated the arena.
He believes that the issue of love for the Imam and the disciple-master culture has roots in Iran’s religious and mystical culture, which is why cultural and religious reasons were very important in the occurrence of the Iranian revolution. He believes that the two ideologies of Marxism and republicanism, without Khomeini’s presence, were incapable of revolution because they did not have access to that massive populace.
Iranian society has transformed and changed significantly since 1979. Ironically, protesters and reformists now have a meaningful distance from the religious mass society, and if the Shia culture of that era was the source of the disciple-master relationship with charismatic leadership, today everything is moving in the opposite direction. Today’s protesters have completely distanced themselves from that religious identity and rely more on their self-founded individualities than on the disciple-master relationship, which ironically has more power to destroy existing leaders than to endear them, let alone create charisma. Can a revolution happen without a leader?
