Broaden Our Horizons About Western Revolutionary Theory

The term ‘revolution’ was first used in its modern sense is on the FrenchRevolution. Between the French revolution and the Russian revolution, Mark’stheory of revolution had been developed, which predicted a new era ofcommunist revolution. But the events in the twentieth century have challengedMarx’s analysis, so western scholars toward to develop new theories ofrevolution. This paper systematic studies on the revolution theories in westernacademic circles.The author believes that the intergenerational division between westernrevolutionary theories can reflect more than type classification, so it followsGoldstone’s division on western revolutionary theories which divided into fourgenerations. The main research methods of this thesis are literature review andcomparison, and then look forward to further development. The logic of thesefour generations can be summarized as follows:The first generation so called “natural history” of revolutions was largely descriptive, discussed the processes of revolution in detail, but their deficiencieswere can’t give full explanations to why revolution occurs, and their selectedcases were too limiting. The second generation emphasizes the role of socialstrains and psychological consequences, which rings hollow and difficult tomeasure. This problem led the third generation to structure analysis, which pointout that when the factors emphasized in the second generation combined withstate structures, it was more likely lead to revolution. But there is a key question:how those structural defects and socio-psychological factors turn into truerevolutions? The fourth generation’s answer is ideology and culture frame, andthe keys are mobilization and agency. Hence, after all the four generations, wecan have a full understanding on revolution.At the end of the article, the author point out the issues can going forward:one is that are there any more factors beyond culture that lead to the differencesof revolutionary forms between developed societies and underdevelopedsocieties; the second is what’s the transformational agency between collectiveaction, social movements and revolution; the last is what are the adverse effects of state structure and state action when guiding and shaping the cultures ofsocial relations and popular resist.