POL 605
Spring 2013
4:00-6:40 Thursday
2134 Adams Humanities
Emanuele Saccarelli
[email protected]
4134 Adams Humanities
Office Hours: T 1:00-3:00; Th 12:00-1:00
Revolution
Revolutions are the locomotives of history
Karl Marx
The oppressors erect the lie into a system of befuddling the masses in order to maintain their rule. On
the part of the oppressed the lie is a defensive weapon of weakness. Revolution explodes the social lie.
Revolution speaks the truth. Revolution begins by giving things and social relationships their real
names.
Leon Trotsky
Course Description:
This course will examine revolution both as an important theoretical question and as a concrete,
recurring event of the highest political magnitude. Our work will proceed by studying a series of
brilliant works of history. Each of these texts is concerned with crucial and complex historical events.
Specifically, we will study the revolutionary rise and fall of Athenian democracy; the Ciompi uprising
in late medieval Florence; the slave revolution in Haiti and its relation to the great French revolution;
the failed uprisings of 1848-9 in Europe; the Paris Commune; the overthrow of the Tsar and the
subsequent Bolshevik revolution in Russia; and finally the tumultuous events of 1925-7 China and
their political fallout. We will strive to understand these important events in all their complexity for the
sake of their intrinsic historical significance. The authors of the texts we will read, moreover, are all
remarkable figures who are worthy of attention. Some of them are “canonical” writers in the history of
Western political thought. Others were men of action who not only wrote brilliantly about
revolutionary events, but also actively participated in them.
Beyond the specific facts and events with which they are concerned, these texts and authors will allow
us to grapple with broad theoretical questions concerning the nature of the historical process, as well
the specific role of revolutions in it. Is history a series of ultimately arbitrary and unaccountable events
with no particular sense or direction, or does it have laws and patterns that can be understood and even
consciously acted upon? Is history merely the passage of time, to be ignored or perhaps operationalized
as a variable, or does the historical process shape and structure reality in ways that are often missed by
contemporary social science? What is the relationship between objective social conditions and
subjective perceptions and actions – put differently, what is the relationship between structure and
agency? Are there salient differences in terms of the political agency of different social groups and
forces in different historical periods? That is, does the political agency of kings, slave-owners, and
capitalists differ substantially from that of slaves, peasants, and workers, and what does a revolution
represent from this standpoint?
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Only a couple of decades ago, many intellectuals and academics proclaimed the “end of history” and
permanently shelved the question of revolution as outmoded, at least in so far as it clashed with their
social interests and professional aspirations. Partly as a result of recent international developments, our
course takes place in a very different climate. The full-fledged, unfinished revolutions in Tunisia and
Egypt, and the mounting conflicts throughout Europe, China, and indeed around the world, powerfully
demonstrate that revolution remains on the agenda and that history, in the form of great, explosive,
unresolved political questions, has returned. Our study of the theory and history of revolution, in this
sense, will be an opportunity to attain a more profound understanding of the political challenges of the
present.
Course Materials:
Please purchase the correct edition of the following books, which are available at the campus
bookstores:
Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (Haymarket)
CLR James, The Black Jacobins (Vintage Books)
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (Modern Library)
Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (Pathfinder)
Additional required readings will be made available to you at the beginning of the semester. These
readings are marked in the course outline below as “Reserve.” I will discuss how to access this
material on the first day of class.
Course Requirements:
a) Attendance and participation:
As a student in a graduate seminar, you are expected to read diligently, attend class regularly, and
actively participate in the discussion. It will be difficult for this to be a tolerable, let alone successful
experience for all concerned without this kind of effort on your part. Be sure to always bring with you
to class the texts we are scheduled to examine on that particular day and be prepared to discuss them.
b) Response paper:
Reading the texts, and reading them well, is an especially important aspect of this course. Most of the
texts we will read tell a complicated story, with a sometimes daunting level of detail about various
people, places, and events. Behind the mass of historical details related in each text, moreover, lurk a
series of complex and difficult questions of a theoretical and philosophical character. A careful reading
of the assigned texts (including taking good notes, working out timelines, etc.) will be a crucial and
challenging part of your work for this course.
For this reason, the first and most basic writing requirement in this course is the response paper: a
single-spaced, typed page about the assigned reading that you will write for and bring to every class,
beginning on January 31st.
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First, you should select a specific, finite event or episode narrated in text assigned for the week,
describe it briefly, then relate it to the broader historical process described in the text (as you
understand it). For example, in reading the first part of Thucydides’ book, you might choose to discuss
Pericles’ funeral oration in Book II, and reflect on how this specific event fits into the broader narrative
of the Peloponnesian War.
Second, you should use the specific episode you chose as an opportunity to discuss one of the
theoretical problems we will examine in the second week of the course. For example, you might
choose to use Pericles’ funeral oration to think about the question of whether outstanding individuals
or social forces determine the course of history.
c) Essays:
Two double-spaced, six page essays are required in the course. The first is due on February 21, the
second on March 28. The questions and instructions will be provided in advance.
d) Final exam:
The comprehensive, take home final exam is due on Thursday, May 9th. The questions and instructions
will be provided in advance.
Course Outline:
Week One: January 17
Welcome and introduction
Week Two: January 24
Carr, What is History?
Chapter 1 “The Historian and His Facts”
Chapter 2 “Society and the Individual”
Chapter 4 “Causation in History”
MacIntyre, “The Indispensability of Political Theory”
Marx, 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
(Reserve)
Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution
Preface (pp. 19-25)
Week Three: January 31
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (I)
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Book I, paragraphs 1, 18-103, 107, 115-117, 139-146
Book II, paragraphs 1-14, 34-65
Book III, paragraphs 2, 8-15, 27, 36-84
Book IV, paragraphs 11-23, 26-41, 46-74, 84-88
Week Four: February 7
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (II)
Book V, paragraphs 1-26, 81-116
Book VI, paragraphs 1, 6, 8-31, 33, 35-54, 60-93
Book VII, paragraphs 26-9, 50-77, 84-87
Book VIII, paragraphs 1-2, 44-54, 64-70, 75-79, 93-98
Week Five: February 14
Machiavelli, History of Florence
(Reserve)
Dedication and Preface
Book I, paragraphs 1-9, 11, 14-5, 19-21, 23, 25, 30-1, 34-5, 39
Book II, paragraphs 2, 8-9, 11-5, 32-42
Book III, paragraphs 1-27
Book IV, paragraph 1
Week Six: February 21
FIRST ESSAY DUE
Week Seven: February 28
James, Black Jacobins (I)
Chapters I-VI
Week Eight: March 7
James, Black Jacobins (II)
Chapters VIII-XIII
Week Nine: March 14
Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
(Reserve)
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Week Ten: March 21
Engels, Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France
Marx, The Civil War in France
(Reserve)
Week Eleven: March 28
SECOND ESSAY DUE
*** Week Twelve: SPRING BREAK – no class ***
Week Thirteen: April 11
Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (I)
Vol. I: chapters 1, 3, 8, 9, 11, 18, 21, 23
Introduction to volumes II and III
Vol. II: chapters 7, 8, 10
Week Fourteen: April 18
Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (II)
Vol. II, chapters 12, 13
Vol. III, chapters 6, 10, 11
Week Fifteen: April 25
Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (I)
Introduction by Leon Trotsky
Chapters 2-10
Week Sixteen: May 2
Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (II)
Chapters 11; 13-20
May 9
FINAL EXAM
Turn in your final exam in the main office by 12:00pm
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