ABSTRACT
The modern era of revolutions, in the sense of ‘‘rapid basic transformations
of a society’s state and class structures . . . accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below’’ (Skocpol 1979: 4), is widely
considered to be over. Postmodernity, it is argued, is defined by an incre-
dulity towards the metanarratives of progress and class characteristics of
modernity (Lyotard 1984). With the emergence of post-industrial societies,
the class-based forms of organization of traditional labor movements are
held to have been replaced by various forms of identity politics, encapsulated in the idea of new social movements. In the era of globalization, the
very concept of revolution as a struggle over state power appears redundant
as global flows of money, power, and information increasingly outflank and
bypass the nation-state. In Fukuyama’s (1992) notorious formulation, we
have reached ‘‘the end of history;’’ which is to say, there is no future beyond
liberal-democratic Western capitalism.
