ABSTRACT
A revolution is a rapid, violent and irreversible change in the political organisation of a society. It involves the destruction of the existing political order, together with the myths which sustain it and the men which it sustains, and the creation of a new order, sustaining new men and sustained by new myths. This change may well result from, and will certainly lead to, other and dramatic developments in the economy and social structure, but what is central to revolution is its political element. What revolutions are basically about is the exercise of power, and the ideas and institutions through which this is achieved. They do not follow inevitably from any preceding set of conditions; and the social transformation to which they lead, though certainly a critical element without which no revolution can be said to have taken place, is made possible only by the prior conquest of political power and by deliberate political decisions as to how that power is to be used.
