ABSTRACT
The political revolutions of modern times are more famous and familiar than the nonpolitical ones. It is precisely the nonpolitical background that explains the political revolutions of communism, fascism, and Nazism. The nonpolitical revolutions include ethical revolution; territorial revolution; and neo-industrial revolution. The ethical revolution replaced both individual and universal ethics with national ethics. The revolution in values has almost annihilated the European heritage. The territorial revolution occupied the dozen rapid years of aggressive war by which Cavour unified Italy and Bismarck unified Germany. The third great nineteenth-century convulsion, accompanying the ethical and industrial changes, was the territorial revolution of 1859-71. Militarist nationalism and class-war socialism intentionally undermined the values of the West and intentionally fulfilled the ethical revolution of 1871-1951. It created two new centralized states: Germany and Italy. Marxist socialism and Bismarckian nationalism have in common a resort to force, a contempt for tolerant parliamentary solutions.
