ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses abandons the usual focus on the who and how of violence, instead to engage systematically in an enquiry into the diverse consequences and content of revolution, a matter of great moment that is too often slighted in a popular and scholarly fascination with "blood alone." Boris Kagarlitsky conceives of revolution in the tradition of Hannah Arendt, a tradition focusing on the creation and institutionalization of political spaces for democratic political exploration and participation. In the traditional notion, in which human life was lived as a great cycle, revolutions were actions which began the cycle yet again, permitting a fresh beginning. The Chinese Revolution, from the Tocqueville perspective of state-building, has yet to happen. Defenders of Maoism as continuing the revolution after the revolution, as avoiding both the exploitation of capitalism and a bureaucratism into which Leninism could degenerate, still insist on the revolutionary essence of Maoism.
