ABSTRACT
The twentieth century is and is not the era of revolutions. When Aristotle spoke of revolutions, he used the term metabole, change, and where appropriate, metabole kai stasis, change and uprising. People need a concept of revolution that is no doubt trickier to work with, but that has also far greater explanatory power, than the formalized concept that Amann proposes. Revolution is now seen as the heroic, romantic deed, as the assertion of human subjectivity, of man as the master of history. This chapter suggests that people should not abandon too readily the economic strand in the realist conception of revolutions. It says that we need a dynamic concept of revolutions, a concept of political revolutions that sees them in their intimate relationship to the more general class of social revolutions of which they are part rather than to the allied classes of rebellions, uprisings, and wars.
