ABSTRACT
According to Franz Schurman, a revolutionary breakthrough makes a return to the status quo ante impossible. Otto Kirchheimer, in his seminal article “Confining Conditions and Revolutionary Breakthroughs,” adds substantially to Schurman’s definition noting that a revolutionary breakthrough may occur with the “old data” remaining, “though absorbed in a new context and thereby deprived of its confining nature.” I take his point to be that while all social change is partial, some social change is decisive in radically revising who authoritatively defines the institutions of power at all levels of society. Successful revolutions insure that the “old data,” e.g., former elites, institutions, and ideologies, when not liquidated, are “privatized” by the “new data.”
