Gerhart Niemeyer reviews Autopsy of Revolution

Angry Honesty on Revolution

Jacques Ellul being a professor of law and social history at Bordeaux, I first thought quite poorly of his book which I mistook for a sociology of revolution. Now of the making of sociologies of revolution there is no end; every radical professor who finds arson and bombs a bit strong for his tender nerves indulges in what he deludes himself to take for scholarship about revolution as a pattern of history. The unspoken premise is usually that revolution is the reality of realities or, as Ellul put it, “the very fabric of history.” None of these “studies” ever makes a contribution; most of them generalize on one specific event, the French Revolution, some of them universalize Marx’s pattern, all of them misuse apparent scholarship for purposes of advocacy. There is a good reason: revolution, the unmaking or smashing of structures of order, has itself no structure. It is nothing but anti, it negates and dissolves. Afterward, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty- Dumpty together again.

GN

About the Author

Gerhart Niemeyer

Angry Honesty on Revolution

Jacques Ellul being a professor of law and social history at Bordeaux, I first thought quite poorly of his book which I mistook for a sociology of revolution. Now of the making of sociologies of revolution there is no end; every radical professor who finds arson and bombs a bit strong for his tender nerves indulges in what he deludes himself to take for scholarship about revolution as a pattern of history. The unspoken premise is usually that revolution is the reality of realities or, as Ellul put it, “the very fabric of history.” None of these “studies” ever makes a contribution; most of them generalize on one specific event, the French Revolution, some of them universalize Marx’s pattern, all of them misuse apparent scholarship for purposes of advocacy. There is a good reason: revolution, the unmaking or smashing of structures of order, has itself no structure. It is nothing but anti, it negates and dissolves. Afterward, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty- Dumpty together again.