Revolution by Chance

[From: Disorderly Conduct 6 - $5

Bring on the Ruckus Society

PO Box 11331

Eugene, Or. 97440

eae@efn.org]

Revolutions are great unpredictables. They loom about us everywhere, always larger than life, on a scale almost impossible to conceive. Change in the humdrum often seems as remote as a journey to Mars, yet these things happen. Revolutions in technology are a dime a dozen, while social revolution -in the USA, at any rate –is made to appear so rare as to be far beyond all possibility. Yet few things are more certain than the fact that, throughout history, rulers and ruling classes have come and gone.

Mars is nearer than ever!

But it is also certain that revolutions – real revolutions – are never structured and planned. They are not well-thought-out scenarios for parlor Nechaevs.

Earthquake-like, revolutions are born in the depths of turmoil and conflict, and cannot be predicted, designed or blueprinted any more than the tremblings of the Earth. Like the seismologist, we can predict that revolutions will happen, but never exactly how or when.

Like volcanoes, revolutions follow only the litmus trails of their own imperious necessity. Beneath the apparently placid crust the interior is always seething, and in an instant-any instant-can release the fire of its destructive potential. Then, suddenly, the fire leaps and streets and buildings crumble and burn. Or, just as suddenly, people’s minds leap, an electrical connection is made – Revolution!- and old ways are abandoned as the state crumbles.

It is reported that there is a 50/50 chance of a major earthquake in San Francisco in the next ten years. Chances of revolution are not reported, however, for our rulers want us to believe that none exist. But a glimpse across the borders reveals a whole world seething as never before – seething with revolution. Technology has not brought happiness to this planet, and capitalism has done little more than to enlarge and multiply (and make a profit from) the instruments of death. These conditions make reform impossible and revolution inescapable.

When revolution happens it is always by surprise, by chance, without preliminary ado or prior public announcement. To the extent that it is expected, it becomes impossible, for there are those whose sole purpose is to impede it, to prevent it or, if necessary, to crush it. The time-honored methods of killing revolt with the poisons of nationalism and religion are used extensively today by the rulers of jittery nations who know well that they are sitting on volcanoes of lush and splendid revolutions. Religion is a ridiculously outmoded idea, and so is the State. Ironically, the multinational capitalists are more aware of this than many radicals, for their “hands-on” experience of the world economy has shown them that religion is indeed the opium of the people (not the rulers), and that there are corporations that are much larger, richer and more powerful than ninety-nine percent of the world’s governments. Of course capitalists also realize that, without states to do their killing for them, and without churches to assure everyone that killing is perfectly all right, their own days would be numbered and their number would be up.

Every revolution in modern times has been by chance; Russia in 1905 and 1917; Spain 1936; China 1949; Hungary 1956; Cuba 1959; Grenada 1978; the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua, Marcos in the Philippines, and many others: Each and everyone of them came as a surprise and a shock. Not one was expected when it happened, either by those who made the revolution, or those who tried to stop it. Most astonished of all, in every case, were “experts” in such things-the muddling military and preposterous politicians-in spite of the fact that billions are spent by intelligence agencies on their own political seismographs (i.e., stoolpigeons, informers and spies) precisely to learn about such matters before it’s too late. The May ’68 uprising in France was not only unanticipated, but widely held as an absolute impossibility. Who would believe it-a near revolution in a modern, civilized, fully-industrialized capitalist country! Such things happen only “somewhere else,” don’t they?

But in truth the stability of the humdrum is always a veneer, and in every country of the world today, the veneer is thinner than ever.

Revolutions do happen more frequently in the Third World, where the third eye of poetry sees more clearly, perhaps, and at least seems to be able to tell the living from the dead. Living as we do in the very heart of embalmed greed, we often feel cut off from the growing stalk of world revolution. But the forces that set to work the movements of decisive change in one small corner of the world map echo inexorably to all other points on the globe. Political geology has it’s own laws, and chance and desire, like the old mole, perform their hidden roles under the surface.

Make no mistake: The objective conditions for revolution exist everywhere today, and have existed for a long time. It is the subjective conditions that are not yet ripe. Our task is to develop a revolutionary subjectivity as the ally of chance, and visa versa.

If revolution comes only by chance, we must be ready for it at all times! We must live expecting the unexpected, allowing the possibilities for revolution to grow, and breathing life into them whenever we can. We must take chances and therefore multiply the chances for chance to work!

How to take chances? Subvert the idols! Disobey the masters! Be implacable! Be irreconcilable! Be creative! Use your imagination! Withdraw your attachment to the slave system! Revolt against work! Assert your “right” to dream, to make love, to be lazy! Throw the floodgates open through an open window!

Reject as much as possible of civilization! Look again at “primitive” social organization-the communism that allowed humans to live at peace with the Earth, for eons, before the advent of property, church and state. We have much to learn from the “archaic” consciousness that adored mountains and trees and regarded wolves and ravens as brothers and sisters. Destroy in your mind that repressive myth the change is impossible!

And above all discover your desires, for only people who can distinguish their real desires from those that have been manufactured for them are able to make the revolution!

Once I knew a beautiful bird who lived in a cage and would not come out. One day the cage door was left open, and eventually the bird ventured out. After he had been free for a day he could never be locked up again-no matter what.

No one really knows what freedom is like until one starts to risk it…

Self-appointed leaders, small cliques of militarized conspirators: These do not make the music of revolution. Why let the forces of death ride us when with our own jug-band we can all play together in Bremen?

Chance is the secret of revolution – chance multiplied by encounters through time, chance embraced by the many for the sake of the Marvelous!

Revolution is always by chance: by starlight, by dreamers, by the unlikely, by the powerless!

This time the struggle is against the most powerful array of repressive forces that has ever existed. Oppression today is unprecedentedly vast and horrible because nothing less can hold back the surge toward revolution around the world. Time grows short. It is all or nothing-perhaps our last chance!

But at every moment chance awakes, unfolds itself across the horizon and stretches! At every moment chance provides us with new keys to its locked doors! And as it does so, it is chance inhaled, chance perfectible, chance luminescent-the very chanceology of chance-that guides our actions and clarifies our dreams.

Omnipresence