Revolution

[1895]  Gustave Le Bon,  Psychologie des foules, Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1998

- "Pour découvrir [à la suite de la Révolution française] qu'on ne refait pas une société de toutes pièces sur les indications de la raison pure, il fallut massacrer plusieurs millions d'hommes et bouleverser l'Europe entière pendant vingt ans." (p. 65)

[1897]  Piotr Kropotkin,  The State [L"Etat - Son role historique], Freedom Press, London, 1987

-  "... there are those who still insist in telling us that the conquest of powers in the State, by the people, will suffice to accomplish the social revolution ! - that the old machine, the old organisation, slowly developed in the course of history to crush freedom, to crush the individual, to establish oppression on a legal basis, to create monopolists, to lead minds astray by accustoming them to servitude - will lend itself perfectly to its new functions : that it will become the instrument, the framework for the germination of a new life, to found freedom and equality on economic bases, the destruction of monopolies, the awakening of society and towards the achievement of a future of freedom and equality!
What a sad and tragic mistake!" (p. 58)

-  "It is not as has sometimes been said by those indulging in metaphysical wooliness just a question of giving the worker 'the total product of his labour'; it is a question of completely reshaping all relationships, from those which exist today between every individual ... to those which exist between trades, hamlets, cities and regions. In every street, in every hamlet, in every group of men gathered around a factory or along a section of the railway line, the creative, constructive and organisational spirit must be awakened in order to rebuild life - in the factory, in the village, in the store, in production and in distribution of supplies. All relations between individuals and great centres of population have to be made all over again, from the very day, from the very moment one alters the existing commercial or administrative organisation."
"And they expect this immense task, requiring free expression of popular genius, to be carried out within the framework of the State and the pyramidal organisation which is the essence of the State! They expect the State whose very raison d'être is the crushing of the individual, the hatred of initiative, the triumph of one idea which must be inevitably that of mediocrity - to become the lever for the accomplishment of this immense transformation. They want to direct the renewal of a society by means of decrees and electoral majorities ... How ridiculous!" (pp. 58-59)

-  "Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it all its wars and domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is ... death!
Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousand of centres on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.
The choice lies with you." (p. 60)

[1922]  Eugénij Ivànovic Zamjàtin,  Noi [My], Feltrinelli Editore, Milano, 1963

-  "'Questo è insensato! È assurdo! Non capisci che ciò che voi tramate è la rivoluzione?'
-  'Sì, la rivoluzione! Ma perché è assurdo?'
-  'Assurdo perché la rivoluzione non può essere. Perché la nostra rivoluzione - non lo dici tu, ma lo dico io - è stata l'ultima. E non ci può essere nessun'altra rivoluzione. Lo sanno tutti."
-  'Mio caro, tu sei un matematico. E in più sei un filosofo matematico: dimmi l'ultimo numero.'
-  'Cioè? Io... io non capisco : quale ultimo numero?'
-  'L'ultimo, l'estremo, il massimo.'
-  'Ma ... questo è assurdo. Dal momento che il numero dei numeri è infinito, quale ultimo numero vuoi da me?'
-  'E tu quale ultima rivoluzione vuoi? Non c'è un'ultima rivoluzione, le rivoluzioni sono senza fine. L'ultima, cioè, è per i bambini: l'infinito spaventa i bambini ed è necessario che i bambini dormano tranquilli la notte ...'." (p. 121)

[1945]  Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power : its nature and the history of its growth (Du pouvoir : histoire naturelle de sa croissance), Liberty Press, Indianapolis, 1993

-  "Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls." (p. 87)

-  "... there never was a revolution yet which did not result in an accretion of Power's weight." (p. 237)

-  "How sad, it is said, that the revolution strayed from its natural course ... Ingenuity is freely expended in unearthing the exact moment at which licentiousness set in, in isolating the act that made the revolution sin, in naming the criminal.
What a misunderstanding is here of the revolutionary phenomenon! The Cromwell and Stalin are no fortuitous consequence, no accidental happening, of the revolutionary tempest. Rather they are its predestined goal, towards which the entire upheaval was moving inevitably; the cycle began with the downfall of an inadequate Power only to close with the consolidation of a more absolute Power." (p. 238)

-  "Thus we see that the true historical function of revolutions is to renovate and strengthen Power. Let us stop greeting them as the reactions of the spirit of liberty to the oppressor. So little do they answer to that name that not one can be cited in which a true despot was overthrown.
Did the people rise against Louis XIV? No, but against the good-natured Louis XVI, who had not even the nerve to let his Swiss Guards open fire. Against Peter the Great? No, but against the weakling Nicholas II, who did not even dare avenge his beloved Rasputin. Against that old Bluebeard, Henry VIII? No, but against Charles I, who, after a few fitful attempts at governing, had resigned himself to living in a small way and was no danger to anyone.
These kings died not because of their tyranny but because of their weakness. The peoples erect scaffolds, not as the moral punishment of despotism, but as the biological penalty for weakness.
People never rebel against a Power which squeezes the life out of them and grinds them underfoot. The savagery of such Power is feared, and it even happens that men find something admirable in its scourging of the great." (pp. 240-241)

[1950]  Alex Comfort, Authority and Delinquency in the Modern State. A criminological approach to the problem of power, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1950

-  "The transition from asocial to social living takes place at the level which religious apostles term 'life changing' rather than at the barricades, and any violence which it involves is more likely to come from the exponents of older pattern, who still regard institutional coercion as a means of 'saving the Republic', than from the revolutionaries themselves." (p. 92)

[1951]  Albert Camus,  L'homme révolté, Gallimard, Paris, 1951

-  "Toutes les révolutions modernes ont abouti à un renforcement de l'État. 1789 amène Napoléon, 1848 Napoléon III, 1917 Staline, les troubles italiens des années 20 Mussolini, la république de Weimar Hitler. Ces révolutions ... se sont pourtant proposé, avec une audace de plus en plus grande, la construction de la cité humaine et de la liberté réelle."
"Le rêve prophétique de Marx et les puissantes anticipations de Hegel et de Nietzsche on fini par susciter, après que la cité de Dieu eut rasée, un État rationnel ou irrationnel, mais dans les deux cas terroriste." (p. 221)

[1968]  Quelle université? Quelle societé? Textes réunis par le centre de regroupement des information universitaires, Seuil, Paris, 1968

-  "La révolution ne deviendra définitive qu'à partir du moment où toutes les frontières mentales seront abattues." (p. 76)

-  "Développez par tous les moyens l'esprit critique, l'ouverture d'esprit, l'information."
    "La révolution s'est faite, se fait et doit se faire par les individus, non par les groupes." (p. 77)