THEORIZING REVOLUTION
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to one of coercion, leading to a further weakened empire. Reactionism will and must occur to reclaim lost surplus profits and geopolitical power. This inevitably ends in imperial overstretch while placing the newly revolutionized state(s) at a decisive advantage. As a result of the transfer of surplus value, the socialized nations are able to expand militant defensive power, while forcing imperial nations into a two-way political-economic disadvantage. Economically, the empire’s already bleeding coffers are further exhausted because of the losses of foreign derived profits. Politically (and militarily), it is forced into unconventional conflicts (that is, guerrilla warfare) on unfamiliar terrain; a field and strategy of battle in which modern imperial powers have proven inefficient. As the exploited begin to “liberate themselves from the bourgeois yoke” they come to consolidate and unify themselves with other states that have done the same (Lenin, 1964e: 339). Revolutionaries in Colombia, to be victorious, must recognize the country’s unique arrangement and relation to capitalism and revolution, and ensure a contextually specific non-dogmatic approach toward social change. This is achieved through a pragmatic response to domestic conditions. Theoretically, this will be dependent on the internal emancipatory dynamics and social organization from below. EVALUATING REVOLUTION “FROM BELOW”: THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOMBIA A great deal of theory related to the issue of revolution has muted the subject of organic struggles “from below,” opting rather for analyses dominated by the question of the centralized state.11 Take for example Theda Skocpol’s (1979) characterization that revolutions are a consequence of competition amongst nation states, or interconflict between those of the dominant class, resulting in the alteration of existing political relations. While some emphasis is placed on those from below, her thesis attests that revolutions occur through and by a dramatic shift at the level of the state, whereby dominant class competition and conflict (through domestic or international political-economic pressure) lead to state deterioration and transformation.12 Negating agency, Skocpol is chastized for developing a deterministic and dissident elitist political perspective, for only “division among the elites … increase the probability of the success of a revolutionary movement” (Defronzo, 1996: 12). “No matter what form social revolutions conceivably might take in the future (say in an industrialized, liberal-democratic nation), the fact is that historically no successful social revolution has ever been ‘made’ by a mass-mobilizing, avowedly revolutionary movement” (Skocpol, 1979: 17). Skocpol’s famous definition of revolution is the “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below” (Skocpol, 1979: 4; see also 163–4). Criticized for marginalizing the latter group, Skocpol attempted to legitimize her approach in a later work by examining the role of peasants in
