THEORIZING REVOLUTION
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Top-down (state-centered) approach
State power is taken through conventional means within, and in response to, an existing political (capitalist) system. Upon completion of the revolution, social change – reflecting the views and interests of those at the top – trickles down and out to existing individuated peripheries
From below (dual power) approach
State power is achieved through unconventional means over the existing capitalist political and economic system. Rather than trickling down, emancipatory conditions have already been made at multiple local levels through organic inter-cooperation thereby overwhelming the dominant class ‘from below’. In this fashion, the state comes to consequentially reflect the interests of those at the bottom
Figure 3.1 Varying approaches toward (and outcomes from) the taking of state power and revolutionary social change
