Revolution is NOT a Metaphor

If you've spent any time on god's green internet lately, you have probably been inundated with posts trying to "reclaim" or “expand” or “soften” the idea of revolution.

Rest is revolution.

Joy is revolution.

Community is revolution.

Friendship is revolution.

You are the revolution.

Everything is revolution.

Many experiences are enriching, enlivening, and worthwhile — even necessary — for our lives. But that doesn't make them revolution. The distinction matters: if we want real political change, we can't allow our energy to be dissipated or coopted by activities that aren't grounded in material change and political transformation.

What does metaphorical, commodified "revolution" look like?

You may have seen ✨ inspirational ✨ social media posts calling on you to engage in rest, or to celebrate loudly and find pockets of joy, or to reimagine your participation in our capitalist landscape, calling each of these actions something like "your own personal act of revolution." It's this type of aesthetic or metaphorical adaptation of the concept of revolution that this essay argues against.

Don't misunderstand. Joy, rest, dance, friendship, community, connection, movement — all of these can be critical components of a holistic human experience. But it's important to be clear about the work they do, and the work they don't accomplish by themselves. If resting and taking moments of reflection gives you the energy to reengage, or helps your body feel renewed enough to put it on the line to de-arrest a comrade or prevent one of your neighbors from being kidnapped by ICE, it's clearly an integral part of your revolutionary action. But rest by itself is not the revolution. Your political power does not begin and end there.

Much online discourse of late has focused on "joy as revolution," a decontextualized phrase stolen from the struggle for Black Liberation, where Black Joy is seen as an acknowledgment of spirits that have not been decimated by oppression, but instead are resilient and capable of the full range of human experience and emotion. Stemming from Audre Lorde's oft-quoted directive that self-care can be "an act of political warfare," Black joy as a form of resistance is mitigating against popular portrayals of the Black experience as one of only trauma, suffering, and subjugation. It has a cultural and historical context that distinguishes it from the more generalized, watered-down appropriation of the idea that "joy is resistance" or calls to create "joy revolutions."

Even the specific idea of Black joy as a revolutionary experience has been broadened, popularized, and commercialized in ways that diverge from the initial idea that Black resilience and humanity is worth protecting, celebrating, and publicizing—and that the very existence of visible Black joy and resilience undermines the totalizing narrative of White supremacy.

But the point here isn't to litigate who gets to experience joy, or in what ways. Rather it's to distinguish that the initial idea undergirding "joy revolutions" and self-care as politicized action was located in the Black experience, and has since diffused into platitudes and appropriation by popular culture, capitalism, and grift. That doesn't negate the value of joy; it only suggests caution in limiting our revolutionary aspirations to emotional exuberance or moments of self-care. Joy (or friendship, community, rest, any of the other "good" things being repackaged as revolution of late) may be critical to experiencing the full range of our humanity and proving to ourselves that authoritarian forces have not fully won. It might even allow us to pursue revolutionary ends. But it is at most an input into our revolutionary agenda, not revolution unto itself.

Who cares — it's all just words

Words are obviously limited, and language is an equilibrium—it expands and contracts in meaning as we use it to relate to each other.

AND.

How we use words shapes how we think and how we act. I mean, hell, we now use "literally" precisely to mean "metaphorically."

Where this elision of meaning becomes dangerous in the realm of "revolution," though, is the risk that your energy and ideals dissipate away from concrete, direct actions toward political change toward immediate catharsis.

Saying something is not revolutionary does not mean it cannot be important or worthwhile, that you should not engage in it, or that it cannot alleviate suffering or have meaning. It may be a necessary condition for living in the world, but it may not be a sufficient condition for, or equivalent to, revolution.

How we name our experience and the words we use matter. If joy is revolution, then I can be satisfied that my political work is done when I experience emotional satisfaction. If rest is revolution, I can consider myself absolved of additional responsibility for contributing to change when I individually satisfy my own needs to take a break from work. Even more risky are slogans that internalize revolution as a felt sense of the body, or suggest that revolution is something you can "be" or "become." These identity-driven arguments ask us to so fully internalize the idea of revolution that we don't see it in its social and political context anymore at all: if I am the revolution, then my own self-improvement and internal work is sufficient change to instantiate in the world.

The intention behind these statements or social media credos may not be malicious. These statements may even be intended to inspire us, help us feel how vibrant and exceptional our lives can be, or evoke gratitude for moments of longed-for connection. At risk, though, is dividing or defusing our energy. If we are lulled into complacency by empty platitudes convincing us that simple felt senses or common individual experiences are revolution, we can lose our sense of commitment to action.

It's critical to point out here that not everything you do in your life must be "revolution." Joy and rest and dance and play and movement and art can all simply be activities you enjoy or emotions you relish or facets of your life...that doesn't make them revolution, but it also doesn't absolve you from evaluating what you can do that is revolutionary. If you have the values and desire to pursue revolution, the question is how and with what actions.

"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution"

One of the most oft-quoted statements about revolution is one that was never said. Not in so many words, anyway.

Many a t-shirt, bumper sticker, and mug attributes the sentiment "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution" to Emma Goldman—an iconic anarchist revolutionary. This idea bears remarkable similarity to some of these other claims circulating in social media discourse lately. This supposed quote is often applied to coax others to lighten up, to not take things too seriously or militantly, to see expressions of excitement, joy, and disinhibition as part of revolutionary action.

Those might be useful sentiments in the abstract, but they are not what Emma Goldman said or what she meant. And the distinction she made is important for us here and now, to begin to understand what is revolutionary.

Rather, what Emma Goldman said, as she reports in her own autobiography Living My Life (1931) is:

At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman, Goldman's lover], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance… My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. . . If it meant that, I did not want it.

You can read more about the meme-ification of Emma's sentiments here, but what I want to drive home is the way this idea has been warped to suggest that our revolutions must be or have aesthetic components, encompass joy, comfort, exhilaration, or have pleasure as a key element. Read this way, in the meme t-shirt/mug version, Goldman is saying we should eschew and reject revolutions that aren't joyful ones, ones with dancing.

Read in her original reporting of the instance, though, the inverse is true: our revolutions should liberate us to feel and be as free as we've ever hoped, but the revolution precedes liberation. Revolution isn't caused by or completely synonymous with things like dancing or having fun, even if they aren't in conflict with each other.

What revolution is ...and what it is not

Revolution is fundamentally a systemic phenomenon. It's a structural change, a critical juncture, an overthrow of the current system, a forsaking of past ways of doing and being, and an upheaval of the status quo.

I'll assert here that revolution is not a subtle, momentary outcome, or a quiet revelation. If you're the type of person who believes you experience revolution inside yourself, sitting alone at home, on a quiet morning with a cup of coffee ... that sounds lovely but I invite you to dream bigger.

One reason for the proliferation of "reimaginings" or metaphorical appropriations of the idea of revolution lately is exactly related to how dire our political circumstances have become—not just in the US, but globally. On the one hand, these political developments raise the spectre of a need for revolutionary action. Everything feels untenable, like it's at a breaking point. On the other hand, the acute discomfort, fear, and uncertainty of this political moment also demonstrates the enormity of the task of dismantling our current systems and processes.

"Flooding the zone" by constantly shifting and changing the policy environment and rolling out new, devastating changes on a daily and weekly basis reveals how complex our current reality is, and how much power has been vested in leaders and institutions that can now wield it violently and with impunity. Under those conditions, revolution seems like an overwhelming undertaking, with only the remotest possibility of success.

Under those conditions, naturally, it makes sense to reach for alternative conceptions of the idea of "revolution"—what is something actionable right now, that feels manageable or achievable, that feels reachable and relatable, that is sorely needed and somehow accessible within our resources? Full-scale political change might not seem like any of those things, but joy or rest might.

One distinguishing factor between these differing conceptions of revolution is how much risk one of them requires. Trying to experience joy? That might be challenging, depending on your positionality in society and your access to resources and support. But it's not nearly as risky as fomenting actual revolution. That's because revolution has real material consequences, and shifting material circumstances threatens those in power in the current status quo.

Risks and Revolution — Some Thought Experiments

Some revolutions require visible, violent action to achieve material change, but not all. All revolutions do, however, shift the empirical material reality that we inhabit.

The scientific revolution shaped the way we built modern educational institutions and industry—and it certainly had casualties (not least, indigenous ways of knowing and studying the world)—but it wasn't brought about by coordinated actors taking aim against a single foe. It was a series of events that culminated in a paradigm shift. At risk in this revolution? Upending our understanding of the entire world, undermining the authority of the Church, departing from classical or cultural norms of knowledge.

The Industrial Revolution, likewise, transformed societies, shaped wealth distributions, scaffolded the emergence of a global economy, and laid the groundwork for capitalist institutions we have today. It, too, was not a calculated violent overthrow by all titans of industry working together, but rather a ripple effect accumulating across space and time. Again, not without casualties.

Indulge me in a few thought experiments here. Imagine what would've happened if the Ever Given—that container ship that for a brief, amusing period in 2021 was stuck in the Suez Canal—had remained lodged for far longer than it did, and somehow took the entire global shipping economy down with it. This could have been revolutionary for how business was conducted between countries and consumers, although surely those at the helm of the Ever Given had no intention of starting a revolution.

Likewise, imagine a royal chef whose experimentation in the kitchen accidentally ferments to a deadly bacteria. His concoction results in the untimely death of the king, throwing the entire dynasty into question and resulting in the eventual end of monarchy. (Maybe he's beheaded as a result, who knows.) Certainly a chef in the royal employ was probably not trying to single-handedly undertake revolutionary action (or was he). But nevertheless his accidental action set in motion events that created systemic change.

Or, inversely, imagine that Tetsuya Yamagami—who assassinated Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a homemade firearm while speaking at a political event in July 2022—had missed his shot. Abe's assassination is widely understood to have shifted the political conversation around the Unification Church's role in politics in Japan, and in its relationship with the ruling LDP in particular. Had Yamagami's aim failed, this shift might not have occurred. But that doesn't make his action less revolutionary—it entailed risk and consequence, alongside a potential for impact.

If we're adding up what "counts" as revolution, then, it's not necessarily your intent or your success rate that matter. None of these are canonical examples of "revolution" that probably come to mind when you hear the word—no scenes from Les Mis or visions of men with muskets fighting off Red Coats here. But they nevertheless all have the real or potential for impact on material reality, to fundamentally shift systems, structures, and institutions.

None of these instances "are" revolution by themselves; that is, no single paper written during the period we later describe as the Scientific Revolution was "revolution" unto itself. Rather, when we're looking to count up instances that accumulate to revolution, we should be looking for actions.

These examples, including the fictional ones, might seem obscure but they should be heartening. We often imagine revolution as a dramatic war montage with countless casualties, heated debates and choosing sides, struggling over recruitment to defend the status quo or contribute to its dismantlement. But as some of these thought experiments demonstrate, revolution can occur even without intention per se (although I'd argue we certainly would prefer our actions and their consequences follow from our intentions). And even individual actions can have revolutionary potential—truly good news, when collective action is one of the hardest things to achieve.

Drawing all of these instances together, though, is their potential for impact on real material conditions, and the risk they entail as a result. The accessible but commodified things being sold to you now as "revolution" are, mostly, catharsis disguised as political potential, with no risk of creating impact or change, but significant risk of demobilizing you to feel satisfied with your self-indulgent endeavors.

Revolution is action, not metaphor

The point here, is that revolution cannot be something metaphorical or ephemeral. It's real and material.

That's not to say that some of the other things The Internet™ claims are revolution—joy, rest, etc.—aren't important inputs for a healthy, fulfilling life, or even for revolutionary action. But at best they precede action. And the action part is what's missing from our current discourse. You cannot "be" revolution, but you can do revolution.

So the question is, how will you act toward revolution? What change are you trying to make? What risks are you willing to take? What status quo do you find intolerable, fully reject, and want to upend?

No matter how hopeless the current situation feels, there are actions you can take no matter your risk tolerance. But the point is that revolution requires action, not metaphorical reenvisioning.

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If you're feeling at a loss for where to begin answering this question, check out this newly reformatted and updated resource on a whole host of actions that you can take that aren't protesting or voting, but also aren't only metaphorical engagements in revolutionary ideals.

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