Example research essay topic: Social Democracy Early Stages - 809 words

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For understanding the principal differences between revolution and democracy we have to compare the meaning of two this words. The revolution always meaning struggle and crushing some bodies thoughts, rules and principles. The democracy it is the opposite meaning. So, when we compare two this category, we have to discuss how to make revolution and how to make democracy. From the nature of revolutions as a sudden, radical overthrow of prevailing social and (or) political structures leaps in the historical process one should not draw the conclusion that an impenetrable Chinese wall separates evolution (or reforms) from revolution. Quantitative gradual social changes of course do occur in history, as do qualitative revolutionary ones.

Very often the former prepare the latter especially in epochs of decay of a given mode of production. Prevailing economic and political power relations can be eroded, undermined, increasingly challenged or can even be slowly disintegrated, by new relations of production and the political strength of revolutionary classes (or major class fractions) rising in their midst. This is what generally characterizes periods of pre-revolutionary crises. But erosion and decay of a given social and / or political order remains basically different from its overthrow. Evolution is not identical with revolution. One transforms dialectics into sophism when, from the fact that there is no rigid absolute distinction between evolution and revolution, one draws the conclusion that there is no basic difference between them at all.

The history of the world has been a history of social revolution. The outcome of revolutionary struggles, however, is not predetermined. The central question in the revolutionary process lies not in the willingness of the working class and the oppressed in general to fight this has been demonstrated time after time but rather in the quality of leadership available to it. Given a leadership that matches the capacity of the masses to defend their class interests, the workers and the oppressed classes cannot be defeated. They are the vast majority, the 99 percent. Their power is virtually unlimited.

But if the force of their power is diverted by parties and mis leaders influenced by Stalinism and Social Democracy, it can be weakened, if not destroyed. This is what we have learned from all the revolutionary struggles of our times. Many people have a stereotyped picture of what a revolution is like. They say a revolution is when people come with guns, when they surround a fortress or take over a city. What they do is they confuse revolution with insurrection. Insurrection is just one stage of revolution.

Revolution is a lot more. Its a long process. In a certain way you can make a parallel between revolution and pregnancy. In the very early stages of pregnancy, if just on empirical evidence you ask whether or not someone is pregnant, the answer will be no.

However, with the use of science you can determine whether the person is pregnant very early. Later on it becomes evident for everybody to see. The same thing is true of social revolution. In the early stages most people dont see it. You always begin on the assumption that in every society that needs a revolution, the majority of the people dont think its possible. The literature speaks of democratization as a process, which is spreading worldwide in a rapid way.

Before 1989, only a minority of the worlds states was formally democratic, and a minority of the worlds people lived in them: the majority was still controlled by communist, military or other authoritarian regimes. A decade later, the positions are reversed, although substantial proportion of the worlds population still lives in states that are manifestly not democracies (especially China). It is obviously true that in a large number in states where democracy is newly instituted, it remains insecure or shallow in terms of the accountability of state for society. By any standards, however, this is a very significant transformation. The old idea that democracy is a question of the political relations within and world order one of the relations between states is outmoded. There is nothing less than a worldwide upheaval that is simultaneously bringing into question national and international political arrangements.

The demand for democracy within national borders is inter-linked with the demand for global standards and institutions. It presents profound challenges to the Western state, within which social democracy is established, and to existing world institutions. It also raises the more radical challenge to social democracy to reconstitute itself, not merely with national or European programs, but as a genuinely worldwide and global politics. Worked Cite: Ernest Mandel, Revolutionary Marxism To-day, New Left Books, London, 1979.

George Nova Origin and Development of the State in the History of Societies Peter Camera How to make a revolution Socialists Played a Key Role in the Anti-War Mov't Social democracy in the unfinished global revolution Conference paper, 1999

Research essay sample on Social Democracy Early Stages