Revision summary
Revolution can replace political order and, in Marx’s aim, the mode of production. Charisma routinises into new staff (Weber); bureaucracy and oligarchy return (Michels). Durkheim, Mead, and gender analysis show slow everyday remainder. India 1947 replaced the colonial state more than caste society. Extent: high for sovereignty, uneven for class, low for honour in the short run.
Model answer
Introduction
Revolution is a rapid, extra-ordinary break in political sovereignty and, in the Marxist sense, in the mode of production. It can replace a ruling staff and a legal order. The extent to which it replaces the whole existing society is historically limited.
Body
High extent: what can be replaced
- Karl Marx: a social revolution transforms relations of production, not only the palace. 1789 and 1917 aimed at that extent, with different outcomes.
- Max Weber: charisma and then a new legal-rational or traditional staff can replace legitimate domination.
- The French Revolutionary calendar of rights and the Soviet property law show deep legal replacement.
Limited extent: what persists
- Emile Durkheim: moral density and habits do not change on a decree day. Anomie can follow the break.
- George Herbert Mead’s self and everyday generalised others change slowly.
- Family, gender, and unpaid care, as later feminists showed after Oakley, often survive as patriarchal order inside a new state.
- Bureaucracy, in Weber’s and Robert Michels’s keys, reconstitutes minority rule.
- Robert K. Merton: manifest new man, latent old networks.
Indian discussion
- National movement and 1947 replaced colonial sovereignty more than village hierarchy. Caste and property showed high persistence.
- Naxal and other revolutionary projects faced the same extent problem: state smash versus social structure.
Discussion of extent
- Political order: often high replacement of personnel and constitution.
- Class structure: possible but reversible or incomplete.
- Status honour and kinship: lowest extent of replacement in the short run.
- Talcott Parsons would call a full replace a new system; most revolutions are hybrid.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD REV[Revolution] --> POL[New sovereignty staff] REV --> MOP[Possible new production] PER[Kin gender honour habit] --> LIM[Limited replacement]
Conclusion
Revolution can replace sovereignty, law, and a ruling class to a large extent. It replaces everyday honour, gender, and moral habits to a much smaller extent unless a long process follows. Marx names the ambition; Durkheim, Weber, and Mead name the remainder.
Quick related
Students also ask
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"Ideology is crucial for social transformation in a democracy." Discuss.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2015 · Q5(b)). View answer →
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Is reform the opposite of revolution?
Reform changes within an order. Revolution claims to found a new order. Empirically they mix.
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Did any revolution replace everything?
None replaced all of kinship, language, and habit on day one. Claims of total replace are ideological.
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