My Revolutions Book

A Moral Calculus of Revolutionary Violence

It was beneficial to read this novel after William Vollmann's "You Bright and Risen Angels" and Norman Mailer's Miami and the Siege of Chicago".

Even more so, it deserves comparison with John Banville's "The Untouchable" (which is one of my favourite novels).

As has become customary, Vollmann's spin on revolution seems to be more preoccupied with revolution as a fashion accessory or a self-conscious symbol of transgression. Mailer faces down the challenge whether an Old Leftie should embrace the revolutionary strategy of the New Left.

Banville convincingly explores the life of a former spy (for Russia) who is about to be exposed. I don't recall a lot of discussion in Banville's novel about what cause he spied for and why. The cause had become subsumed into the dictates of the Soviet Union.

Kunzru's novel has more in common with Mailer's scenario. While Mailer (who also purports to be the protagonist) is obviously a novelist and journalist, Kunzru's first person narrator and protagonist is a former L.S.E. student who engaged in revolutionary terrorist activity in the U.K. at the cusp of the late 60's/early 70's.

The Angry Brigade

In an Historical Note at the end of the novel, Kunzru says:

"The British revolutionary underground has attracted less attention than its counterparts in the United States, Italy, and Germany. Many people, even in the U.K., have forgotten the Angry Brigade, whose notoriety peaked at the time of the 'Stoke Newington Eight' trial in 1972, at the end of which four defendants received long prison sentences."

The unnamed group in "My Revolutions" is based on the Angry Brigade, which in turn was inspired by the German Baader Meinhof Gang (or the Red Army Faction), and the Italian Brigate Rosse (or the Red Brigades).

Chris Carver (AKA Michael Frame) is a fringe member of the group. He has read and absorbed a small amount of radical leftist literature, though he doesn't seem to have developed a robust political philosophy that motivates his embrace of political violence and terrorism. His sympathy with the group seems to be more superficial, based on personal admiration of other members, or sexual interest in the female members (e.g., Anna Addison [possibly modelled on Anna Mendelssohn], who might or might not have been killed in the bombing of the German Embassy in Copenhagen in 1975). Indeed, for much of the first half of the novel, the sexual overtones dominated, so much so that I questioned whether it had more in common with English Lad Lit.

Ultimately, though, the novel grows into a more mature and sophisticated analysis of "what I believe". Chris/Mike is portayed as more of a socialist than an anarchist, and realises that the violent tactics used by the group actually betrayed the political and philosophical vision that motivated his anger in the first place. Unlike "You Bright and Risen Angels", the novel forces the reader to ask the question what circumstances justify violence or terrorism, particularly in western societies that have morphed into social democracies or welfare states.

The internal culture of the group seems to alienate members from the broader cause of radical humanism and society as a whole, including innocent civilians and complicit/guilty members of the military industrial complex (such as the police, special forces and the armed forces).



The Fragmented Collective

The narrative is a fractured composite of at least five different periods in Chris/Mike's life:

1968 - the time of Chris's radicalisation, leading up to the bombing of the Post Office Tower and his exile from the UK in 1971

1975 - the bombing of the German Embassy in Copenhagen

1981 - Mike returns to the UK and soon after meets Miranda

2000 - Mike and Miranda have a holiday in France, where he thinks he sees Anna in the street

2001 - Mike narrates his story (partly to Miranda's daughter and his step-daughter, Sam) as he approaches his 50th birthday party.

Kunzru expertly re-assembles the fragments in a manner that both keeps us guessing and supplies us with a satisfying climax.

The Feral Ecology

The profiles of the group members and other protesters are both insightful and amusing:

"...the feral ecology of the London underground...the Black Power crowd, the neatly dressed Leninists from the orthodox Communist Party." (108)

"A Bohemian slovenliness hung over the place, a mannered slouch." (254)

"Stupid nihilistic rich kids…" (183)

"...the whole ragtag London mob, students and street hippies and East End mods and striking builders and Piccadilly junkies spilling like an overflowing council bun into the big green open space, superciliously surveyed by the elegant townhouses of Mayfair." (34)

"...its audience, a confection of swinging London and San Francisco flower-power…" (92)

"...a ramshackle counterculture made up of hundreds of cliques and groups and communes, little magazines, support groups, co-ops, bands...an anti-city of bed-sitters and bookshops, rehearsal rooms and cramped offices." (109)

"There were mysterious middle-aged men with flasks of tea ànd sheaves of self-printed leaflets, feral-looking hippies, delinquent teens, raggedy thirties Marxists looking to warm their hands at the revolutionary fire." (73)

Against My Father's World

They pit themselves against the status quo of their parents' world:

"There's always been a part of the British establishment that identifies its own interests with the interests of the state." (225)

"They're smug, Philistine, reactionary, self-satisfied morons."

"I don't think that's fair. They're conservative. Old-fashioned." (24)

"Standing in the crowd that morning with my fist in the air, there was one thing I was certain of: I'd had enough of my father's world, enough of the idea that life was a scramble to the top over the heads of those poorer, slower, or weaker than yourself." (29)

"[The boy] couldn't have been older than seventeen, with tousled hair and a big cardigan that looked like his mum had knitted it." (34)

The Existential Poverty of the System

The political agenda is constructed on the run, spontaneously:

"We worked together, scrawling phrases, calling them out to one another, little fragments of polemic we delivered like orators, taking pleasure in the force of the words, their potential to make change." (45)

Still, they co-opt the framework and language of Marxism:

"He wanted to illustrate the existential poverty of the System. He wanted to propagandise for internationalism, for a free and progressive style of life…'Cinema is a weapon,' he said, 'for changing consciousness.'" (41)

"No one else is going to do it, if we don't. No one else is going to build the revolution. I think we owe it to the future." (42)

"Action. It's where everyone's at now. Either shit or get off the pot." (42)

"We were a sign of something, the canaries in the capitalist coal mine, the Vanguard." (73)

"...we had to commit to the project of forming a disciplined vanguard, to being one of an exemplary group of people who could credibly go out to the workers, raise consciousness through agitation and propaganda, and grow the movement to the point where the overthrow of the capitalist state would become feasible." (148)

From Protest to Resistance

The first step is to go beyond protest and embrace direct action, which inevitably results in confrontation:

"CONFRONTATION is a bridge from protest to resistance...CONFRONTATION is your path to revolutionary self-transformation...CHOOSE YOUR TARGETS! ACT NOW!" (45)

"We would make Sylvan Close the site of an open confrontation with the State." (158)

Breaking the Law

Confrontation brings conflict with the police and allegations that they have broken the law:

"Colin and Maggie disapproved of breaking the law. They said we had to show we were a responsible, rational part of society. If we were perceived as wreckers or undesirables, how could we hope to have an effect." (63)

"The other cardboard cut-out of Sean is, of course, the social deviant, a member of the criminal classes led astray by a superficial engagement with politics." (97)

"Principle number one: if we wanted to call ourselves revolutionaries, we had to be prepared to break the law. This wasn't just a gesture, or a bonding ritual. The experience of transgression was part of our formation as revolutionary subjects. It would change us, change our relationship to power." (117)

"There were all those pseudo Trotskys yabbering away, but most of them didn't have a clue. All that revolutionary fervour - it was sort of wishful thinking. Oh, I don't deny there were things that needed doing - I mean, Britain was a joyless hole of a place before our generation got hold of it - but no one could see farther than the end of their noses. We thought it was all about us. And there we were, in the middle of the Cold War...Anything that destabilised the British state was to the advantage of the USSR." (258)

The Transformation of the Self

Most of the students are comfortably middle class or bourgeois, ostensibly showing solidarity with the working class or proletariat (because the workers have the numbers, if organised).

However, to transform society, the revolutionaries first have to transform themselves:

"I was diagnosed as a closet elitist, still trying to set myself apart from the proletariat." (188)

"Freedom begins with the self!" (87)

"It's not about the self. The self is reactionary crap. It's about mass mobilisation." (88)

"A revolutionary transformation of society would require a transformation of social life, a transmutation of ourselves...We had to kill the engine that generated all the daddies and mummies, throw a clog into the big machine."(109)

Revolutionary Violence

Just as action leads to confrontation, it leads to violence, which conflicts with their non-violent strategy:

"Adventurism is a characteristic deviation in times of weakness." (214)

"I accused them of fetishising nonviolence, telling them they'd just internalised the state's distinction between legitimate protest and criminality." (173)

"It makes no sense to her to employ violence to end violence." (88)

Eventually, some would say, inevitably, they embrace bombing and terrorism:

"Revolution [isn't] going to happen without someone seizing power. It [is] going to take struggle. It [is] going to be violent." (88)

"We are advocates of the abolition of war. We do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun, it is necessary to take up the gun. (Mao)" (226)

"You can't hate the world's imperfection so fiercely, so absolutely, without getting drawn toward death. Beyond a certain point it becomes the only possibility." (22)

"Someone's going to get killed...Collateral damage. It's inevitable in war." (245)

"We're going to kill to demonstrate our organic connection to the masses." (230)

"I thought our action [the bombing] was so pure in motive and clear in intent that no one could fail to understand it. I thought we were a spark." (202)

The Killing Fields

Chris/Mike starts to question both the means and the ends, when he is required to kill innocent people:

"I couldn't see how it was justified for me...to kill a man out of some abstract sense of revolutionary solidarity or third world internationalism...On a simple human level [the] plan still meant killing a man in front of his child and that had nothing to do with what I believed in. I wanted an end to poverty, to carpet bombing, to the numbness and corruption of the death-driven society I'd been born into. Instead it seemed death had corrupted me too." (261)

The Pure Mind of the Theorist

He is forced to ask whether he really is an extremist or just an idealist:

"I always felt you got caught up in something you had no control over. You didn't seem like the others. You didn't seem like an extremist." (168)

"...I think when it comes to actual revolution, you'll hate it. You'll hate the noise. You'll hate the people. I think you're a theorist." (117)

"Oh, Sam. It was arrogance, I suppose. We thought we'd stepped outside. We thought it had been given to us to kick-start the new world. Can you understand that?" (231)

"A lot can happen in thirty years. People who sat around at Lansdowne Road preaching revolution can start to speak the language of choice and competition." (139)

"Let's all get on with gardening and watching the soaps and having kids and going shopping. You've done it. You've been able to lead a dull life because there's no real conflict anymore...That's what a good society looks like, Chris. Not perfect. Not filled with radiant angelic figures loving each other. Just mildly bored people, getting by." (259)

"I don't remember much about what I thought or how I felt. I was treading water, turning round and round, existing rather than living. I had the idea that I'd try to find somewhere very beautiful and very simple and settle there, far away from all kinds of violence and destruction. To say I was disillusioned with politics would be too simple. I still hated the system, hated the cops in their gray or green or blue or brown uniforms, pushing people around, moving them on from the Damrak or St. Pauli or the Stroget. But I didn't trust myself anymore. I was suspicious of my instincts, my capacity for violence." (260)

"I gradually began to feel less connected to what I'd thought and done before. The monks taught that to escape suffering one must reject the impulse to act on the world. The desire for change, they insisted, is just another form of craving...The liberation I'd fought for was surely impossible, illusory...The Dhammapada begins, 'Mind is the forerunner of all processes: it is chief and they are mind-made. If one talks or acts with an impure mind then suffering follows as the wheel follows the ox's tread.' So I tried to purify my mind, to accept that the only possible sphere of liberation was the self. I thought I had a chance to achieve peace. I might as well have been doing push-ups..." (271)


"But when you talk about destruction,
Don't you know you can count me out?"

John Lennon, "Revolution"

SOUNDTRACK:

Angry Brigade and Persons Unknown Documentaries



The Angry Brigade



The Beatles - "Revolution"



Guerrilla (Official Trailer)