History and revolution

Refuting revisionism

Mike Haynes and Jim Wolfreys, Verso, 320 pages, paperback, £17.99

This book asks the simple question: why do revolutions still lay claim on us?

Recent historical writing tends to write off how working people have challenged the foundations of the existing order. Over the past two decades, it has become fashionable to dismiss the English, French and Russian revolutions as counterproductive and bound to end in disaster.

This book is therefore a refreshing look at the popular bases of those revolutions, as well as powerfully asserting the role workers have played in bringing about important political changes.

It is clear from this collection that modern democracy is very much the product of working-class action and that, while revolutions may involve certain risks, such mass action also contains the potential for progressive improvement.

As such the book is a celebration of the refusal of workers to simply carry on being ruled as before.