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ORIGINAL: Alumbrado

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Mere unrest among the working and middle classes, all by itself, isn't enough. Revolutions require leaders — and those always come from the professional and intellectual classes.

Mao will be so heartbroken to learn that he wasn't a leader of any revolution because of his ignoble birth...

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Born on 26 December 1893 in the village of Shaoshan in Hunan Province, in China's south. His family are prosperous peasant farmers.

1913 - Mao enrols in the provincial normal school in Changsha, where he receives his last five years of formal education, graduating in 1918. While a student, Mao and his friends founded a night school for workers.

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Chinese peasants throwing the Empress, or the kuomintang out of the country and installing their own government (however flawed) still does not seem like a failed uprising. And it still disproves the notion that only members of the intellectual class are capable of leading the underclasses in a revolution. Mao was a lot of things, but born into the upper classes was not one of them.

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ORIGINAL: seeksfemslave

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ORIGINAL: Alumbrado

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Mere unrest among the working and middle classes, all by itself, isn't enough. Revolutions require leaders — and those always come from the professional and intellectual classes.

Mao will be so heartbroken to learn that he wasn't a leader of any revolution because of his ignoble birth...

http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/mao.htmlMini

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Born on 26 December 1893 in the village of Shaoshan in Hunan Province, in China's south. His family are prosperous peasant farmers.

1913 - Mao enrols in the provincial normal school in Changsha, where he receives his last five years of formal education, graduating in 1918. While a student, Mao and his friends founded a night school for workers.

In other words by education and his relatively privileged family background he raised himself up the social hierarchy.
Alumbrado you amuse me lol

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Revolutions require leaders — and those always come from the professional and intellectual classes.

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Alumbrado (about Mao)
Being born the son of a 'prosperous peasant farmer' and acquiring some education is not the same as being born into either the 'professional classes',or the 'intellectual classes' which was asserted as mandatory for leading a revolution.

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ORIGINAL: Zensee

As a side note – this does make me wonder if there is a real difference between rebellion and revolution. Specifically, was the American Revolution actually the American Rebellion. It’s easier to eject a foreign power than to winkle it out of its shell.

The French Revolution changed the government within their country. The Americans chucked an unwelcome, increasingly foreign power OUT of theirs.  Spartacus did not seek to change the Roman Empire, just escape it’s yolk.

Or is a rebellion just a failed revolution?

Or is it just semantics?

Z.

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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver
Rebelion and revolution are two quite different things. The British call what the Americans call the revolution, the American War Of Independence and I would argue the Brits are correct on this one. The colonial establishment were not involved in revolution as they were not trying to overthrow the socio-economic regime but to usurp it and entrench their own authority. The colonies were economically successful, there was nothing to be gained economically by kicking the Brits out, in fact the economic price of kicking the Brits out shows that. The founding fathers wanted political power and the social and economic order to remain the same. This they went someway to doing by raising tax themselves to pay for a standing army to protect their power while refusing 90% of the colonists the vote. Remember, the founding fathers claimed their revolution was about no taxation without representation? There was less representation in the newly formed USA than in the colonial days. Rebelion and power usurption is what happened, the reason why the term 'revolution'has stuck in America is because the leaders of 'the revoltion' were geniuses in propaganda. It is no surprise that the American constituion still exists and the French and the Russian revolutionary constitutions don't. The American constitution is a very conservative document and one that protects the power of the rich and powerful as much as it pretends to protect the rights of the poor (you know, their right to be poor). The French and Russian revolutionary constitutions were truely revolutionary constitutions which is why they were unacceptable to the establishments that emerged from their respective revolutions, they really did give power to the poor and oppressed, no establishment interested in maintaining power can allow that.

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(SFS)No it wasnt. Read again]