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arroe: well there we are. flawed analysis historically generating flawed politics in real time.
the russian revolution can be much more adequately understood as an urban coup d'etat grafted onto a peasant revolt. the cllapse of the military played a central role in enabling this convergence. there were any number of views about what a post-revolutionary system would look like--nothing like the unity you talked about in your post existed--the bolsheviks had the advnatage of a clear political line, repeated over a course of years, and clear boundaries seperating their organization from the outside (as over against say the social revolutionaries)...in this case, what emerges clearly is the importance of prior political work--were a revolution to happen, people would orient themselves around existing political options--which is an implication of saying the revolutions are made, they do not simply happen.
it is hard to think this way from a poli sci viewpoint, which tends by its nature to view power as exercized from the top down, in an administrative manner. to the exclusion of more socially oriented view of power and how it is exercized. the same limitation obtains with reference to politics. it is a limited and limiting disciplinary viewpoint from which to operate, and certainly does not function to give your position any legitimacy.
the french revolution is more complex, but the basic scenario is that the state collapsed as a function of financial pressures (the floating of bonds to pay for intervention in the american revolution following by a defaulting on the bonds) which lead to an artistocratic revolt, which lead to a basic reorganization of the structure of the monarchy, which was accompanied by a further implosion of the power of teh state--it was from inside the mechanisms that were being put in polace as a function of the aristocratic revolt that the revolution started....there was little in the way of prior political agitation along explicitly revolutionary lines--rather there was a series of positions, organized around political clubs, that tried to exercize power within the national assembly--the gironde, later the jacobins....further, there was a huge difference between politics in the urban centers and in the countryside....it was not a simple revolt of the population against an oppressive system. it was far far more complicated than that. its complexity and the subsequent ways of thinking about it (shaped by attempts to take the french revolution as the origin of the modern reovlutionary movement) issued into the ways in which revolutionary movements came to undertstand how they could operate--within this, it is as a reaction to the french revolution that political work (the articulation and dissemination of a politicalline prior to any actual revolt) was fashioned.
i do not know what irish revolution you are talking about--i assume you mean 1916. i do not see how it is comparable to the french situation at all.
as for the possibilities of revolution now in the states, i think that you might be right about what would happen if you only take into account a superficial view of conditions that obtain in the present--i think that any revolution that might happen in the shorter run will happen from the right...but that could change with teh development of new kinds of revolutionary movements, new languages for elaborating critique and for mobilising people against the existing order.
history is open. people make it. the existing situation is a fleeting as your breakfast was, in the bigger view of things. nothing is stable. nothing is eternal. ultimately, power resides in the people--whether they choose to exercize it or not is a seperate matter.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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