Review of "The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin" by Dan Edelstein (Princeton UP, 2025)

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A book cover with a background in cream color with the title in all caps as THE REVOLUTION TO COME with normal font for the subtitle "A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin". The author's name, DAN EDELSTEIN is also in all caps. To the left of the subtitle is an image of a fork pointing down impaling what looks like a red strawberry.

Review of "The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin" by Dan Edelstein (Princeton UP, 2025)

This was an interesting, accessible, if fundamentally conservative intellectual history of the idea of revolution. The basic argument is that the meaning and aims of revolution have changed over time. Initially, from the Greeks to the revolution in what became the United States, revolution was something to be avoided and feared. The goal was stability through effective, balanced governance. But with the advent of the idea of progress during the Enlightenment, ever since the French Revolution, revolution was seen as something desirable and necessary.

I read it largely as a critique of the desire for progress and of the left. Many of the critiques are fair, but my concern is that they have been selectively applied. For example, Edelstein locates the emergence of the practice of "political terror" as being intrinsically linked to progress and leftist revolution via events in France. I would argue that all states practice political terror. What was slavery and Indigenous genocide in what became the U.S. if not political terror? What of conservative regimes such as Pinochet's throwing opponents out of helicopters into the ocean? Or that most institutionalized of terror: the Nazi holocaust? Those receive no mention (aside from a claim they do not fit within the scope of study). To condemn Stalin is justified. But to give a pass to Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, et al. because they were not leftists is to miss the bigger picture. What is at issue is not the "pathological" aspect of leftist revolution, but rather the bane that is the nation-state and its exercise of illegitimate power and authority - left or right.

As a study, it is troubling in that it is focused solely on Western thought. There is no consideration of Indigenous forms of governance. Similarly, it is largely a story of powerful white men, with little consideration or contemplation of dynamics such as race or gender or who even gets to decide what government is desirable. Ultimately, what Edelstein wrote without knowing it or acknowledging it is a history of power from above. Unfortunately, those who have always critiqued such power, such as anarchists, are mentioned only in passing, while others are absent entirely.

I am not trying to entirely pan the book, there is much that is of interest, but I also believe that to extract such information one must read it against the grain - ironic, as his reading of revolution is presented as doing just that.

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