Revolution Today

Susan Buck-Morss asks: What does revolution look like today? How will the idea ofrevolution survive the inadequacy of the formula, 'progress = modernisation through industrialisation,' to which it has owed its political life?

Socialism plus computer technology, citizen resistance plus a global agenda ofconcerns, revolutionary commitment to practices that are socially experimental andinclusive of difference - these are new forces being mobilised to make another futurepossible.

Revolution Today celebrates the new political subjects that are organizing thousandsof grass roots movements to fight racial and gender violence, state-led terrorism, andcapitalist exploitation of people and the planet worldwide. The twenty-first centuryhas already witnessed unprecedented popular mobilizations. Unencumbered by olddogmas, mobilizations of opposition are not only happening, they are gaining supportand developing a global consciousness in the process. They are themselves a chain ofsignifiers, creating solidarity across language, religion, ethnicity, gender, and everyother difference.

Trans-local solidarities exist. They came first. The right-wing authoritarianism andanti-immigrant upsurge that has followed is a reaction against the amazing visualpower of millions of citizens occupying public space in defiance of state power.

We cannot know how to act politically without seeing others act. This book providesphotographic evidence of that fact, while making us aware of how much of the newrevolutionary vernacular we already share.