Revolution is not a dirty word.

So why does it feel taboo to say it out loud?

The Peaceful Carnation revolution in Portugal, photo by Henrique Matos.

Good day, everyone,

And somehow, through decades of ironing out rebellious thought and softening you up, they have convinced you that revolution is somehow a bad thing. That it means chaos, madness, violence, the end of our much-beloved ‘order.’ But what happens when the order is just a bit crap? Poverty wages. No healthcare or social safety nets. Strong-armed policing and military repression. Endless money for wars…but not for infrastructure.

No, I believe that the real madness is being naïve enough to think this system can be ‘fixed’ without a bit of a push.

Revolution is not a dirty word my friends. It just means ‘great change’ and it is the historical necessity that they, the 1%, fear most.

The ruling class and its hypocrisy.

Every ruling class sanctifies its own violence as ‘progress’ while branding the resistance of the oppressed as ‘terror.’ This is a tale as old as time itself and it is no accident. It is very deliberate ideological warfare, waged to justify their rule and suppress ours. Let me expand a little because I think this article is going to hit just right at this time in history…

The ‘glorious, necessary’ revolutions (for the ruling classes).

American Revolution of 1776.

The American Revolution of 1776 is always hailed as the ‘birth of freedom’. Especially in US classrooms (I know because, although not being American, I had the displeasure of going to one of its schools briefly thanks to having a diplomatic childhood.)

But how can this revolution be the birth of freedom if this freedom did not extend to blacks, indigenous peoples, or anyone unlucky enough to be a woman in 1776? The so-called Founding Fathers harped on about ‘liberty’ but at same time were expanding slavery, committing literal genocide, and establishing property supremacy as the foundation of their new order.

Delightful fellows they were.

Similarly, the French Revolution of 1789 became celebrated for ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité!’ that is, until the sans-culottes dared to demand real equality. Then came the guillotine for ‘radicals’ who wanted real change, like Robespierre, followed swiftly by the giga imperialist Napoleon's regime, which restored hierarchy under a different banner.

Is it not a bit strange that these revolutions were bloody, chaotic, and exclusionary yet the history books still call them ‘necessary.’ Why? Because they consolidated bourgeois power, effectively replacing feudal lords with bankers and industrialists while maintaining the fundamental structure of exploitation.

To hammer in my point, let’s compare it to another revolution…

The ‘naughty evil’ socialist revolutions (that threaten the power itself).

Vladimir Lenin gives a speech before a crowd during the workers revolution against the Empire.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 smashed feudalism and capitalism in one fell swoop, lifting millions of Russians from illiteracy, granting land to peasants, and ultimately crushing the Nazis at Stalingrad, driving them back to Berlin and ending World War Two in Europe.

Yet, the West dismisses it as a ‘failure’ while conveniently ignoring that the USSR transformed from a backwards, feudal, tsarist state to a superpower that was sending rockets to space in just 40 years. This is unfathomably disingenuous, right?

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 overthrew a US-backed dictator, eradicated illiteracy, and sent doctors rather than bombs across the Global South. Yet, Cuba remains branded as 'an authoritarian regime’ in Western media, even as the US continues its illegal embargo against the Island and props up actual dictatorships such as the absolute monarchy in Saudi Arabia, a country with modern slavery.

The difference here is that bourgeois revolutions just rearrange the exploitation a little, while honest, leftist revolutions aim to abolish it entirely.

The Revolutionary Cavalry of Cuba entering Havana after the triumph of the Revolution on January 8, 1959.

The ruling class doesn't hate revolution really, I believe it likes the idea of it, it just hates revolutions that come from the working-class majority. The ones that go a little too well for us and shake their world. Their revolutions kept most of the oppressive systems in place while ours change them. Their movements replaced kings with CEOs while ours smash the CEO class entirely. Their promises offered abstract ‘rights’ while ours deliver concrete liberation.

That's why they criminalise our movements, rewrite our history, and fill our heads with fear. Because they understand the fundamental truth that: when the oppressed learn their own power, the game is over and in my estimation, the game is drawing to a close.

Neverending reform, so why is everything still crap?

Defenders of the system squeal about ‘reform’ as the only path forward.

‘We can change things by having faith in politicians to do things for us!’

But let’s be real…what has this endless parade of reform actually delivered anywhere on this planet, really? In the past decade we witnessed the emergence of ‘green capitalism’ yet we’re still choking the earth for profit, merely covered with crap fig leaves. We see calls for ‘racial justice’ that studiously avoid addressing the economic foundations that perpetuate racial oppression. (Think BLM.)

Across the globe, people celebrate ‘higher wages’ even as rents, debts, and inflation devour these gains faster than they can accumulate, leaving workers running ever faster on an economic treadmill that leads nowhere.

Reforms are simply concessions designed to keep us complacent, small adjustments to a fundamentally bad system that only exploits. They offer the illusion of progress while preserving the very structures that create the problems they claim to solve.

Revolution, by contrast, recognises that you cannot reform a system whose core logic demands exploitation, you need to knock it down like a Jenga tower and rebuild it from the ground up.

Revolution is not chaos, it’s change.

The bourgeoisie and all their apparatus such as the police, army and media love to depict revolution as disorder, painting images of mindless destruction and social collapse:

Fox News is, of course, the worst regime mouthpiece in the US for this kind of anti-worker reporting.

But…what could be more disorderly than the system they so vehemently defend?

Their world gives us war without end, waged for resources, for markets, for global hegemony, leaving entire regions devastated. We witness hunger amidst plenty, where food rots in warehouses while millions starve not from scarcity but from inability to pay. We see homes sitting empty, speculation keeping them vacant, while families sleep on streets in the shadow of these abandoned structures.

A tent town in the US.

Revolution is not the creation of chaos at all, it is the inevitable reordering of this madness. It represents the working class finally seizing what we have built with our own hands and making it serve our needs rather than their bloody profits.

You want to see disorder? Look at the US, look at India, look at all of the places that capitalism has been allowed to run rampant. The real disorder is allowing a system to continue to treat human life as disposable. Revolution brings the only order that matters: an order based on human dignity and there are so many places on this planet where humans are not being treated with dignity.

Watch: A Palestinian child stands in the food line, crying from hunger.

Watch: Detainees at an ICE facility spell out SOS with their bodies.

2025 is here and as you can see, it’s not great.

They dismiss us leftists as idealists, layabouts and dreamers disconnected from reality. But look around at the world they've built and ask yourself who is actually living in fantasy land?

Fascism is rising across the globe because unbridled capitalism, entering its death throes once again, is breeding monsters from its own contradictions. Trumps, Netanyahus, Modis…

There’s war, genocide, the biggest divide between rich and poor since Victorian times…so it’s no surprise people are angry. The youth especially. They radicalise not from ‘Chinese anti-western propaganda’ but because they see no future worth living under this decaying system that seems to linger without ever really dying.

Strikes erupt, protests multiply, uprisings spread, and the contradictions of their order sharpen into irreconcilable, inevitable conflict.

Demonstrators in LA this month.

The real fantasy is believing this system can last. The true delusion belongs to those who think endless growth on a finite planet, infinite inequality in human societies, and perpetual war for dwindling resources are perfectly fine and sustainable for the future. They’re not.

Say it, loud!

They want us to whisper ‘revolution’ like it’s a swear word or illegal, to treat it as an embarrassing relic of a bygone era. Taboo. But we can never allow that to happen. We must shout it as a promise to ourselves, a promise of liberation for all humanity.

REVOLUTION.

The words that once echoed across Europe still ring true today:

‘The working class has nothing to lose but its chains. It has everything to gain.’

So, friends across the globe, stop apologising for dreaming of a better world. Start organising to build it. The future belongs to those bold enough to seize it, and that future is ours for the taking.

Agitate. Educate. Organise.

And on that note, I’ll let you go for the day,

(P.S. If the ruling class hates this article, you’re probably doing it right.)

I am a poor writer, you can help me keep going by buying me a sandwich below! If everyone reading this made a small contribution, I could dedicate myself to this work full time, bringing you even more of what we need in these dark times.

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