Revolution

The last sentence is the verdict and the rest of the definition sets out how it comes about. A revolution changes the top, and the replacement usually comes from the largest or most powerful negative image group, which sounds like the structure being overturned and is not. The negative image is a role inside the endogroup rather than outside it, and a role that runs the same programme as the reflectors, so promoting its representative to the centre changes the occupant without disturbing anything. Marsh's account of the commoner describes the same event from the other side, since the same block of uniform opinion that upholds a status quo can overthrow it, which is why revolutions can replace an endo-ideal without touching the arrangement underneath. Her observation about who ends up leading is the practical one. New endogroups are usually formed from intelligentsia revolutionaries, a migratory endo-ideal or the endo-ideal of an enemy endogroup, because no negative image can self identify as the negative image without becoming an endo-ideal, so the group cannot found itself from below. The energy account describes the cycle. The endosocial cycle of escalating abuse depletes the negative image first, then the reflectors, until the structure can no longer hold, and an act of violence can cause endogroup membranes to snap like an overstretched elastic band. What follows is a new figurehead on the old structure, and those who take that path are very likely to find themselves under a tyrant again.

Revolution theory has a substantial literature, with Crane Brinton's anatomy describing a recurring sequence through radical phase and Thermidorean reaction, Theda Skocpol's structural account and Tocqueville's observation that revolutions occur when conditions are improving. The iron law of oligarchy predicts exactly the outcome Marsh describes. Marxist theory distinguishes political from social revolution precisely to separate a change of rulers from a change of structure. Marsh's definition makes the failure the default rather than a category to be distinguished, so on her account what is ordinarily called a revolution is by definition the shallow kind, and the deeper kind requires building rather than overthrowing.