Revolution and the Millennium: China, Mexico, and Iran (review)

In his study of the relationship between millenarian movements and modern revolutions, James F. Rinehart contends that though the two activities are "distinctly different social phenomena" (p. 1), they both share some common characteristics: they emerge when society and polity are in a state of disequilibrium; both are based on the conviction that the old order has to be destroyed; and both "possess an unshakable belief in the inevitability of their actions" (p. 2) that promises to transform society and inaugurate an ideal era of social justice and harmony. Indeed, "Millenarian beliefs, . . . in varying degrees and forms, are present in all true revolutionary upheavals" (p. 3). This fact has not been fully understood, and, as a consequence, "little scholarship has been devoted" to the subject of revolutionary millenarianism (ibid.). Rinehart seeks to fill this "void" by presenting, in the work under review, a comparative analysis of the Chinese (1911, 1927-1928, and 1945-1949), Mexican (1910), and Iranian (1905 and 1978-1979) revolutions. However, the author informs us that his study " will not attempt to advance a general theory of millenarian revolution" (p. 6).

The book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter, "Apocalyptic Prophesy to Millenarian Revolution," discusses the development of revolutionary millenarianism in the context of Western history. The author sees the first manifestation of the "dominant characteristics of the revolutionary millenarian paradigm" (p. 19) in the biblical account of Daniel's dream, which prophesies that after the elimination of foreign occupation—beginning with the Babylonians and ending with the Greeks—Israel, personified in the dream as the "Son of Man," would emerge "as an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (ibid.). According to the endnote this quotation is from "Daniel 8: 13-14." Rinehart's use of citations is sometimes exasperating, and this quote is a case in point. In the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible, Daniel 8: 13-14 reads as follows:

13 Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot?

14 And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.

If Rinehart did not use the Authorized Version he should have given a more detailed endnote. Putting aside the issue of citations for the moment (I will come back to them later), the Daniel prophesy is viewed by Rinehart to be "political" millenarianism, a movement of devout, lower-class Jews directed against foreign domination and the Jewish elite, who were seen as working with the aggressors to corrupt Jewish religion and culture. In contrast to the Jewish millenarianism, later millenarian movements in medieval Europe are seen as "religious" in nature. The main support for these movements came from the lower classes, such as the peasantry, who had suffered the most from natural disaster or from some form of economic dislocation. The movements were often led by "charismatic prophets" who were dissatisfied with "an increasingly corrupt and unresponsive church" (p. 19).

From the late twelfth century, after abbot Joachim had enunciated his theory of the three stages of history and prophesied that the last stage would bring the millennium, millenarianism began to spread more widely in Europe. In the eighteenth century, after it became associated with "the powerful Enlightenment idea of progress" (p. 23), millenarianism became "secularized," and this, ultimately, generated the belief that the Golden Age (Utopia), could be achieved through science, reason, and the human will. And, although Marx categorically rejected religion as the "opiate of the people," his writings "portrayed the arrival of the communist millennium as the advent of true human freedom," and, "not surprisingly, it is the millenarian element of Marxist thought that modern revolutionaries have tended to emphasize" (p. 28). Rinehart...