1 INTRODUCTION: A NOTE OF GRATITUDE

Few things in academic life are as satisfying as encountering an engaged critique of one’s work. In that spirit, I was delighted to read the rigorous and thoughtful replies to my review essay ‘A Fifth Generation of Revolutionary Theory?’ by Ben Abrams (2019) and, responding to both of us, Colin Beck and Ritter (2021). Their critiques have prompted me both to rethink what I have got wrong–as well as clarify and defend what I still think I have right, as I argue below–and the limitations of the entire exercise of delineating ‘generations’ of social theory about revolutions. They also do so in ways that open up new directions for the study of revolution: a challenge I seek at least to begin to take up in this brief reply. (Figure 1)

There is much common ground between us. In this reply I will focus first on my substantive disagreements with Abram’s contention that a fifth generation is yet to come –namely the implicit difference between ‘modelling’ explanatory variables and identifying interactive processes and a genuinely different object of investigation, both present in his ‘long’ fourth generation. I then take up Beck and Ritter’s advice to turn away from literature reviews and back to developing novel substantive questions that also (as Abrams rightly enjoins us) have some political bearing on the practice and outcomes of revolutions. Taking some issue with Beck and Ritter’s claim that the question of the object of study in revolution theory has been settled, I suggest that underlying all of this meta‐debate is a deeper question: whatever happened to social revolution? I will sketch out the beginning of an answer based on the transformation of agrarian relations in the late 20^th century, and the implications of this transformation not just for revolution but for its understudied correlate, counter‐revolution. In doing so, even in preliminary and tentative form, I hope to advance the common project of substantive research on revolutions which this debate has revealed as the common concern amongst its participants.

中文翻译：

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关于革命理论的世代：一种回应

1引言：概论

在学术生活中，很少有事情像遇到对工作的热情批评那样令人满意。本着这种精神，我很高兴阅读对我的评论文章“革命理论的第五代？”的严谨和周到的回答。本·艾布拉姆斯（Ben Abrams）（2019年）以及回应我们俩的科林·贝克和里特（2021年）他们的批评促使我俩重新思考我犯了什么错误，并澄清和捍卫我仍然认为正确的东西，正如我在下文所述，以及描述革命的社会理论的“世代”的整个过程的局限性。 。他们这样做的方式也为革命研究开辟了新的方向：我至少希望在这篇简短的答复中开始探讨这一挑战。（图1）

我们之间有很多共同点。在本答复中，我将首先关注我对亚伯兰关于第五代尚未到来的论点的实质性分歧，即第五种说法是“建模”解释变量与识别交互过程之间的隐式区别，以及真正不同的调查对象，两者都存在于他的著作中。长的第四代。然后，我接受了贝克和里特的建议，从文学评论转向建立新的实质性问题，这些问题也（正如艾布拉姆斯正确地要求我们）对革命的实践和结果具有政治影响。对于贝克和里特关于革命理论中的研究对象的问题已经解决的主张，我提出了一个问题，我认为所有这些元辩论的根本是一个更深层次的问题：社会革命发生了什么？我将根据20世纪后期农业关系的转变，勾勒出答案的开始。^个世纪，这种转变不仅是革命，而是它的充分研究相关，反革命的影响。通过这样做，即使是初步的和初步的形式，我也希望推进关于革命的实质性研究的共同项目，而这场辩论已经揭示了它是参加者之间共同关心的问题。