III. Plot a Revolution
     7. This strategy is always popular among those who have no patience with the tedious workings of the democratic process or who believe that basic institutions can only be changed by force. It attracts some of the more active and idealistic young people of every generation. To them it offers a romantic appeal, usually symbolized by some dashing and charismatic figure. It has the even greater appeal of simplicity: "Since this society is hopelessly bad, let's smash it and build something better on the ruins."
     8. Some of my best friends have been revolutionists, and a few of them have led reasonably satisfying lives. These are the ones whose revolutions did not come off; they have been able to keep on cheerfully plotting their holocausts right into their senescence. Others died young, in prison or on the barricades. But the most unfortunate are those whose revolutions have succeeded. They lived, in bitter disillusionment, to see the establishment they had overthrown replaced by a new one, just as hard-faced and stuffy.
     9. I am not, of course, suggesting that revolutions accomplish nothing. Some [the American Revolution, the French Revolution] clearly do change things for the better. My point is merely that the idealists who make the revolution are bound to be disappointed in either case. For at best their victory never dawns on the shining new world they had dreamed of, cleansed of all human meanness. Instead it dawns on a familiar, workaday place, still in need of groceries and sewage disposal. The revolutionary state, under whatever political label, has to be run -- not by violent romantics -- but by experts in marketing, sanitary engineering, and the management of bureaucracies.
      10. For the idealists who are determined to remake society, but who seek a more practical method than armed revolution, there remains one more alternative.