Written by Thomas Magstadt   

Let's face it, the political system hammered out at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 is broken. The "Miracle at Philadelphia"* has become the nightmare in Washington.

Predictably, the winners in the 2012 congressional sweepstakes will turn out to be every bit as bought as the current bunch of losers. Four more disastrous years of dysfunctional government and mounting turmoil: that's the most likely outcome of the money-go-round and media circus that passes for a national election in this country at present.

So long as nothing is done to address the underlying causes of the problems facing the middle class and poor, the pressures that produced both the amorphous Tea Party movement and the leaderless Occupy movement will continue to build. Eventually, leaders will emerge on both the right and left, and it will be too late to prevent an upheaval, with consequences no sober person would dare to predict.

Raising this spectre is not a call to arms. It's simply a reality.

In nuclear physics, a critical mass is the minimum amount of a given fissile material necessary to achieve a chain reaction – in other words, a really big explosion. Translated into the language of politics, we're talking about a really big self-sustaining mass action, the kind can leave the social, economic, and cultural landscape of a country looking like the surface of the moon.

It's happened time and again in the last century. It just hasn't happened here – yet.

Indeed, people believe it can't happen here. Not believing in the unimaginable is particularly irrational in a world that has seen the Berlin Wall torn down, the Soviet Union disappear, the French give up the franc, the World Trade Center implode on television, and an African-American elected president of the United States.

The term "social revolution" means different things to different people. It's not the same as a political revolution, which stripped of all nuances means what the Washington cognoscenti now call "regime change".

A social revolution is not simply a matter of replacing one government – or form of government – with another. The kind of far-reaching change it contemplates is fraught with uncertainty and perils: witness the October Revolution. But it is often a necessary stage in the life cycle of a society in thrall to an oppressive ruling class: witness the French Revolution.

Here's a short list of thinkers – a few among many – associated with the theory and practice of revolution. Look at how each defined this phenomenon, so instrumental in shaping the modern world for better or worse, and ask yourself if we are not seeing signs that a critical mass is developing – or perhaps already exists and only needs a triggering mechanism to start the self-sustaining chain reaction of social revolution.

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)

Trotsky envisaged a total overturning of existing structures and institutions in society; a fundamental redistribution of wealth, shattering of established property relations, and an end to class-based power and privilege. Trotsky's advocacy of "permanent revolution" – a concept he did not invent but applied to the October Revolution – was based on the conviction that the overthrow of capitalism would and could not be accomplished by simply bringing down the feudal order in Russia. Rather, the class struggle would have to be carried well beyond the replacement of the Tsarist autocracy. Bourgeois capitalist democracy is a stage on the road to the classless society, not the final destination. Russia alone would not move beyond that stage unless or until the revolution spread to other countries, hence the necessity of a perpetual or unending revolution. Only when the classless society is achieved worldwide will revolution have run its natural course – for Marxist true believers, that's the end of history.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

I'll let Hoffer, author of "The True Believer" and "The Ordeal of Change" (from which the following excerpt is taken), speak for himself: "When a population undergoing drastic change is without abundant opportunities for individual action and self-advancement, it develops a hunger for faith, pride, and unity. It becomes receptive to all manner of proselytizing, and is eager to throw itself into collective undertakings which aim at 'showing the world.' In other words, drastic change, under certain conditions, creates a proclivity for fanatical attitudes, united action, and spectacular manifestations of flouting and defiance; it creates an atmosphere of revolution. We are usually told that revolutions are set in motion to realize radical changes. Actually, it is drastic change which sets the stage for revolution."

The drastic change that has set the stage for social revolution is the rapid transfer of wealth from lower income levels to the very highest. The Occupy Wall Street movement is a mere symptom, a prelude to main event. Hoffer writes "Where things have not changed at all, there is the least likelihood of revolution."

In "The True Believer" Hoffman argues "…stopping a mass movement is often a matter of substituting one movement for another. A social revolution can be stopped by promoting a religious or nationalist cause." This insight goes a long way toward explaining why the giant corporations in league with the 1% were so intent on creating the myths surrounding the National Security State during the Cold War and its successor, the Homeland Security State, built on military-strategic quicksand otherwise known the War on Terror.

Lenin (1870-1924)

The architect of the October Revolution in Russia, characterized the popular uprising of peasants and workers as "…the festivals of the oppressed...[who act] as creators of a new social order."

Samuel Huntington (1927-2008)

In Huntington's worldview, social revolution is "…a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the dominant values and myths of society, in its political institutions, social structure, leadership, and government activities and policies." A Harvard professor and celebrated scholar, Huntington had far more in common with Edmund Burke than Lenin.

Theda Skocpol (1947- )

Skocpol's definition is not so different from Huntington's: a "combination of thoroughgoing structural transformation and massive class upheavals." But that's where the similarity ends. In her view, "Republicans are sabotaging national economic recovery and preventing job growth, just for political advantage."

Fair enough. But Democrats have been singularly ineffective in dealing with the saboteurs. So, to repeat, it's difficult to see how things can get better until they get worse.

But will it lead to social revolution? Judging from videos of police brutality against peaceful protestors in Zuccotti Park, Cal Berkeley, and UC Davis, "the festivals of the oppressed" are in full swing.

A growing number of citizens involved in the Occupy movement believe the revolution is already underway. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but I'm not so sure. Neither, apparently, are the greed-is-good capitalists who pretend to believe in the "free market" but hate competition; who take the most from society but give back the least; who wrap themselves in the flag but look the other way as the sons and daughters of working-class families are sent to fight and die in quixotic wars the 1% exploit for corporate profits and personal gain.

They are clearly running scared. They have been waging class warfare and in the process they have created a sleeping giant – a new indentured and indebted underclass that's rapidly replacing the middle class as the dominant socioeconomic reality of our times. Now the giant is stirring. That's why the 1% are ramping up to spend more money than ever to bend the rules, break the back of the protest movement, and make sure a beholden Congress stays bought.

If you want confirmation in the coming days and weeks, look for Fox News and the national rightwing propaganda machine to become more desperate in its efforts to create substitutes for the real crisis, which is not about unruly mobs or terrorist plots or leftwing conspiracies.

It's about rising inequality in America, about the injustice of a system that makes tax evasion perfectly legal for the richest among us and allows financial institutions to play Russian roulette with the lives of the 99% who are powerless to do anything about it.

It's about the big crimes of the mostly white 1% that go unpunished and a criminal justice system that routinely puts blacks in prison for crimes that pale in comparison.

And it's about the hypocrisy of a "democracy" in name only that puts public offices on the auction block and gives "the people" the best Congress money can buy.

*"Miracle at Philadelphia" is how Catherine Drinker Bowen described the Philadelphia Convention in her best-selling book of the same name.