Revolution is not when you exchange one group of landlords for a different set. It is a total upending of systems. That is the true meaning. Soc dems and reformists think we can just change the window dressing and call it systemic. "If the new lord is better than the old lord we can return to the happiness of feudalism." What a terrible thing to believe.
We must reclaim this term. These terms belong to the people not a bunch of centuries dead slaveholding jackasses in powdered wigs who didn't change a goddamn thing.
Just something I've been thinking about lately.
The American Revolution was politically progressive. It was the revolution of the colonial middle classes against the feudal ruling classes which would lead to the creation of the world's first liberal capitalist democracy that had greatly expanded suffrage than what had existed during the colonial period.
This does not necessarily make it a socially progressive one even though in greater contrast to the world the American Revolution occurred in, one could say it was the most socially progressive event to occur until the more radical and doomed French Revolution occured.
Think of it akin to the abolishment of serfdom. A historically progressive step in the right direction but most certainly not the end of the road to progressive development.