ABSTRACT
Revolution remains endlessly fascinating to scholars and activists alike; it is, H. L. Mencken once suggested, the "sex of politics." 1 However, the concept of revolution has lost much of its utility, rendered by excessive and careless usage into little more than a synonym for "watershed" or "turning point" and invoked as a rhetorical device to lend drama or import to far less dramatic, even mundane, occasions. In addition, the use of the term to connote fundamental societal transformation has recently been challenged by the claim that the triumph of capitalism is contemporaneous with the demise of revolution.
