A spontaneous uprising can surprise the ruling class only once before it fails

Evidence

But the 1968 constellation of uprisings did not topple governments, not even after Paris was brought to a standstill for weeks. The PCF used the leverage generated by the unrest to demand a significant wage increase for French workers, reflecting both the desires of the union rank-and-file and the limited ambitions of Moscow, which had no interest in provoking Washington by making a bid for revolution in Western Europe. When the Old Left succeeded in getting the workers more money, this quickly took the steam out of the utopian student movement. … French-Austrian philosopher André Gorz asked, in a 1968 New Left Review essay, why the French people would award the revolutionaries with votes after they proved unable to assert their power to govern when they had the chance. He had noticed that you could only surprise the ruling class with a spontaneous explosion once. Effective prefiguration, as he saw it, showed the masses that your concrete movement was worth buying into, and what it was capable of achieving. That did not happen. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 98

Categorization

• XREF: Gorz’s prefiguration argument directly bears on the central thesis Bevins develops across the book about why mass protest does not translate into durable change — likely echoed in later chapters on the 2010s. — connects to: An occupying power can provoke premature revolt to identify and decapitate resistance — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 879; Spontaneous mass uprising without organized revolutionary leadership invites state suppression — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 77; Unled spontaneous revolts invite reactionary counter-movements and coups — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 808 (+2 more)
• SEED: Gorz’s ‘you can only surprise the ruling class once’ is a strong epigraph or spine for an essay on why the element of surprise is a wasting asset in protest politics.

Broader Connections

• Spontaneous mass uprising without organized revolutionary leadership invites state suppression #corroborates (0.82) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 77
• Unled spontaneous revolts invite reactionary counter-movements and coups #corroborates (0.79) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 808
• Ruling classes mobilize their full reserves before revolutionaries reach power. #expands (0.76) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2300
• Revolt in a non-revolutionary period is precarious and self-endangering. #expands (0.74)
• An occupying power can provoke premature revolt to identify and decapitate resistance #expands (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 879