| Rise Against – A Gentlemen's Coup Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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It's essentially about a political revolution that hasn't yet turned into a social revolution. The people have grievances, very possibly economic in nature (ie. they're shit poor), and '[seize] the throne', putting a new popular government into power, but it's still the 'same old story' - this government is incapable of transforming the basic social and economic relations that are behind the suffering. The lyrics then say that the revolution has 'not gone far enough', and that they should have 'burned [the throne] to the ground'. This is saying that they need to turn a minor political revolution into a social revolution, and instead of just capturing the state apparatus, the revolution must smash the state and replace it with a system designed from the ground up to serve the interests of the masses. The Egyptian Revolution is the perfect example of this. The people revolted due to a combination of severe state repression and horrific economic conditions, as Mubarak's neoliberal reforms gutted working class living standards. So far, however, all we've seen is the power changing hands to a theoretically progressive body, without the core economic grievances being addressed - hence the ongoing protests in Tahrir as I type, and a growing realisation that it's the very way the society is organised that is the ultimate problem. |
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