Notre Temps Est Venu/Our Time has Come, mixed media on canvas, 2010. Erik Bulatov.
anyway, history in itself (as contingency, real possibility, etc.) is not rational, though it is not made any more rational in interpretative thinking (as in empirical/positive science, most historiography). for me (a hegelian), there is a co-productivity of thinking and history (subject-object), thus conceptually comprehensive cognition of historical development as opposed to the record of historical succession (some i'm sure are put off by the dialectic of reason, often equated with "progress"). in this sense, too, there is a logic to counter-revolution and retrogression in historical development. otherwise, you have what by now is a naive historicism (most in the right and the left despite ideological differences) or the usual relativism and conjectural judgment of what-ifs (although things are up for grabs in the game). i would even say contra almost all that there is a rationality to counter-revolution, that this is the "negative" with which we must necessarily tarry - modern history is replete with examples if not the stupid present situation...one shouldn't merely get stuck on semantical representation. if dialectics is development (historical or otherwise) thru contradiction/otherness, if revolution is the movement of absolute negativity, then i dunno why adherents of dialectical thinking leave out the so-called bad things (or is it Ding-an-sich, the beyond in various ways of revolutionary consciousness?). alas, i think there is only a handful of honest revolutionaries contra those who want some ethical-practical solution (which is exactly bourgeois intellectual intuition and the flip side of socialist utopia) and sometimes in the name of some self-styled philosophy. there is the further consideration, not only "being against" but "being for," the new society in-and-for-itself if you will - well, this still can't happen without a relentless self-critique in philosophy, which is quite lacking...revolutionary essence still needs to realize its concept.
