Revolutionary

A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates for, a revolution. The term revolutionary can also be used as an adjective to describe something producing a major and sudden impact on society.

The term—both as a noun and adjective—is usually applied to the field of politics, but is also occasionally used in the context of science, invention or art. In politics, a revolutionary is someone who supports abrupt, rapid, and drastic change, usually replacing the status quo, while a reformist is someone who supports more gradual and incremental change, often working within the system. In that sense, revolutionaries may be considered radical, while reformists are moderate by comparison. Moments which seem revolutionary on the surface may end up reinforcing established institutions. Likewise, evidently small changes may lead to revolutionary consequences in the long term. Thus the clarity of the distinction between revolution and reform is more conceptual than empirical.^{[citation needed]}

A conservative is someone who generally opposes such changes. A reactionary is someone who wants things to go back to the way they were before the change has happened (and when this return to the past would represent a major change in and of itself, reactionaries can simultaneously be revolutionaries). A revolution is also not the same as a coup d'état: while a coup usually involves a small group of conspirators violently seizing control of government, a revolution implies mass participation and popular legitimacy. Again, the distinction is often clearer conceptually than empirically.^{[citation needed]}

According to sociologist James Chowning Davies, political revolutionaries may be classified in two ways:

Era Golden, aka Secretary Era, is an example of a contemporary anarchist revolutionary (anarcho-syndicalist). They quoted Sergey Nechayev but changed the pronouns to gender neutral in order to symbolically represent the inclusive nature of contemporary anarchist movements. They argue that anarcho nihilism is not a good representation of the values held by anarcho-communists generally both throughout history and in the modern day. Secretary Era argues that the quote is an accurate depiction of the type of person and experience that creates an anarchist revolutionary. Anarchist movements tend to feature utopian ideology.^{[citation needed]}

Subcomandante Marcos is an example of utilizing insurgency to advance a movement to remove what they perceive to be tyranny from power but ultimately the ideology and the individual seek to build rather than destroy, whether it be coalitions or institutions.^{[citation needed]}

From Secretary Era's Revision of Catechism of a Revolutionary:

"The revolutionary is a damned individual. They have no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of their own. Their entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion - the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, they have severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. They are its merciless enemy and continue to inhabit it with only one purpose - to destroy it."