{"id":14840,"date":"2026-06-16T15:38:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T19:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=14840"},"modified":"2026-06-26T02:00:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:00:44","slug":"redeeming-the-past-for-a-revolutionary-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2026\/06\/redeeming-the-past-for-a-revolutionary-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Redeeming the past for a revolutionary future"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span>bolition, as Angela Davis reminds us, is based on the radical notion that institutions like the police, courts, and prisons are not isolated problems that might be fixed by reforming away their most harmful and violent elements. They are constitutive of capitalism, so can only be undone through a complete transformation of society. It is only through such a process of revolutionary change that real alternatives to punitive and carceral forms of justice might be created. In the process of political struggle different ways of relating to each other begin to develop, new social forms of organization are produced, and qualitatively different alternative futures begin to emerge as material possibilities. Abolitionism, in this sense, is a negative resistance to the oppressive and exploitative relations of the present as well as a positive force capable of expanding the horizon of what a future society might look like.<\/p>\n

Revolutionary Forgiveness: Beyond Moralism, Toward Liberation<\/em> by D. K. Renton begins from the abolitionist position that recognizes that \u201cif every intimate harm is to be met with the incarceration of the perpetrator, then a series of abuses will follow\u201d (1). Of course, an abolitionist stance does not mean ignoring immediate social harms both within left-wing movements and in society more broadly. Revolutionary Forgiveness<\/em> insists that leftists must begin to create meaningful alternatives to the carceral system and that one possibility is to be found in revolutionary forgiveness. More than a moral commitment to magnanimity, revolutionary forgiveness for Renton is a political and ethical practice in which perpetrators of social wrongs are only forgiven once the social relations that allowed those harms to occur have been (or are in the process of being) transformed. Only then will the victims have gained the social power necessary to actively choose to forgive the offenders, allowing them both to reintegrate fully into society.<\/p>\n

Connecting forgiveness with social justice goes beyond individual accountability. However, as Renton emphasizes, the perpetrator taking responsibility for the harm they have caused is an integral part of revolutionary forgiveness. Justice at the individual level is directly tied to revolutionary transformation, the complete reorganization of all social relations, and the creation of new revolutionary institutions. Importantly, though, Renton is not content to wait until after the revolution for the process of forgiveness to begin or new ways of dealing with harm to develop. Instead, he insists that alternative and truly democratic ways of dealing with social injustice can \u2013 and must \u2013 be developed in the present, in concert with resistance against capitalist exploitation and oppression. Drawing from the writings of Gy\u00f6rgy Luk\u00e1cs, Renton argues that \u201cthe means chosen to achieve socialism [must be] indivisible from the ends\u201d (64).<\/p>\n

No forgiveness without justice<\/h4>\n

Stressing the necessary relationship between means and ends need not reduce politics to an attempt to create a post-revolutionary future in the present. At its worst, prefigurative politics places change at the individual level above social transformation. But prefiguration does not mean living exactly as we would like to in a post-revolutionary situation while ignoring the social relations of the present. Instead, Renton rethinks prefigurative politics through a revolutionary lens by emphasizing that through the process of struggling against present conditions, people begin to create new ways of relating to each other and the world. Revolutionary transformation occurs through what Alan Sears, in his recent book Eros and Alienation<\/em><\/a>, calls concrete utopian practices. By engaging in political movements, people begin to become aware of their own collective power and, in the process, start to create new forms of democratic organization, new forms of revolutionary infrastructure, and new political institutions.<\/p>\n

As Renton reminds us, Marx saw political experimentation with new ways of organizing society\u2019s life activity as an essential part of the revolutionary process. Critical of the utopian socialists of his time who tried to create an ideal society based on a preconceived vision of the future, Marx states in The Civil War in France<\/a> <\/em>that the working class will have to \u201cwork out their own emancipation\u201d for themselves, a project which requires them \u201cto pass through long struggles, through a series of historical processes, transforming circumstances and men.\u201d Revolution, for Renton as for Marx, is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing and non-linear process which includes political experimentation, defeats, and discovering new practices along the way.<\/p>\n

Revolutionary forgiveness represents a distinct approach, one which Renton clearly differentiates from other theories of forgiveness, including those of philosophers Jacques Derrida and Hannah Arendt. Derrida\u2019s notion of forgiveness is based on the moral claim that forgiveness is the right thing to do regardless of the circumstances surrounding it. Such an unconditional view of forgiveness is, as Renton describes it, a \u201cwager on the possibility of the offender\u2019s redemption, prior to the moment when the perpetrator has changed heart\u201d (27). While revolutionary forgiveness is also a wager in the sense that it is part of a broader revolutionary process, the outcome of which cannot be certain, Derrida\u2019s wager is completely disconnected from justice as it does not depend on either a commitment to individual change by the perpetrator or broader social transformation. Renton insists that the decision to forgive must rest with the victims, including the ability to refuse forgiveness.<\/p>\n

As a case in point, the book examines the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, an attempt to respond to the great social harm of apartheid with accountability and forgiveness. Those involved in the crimes of the apartheid state met with victims and listened to them describe the harm they endured. The Commission implored perpetrators to come forward and victims to begin to forgive. All of this occurred as a part of a process of forming a post-apartheid state grounded in multi-racial democracy. However, as Renton argues, post-apartheid South Africa left racial and class inequality largely in place: \u201cIt is a story of what happens when you tell a people to forgive, but without granting them in return the social revolution whose victory would dull the acrid taste of seeing culprits go free\u201d (40). While the post-apartheid state has granted formal equality, South Africa remains a class society and so continues to be segregated along class and racial lines.<\/p>\n

As Massimiliano Tomba demonstrates in Insurgent Universality<\/a>,<\/em> a truly democratic society cannot emerge from formal rights granted from above by a nation-state, as this will always exclude the most marginal elements of society. Instead, a politics of universality must be directed by self-organized activity and struggle from below. Renton shows that this process was blocked by South Africa\u2019s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where the state prompted victims to forgive their oppressors without granting them the true social equality needed for the people to dictate their own terms. Of course, there is no guarantee that former oppressors will not betray their promises to change and attempt to retake their positions in power if given the chance. But unlike Derrida\u2019s unconditional moral claim, Renton insists that forgiveness can only truly occur as part of a broader process of social transformation, where the victims hold the social power necessary to ensure reconciliation actually takes place.<\/p>\n

Unlike Derrida\u2019s, Arendt\u2019s notion of forgiveness centers the experiences of victims by arguing that it is only through forgiveness that a victim of harm is able to move beyond their feelings of shame, guilt, anger and resentment. By forgiving the perpetrator, the victim transfers the burden of the past from themselves to the offender, allowing themselves to begin to fully heal while also permitting the perpetrator to reintegrate into society. However, like Derrida\u2019s, Arendt\u2019s view of forgiveness does not require any substantial transformation, either socially or on the part of the offender. As Renton states, \u201cForgiveness in Arendt\u2019s terms does not require that an offender make reparation, not even that the wrongdoer restore the victim at least to the nearest available approximation of their lives before the pattern of social harm began\u201d (242).<\/p>\n

Once again, forgiveness is disconnected from justice. This lack of justice is unacceptable on an individual level as Renton shows in the case of Eleanor Marx\u2019s abuse at the hands of socialist Edward Aveling. Subject to a pattern of emotional abuse, Eleanor Marx continually forgave Aveling but remained committed to their relationship. But her forgiveness did not allow her to move on from the past. Instead, she remained trapped in a situation of unequal power and abuse. On March 31, 1898, Eleanor Marx committed suicide by cyanide. According to all accounts by biographers of Marx, Aveling \u201cwas the effective but not the immediate cause of her death.\u201d While Aveling, by most accounts, did not murder Marx (though, as Renton shows, the biography of Aveling written by Deborah Levin states that Aveling murdered Marx), he was culpable in her suicide.<\/p>\n

Eleanor Marx was never able to achieve justice. Her death was a result of a pattern of abusive behavior that she was not able to escape from. Her attempts to forgive Aveling did not protect her. Separated from justice, forgiveness is not possible. Despite Marx\u2019s efforts to forgive Aveling, a meaningful process of forgiveness could not have occurred unless she removed herself from the abusive relationship and began to heal. That process never happened.<\/p>\n

The lack of justice is even more unsupportable at the social level. For example, demanding that Palestinians forgive those who have enacted genocidal violence without any reparations or justice \u201cwould be a cruel joke\u201d (245). As Renton argues, the struggle for a free Palestine requires going beyond the reparations given to the victims of South African Apartheid. Palestinian liberation will only be fully achieved through a complete transformation of the capitalist system that underpins settler colonialism and imperialism today. Moving on from the past can only occur once revolutionary justice has been achieved.<\/p>\n

The need to forgive<\/h4>\n

It is for this reason that Renton stresses that \u201cthe sequence is crucial: I want the oppressed to be compassionate after they have destroyed the citadels of the rich and removed those who occupy them\u201d (2). However, at other moments Renton insists that forgiveness can (and, indeed, must) be a part<\/em> of the process of social change. There is an undeniable tension here, between the need for revolution to occur prior to forgiveness and the notion that forgiveness must be a part of social transformation. Rather than eliding this tension, Renton defines revolutionary forgiveness as a process that must be combined with social struggle if it is to be at all. But it can also be an integral part of the process of social change, transforming relationships between people in a way that strengthens our movements by beginning to mend the harm done by violent and oppressive behaviour internal to our communities.<\/p>\n

He draws on the example of Prisoners Against Rape (PAR), a Black collective composed of prisoners convicted of rape at Lorton Reformatory in Virginia in the late 1970s to early 1980s, to demonstrate the possibility that forgiveness can occur in the present, if it is a part of our political practice. Members of PAR contacted the DC Rape Crisis Center as part of an effort to change both themselves and society. They read feminist and anti-racist theory, wrote letters for feminist newsletters in which they defined rape as a systemic form of violence emerging from unequal power relations between men and women, and called for non-carceral forms of dealing with acts of violence. Their commitment to meaningful change is what convinced feminist activists to take them seriously and begin to forgive them. But this process of forgiveness was only possible because society as a whole was beginning to change. Feminist struggles had begun to win meaningful victories, such as the recognition of marital rape beginning in 1978. As Renton states, \u201cIn that context, women activists could afford to be more generous \u2013 because they could imagine a world after rape\u201d (202).<\/p>\n

Rather than an act that occurs only after the revolution, forgiveness represents an essential component of our movements. This must be the case because individual and social change are not mutually exclusive processes. As Hannah Proctor argues in Burnout<\/a><\/em>, finding new and non-carceral ways of dealing with oppressive behavior in leftist movements cannot wait. Pushing individual and collective change off to a post-revolutionary future allows for the reproduction of oppressive behavior in left-wing spaces. But while Proctor insists that we confront oppressive relations in our organizing, she maintains that we must do so in a way that recognizes the contradictions internal to social movements attempting to overcome oppression and exploitation while still bound up in the social relations of capitalism.<\/p>\n

While we should all strive to live up to the political and ethical ideals we hold, it is important to recognize that individual change is often slow, imperfect, contradictory, and non-linear. Proctor asks: \u201cCan political movements make space for psychic ambivalence, inconsistency and contradiction rather than viewing them as antithetical to their goals?\u201d (102). Instead of responding to any violent or oppressive behavior with ostracization or incarceration, Renton, like Proctor, allows for the possibility of redemption as part of a project of achieving justice. The refusal to forgive despite meaningful commitment to change on the part of the perpetrator results in unjust outcomes for all. Indeed, it reproduces the moralism of the carceral state, which views all acts of crime as punishable and labels those who commit crimes as deviant criminals, regardless of the historical, economic, or political circumstances which led them to those actions.<\/p>\n

Of course, this does not mean that instances of abuse should be ignored or minimized in order to avoid fragmenting an already relatively weak Left. Renton himself has been a consistent critic of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for their cover up of rape in the party and the role of party leadership in attempting to minimize the effects of the ensuing organizational crisis. While he does not interrogate the specifics of the SWP in detail here (Comrade Delta<\/em>, Renton\u2019s account of the events is forthcoming in September 2026), Renton shares an interaction with a party member who supported the leadership against the oppositional movement – including Renton – demanding accountability. This party member approached Renton, suggesting that the offender be removed from his role in the leadership of the party. However, he would remain a member of the party, paid by party-led campaigns.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Renton was unconvinced that this would be a way forward, either for the victims or for the party. But what would have allowed for a process of forgiveness to occur? Renton does not specify exactly, but proposes that a statement of guilt from the perpetrator and an admission by the party for its role in the cover up, accompanied by meaningful attempts by the perpetrator to mend the harm done to the victims and by the party to ensure that similar incidents in the future would be handled in a way that prioritized the interests of the victims, would perhaps have allowed for a process of forgiveness to occur. However, without such attempts to achieve a just outcome for the victim, Renton insists that forgiveness could never occur: \u201cWhen it comes to rape, just as with any other violent crime of a similar seriousness, the instinct to choose a punishment acceptable to an unrepentant perpetrator is both wrong and offensive\u201d (11).<\/p>\n

Renton\u2019s notion of revolutionary forgiveness is not an easy thing to achieve. But a process of healing and forgiveness will be necessary in order to move forward with our vision for a different future. Rather than viewing the past as a static and finished entity, Proctor argues that our relationship to our history shapes how we will act in the future. Instead of using forgiveness as a way to forget the past as Arendt would have us do, revolutionary forgiveness \u2013 understood as part of a broader movement for radical social transformation \u2013 allows for the redemption of the past. By remaining committed to a vision of a different future, past actions which caused harm or trauma might be forgiven, political mistakes might be overcome, and wrongs might be righted. Through the process of revolution both the past and the future are made to be qualitatively different.<\/p>\n

The redemption of the Left<\/h4>\n

The redemption of the past will occur, as Daniel Bensa\u00efd argues in Marx for our Times<\/em><\/a>, through the realization of the future our ancestors struggled for. But revolutionary forgiveness redeems our past in another way. As Renton points out, the history of communism is stained with the blood of the Stalinist purges in Russia, the repression, expulsion, and murder of anti-Stalinist dissidents. But instead of turning away from revolutionary politics, Renton insists on a renewed commitment to the possibility of socialism from below, which would realize the emancipatory promise contained in the Russian Revolution. Of course, there is no guarantee that we will live to see such a future and in this sense Renton\u2019s notion of revolutionary forgiveness is, like Derrida\u2019s and Arendt\u2019s, a wager on the possibility of a different future. But unlike the other two, Renton links forgiveness with revolutionary change and maintains that it is only through the process of revolution that our past might be fully redeemed.<\/p>\n

Renton follows Luk\u00e1cs in describing Soviet Russia under Stalin as a society based on political violence, ongoing oppression, and class domination. He argues that rather than abandoning revolutionary politics, Luk\u00e1cs remained committed to a view of communism that did not separate means and ends. A liberatory society, for Luk\u00e1cs, could never be achieved through non-liberatory means. This commitment resulted in Luk\u00e1cs being jailed in Moscow by the People\u2019s Commissariat for State Security. Despite the repression of the Soviet State, Renton argues that Luk\u00e1cs consistently criticized Stalinism against his own material interests and safety. Renton states that \u201cit was Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s tragedy that \u2013 by living long enough to see Stalin replacing Lenin as the leader of the USSR \u2013 his jailers came from the ranks of his comrades\u201d (69). Remaining committed to revolutionary communism resulted in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n

However, Renton does not comment on what Michael L\u00f6wy views as the true tragedy of Luk\u00e1cs: the repudiation of his own commitment to revolutionary socialism in 1926 resulting in a turn towards a \u201crealist\u201d politics and an acceptance of Stalinism. In an essay on \u201cLuk\u00e1cs and Stalinism<\/a>,\u201d L\u00f6wy shows that Luk\u00e1cs began to accept the relative stability of global capitalism, causing him to modify his theoretical and political views, including agreeing with Stalin on the need for socialism in one country. According to L\u00f6wy, Stalinism from Luk\u00e1cs became \u201ca \u2018necessary phase\u2019, \u2018prosaic\u2019 yet with a \u2018progressive character\u2019, in the revolutionary development of the proletariat seen as a unified whole.\u201d While critical of some elements of Stalinist Russia, Luk\u00e1cs was unwilling to fully endorse the Left Opposition, unlike others within the movement. While he did not uncritically accept the Stalinist political line he nevertheless stood by its basic tenets.<\/p>\n

While Renton presents the fact that \u201cLuk\u00e1cs remained loyal to the state that had imprisoned him\u201d as evidence of his ongoing commitment to communism, L\u00f6wy highlights the ways in which Luk\u00e1cs turned away from his earlier views on revolution in favor of the more \u201crealistic\u201d project of reconciling bourgeois culture with Soviet Communism. This shift to realism represented a break with his original commitment to revolutionary socialism. While he did not abandon communist politics entirely, he nevertheless accepted that if revolution was not imminent the best course of action was to support Stalinism.<\/p>\n

However, as both Renton and L\u00f6wy show, Luk\u00e1cs returned to his revolutionary commitments in 1968, supporting the Czechoslovakian workers\u2019 resistance to Soviet rule. As L\u00f6wy demonstrates, Luk\u00e1cs\u2019 post-1968 writings show a renewal of his earlier work and devotion to revolutionary socialism from below, including support for the growing student movement and anti-imperialist struggle in Vietnam, as well as a critique of Soviet bureaucracy. In doing so, Luk\u00e1cs was able to redeem his own past, restoring the hope in a revolutionary future despite the many defeats of the communist movement.<\/p>\n

Hope in forgiveness<\/h4>\n

Incorporating a fuller examination of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019 political trajectory helps to situate revolutionary forgiveness as part of a project of total transformation, both individual and social. As Renton argues, an ongoing relationship with past movements like the Russian Revolution is important so as to avoid repeating the errors of our forebearers. But remaining open to a relationship with the past also reveals the ways in which our ancestors like Luk\u00e1cs, while not free from contradiction, committed themselves to revolutionary socialism. By renewing that commitment in the present, we might redeem the failures and defeats of the past, allowing for the full realization of the future that the Russian Revolution was not able to fulfill.<\/p>\n

It is only by completely transforming the world that forgiveness can be finally tied to justice. Revolutionary forgiveness can only occur when the oppressed have seized control of the power necessary to ensure that their former oppressors cannot restore the unequal power relations of capitalist society. But revolution is not simply a final event, a moment in the future that we wait to come to us. It is a process of transformation. If it is to be truly revolutionary, forgiveness must occur as a part of that revolutionary process. It cannot wait until after the revolution because it is a necessary part of the social and individual changes that we enact as we struggle to transform the world. We must be able to forgive ourselves, our comrades, and our ancestors for the mistakes we have all made so that we can continue to participate in the social movements we are a part of. If we cannot forgive ourselves, our commitments to revolutionary politics might waver, causing us to accept either Stalinist realism (as Luk\u00e1cs did for a time) or reformist realism. And if we do not forgive ourselves, we certainly will not be able to forgive those who acted in the interests of capital. In order to move towards a different world, we need to insist on the possibility of a completely new and non-carceral future, one where all people begin to relate to each other not as boss and worker, colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed, but as human beings committed to a collective project of human freedom and self-realization. Revolutionary Forgiveness <\/em>represents an important contribution to that process and will be valuable to anyone committed to truly revolutionary theory and practice.<\/p>\n

\n

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see \u201cAbout Tempest Collective<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/small>
\nFeatured Image credit: Haymarket Books<\/a>; modified by Tempest.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sean Isaacs<\/strong> describes how Revolutionary Forgiveness<\/em> offers meaningful alternatives to the carceral system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":14913,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[416],"class_list":["post-14840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-review","tag-abolition"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/36.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}