Forgiveness is necessary in the long fight for a just world—but it is only possible after the oppressed are victorious.
For too long, revolutionary social movements have reconciled to defeat. We must start winning again. Forgiveness is a necessary strategy for remaking the world, to secure and sustain victories, to turn one-time enemies into friends.
With deep political commitment and lucid moral clarity, David Renton makes the case for forgiveness, but of a particularly unruly sort. Tracing the tragic abuse of Eleanor Marx and Jane Wells, the mistakes of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the courage of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the redemption of an American televangelist, Renton urges us to forgive, but only after tearing down the citadels of the rich.
Revolutionary Forgiveness merges history with philosophy, infuses politics with ethics, and connects collective struggle with the individual’s search for justice to demand a future for all—when the oppressed will be magnanimous in power, and even former oppressors will be free.
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“How can the oppressed of the world forgive while colonial capitalism continues to kill? In this excellent book, David Renton shows that many theorists have failed in their thinking by placing forgiveness first. Instead, revolution must come first. Using compelling examples from apartheid South Africa, the Shoah, Israel-Palestine, and key touchpoints in socialist history, Renton explores what it would take for oppressed people to forgive their persecutors. What emerges is a portrait of the possibilities of healing, and a vision of forgiveness underpinned by radical social change.”
—Rabbi Lev Taylor, educator for the Queer Yeshiva“This book is at once an insightful exploration of the politics of forgiveness and a passionate case for the interdependence of personal and social revolution. Too often, forgiveness becomes a substitute for social transformation; David Renton instead convinces us to recognise it as a necessary part of the repertoire and vocabulary of revolution.”
—Dan Swain, author of None So Fit to Break the Chains: Marx’s Ethics of Self-Emancipation
Praise for The New Authoritarians
"A essential intervention that helps us understand the political shifts taking place on the right, and points a way for the left to halt an unfolding disaster"
—Dan Trilling, Bloody Nasty People: The Rise of Britain's Far Right
"Renton is a stalwart of the anti-racist movement and his book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the changing nature of the right"
—Sasha Das Gupta, organiser, Momentum
Other books by David Renton
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The New Authoritarians
by David Renton