If 1) applies but 2) does not, then the oppressors will simply reorganise themselves, regroup and remain in control - possibly as a result of personal power struggles. At most there will be a palace revolution that leaves oppression intact if not intensified.
If 2) applies but 1) does not, then there will be futile insurrections, a clamp-down upon popular discontent - again leaving oppression intact if not intensified.
If both conditions apply, then historic revolution is timely. Lenin was, he thought, a practical politician; he believed that history does not simply happen but has to be made by dedicated and informed people co-ordinating political activity realistically. He envisaged 'the Party of a New Type' - not merely a body of like-minded people, not merely a group of temporarily consenting co-conspirators, but an elite corps of "midwives of revolution."
We all know what happened.
Leninist states came and went within the memories of the now very old. Leninism is now discredited but there are some electoral signs in Russia and elsewhere of a nostalgia for what social security the Red Empire was able to achieve for is subjects. So far from our being at the "end of history" we are now, as ever, embroiled in its continuation.
The Party of the New Type soon became a Coercive Coterie of the Old Type - or more precisely an ugly mongrel of Old Types - a blend of sectarianism, personality cults, sycophancy, nepotism, the dominance of the military/industrial complex and all sustained by relentless inquisition.
The ultimate failure of The Party in a variety of societies, from advanced small states like Czechoslovakia to ruinous old empires like that of the Romanoff dynasty, should not blind us to the basic truth of Lenin's analysis of the concept of the revolutionary situation. Indeed the collapse of the Soviet Empire and its offshoots is, precisely, a case of conditions 1) and 2) (described above) coming together in the late 1980's.
My main thesis is twofold - that there is now a global revolutionary situation and that the failure of progressive macro-politics (of which Lenin's historic failure is the paradigm) leaves us with a problem that we are scarcely yet thinking about.
On what grounds can we say that there is a global revolutionary situation in the making? On two grounds, in conjunction:
One is the gross imbalance in consumption patterns - the richer twenty percent of mankind (concentrated mainly in the northern white Europeanised lands) consumes about eighty percent of what is consumed in total. The other eighty percent of humankind - mainly in the southern non-European world - accounts for about twenty percent of global consumption.
This cannot go on indefinitely because, even assuming the low-consumption patterns of the great majority simply continue, the high consumption patterns of the rich minority will suffice to damage, perhaps irretrievably, the planet's capacity to sustain human life at a reasonable level quantitatively and qualitatively. Ecological collapse will follow inexorably from persisting in the current practices of the developed world. Whether this collapse comes in our lifetimes (most unlikely) or whether it comes in the fourth millenium of the Current Era (or sometime in between) it will surely come in a short time compared with the million or more years it has taken our species to get thus far.
This is the global version of "the oppressive rulers cannot continue ruling in the old way because the system is collapsing for its own internal reasons".
The second ground is that, not least because of globalised television being full of programmes reflecting - indeed flaunting - lifestyles prevalent in the richer countries, the eighty percent of low-consuming humankind are coming literally to see that they are getting a raw deal.
It is true that few of the world's poor have private domestic TV sets but, increasingly, there is likely to be communal access to TV and so people, in large numbers, can watch it together. (Some years ago, in south India, I watched evening TV with a hundred or more local people in a communal building).
Increasingly, it must be the case that people who watch TV together will think and talk together and soon it must be the case that "the oppressed people are no longer submitting passively to the system". It is the mere fact of watching TV together in large numbers that may mobilise the world's poor in a way reminiscent of the mobilisation of the industrial workers by the mere fact of their working together in large numbers.
So the second element in the global revolutionary potential is becoming actual.
There is a rich irony in, on the one hand, domestically viewed television in the rich countries destroying conversation and fragmenting people into viewing different channels in their different rooms and, on the other, communally viewed television tending to unite the world's poor people in shared awareness of the raw deal they are getting. What is to be done?
There are a number of ways of making matters worse.
Levelling up - trying universally to realise 'the American dream' - will not do whether it is attempted by interventionist 'aid' or by the magic of the market and 'trickle down'. The required fourfold increase in consumption, by the poorer eighty percent of humankind, would raise global consumption levels in the ratio 100:160 - even supposing the richer twenty percent were to make no increased demands on the planet. The universal American dream come true would be, in all probability, a global ecological nightmare.
Again, simply to crush forcibly the informed aspirations of the world's poor entails global fascism - and even localised white-world fascism was more than human beings could stomach. Overt world-wide fascist repression is as flawed as the Party of the New Type; it is essentially counter-human.
Again, the notion that containing population growth is all we need is also fallacious. If the poorer eighty percent double their numbers, at present living standards, then world consumption would rise in the ratio of 100:120. If the richer twenty percent double their standard of living, at present population levels, then world consumption would rise in the ratio of 100:180. These two doublings are both foreseeable in less than three generations - by the year 2100.
It is therefore 'our' consumption' rather than 'their' procreation that is the bigger problem - although both are problems right enough.
There is only one thing for it - levelling down by 'us' to permit levelling up for 'them' conducted in a way that is both realistic and just. How many votes are there in that?
If nothing is done then there will be endless little wars, and possibly some big ones too, millions of refugees, ferocious 'ethnic cleansing' all over the place, endemic terrorism (because disaffected poor people cannot engage the military of the developed countries in 'acceptable' forms of warfare) and all sorts of escapist tendencies ranging from revolutionary religious fanaticism to substance abuse on a mass scale.
Macro-politics has failed in its Leninist version and is likely to fail globally in its notionally liberal democratic version. Macro-politics has failed to generate progress because Grand Theory is fatally flawed; we do well to be sceptical about both.
Hope must be placed upon varied pressure groups, identifying the real good that is there to be done, trying to Promote This and Prevent That in quite specific ways. Freedom with scepticism, that necessary basis of progress, lives and functions in the interstices of society, in the spaces between necessary governments and necessary interest groups. We need, globally, an open plural society not an Elite Party ruling a mass of powerless individuals.
'One Nation' theory in this country, and in others, is against this open plurality; it rests upon the simplistic notion of government vis a vis millions of individuals and it matters not whether those individuals are notionally shareholders or stakeholders or whatever. The One Nation idea rests upon a naive assumption that conflicts of interest can be somehow wished away; they cannot; they must be acknowledged and resolved by intelligently interacting pressure groups. A One Nation Party would, inexorably, either fail or metamorphose into the One Party Nation. We've seen that in action and we don't want to see it again - nationally or globally.
This is no time to for sectarianism; we need varied action against mass fanaticism and personal escapism. This is no time for perpetuating global injustice; there must be levelling and, for ecological reasons, it has to be down for 'us' and up for 'them'.
That is the political ethical challenge in the age of global revolution.