On 5 October 1789, a throng of Parisian woman marched to the royal palace at Versailles with the intention of demanding bread. They would leave Versailles the next day, not only with wagons of flour, but the king himself. If any single event of the French Revolution signalled that the tide had turned, this was it.
As important as this event was, it was not possible to predict even a month earlier. An unusual set of circumstances were required. The Parisian population was already agitated by earlier events, which made the arrival of a perfect storm just a question of time.
This story serves as a reminder that there are things that activists can do even though their situations look hopeless. A single perfect storm can change the political landscape forever.
When a physical system comes under stress, there is for a long time, no apparent physical change. But components develop small fractures. Ultimately, a very small stressor causes one component to break, which puts more stress on other parts of the system. Other parts begin to break. Within a short period of time — days or weeks — what once seemed monolithic and unassailable has been swept away.
It is at such moments that people ask, who knows what comes next? The answer comes from those who have already been writing about it. These people can come to the fore very quickly where there is lack of alternatives.
Activists today who see very little way forward in the current political climate can spend time working out solutions that shall be needed in the future. For example, in 1932, the town of Wörgl in Austria adopted a local currency that rescued the town’s economy from the ravages of the Great Depression. The system was developed by economist Silvo Gesell years earlier.
There is a risk, of course that some activists work on projects that shall never be used. However, if those activists truly believe their current situation is hopeless, they have nothing to lose.
