As the wave of revolutions continues rolling across the globe, and we are subjected to the pronouncements of left pundits of the more traditional bent who, after some initial excitement, somberly judge each to be a failure, I think we would do well to return to What is Philosophy? where Deleuze & Guattari offer what is to my mind the right way to think about these events:
A monument does not commemorate or celebrate something that happened but confides to the ear of the future the persistent sensations that embody the event: the constantly renewed suffering of men and women, their re-created protestations, their constantly resumed struggle. Will this all be in vain because suffering is eternal and revolutions do not survive their victory? But the success of a revolution resides only in itself, precisely in the vibrations, clinches, and openings it gave to men and women at the moment of its making and that composes in itself a monument that is always in the process of becoming, like those tumuli to which each new traveler adds a stone. The victory of a revolution is immanent and consists in the new bonds it installs between people, even if these bonds last no longer than the revolution’s fused material and quickly give way to division and betrayal (p. 177).
I am thinking particularly here of Spain (as always), but Egypt too…
Path to the Possible 
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