Revolutionary Legitimacy and Third Worldism in Cuba and Iran

Abstract

Revolutions are often understood as structural crises that render states vulnerable to collapse. However, such structural understandings of revolution, though they sufficiently explain how a government may become vulnerable to collapse, are insufficient in explaining how revolutionary rupture becomes morally legitimate and capable of commanding mass participation. This research challenges dominant approaches to social revolution theory that understand revolutionary ideology to be secondary to structural breakdown in moments of rupture, using two cases that are often treated as ideologically opposed due to their diverging religious orientations: the Cuban Revolution (1959) and the Iranian Revolution (1979). This research uses qualitative discourse analysis to analyze speeches, manifestos, and sermons produced by Fidel Castro and Ayatollah Khomeini during periods of mobilization and early regime consolidation. These primary sources were coded focusing on three recurring themes: appeals to moral authority, framing of oppression and liberation, and references to transnational discourse. The findings demonstrate that revolutionary leaders used parallel moral vocabularies that were articulated through their respective cultural contexts to mobilize and legitimize revolution, revealing that revolutionary ideology is a constitutive mechanism through which revolutionary legitimacy is produced and social revolutions are mobilized.