From the great revolutionary uprisings of the past to recent Occupy and Black Lives Matter protests, radical politics has frequently had an anarchic streak and avoided a single leadership.  Yet getting significant change to happen often seems to require more centralised power, not less. 

The puzzle of radical change, at its most stark in Stalinist Russia and caricatured in Orwell's 'Animal Farm', is the paradox that revolution and radical change are at once an attack on authority but to be successful must set themselves up as a new authority. 

Is there a solution to this hypocrisy? Can radical change be implemented without creating a new tyranny?  Is a continuous overturning of authority a possible strategy, or does this inevitably lead to the excesses of the French revolution and Mao's cultural revolution?  Or is the very idea of an attack on authority itself simply a bid for power and one that should be scrutinised with great care?

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