The revolutionary process appears with two different speeds. The first, rapid, is destined to apparent failure, at least at immediate level. The second, that is much slower, is usually crowned with success.
The most extreme revolutionary movements can be traced back to the first speed: movements such as the Anabaptists in the sixteenth century and the Jacobin and anarchical currents of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To the second speed we can trace the moderate currents of Protestantism and Liberalism that, advancing in successive stages of dynamism and inertia, favour the decline towards the same point of arrival.
The failure of the extremists is only apparent: they create a fixed point of attraction that, because of its radicalism, fascinates the moderates. Society ends up going slowly along the road on which the most radical intended to bring it.
