Social revolution in history

¶ … Social Revolutions

Over the 20th century, a very select number of social scientists became well-known because of their concepts, theories or writings that made a major impact on both their specific field of study as well as a wider scholastic area of knowledge. One of these social scientists is Theda Skocpol, a sociologist and political scientist at Harvard University. States and Social Revolutions epitomizes one of her better known books, where she presents her own ideas about why political revolutions occur in some countries but not in others. In order to accomplish this, she analyzes social revolutions that took place in France, China and Russia to determine similarities. She hypothesizes that these three nations experienced uprisings because they all were in the same dire straights at critical points in their respective histories.

In her preface, Skocpal states that some books present fresh evidence and others make arguments that make the reader see old problems in a new light. States and Social Revolutions is an example of the latter.1 by using comparative history to explain the causes of the French Revolution of 1787-1800, the Russian Revolution of 1917-1921 and the Chinese Revolution of 1911-1949, Skocpal develops new insights into the theories of revolution.

According to Skocpal, revolutions are noteworthy due to "their extraordinary significance for the histories of nations and the world but also because of their distinctive pattern of sociopolitical change."2 She distinguishes social revolutions from other conflicts by stipulating that "basic changes in social structure and in political structure occur together in a mutually reinforcing fashion."3

This distinction identifies a complex object of explanation and makes successful sociopolitical transformation -- actual change of state and class structures -- part of the specification that is called social revolution, instead of leaving change contingent on the definition of revolution. She believes that existing theories of revolution are not adequate because they are not analyzed from a structural point-of-view with special attention to international contexts and to what is taking place at home and abroad that impact the breakdown of the state organizations of the old regime and the creation of the new revolutionary ones.

Skocpal explains that the revolutionary crises resulted at the time when the old regimes were no longer able to confront the challenges of the rapid changes within them as well as in the world at large. France, Russia and China had been able to thrive because of the autocratic monarchies that maintained a social order and dealt with external threats, such as the English, Japanese and Prussians. In addition, the three nation states had advanced military and administrative structures along with varying bureaucratic functioning.

The three countries were also essentially agriculturally based, more so than industry or commerce, with peasants and upper-class landowners who were the mainstay of the government. The political form was feudal in nature with the owners renting out the land for use by the peasantry in exchange for the agricultural products. The political conflict in all three of the old regimes was not between commercial-industrial classes and landed aristocracies, but rather centered on relationships of the producing classes or peasants to the dominant classes or landowners and states and in the relationships of the landed dominant classes to the autocratic imperial states.

The monarchy and the aristocracy were in a way working together to control the peasantry to keep producing food. The state's military was available to put down peasant uprisings, and the aristocracy staffed and funded the state and became very wealthy through the exploitation of state resources and political offices. Despite the fact that the aristocracy and monarchy worked together, they, too, were in conflict. The monarchs wanted to centralize power and agricultural production and the landowners only let the state do so much with their personal estates. Thus, the aristocrats constantly kept the monarchy in check as a weak institution that was ripe for being overthrown.

Meanwhile, each country was also trying to deal with external threats that paved the way for revolution. Skocpol stresses that it was the state's lack of ability to keep foreign invaders at bay that resulted in each of the three social revolutions. The aristocracy overthrew the state because it relied too much on their resources to support the war.

Thus, Skocpol's underlining premise is that the revolutions in France, Russia and China took place when 1) state organizations susceptible to administrative and military collapse are subjected to intensified pressures from more developed countries abroad and (2) agrarian sociopolitical structures that facilitated widespread peasant revolt against landlords.4

She then continues on to relate the next step in the social revolution, the emergence of a new sociopolitical government. Social revolution comes about when external factors, usually a military threat alters the relationship of state organizations to domestic political and social groups. The old regimes cannot respond to these external powers and, as a result, revolutionary crises occur. The revolt from below changes class relations that would not have otherwise occurred.5

The French Revolution was like a "gigantic broom" that swept away the "medieval rubbish" of seigneurialism and particularistic privilege, thus freeing the peasants, private wealth-holders and the state from the binds of the Old Regime.6

In Russia, rather than ending with a bureaucratic state and a private-propertied society and market economy, the revolution gave rise to a Party-state committed to state-controlled national industrialization. This is because the peasants seized and redistributed larger landed properties, with the result that possibilities for market-guided national economic development were seriously harmed.7

There were preexisting large industrial enterprises and available models of state control over industries in Russia. Also, this country was situated politically within the European states system. Thus, the Boshevicks could consolidate Party-state power on an urban-industrial base, extend that power over the peasantry and use it build the industrial state.8

In China, as in France and Russia, the revolutions depended on the achievements of the peasantry and its relationship to the state-building leadership that consolidated the revolution. Whereas in France, the peasantry made a limited revolution against certain claims of surplus and was forced to exist in a national market with a bureaucratic state, and in Russia where peasants were controlled by the Bolsheviks, in China, the peasantry could not make its own revolution and the Communists and peasantry became allies.9 Such revolutions do not by any means mark the end of change, but almost the beginning of it. Yet they do set the structure for what is to come in the future, creating obstacles and opportunities for future struggles internally and externally.10

The fact that Skocpol uses these three major revolutions as her examples is overwhelming and impressive in itself. Not only did she have to understand what took place, itself, but how the revolution was part of a larger culture that went back hundreds and even thousands of years. Then she had to find the similarities between these three separate events.

The book is very clearly laid out, starting out with a basic understanding of her definition of revolution compared to others, which she felt were not encompassing enough. Then she went on to look at the different theories of revolutions that other scholars have proposed to provide her viewpoints on these. Lastly, she went thoroughly into her theory of what needs to be in place for the revolution and what actually precipitates it. For not having a strong background on this topic or the sociopolitical history of these three countries, I was able understand her jargon-free and easy-to-read format. I give high marks to anyone who does not talk in convoluted scholastic terms and leave the non-expert behind.

Since I have only read books that cover each revolution separately, not all three in such a fashion, I do not know how it compares with others written on this subject. Also, my background not being in this area, it is difficult to know whether or not this theory is more or less viable than others proposed. However, I do know that I have read a number of books on different areas of history that are so difficult to understand. Not only was I able to understand what she was explaining about these countries, but I could readily see how it could happen.

It is also interesting to take her theory and apply it to what is presently happening in different parts of the world, including the United States. Is it possible, hypothetically, given her premise that a major industrial country like the U.S. could have a revolution, or does there have to be another whole set of factors in a more complex and industrialized state? I would also like to look at other revolutions in recent and past history and see how they relate to her theory. The goal of reading history is that it should help the individual learn more about human development overall and to better understand how people will react given different circumstances that may arise in the future.

Reviews on Skocpal's books are mixed. Most of them praise her breadth and depth of work. For example, Krishan Kumar of the University of Kent at Canterbury11 states,... "in sum, a fine piece of properly political sociology, of which there are in truth very few examples. Society gets its due share of attention; but as is fitting and absolutely essential in any discussion of revolution, it is the peculiar nature of and crisis of the state that occupies the centre of the stage."

Similarly, Michael Kimmel of the University of California -- Santa Cruz,12 states that "Theda Skocpol is perhaps the most ambitious and exciting of a new generation of historical-comparative sociologists who have focused their attention squarely on the big issues of social change that once preoccupied the classic sociologists."

The difficulty that some reviewers had about this book is because of some of the misinformation. For example, George Yaney 12 of the University of Maryland states it is based almost entirely on secondary sources in French and English. Also, "One can find flaws in Skocpol's book. First, it fails to offer a sold theoretical structure to replace the ones she mauls. Having torn up Marx's analysis pretty severely, Skocpol still, from time to time, offers up Marxist canons and metaphors as if their validity could still be taken for granted." She also hands out vague sociological generalizations in parts of the book as if they were concrete historical descriptions. Yet, given that, he adds, "it would be pedantic to dwell on flaws and weaknesses. Skocpol's purpose is to set forth new perspectives, not to write up a new theory or discover new data, and I think she has done her job very well." He notes, as others have, it is not easy to combine academic disciplines and even harder to write on comparative history. She has managed to do both together and should be congratulated for doing so. She is, on the whole, a careful scholar and must be a courageous person.