Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions: A Book Review

Introduction to Skocpol and Her Argument

Over the twentieth century, a select number of social scientists became well known because their concepts, theories, and writings made a major impact both on their specific field of study and on wider areas of scholarly knowledge. One of these social scientists is Theda Skocpol, a sociologist and political scientist. States and Social Revolutions is one of her better-known books, in which she presents her own ideas about why political revolutions occur in some countries but not in others. To accomplish this, she analyzes the social revolutions that took place in France, China, and Russia, searching for common patterns. She hypothesizes that these three nations experienced uprisings because they were each caught in similarly dire circumstances at critical points in their respective histories.

In her preface, Skocpol states that some books present fresh evidence while others make arguments that lead the reader to 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, Skocpol develops new insights into the theories of revolution.

According to Skocpol, revolutions are noteworthy not only 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 forms of conflict 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 very definition of social revolution, rather than leaving such change contingent on a looser definition of revolution. She argues that existing theories of revolution are inadequate because they are not analyzed from a structural point of view, with insufficient attention paid to international contexts and to the interplay between domestic and foreign forces that drive the breakdown of old-regime state organizations and the creation of new revolutionary ones.

Structural Conditions for Revolution

Skocpol explains that the revolutionary crises she examines resulted when the old regimes were no longer able to confront the challenges of rapid changes both within their borders and in the wider world. France, Russia, and China had each been able to sustain themselves through autocratic monarchies that maintained social order and managed external threats — from the English, Japanese, and Prussians, respectively. In addition, all three states possessed advanced military and administrative structures along with varying degrees of bureaucratic functioning.

The three countries were also essentially agriculturally based — more so than industrial or commercial — with peasants and upper-class landowners forming the backbone of the government's economic support. The political form was feudal in nature: landowners rented out the land to the peasantry in exchange for a share of agricultural production. The central political conflict in all three old regimes was not between commercial-industrial classes and landed aristocracies, but rather centered on the relationships between the producing classes (peasants) and the dominant classes (landowners and states), and between the landed dominant classes and the autocratic imperial states.

The monarchy and the aristocracy effectively worked together to control the peasantry and maintain agricultural output. The state's military was available to suppress peasant uprisings, while the aristocracy staffed and funded the state, growing wealthy through the exploitation of state resources and political offices. Despite this cooperation, however, the two were also in conflict: monarchs sought to centralize power and agricultural production, while landowners resisted state encroachment on their personal estates. As a result, the aristocracy constantly kept the monarchy in check, leaving it a weak institution vulnerable to being overthrown.

Each country was simultaneously struggling to manage external threats that paved the way for revolution. Skocpol emphasizes that it was the state's inability to repel foreign pressures that ultimately produced each of the three social revolutions. The aristocracy, having been called upon too heavily to fund military campaigns, eventually turned against the state.

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

She then traces the next stage of the social revolution: the emergence of a new sociopolitical government. Social revolution occurs when external factors — usually a military threat — alter the relationship between state organizations and domestic political and social groups. When old regimes can no longer respond to these external forces, revolutionary crises follow. The revolt from below then transforms class relations in ways that would not otherwise have occurred.⁵

Outcomes of Revolution in France, Russia, and China

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

In Russia, rather than producing a bureaucratic state with a private-propertied society and market economy, the revolution gave rise to a Party-state committed to state-controlled national industrialization. This outcome resulted from peasants seizing and redistributing large landed properties, which severely undermined the possibilities for market-guided national economic development.⁷ Preexisting large industrial enterprises and available models of state-controlled industry, combined with Russia's position within the European states system, allowed the Bolsheviks to consolidate Party-state power on an urban-industrial base, extend that power over the peasantry, and use it to construct an industrial state.⁸

In China, as in France and Russia, the revolution depended on the role of the peasantry and its relationship to the state-building leadership that consolidated power. Whereas in France the peasantry made a limited revolution against certain surplus claims and was subsequently drawn into a national market under a bureaucratic state, and in Russia the peasants were brought under Bolshevik control, in China the peasantry could not make its own revolution — and so the Communists and the peasantry became allies.⁹ Such revolutions do not mark the end of change but rather its beginning. They do, however, set the structure for what is to come, creating both obstacles and opportunities for future internal and external struggles.¹⁰

Conclusion

Regardless of the criticisms, and without claiming the expertise of a Russian scholar like Yaney, one can still applaud Skocpol's achievement. She is not only daring to write about such an extensive topic, but also doing so with full awareness that she is opening herself up to commentaries — good and bad — from specialists across multiple fields. That is indeed courageous, and it is precisely how new ideas enter the world of scholarship.