Article On Revolutions

Theories of Revolution and Industrialized Societies
Author(s): Edward S. Malecki

Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Nov., 1973), pp. 948-985
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science
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Theories of Revolution
and
Industrialized
Societies
EDWARDS. MALECKI
The theoreticalviews on the prospectof revolutionin industrialized

societies can be divided basically into two camps-those which
accept or predict revolution in industrializedsocieties and those
which, for all practical purposes,reject that possibility. The leading theoretical viewpoint representingthe case for revolution in
industrializedsocieties is Marxist.The leading theoreticalviewpoint
rejecting the possibility of revolution is the body of thought by
American political scientists dealing with political development.
The Marxistview explicitly predicts the inevitability of revolution
* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of
the Western Political Science Association in Portland, Ore., March 23-25,
1972. I am grateful to Joel Edelstein, Dave Garson, Dave Nichols, and the
anonymous reviewers of the Joumnalof Politics for their comments on the
paper.

REVOLUTION AND INDUSTIALIZED
SOCIETIES
949
in some, but not all, industrialized societies. Revolution is inevitable for the most advanced industrialized capitalist states,
but evolutionto communismis the coursefor industrializedsocieties
which have already advanced to the first stage of socialism by
previously overthrowing the bourgeoisie.' On the other hand,
Americantheories of political development, while divided on the
exact course that political development follows, sound a united
chorus in their belief that realisticallyit is a contradictionin tenns
to speak of revolutionand modern industrialsocieties in the same
breath.
The case for the Americanview has been most succinctly and
stronglyargued by SamuelHuntington. After distinguishingsocial
revolution from palace coups and other lesser forms of political
violence he notes that:
Revolutions are rare. Most societies have never experienced revolutions and
most ages until modern times did not know revolutions. . . . [R]evolution is
characteristic of modernization. It is one way of modernizing a traditional
society.2
Huntingtonthen goes on to argue that:

Revolution is thus an aspect of modernization. It is not something which can
occur in any type of society at any period in its history. It is not a universal
category but rather an historically limited phenomenon. It will not occur
in highly traditional societies with very low levels of social and economic
complexity. Nor will it occur in highly modern societies. Like other forms
of violence and instability, it is most likely to occur in societies which have
experienced some social and economic development and where the processes
of political modernization and political development have lagged behind the
processes of social and economic change.3
1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York:
Washington Square Press, Inc., 1964), 57-79, 92-95; Marx, "Critique of the
Gotha Program," in Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy: Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, ed. Lewis S. Feuer (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday &
Co., Inc., Anchor Books, 1959), 119, 126-129. Lenin correctly interpreted Marx's view that the state apparatus must be used by the proletariat
in the initial stage of socialism to crush the lingering bourgeois elements and
to carry out the basic administrative needs of the society until a new generation comes of age under socialism and the last vestiges of bourgeois practices are eliminated. V. I. Lenin, "The State and Revolution," in Essential
Works of Lenin, ed. Henry M. Christman (New York: Bantam Books, 1966),
esp. 333-349 (chap. 5).
2 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), 264.
3 Ibid., 265 (emphasis added); for quantitative studies supporting this view,

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Revolution,then, from the Americanviewpoint of political development, is confined to transitionalsocieties and absent from traditional and modem societies.
The theoretical reasons for the contrasting conclusions on the
possibility of revolution in industrial societies can be drawn into
sharperfocus if one views the Americanthought as a form of neoHegelianism.4 Just as G. W. Hegel viewed capitalismin his time
as the terminalpoint in humanprogress,there is a strongconceptual
tendency to view the economicallymost advancedsocieties of one's
own time as the ultimate in achievement. Both ages see society
as sharply differentiatedfrom the state or political institutions.
Both see the development and transition of society to its modem phase as marked by the unleashing of tremendous economic
production and potential freedom but also by the destruction of
existingpolitical instruments,resultingin a vacuumof authorityand
the chaotic mass mobilization of society based on terror and
violence. Hegel saw a strong centralizedstate separate from civil
society as the necessary embodimentof unity and reason in channeling the new individual freedom of the mature civil society he
envisioned.
Americanshave an increasingtendency to view strongcentralized
bureaucraticpolitical institutionsdifferentiatedfrom society as the
sources for rationalizing and integrating the expanded political
participationembedded in political modernization.5 Contemporary
see Ivo K. Feierabend and Rosalind L. Feierabend, "Aggressive Behaviors
Within Politics, 1948-1962, A Cross National Study," in When Men Revolt
and Why: A Reader in Political Violence and Revolution, ed. James Chowning Davies (New York: Free Press, 1971), 229-249; and William H. Flanigan
and Edwin Fogelman, "Patternsof Political Violence in ComparativeHistorical
Perspective,"ComparativePolitics, 3 (October 1970), 1-20.
4 This is not to say that the Americans rely directly on Hegel's thought.
On the contrary, at a conscious level of reference to classical thought Americans are apt to ignore Hegel while making favorable references to Aristotle,
Plato, Hobbes, de Tocqueville, and Weber coupled with critical references to
Marx. See, for example, Huntington, Political Order, 37, 50-51, 80-81, 102;
Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1966), 13, 17-18,
300-321, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of
Politics (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., Anchor Books, 1960), viiviii, 4-11, 449-456. Lipset is the only one who mentions Hegel and he makes
only a single sentence reference. See Political Man, 3.
5 As an advanced representative of American theorists on political develop-

REVOLUTION AND INDUST1IALIZED
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951
western developmental theorists also agree with Hegel on the

relative importanceof ideas in historical development and on the
fact that history is not unswervingprogress." In summary,then,
American theories of political development are neo-Hegelian in
outlook because they hold that modernization,defined in terms of
advanced contemporarysocieties, once fully reached, marks the
end of development, the exhaustionof political ideas, the end of
ideological crisis, hence the end of revolution.7
For the neo-Hegelians the engine of revolution is no longer
necessarybecause there is nothing more to do. Political modernization representsthe triumphof reason through complex,coherent,
and autonomouspolitical institutionsof proven adaptability.8Political actors, who are conscious of having reached the limits of
development and who see the necessity of externally imposed
unity, increasingly define problems as technical and see their
solution in administrativeapplication of reason.9 Thus, the neoHegelians see the conflicts within industrial society as readily
resolved through the use of centralized bureaucraticpolitical institutions which guaranteethe merging of private interests so that
ment, Huntington represents the vanguard of the tendencies described here.

Huntington, Political Order, 32-39. The references to Hegelian thought are
drawn from Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of
Social Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, Inc., 1960), 169-248.
8 See Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, 244-247, for a brief restatement of
Hegel's views. Most western scholars reject materialistic determinism and
support the importance of cultural values and freedom of choice as a motive
force for societal development. See, for example, Huntington on the role of
policy choice for the military in modernization and in strategies of reform.
Huntington, Political Order, 237-263; 344-361.
7VWhilevariations on these themes are present among different theorists,
the influential Bell-Lipset thesis on the end of ideology is the modal theme.
See Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (rev. ed.; New York: Free Press, 1962),
392-407, and Lipset, Political Man, 439-456. For a critical discussion see
Stephen W. Rousseas and James Fergarris, "The Equilibrium Rationalized,"
in Frontiers of Democratic Theory, ed. Henry S. Kariel (New York: Random
House, 1970), 305-323. For Huntington's agreement on the Bell-Lipset
thesis, see Political Order, 138-139.
8 Huntington, Political Order, 12-24.
9 See, for example, Samuel H. Beer, "The Comparative Method and the
Study of British Politics," Comparative Politics, 1 (October 1968), 19-36.
For a statement of Hegel's view see Marcuse, Reason, 213-216.

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THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 35, 1973
the interest of "rear'individual freedom is achieved and anarchy

or rebellion avoided.
EMPIRICAL FIT OF THEORES
Determiningthe degree of fit between the phenomenaobserved

and the phenomenapredicted or explained by a theory is one of
the major criteria for evaluating the adequacy of social theory.10
In the case at hand, one of the criteriafor determiningthe relative
adequacy of the Marxianand neo-Hegelian theories of revolution
as applied to industrializedsocieties is to determine the degree
to which each fits politicallife of industnralizedsocieties. It should
be acknowledged at this point that in addition to the possibility
that one theory or the other may be "right"-in the sense that it
shows a greater observed correspondenceto the phenomenato be
explained than the other theory-there is the possibility that both
theories have a poor or ambiguousfit to the data.
It is quite clear that, at least until 1960, Marxiantheory appeared
to have a relativelypoor fit with the political life of an industrializing world. RobertTuckernotes that Marxiantheory of revolution
failed in two fundamentalways. After summarizingKarlMarxand
Frederick Engels' views on the preconditionsto revolution in industrializedsociety he states:
Thus, classical Marxism envisaged the communist revolution as a revolution
of capitalist breakdown occurring in the most advanced stage of development
of the capitalist system. . . . History has diverged in two fundamental ways
from their theory. First, capitalist societies, instead of suffering self-destruction in a proletarian upheaval, have gone through a process of self-modification that Marx would not have thought possible and for which his theory in
any event made no provision. . . . Indeed, societies that have experienced
thoroughgoing capitalist development appear to be among the least likely
prospects for communist revolution. [Secondly] . . . if classical Marxism
erred in projecting the communist revolution in a form in which it would not
occur, it likewise erred in failing to foresee it in the form it would occur.
The communist revolution has not come about as a revolution of capitalist
breakdown; large-scale industrialization has been among its consequences
10In addition to norms of correspondence, evaluative criteria for social
theory include norms of coherence, pragmatic norms, and normative or value
positions. See Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for
Behavioral Science (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1964),
311-326, 370-403.

REVOLUTIONAND INDUSTILALIZEDSOCIETIES
953
rather than its causes. . . . [T]he typical habitat of communist revolution has
been a country of precapitalist or at most semi-capitalist economic formation.
... The communist revolution-insofar as we can draw a generalization concerning its nature on the basis of these facts-is a revolution of underdevelopment.11
Tucker goes on to note that the two exceptions to the general rule,
that the Communist "revolutions" occur in preindustrial rather than
in industrialized societies, deviate significantly from classical Marxian theory because the Communist regimes installed in East Germany and Czechoslovakia were externally imposed by the Soviet
Union rather than products of an internal proletarian revolution.L2
Apparently, then, the Marxian revolutionary idea does not fit the
facts of the political life of industrialized societies, and at least
by default the neo-Hegelian view of American developmental
theorists does fit the case.
Although Tucker's conclusions about the empirical adequacy of
Marxian revolutionary theory are plausible and widely shared
among American scholars, let me commit academic heresy by
arguing the other side of the case. The major point of arguing in
favor of the Marxian view is that of demonstrating the necessity
for each scholar to make a conscious and reasoned choice between
the Marxian and neo-Hegelian views of the future of industrial
society. If the Marxian viewpoint on revolution is empirically
plausible, then no longer can American scholars let the external
"facts" make the decision for them. Where two courses of action
are empirically plausible alternatives, the choice is not resolved by
gathering more facts but by a normative evaluation of the consequences associated with those alternatives.13
A
REAPPRAISAL OF THE EVDENCE
The two critical empirical inadequacies allegedly invalidating the

Marxian theory of revolution involve the absence of predicting the
11 Robert C. Tucker, The Marxian RevolutionaryIdea (New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., Inc., 1969), 136-137 (emphasis in the original). For a similar
view see Mills, "New Beginnings?"in The Marxists,ed. C. Wright Mills (New
York: Dell Publishing Co., Laurel Edition, 1962), 468-474.
12Tucker, Marxian RevolutionaryIdea, 162-169.
13 See, for example, Robert A. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis (rev. ed.;
Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970), 100-112, for a brief
treatment of the fact-value mix in decision-making.

THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 35, 1973
954
revolutions which have occurred in the twentieth century and

the erroneousprediction of revolution in advanced industrialized
capitalist societies. The formeris a sin of omission,and the latter
apparentlya sin of commission. Since the alleged errors involve
differentprinciplesand differentfactual bases, each will have to be
discussed separately.
Impact of Revisionism
It is quite clear that the Communistrevolutionsin Russia,China,
Cuba, Yugoslavia,Albania, and Vietnam of this century constitute
major social revolutionscarried out in the name of socialism. It
is also quite clear that all occurredin agrarianprecapitalistor semicapitalist societies.14 What is not so clear is that these revolutions
constitute a skipping of the historical stage of capitalism and the
usheringin of socialism."5The fact that revolutionarieslabel themselves as Marxistsor Communistsdoes not make their movement,
if successful,the initial stage of socialismin the sense that Marxand
Engels used that term. Nor do the revisions of Marxiantheory
carried out by Lenin, Stalin, Tito, Mao, and Castro in the name
of "correcting"the theory to accord with unforeseen historical developments and peculiar local conditions demonstratethat there is
more than one road to communism."' It must be remembered
14Tucker, Marxian RevolutionaryIdea, 146-162. Tucker following conventional usage describes the establishment of regimes in Poland, East Germany,
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, North Korea, and Rumania as imposed
revolutions. The similarity of these events to the Nazi "revolt" in Austria
and the CIA "revolts" in Indonesia, Guatemala, and Santo Domingo points
to the conclusion that these events are better viewed and analyzed as aspects
of foreign policy of the external power than as a revolution.
15For a discussion of skipping historical phases, see Barrington Moore, Jr.,
"Sociological Theory and ContemporaryPolitics," in Reader in Political Sociology, ed. Frank Lindenfeld (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co., Minerva
Press, 1968), 23-37.
16 In common usage among Marxistscholars, "revisionism"refers to attempts
to deradicalize Marxist theory, such as the efforts by Eduard Bernstein and
Nikita Khrushchev. In this paper, revisionism refers to any systematic departure from classical Marxiantheory. For a discussion of the Leninist, Stalinist, Titoist, Maoist, and Castroist revisions see Tucker, Marxian Revolutionary
Idea, 153-162, 198-214. Mils, MaIsts, 132-158, 203-467, has both a discussion and documents of the revisionist revolutionarytheory. For an interesting and recent discussion of Maoism, see Mark Selden, "Revolution and
Third World Development" and Richard M. Pfeffer, "Mao Tse-tung and the

REVOLUTIONAND INDUSTIIUALI:ZE
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that these revisionswere made by men who were firstand foremost

political revolutionariesand that they were made in order to deal
with the concrete political conditions with which these men had
to cope, including the initial mobilization of revolutionaryforces
and the later legitimatizationof their new regimes. While Marx
and Engels also had their activist side, the importance of their
theory is in its analysis of the history of various socio-economic
stages.
Huntington captures the significance of the change made in
Marxismby the Leninist revisions. He argues:
In the socialist intellectual tradition, Marx is usually thought of as the peak:
before Marx there were precursors, such as the utopian socialists; after Marx
there were disciples and interpreters,such as Kautsky, Bernstein, Luxemburg,
Lenin. In terms of the political theory of Marxism, however, this is quite
inappropriate-Lenin was not a disciple of Marx, rather Marx was a precursor of Lenin. Lenin made Marxism into a political theory and in the
process stood Marx on his head. The key to Marx is the social class; the
key to Lenin is the political party.'7
The essence of the Leninist revision and the other revisions is to

convertthe historicaldeterminismof Marx'stheory of societal stages
into historicalindeterminismgoverned by the political choice of a
revolutionaryvanguard. Revolution still requires favorable social
conditions, but revolution itself is no longer viewed as inevitable
but rather as the result of planned activities by a revolutionary
vanguard.'8
If Lenin and the subsequent revisionists have substituted conscious political choice for historical determinismin terms of the
occurrenceof revolution,they have also moved the transitionfrom
the initial or lower stage of socialism-that is, the dictatorshipof
the proletariat-to communism. The deterministicforces of Marx
and Engels' theory of history are dropped, and the successful
transition to communismis made dependent on appropriate decisions by the revolutionaries. Lenin, in extending Marx'sanalysis
Cultural Revolution," both in National Liberation: Revolution in the Third
World, ed. Norman Miller and Roderick Aya (New York: Free Press, 1971),
214-296.
17 Political Order, 336.
18Tucker, Marxian Revolutionary Idea, 149-152. Lenin quite explicitly
rejects the idea of spontaneous revolution in "What is to be Done?" in Essential Works of Lenin, 72-85.

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of the Paris Commune of 1871, stresses the lack of decisive action

against the remnants of the bourgeoisie as the major cause of
collapse of this initally successful revolution. Lenin argues that in
the initial stage of socialism revolutionaries must use the repressive
mechanism of the state in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat to crush the bourgeois institutions. If the revolutionaries
follow misguided policies based on the assumption that the proletariat can use parliamentary democracy as their instrument of state
in the initial phase of socialism, they will never proceed to communism because they have preserved the bourgeois instrument of
class rule which necessarily will result in preservation of the bourgeoisie. Thus, the successful seizure of power by the proletariat
does not inevitably lead to the withering of the state and the communist epoch. The road to communism requires the selection of
proper political institutions and policies.19 The debate over the
proper policies still continues and is reflected in China, where
Leninist factions stress policies of industrial and technological development as the necessary precondition to communism, and the
Maoist factions stress proper moral or revolutionary egalitarian
consciousness of the masses as the basic precondition.20 The very
existence of the debate signals a rejection of historical determinism
and a major revision of Marxian theory.
Western scholars have largely accepted the revisions of Marx and
Engels' theory of history as correct. For opposite reasons but with
equal enthusiasm, they have agreed with Lenin that successful
socialist revolutions are not inevitable. They have agreed with
the revisionists that the label of socialism correctly describes their
societies-Russia, China, Cuba, and so on. And finally they happily
agree that the road from socialism to communism is not inevitable.
In short, Western scholars by agreeing with revisionist revolutionaries have purchased historical freedom in exchange for historical
determinism, and the imperfect mixture of blessings and cruelties
embedded in "socialist" history past and present in exchange for
the unclouded future of communist utopia.
19Lenin, "State and Revolution," 272-364. For a more recent discussion
of this point, see Paul M. Sweezy, "Towarda Programof Studies of the Transition to Socialism," Monthly Review, 23 (February 1972), 1-13.
20
Pfeffer, "Mao Tse-tung," 255-263, 279-287.

REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALI:ZED SOCIETIES
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The Case for ClassicalMarxism

Having seen the argument that Marx and Engels were proven
wrong by the facts and corrected by the subsequent revisionists, let
us make the opposite assumption and argue that Marx and Engels
are correct and the revisionists wrong. Necessarily this argument
involves looking at the revolutions that did occur in the twentieth
century as the type predicted by classical Marxian thought. If
the revolutions are viewed in the terms by which their leadership labeled them, then Communist revolutions of the twentieth
century are socialist revolutions; hence, Marx is wrong by definition.
For Marx to be correct, the Communist revolutions of this century
must be viewed either as nonrevolutions or as bourgeois revolutions
ushering in a new form of capitalist society.
For Marx and Engels, revolution means the change from one
historical epoch to another-the change from slave society to
feudalism, from feudalism to capitalism, from capitalism to socialism. The key to the revolution is a change in the mode of production from slave-labor, to serf-labor, to wage-labor, to free labor,
respectively. The revolution is always led by the rise of a new class
out of the antagonisms of the previous class system. The new class
always brings with it a new mode of production which is fettered by the existing relations of production-that is, prevailing
definition of property relations as master-slave, lord-serf, and
capitalist-proletariat. The social revolution is the smashing of the
fetters of the relations of production by the new class which
necessarily leads to the change of all subordinate social, political,
and cultural elements in the superstructure. The socialist revolution
resolves the final contradiction by socializing the means of production, thereby eliminating the class base of society and with it
the necessity and the existence of the state.2' While the violent
overthrow of government or of the political superstructure is an
element of the classical Marxian theory of revolution, the critical
element is the change in the mode of production.
It is important to stress that change in the mode of production is
crucial in classical Marxism because revisionists following Lenin
21 For a brief summary in his own words, see Karl Marx, "Excerpt from a
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," in Basic Writings, ed.
Feuer, 43-44. For a restatement of Marx'sviews, see, Tucker, MarxianRevolutionary Idea, 10-25.

958
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stress the violent overthrow of government by a mass-based,

ideologically led social movement as the key element of revolution. Lenin in State and Revolution explicitly argues the necessity
for choosing a course of action involving violent seizure and destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus, followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the remnants of the bourgeoisie are
crushed and sharp changes in the distributive system take place.22
On the other hand, violent change in classical Marxism is simply
the inevitable accompaniment of changes in the basic social forces
-the mode of production.
For Marx and Engels a specific class at a more or less specific
point of economic development is the leader of the revolution. In
this sense each revolution is unique. The capitalist revolution can
occur only when the fetters of the feudal institutions are challenged
by a rising new class-the bourgeoisie. In a similar fashion, the
socialist revolution can occur only when the proletarian class challenges the fetters of the capitalist institutions. Just as "primitive"
accumulation is a necessary precondition for the successful rise
of the bourgeois class, the increasing socialization of production in
advanced capitalist societies is a necessary precondition for the
socialist revolution. The socialization simplifies the class structure
and readily exposes the exploitation inherent in the system, lays the
groundwork for the disappearance of the state in the socialist
epoch, and represents the potential productive power of communism once industry is released from the fetters of the profit systemY23 Moreover, advanced capitalism established worldwide markets, thereby internationalizing the world and preparing the groundwork for a classless system.24 Specifically, then, the socialist revolution in classical Marxian theory is a worldwide revolution which occurs initially in advanced industrialized capitalist societies and in
which the proletariat is the revolutionary class violently overthrowLenin, "State and Revolution," 277-308, covers the destruction of the
bourgeois state as the essence of revolution and 333-349, esp. 342-343, cover
changes in the distributive system after the revolution. For a view similar
to that taken in the main text, see Tucker, MarxianRevolutionaryIdea, 10-11.
*23 The summary in the text is drawn from the following: Friedrich Engels,
"On Historical Materialism," and "Socialism:Utopian and Scientific," and
Karl Marx, "Excerpts from Capital," in Basic Writings, ed. Feuer, 53-67, 90111, and 160-167. In the excerpt from Marx the forceful and exploitative nature of primitive accumulation is emphasized.
24Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 90-91.
22

REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALIZED SOCIETIES
959
ing the bourgeois ruling class and its institutions, including the
nation-state.25
It is quite clear that the Communist revolutions which have

occurred are not socialist revolutions in the sense of classical
Marxian theory. There is considerable agreement that the Communist revolutions involve the establishment of urban intellectuals
with a bourgeois background and an ideological appeal using
Marxist rhetoric. In every instance they came into power with
peasant support or at least in conjunction with concurrent peasant
uprisings. Without the peasants there would not have been a
revolution.26 In each case of a Communist revolution, appeals to
nationalism played an important role in the seizure or consolidation
of power. In Russia, foreign intervention on behalf of the counterrevolutionaries after the Bolshevik coup aided the consolidation of
Bolshevik rule by nationalizing the conflict.27 The Japanese invasion of China, the German invasion of Yugoslavia, the French
colonization and the Japanese invasion of Vietnam, and the neocolonialist American rule in Cuba, all stimulated strong nationalistic
currents in those respective societies, nationalistic currents that
were successfully tied to the Communist movements.28 In every
case the sweeping internationalism of Marxism was nationalized, so
that Russia has its Leninism, China its Maoism, Yugoslavia its
Titoism, and Cuba its Castroism. Thus, rather than a socialist revolution establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat and crushing all
bourgeois institutions including the nation-state, we see a largely
Ibid., 66-79; and Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Program,"120-123.

Tucker, MarxianRevolutionaryIdea, 130-171; Huntington, Political Order,
264-343, esp. 291-300; Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century
(New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 47-207, 251-302, but esp. 296-299;
Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in
the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 451-483.
Each of the sources offers supporting data on one or more of the Communist
revolutions. There is general agreement that the Russian revolution is somewhat unique because of the strong role played by the urban proletariat in
the Bolshevik seizure of power. Both Wolf and Moore agree, however, that
without the concurrent peasant uprising and the use of the peasants in the
Red Army, the revolution would probably have failed.
27 Huntington, Political Order, 305-306.
28 Tucker, MarxianRevolutionaryIdea, 155-162; Huntington,
Political Order,
300-308.
25
26

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peasant-based revolution establishing the dictatorship of the bourgeois intellectuals, who become increasingly more and more nationalistic as they consolidate and institutionalize their power.
If one focuses on those aspects of classical Marxism related to the
explanation and elaboration of a theory of historical development,
there is little doubt that the Communist revolutions of the twentieth
century are capitalist revolutions. Engels gives an apt description of
twentieth century Communist revolutions. After noting that the
urban middle class brought on the Calvinist revolution in Germany,
the Puritan revolution in England, and the French revolution,
Engels points out: "Curiously enough, in all three great bourgeois risings, the peasantry furnishes the army that has to do the
fighting, and the peasantry is just the class that, the victory once
gained, is most surely ruined by the economic consequences of that
victory."29
Not only have the peasants formed the bulk of the fighting forces
in all Communist revolutions, but when the industrializing plans of
the urban intellectuals who lead the revolutionary movement are
carried out, the peasants as a petit bourgeois class are eliminated in
the collectivation of agriculture and the shift to industrialization.
While Mao and Castro may reverse the priorities of the Russian
model of development-which emphasized industrialization first,
then equalization-they do share the common point of view that the
peasant as a petit bourgeois class must be stamped out.30 The peasants, like the rest of the population in Communist states, become
wage-laborers. There would be no doubt of the capitalist nature of a
bourgeois led revolution resulting in the institutionalization of wagelabor throughout society if Marx and Engels had not also written
in the capacity of political activists.
While a socialist revolution is a necessary consequence of their
theory of historical development, it seems quite clear that the role
of the bourgeois intellectual in that revolution grows out of Marx
and Engels' political commitments. They wanted capitalism to fall
and to fall quickly. They saw or wanted to see that the time was
ripe for the socialist revolution,31 but they also saw that the leadership of socialist movements was frequently bourgeois in back29
"On Historical Materialism,"56 and 55-61 generally.
30 Wolf, Peasant Wars, 300-302.

31 Karl Marx, "Excerptsfrom the
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,"

961
ground. Thus, in the Communist Manifesto (a) increasing class

consciousness of the proletariat is laid to the worsening material
conditions of developing capitalism,32 but (b) conveniently, just
when the decisive hour is reached, a small theoretically oriented segment of the ruling class who comprehend the historical movement
as a whole, splits away and joins the proletariat.33 While the
historical element of (a) follows from their social theory and can
include the fall of some bourgeoisie into the proletariat as a result
of concentration in ownership resulting from economic crisis, there
is no way to derive the necessity of (b) from their social theory.34
In fact, since the rise of a new class is associated with the new
ideology appropriate to the changing mode of production, one can
argue that their social theory explicitly rejects the possibility of
the new ideology having its roots in a dying class. Because neither
of the major classes involved in the twentieth century Communist
revolutions is the historically required class for carrying out a
socialist revolution, and because both are the historically required
classes essential to the capitalist revolution, we can conclude
that the Communist revolutions are in fact capitalist revolutions
in the sense of classical Marxian social theory.
From one perspective, this conclusion is not very radical, for
Lenin himself recognized that the first stage of the Russian revolution in 1917 transferred the state power from a feudal landed
nobility and placed it in the hands of a new class-the bourgeoisie.
He also saw that the road to socialism required Russia to move
two steps backward in order to go one step forward. The New
Economic Policy (NEP) was in essence the stage of consciously
directed state capitalism, which, having achieved a sufficient development, would permit the transition to socialism.35 More
in Basic Writings, ed. Feuer, 323-324, explicitly places the capitalist revolutions in the eighteenth century and the socialist revolution in the nineteenth.
32 Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 66-75.
33 Ibid., 74-75.
34For a view which sees their theory as part of historical consciousness of
the proletariat and as an aid to the socialist movement rather than a directing
force of the movement, see Tucker, "Introduction," in The Marx-Engels
Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972),
xxviii-xxxii.
35 Lenin, "On the Tactics of the 1917 Revolution,"and "CooperativesUnder
Socialism,"in The Marxists,ed. Mills, 234-244, 246-253.

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importantly,had not Marxexplicitly stated that in the initial stages

of socialismmany bourgeoispractices,including wage-labor,would
be briefly carried on during the transition from capitalism to
socialism?3"The perspectiveof this paper, however, is not that the
Communistrevolutionsmust necessarilyhave a brief interlude of
capitalismin their march toward socialism,but ratherthat in spite
of their espoused anticapitalistideologies, in spite of their lack of
free competitivemarkets,and in spite of their statementsabout the
provisional nature of their contemporarypoints of development,
they all representa variationof capitalist revolutions,and all will
proceed on the long march down the capitalist epoch.
Everybody recognizessignificantvariationsin feudal institutions,
even though the basic nexus is that of the lord-serf relationship
and serf-laboris the major mode of production.37While it is also
recognizedthat capitalistinstitutionscan have significantvariations,
the stress among both Marxist and non-Marxist developmental
theories has been to sharply contrast capitalist (democratic) with
Communist (totalitarian) societies and to place the former in an
earlier historical era and the latter in a contemporaryera. These
societies, however, can also be looked upon as different forms of
capitalismlocated in a common historical era.
When classical Marxian theory is viewed from the historical
perspective,one can indeed make a case that we are at the midpoint
of the capitalist era rather than at its terminalpoint. The ancient
slave states of Greece and Rome ran a cycle of roughly 1,000
years, covering approximatelythe period from 500 B.C. to 500
A.D. The feudal era in western history runs approximatelyfrom
500 A.D. to 1,500 A.D. or roughly another thousand-yearcycle.
The capitalistera began, accordingto Marx,approximatelyat 1,500
A.D.,38 and if these developmentalcycles do recur, then the end
86Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Program," 117-120. Marx saw this provisional survival of bourgeois wage-labor as a carry over from advanced capitalism. Nowhere does he argue that the socialist revolution should introduce it.
87 Moore, Social Origins, 3-110, 228-313, discusses English, French, and
Japanese feudal institutions with references to the German and Russian variations. Moore also discusses the Chinese hybrid of bureaucratic-feudalismin
162-227. For a similar discussion of variations in feudal society, see Lenin,
"The State and Its Evolution," in The Marxists,ed. Mills, 223-226.
38 Marx, Capital, The Communist Manifesto, and Other Writings, ed. Max
Eastman (New York: Modem Library, 1959), 184.

REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALIZED SOCIETES
963
of the capitalistera should be approximately2,500 A.D. ratherthan

the late nineteenth century as Marxsaw it.-9
Moreover,it appears that the midpoints in these cycles denote
a sharp break with the general pattems on either side. In the
midpoint of the ancient period we see the collapse of separate
societies and experimentswith decentralizedfonns, such as Athenian democracyand the RomanRepublic. These experimentswere
followed by a period of centralizationunder the Roman Empire.
Around 500 A.D. the collapse of centralizationunder the Empire
yielded the feudal pattem. At the midpoint in the feudal period,
around 1,000 A.D., a drive away from the extreme decentralization
of the early medieval period gave way to increasingcentralization
by church authority, symbolized in the beginning of the first
Crusades. The failureof the papal authorityto consolidateits drive
toward centralizedpower is followed by a period of consolidating
local power, reflected in the growth of the modern nation-state.
Finally, in the twentieth century, the midpoint of the capitalist
cycle, we see the emergence of various efforts-including conquest,
international revolution, and contractual internationalism-which
are aimed at centralizingpower and overcoming the divisiveness
of nationalism.
Of course, even if it is granted that we are in the consolidating
phase of the capitalist cycle, the possibility is not ruled out that
some feudal societies linger, or that the embryo of socialism is
not upon us. Therefore, the case that the current Communist
regimes are capitalist in nature requires more detailed argument.
The prime fact of life in capitalist society is that wage-labor is
the dominant economic form.40 The presence or absence of a
domestic competitivemarketis not critical.41 As Engels points out
39Marx, "Eighteenth Brumaire,"323-324. As mentioned above in the text
an activist side to Marx must be given some weight when evaluating his
specific statements about the approach of the socialist revolution. His activist
side does not necessarily mesh with his historical theory.
40 Marx, "Critique of Political Economy," 42-44; see Tucker, Marxian Revolutionary Idea, 10-17, for an interpretationsimilar to that of the text.
41See Rudolf Hilferding, "State Capitalism or Totalitarian State Economy,"
in The Marxists, ed. Mills, 334-339, who argues to the contrary. He asserts
Marx defined capitalism in terms of the market. This argument is patently
false because Marx defined historical epochs by the dominant mode of production for each epoch. The market is important to Marx in relation to

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considerable state ownership of property can exist in a capitalist

society. He also notes that, in advanced capitalism, state ownership of the means of production is likely to be the dominant
characteristic.42 With increasing crises in the market system,
private monopoly, state management, and state ownership all
represent increasingly progressive measures to substitute rational
control for the irrationality of the invisible hand in the competitive
market. Although the market operation produces crises which may
precipitate the consciousness of revolution,43 Engels suggests that
increasing socialization of production under a capitalist regime can
create alternative roads to revolutionary consciousness by postponing the effects of crises until, under total state capitalism, the
bourgeoisie are seen as a superfluous class and are overthrown by
the proletariat.44
The key to each societal type, then, is the mode of production.
In a capitalist society the mode of production is wage-labor. Unlike the earlier slave and feudal modes of production, under
capitalism the laborer is formally free to sell his labor power.
The labor power is converted into a commodity and sold to a
capitalist in return for wages which are in turn used to purchase
other commodities. In capitalism, the worker does not produce for
his immediate needs but rather for wages. In a competitive
capitalist system, it is the market which brings together both the
pool of formally free workers and the capitalists who, as the
owners of money and the means of production, seek to purchase
others' labor power. It is the market which also brings together the
workers' wage and the commodities produced by the workers in
the aggregate. Thus, the capitalists and the market determine what
is to be produced and how the production will be distributed.
economic crises and their role in bringing on the revolution, but this is not to
say that the market is the defining characteristic of capitalism.
42 "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific," 103-104, 110-111.
43 On the theoretical distinction between precipitants and causes of revolution, see Harry Eckstein, "On the Etiology of Internal War," in Struggles in
the State, ed. George Armstrong Kelly and Clifford W. Brown, Jr. (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1970), 168-195; see, also, Lawrence Stone,
"Theories of Revolution," in Why Revolution: Theories and Analyses, ed.
Clifford T. Paynton & Robert Blackey (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing Co., Inc.), 270-271, who summarizes Eckstein's argument and aptly
notes that Eckstein himself confuses the distinction in practice.
44 "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific," 103-104, 110-111.

965
The critical fact of this mode of production is that the worker is

separated from the means of production; thus, he is separated
from decisions on what will be produced and on how the production will be distributed.45
In the Communistsystems, we see not the eliminationof wagelabor as the dominantmode of production,but ratherthe elimination of the competitivemarketas the technique of bringingtogether
the labor power of the workers and the means of production. In
substitution for the market we find administrativedecisions, but
exactly as in the market situation, the worker is separated from
the means of productionand thus removed from decision on what
will be produced and on how the production will be distributed.
Marx, himself, notes that this type of commodity production is
simply a variant of bourgeois capitalist production. He sees this
variant as an aspect of advanced capitalism lingering on after the
socialist revolutionbut disappearingas the transitionfrom the first
phase of socialism to the higher phase is completed.48
There are three major reasons for believing that this mode of
capitalist production is not, however, a transitionalphenomenon
in Communistsocieties. In the firstplace, the initiationof this form
of wage-labor, far from being an aspect of advanced capitalism
lingeringon after the revolution,is in fact one of the majorinnovations of the Communist modernizing of precapitalist societies.
Second, it appearsthat the combinationof labor power and capital
by administrative techniques in Communist societies is less a
distinguishing feature of socialism than a logical outgrowth of
advancedcapitalisttechnologyrequiringboth large-scaleproduction
and planning. As Galbraithhas noted, the trend toward monopoly
capital is not simply the entrepreneurialdrive for profits, but also
a technological necessity for all highly industrialized states.47
Thus, in the early phases of capitalism there may in some sense
be a choice between marketand planning but in advanced capitalism all are required to administerthe labor-capitalrelationshipif
they hope to survive. Finally, the social division of labor in this
administeredwage-labor mode of production perpetuates a form
45Marx, "Excerpts from Capital," 161-162.
41"Critique of the Gotha Program,"117-119.
47John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (New York: Signet
Books, 1967).

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of the class system which guarantees that transition to the classlessness of Marx's communist society will not occur automatically.
Beginning with Milovan Dijlas' critique of Communist societies
as incipient class systems-with a new class composed of the Communist party's full-time managerial bureaucrats filling the role of
the bourgeoisie in capitalist societies-there has been increasing
awareness among both Marxist and non-Marxian students of Communist societies that the initial period of the revolution, in which
the distributive system sharply moved in an egalitarian direction, is
not necessarily followed by an increasing movement toward communism.48 Paul Sweezy notes that he has shifted his position and
no longer regards state ownership of the decisive means of production and centralized planning of the economy as essential
criteria of the socialist society or as the necessary and sufficient conditions for the automatic transition to communism. While Sweezy
hedges on whether Communist societies with the new class are
reversions to capitalism (as the Chinese maintain), he does see
this new ruling class as a "state bourgeoisie."49 Sweezy declares
that ownership and inheritance of property are not the only ways
that class position can be transmitted between generations. Systematic differential access to education is another way, a way that
is increasingly important in all eastern European Communist
societies as the basis for admittance to the elite positions in those
societies.50 The state bourgeoisie "rules not through private ownership of the means of production, as in capitalist society, but through
occupying the decision-making positions in the party, the state, and
the economy; and it is a class and not simply a stratum because
its sons and daughters have a much better chance of occupying
the same positions of power t-han do the children of the rest of the
population."51
What we are seeing is a new forn of capitalism in which, at least
in the initial stages of the revolutionary period as in previous
capitalist revolutions, changes in the distributive system are rela-
48 For a summary of Dijlas' views and other views on the matter, see Frank
Parkin, Class Inequality and Political Order: Social Stratificationin Capitalist
and Communist Societies (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), 137-159.
49 "Toward a Program of Studies," 1-13.
50 See Parkin, Class Inequality, 149-154, for supporting data.
51 Sweezy, "Toward a Programof Studies," 6.

REVOLUTION AND INDUSThIAIEJED
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967
tively major.52 It is unique changes in the distributivesystem by

Communistregimes which mark them as new forms of capialism.
All capitalist revolutions separate the worker from the means
of production and establish wage-labor as the dominant mode of
production. In all capitalist revolutionsthe last vestiges of feudalism are overthrown,and the tie of the workerto the land is ripped
asunder. The unique feature of Communistrevolutionsis not that
they change the basic mode of production. Rather,unlike capitalist
revolutionspriorto the twentieth century,which reduced the power
of the state institutions over the distributive system by breaking
the feudal nexus of political and property power,53 Communist
regimes re-establish the identity of political and property power
over the distributive system. The Communists,however, in this
relationshipinvert the feudal emphasis, which basically used the
property system to determine one's political position. The Communist regimesuse one'spolitical position to determineone's access
to propertypower. Both the classicalcapitalistand the neocapitalist
regimes differ from the feudal in the manner in which power over
the distributivesystem is passed from one generationto another.54
In the feudal system, power over distribution is almost solely
determinedthrough inheritancelegally tied to ascriptiveprinciples.
In classical capitalism,the power of institutionalizedpropertyover
the distributive system is also determined by inheritance based
largely on ascriptive principles, but political power, at least in
terms of parliamentarydemocracies,is based in part on achievement criteria and in part on political loyalty. Political loyalty is a
new form of ascriptive criterion, one which uses identification
with a particularideological line as a substitute for identification
52Marx comments on the paradox that the peasant was originally benefited
by the French revolution in terms of the distribution of small parcels of land,
but later these benefits turned to capitalist nooses around their necks as they
sank in debt and had too small a plot to compete successfully in the market.
"Eighteenth Brumaire," 341-344. In "Critique of the Gotha Program," 120,
Marx also notes that mere changes in the distributive system do not constitute
the arrival of the socialist epoch.
53 Marx and Engels recognize this fact when they scoff at bourgeois freedom
which means only that property owners are free from state interference.
Communist Manifesto, 84-85.
s See Gerhard E. Lenskd,Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1966), 50-58, for a brief discussion of the joint role of property and governmental office in the institutionalization of power over the distributive system.

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with a particular blood line as the measure of loyalty.55 In the

classical capitalist system, political loyalty is defined by one's
identification with the ideology of private ownership found in classical capitalism. Domhoff has shown how the combined achievement and loyalty criteria are used by the American upper class to
recruit the power elite in major United States institutions.56 While
these decentralizing changes in the manner of determining control
over the distributive system have reduced the degree of inequality
in the distributive systems of classical capitalist societies vis-a-vis
feudal societies, they have only partly reduced the degree of overlap between the political and property class systems, and they
have only partially eliminated sharp degrees of inequality in the
distributive system.57
In the Communist societies, control over the distributive system
is not based on legal inheritance of any type. Even in the Soviet
Union, where inheritance tax laws have been abolished, no private
ownership in the principal means of production can be passed along
from one generation to another at the present time. While there is
no private property system of major consequence for the Communist distributive system, the property system is not unimportant
for the distributive system. Only in societies with collective ownership of the means of production is property unimportant in terms of
fostering inequality in the distributive system. The distinctive
feature of all property is the right of use and possession that ownership conveys to the owners in relation to nonowners. In collective ownership everyone has the right of usage and possession.
Collective ownership of property is best symbolized by public
parks, public roads, and so on. On the other hand, state ownership
of property gives the right of use and possession to the state, but
more concretely to those who control the state institutions.58
55 For a similar view, see the discussion of parentela in Italian politics by
Joseph LaPalombara, "Interest Groups in Italian Politics," in Group Politics:
A New Emphasis, ed. Edward S. Malecki and H. R. Mahood (New York:
Charles Scribner'sSons, 1972), 264-267.
56 G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., Spectrum Book, 1966).
57 See Lenski, Power and Privilege, 297-433.
58 Lenin appears to partially recognize the distinction between collective
ownership and state ownership when he discusses the role of the state in the
initial phase of socialism as the guardian of "the public ownership in the
means of production." "State and Revolution," 343. For a brief discussion

969
What we find in Communist societies is not wide-spread collective ownership of the means of production but, rather, state
ownership. More particularly,given the role of the Party in Communist societies, the Party is legal owner in de jure sense while the
rankingParty elite are de facto owners. The Party elite have possession of the means of production, and it is they who determine
how those means of production will be put to use, not the great
mass of wage-laborers at their command.59 It is in this context that
recruitment to the Party elite becomes decisive for determining the
character of the distributive systems for Communist societies.
Unlike the classical capitalist societies, which use different criteria
for transferring property power and political power, Communist
societies use a single path based on a combination of achievement
and political loyalty. The result is quite similar to the recruitment of the power elite for United States institutions, with education as a primary measure of one's achievement and commitment
to the ideology of the Communist party as one's measure of political
loyalty. So long as political loyalty remains an important ascriptive
criterion for inclusion in a very select group-one with de facto
ownership of the means of production-Communist societies will
have a crucial mechanism for perpetuating an ownership class
which has a distinctive conception of the rights and duties involving ownership of the means of production.ff
The distinctive character of the neocapitalism of Communist
societies is not a difference in the mode of production. They share
this difference with classical capitalist societies. But they differ
in the relations of production and their effect on the distributive
system. While the ownership classes of both feudal and Communist societies combine political and property power in the hands
of a small elite, paradoxically the degree of inequality in the Communist distributive system is smaller than those of the partially
decentralized capitalist societies and much smaller than those of
the feudal era.,' It is true that ownership in the basic means of
of property as rights and duties see Lenski, Power and Privilege, 58, 83, 341345.
59 Cf., Sweezy, "Toward a Programof Studies," 7-8.
60 Richard Cornell, "Students and Politics in Communist Eastern Europe,"
Daedalus (Winter 1968), 166-171.
61f See Parkin, Class Inequality, 103-159, and Lenski, Power and Privilege,
243-345.

970
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productionrests in the hands of a small class in each case, but the

Communistownership class is distinctive in that its ownership is
based on trust and an egalitarian ideological justification. Both
feudal and classical capitalist ownership rests on an egoistic basis
and an inegalitarian ideological justification. The egalitarian
ideology of the Communistelite, combined with their total command over the distributivesystem, yields, at least initially while the
ideological commitmentsof the Party elite are strong, much lower
degrees of inequality than those found in classical capitalistsocieties.62
So long as loyalty to an egalitarianideology is one of the prerequisites to elite Party positions in Communist societies and so
long as the Party owns the means of production, the secondary
variations in the distributive system of the classical and neocapitalist systems will remain quite clear. But the differencesare
secondary in relation to differencesin modes of production. Just
as Stanley Elkins noted the greaterrepressivenessof slavery in the
United States as comparedto slavery in Latin America,"3one can
note the differencesare, however, only secondaryvariationswithin
the basic slave-laborand wage-labormodes of production.f64 While
Communistregimescan partiallyrevertto the inequalityof classical
capitalism, as Yugoslaviaand the Soviet Union have done, these
regimes retain a distinctive feature of neocapitalismin that de jure
ownershipof the means of production remain with the Party and
62Parkin, Class Inequality, 137-159, and John Goldthorpe, 'Social Stratification in Industrial Society," Sociological Review, 8 (October 1964), 97-112.
63 "Slavery and Personality" in When Men Revolt, ed. Davies, 152-164.
64 See Lenski, Power and Privilege, 46-50, 90-93, 434-441, for a discussion
of distributive systems in terms of primary and secondary variations. In the
present case, Marx's modes of production are viewed as the primary variation
in the distributive system because changes in the mode of production mark
revolutionary changes in productivity, surplus, and the social and political
superstructures of societies. It is also possible to distinguish tertiary variations, such as those within classical capitalistic societies, which vary between
one another in terms of whether or not a labor or social-democraticparty has
been elected to power. In those societies like England, Norway, and Sweden,
where a social-democraticparty has held power, the mobility system is much
more open than in societies like West Germany and France, where a social
democratic party has not held effective power. (Parkin, Class Inequality,
107-114). It should be pointed out that this tertiary variation in the type of
authorities in power does not have a significantrelationshipto income inequalities.

SOCIETIES
REVOLUTIONAND INDUSTRIALI:ZED
971
de facto ownership is retained by the Party elite.65 Like the

deradicalization of classical capitalism from market to monopoly
structure, the deradicalization of neocapitalism from radical egalitarian Party ownership to functional inegalitarian Party ownership
is a tertiary variation within the basic capitalistic nature of wagelabor which does not totally negate the secondary neocapitalist
nature of the distributive system.68
POST-INDUSTRIAL POLMIICALVIOLENCE AND
THEORIEsOF REVOLUTION
Granted that the violent Communist revolutions of the twentieth

century have been bourgeois-led revolutions introducing a new
form of capitalism and thus quite explicable under classical
Marxian theory, one can ask why no socialist revolution has occurred in an advanced industrialized capitalist society. Happily, at
least for some Marxist theorists, the emergence of widespread
political violence in modem societies has augured the arrival of
the long-awaited socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist
societies of the West. In the 1960s, we have seen massive student demonstrations in the United States, West Germany, and
Japan. A student-worker strike in France paralyzed the entire
country in 1968.67 In somewhat less-advanced capitalist democracies like Italy and Mexico there have been huge student demonstrations and strikes. Armed confrontations in Mexico between students and authorities have resulted in many deaths. In another
relatively modem Latin American capitalist democracy, Uruguay,
the Tupamaros have been violently challenging the established
65 See Parkin, Class Inequality, 167-180 and Sweezy, "Toward a Program of

Studies," for a discussion of this phenomena.
66 On a general discussion of deradicalization of Social Democratic and
Communist movements see Tucker, Marxian Revolutionary Idea, 172-214.
67 For descriptions of student protest in the United States, West Germany,
and Japan, see Richard E. Peterson, "The Student Left in American Higher
Education," Frank A. Pinner, "Tradition and Transgression: Westem European Students in the Postwar World," and Michiya Shimbori, "The Sociology
of a Student Movement-A Japanese Case Study," Daedaluw (Winter 1968),
293-317; 137-155, and 204-228; for a description and various interpretations
of the French student protest, see Kelly and Brown, eds., Struggles in the
State, 482-511.

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power since 1967.68 Moreover, the modem capitalist democracies

of America, Canada, and Britain have experienced widespread and
bitter political violence in relation to the black and brown American, the French-Canadian, and the Northern Irish Catholic movements. If these events have created some hope in those waiting
for the classical Marxian socialist revolution, they have created
anxiety among western developmental theorists committed to neoHegelian models.
Adequacy of Neo-Hegelian Models

According to the neo-Hegelian model of political development,
revolution and modem society are like oil and water and just do not
mix. Those with a neo-Hegelian viewpont generally tend to treat
the political violence which has occurred in modem western
democracies as an aberration insofar as their theoretical model
linking modernization and stability is concerned.69 Moreover,
when attempts are made to incorporate in theory the occurrence
of political violence in modern societies, then the whole theoretical
argument that modern societies have developed social, economic,
and political institutions removing the conditions of revolution is
contradicted.70 The dilemma the neo-Hegelians face is that either
they must ignore empirical evidence contradicting their theory of
political development and thus save the theory by assuming the
posture of an ostrich, or they must incorporate the evidence and
thereby negate their theory of political development.
Of course the empirical inadequacy of the neo-Hegelian theories
of political development in dealing with widespread mass political
violence in modem societies does not automatically mean that any
type of revolution will invalidate that theory. Of the several
different types of revolution, only some contradict the neo-Hegelian
view. Revolutions can be typed in terms of their effect on the
authorities and policies, the regime, the community, the distributive
68 See John Gerassi, "Latin America: The Left on the Move," Ramparts,
September, 1971, 22-23.
69 Frank Myers, "Social Class and Political Change in Western Industrial
Systems," ComparativePolitics, 2 (April 1970), 389-412.
70 See, for example, William A. Gamson, who reads Robert Dahl's pluralistic model of American politics as explicitly incorporating the likelihood of
political violence. "Stable Unrepresentationin American Society," in Malecki
and Mahood, eds., Group Politics, 60-75.

973
system, and the prevailing mode of production.71 The occurrence

in a modern society of a Marxian revolution, which changes all
these elements, clearly would invalidate the neo-Hegelian theories.
On the other hand, a number of different non-Marxian types of
revolution would change only some of the elements of society.
All of the non-Marxian types of revolution involve the use of
force to change the authorities, the regime, the community, and/or
the distributive system. Palace coups, which represent the minimal
amount of political violence and change, have been frequent in
relatively static societies like the Latin American countries. These
revolts change the authorities and a few policies but nothing else.72
Rebellions change authorities and policies as well as the regime.
For example, in France during the 1850s Louis Bonaparte forcefully seized power and converted the regime from a parliamentary
democracy to an authoritarian empire. However, the community
of the French nation-state, the distributive system, and the basic
mode of production all remained the same.73 Charles De Gaulle's
seizure of power in France in 1958, with the consequent rewriting
of the constitution into a strong presidential system from a strong
parliamentary system, also is a classic case of rebellion.74 Wars
of independence, wars of national unification, and wars of secession
represent attempts to change the authorities, the regime, and the
community. Wars of independence are typically colonial struggles,
as represented by the American, the nineteenth-century Latin
71 For distinctions between revolutions on the basis of their effect on authorities, regime, and community see, ChalmersJohnson, RevolutionaryChange
(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1966), 135-149; Huntington, Political Order,
264-266, makes a similar distinction but adds the important aspect of change
in the distributive system and the value which supports it. Lenski, Power and
Privilege, 59-62, 68-72, also views changes in the distributive system and its
ideological support as a major factor distinguishing different types of revolutions. None of these scholars mentions the key element that changes in the
mode of production have for the Marxian revolutionary idea. See Tucker,
MarxianRevolutionaryIdea, 3-32.
72 See, for example, Merle Kling, "Toward a Theory of Power and Political
Instability in Latin America," Western Political Quarterly, 9 (March 1956),
21-35, for a general discussion of the palace coup.
73 Marx, "Eighteenth Brumaire," 318-348, gives an analysis of this change
in regime in France.
74 See Johnson, Revolutionary Change, 139. Johnson calls this a simple
revolution and palace coups are termed "rebellions." The sense is the same as
the text even though the labels differ.

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American and the twentieth-century Indian wars of independence.

On the other hand, wars of national unification represent revolts
against regimes which prevent achievement of an existing community, such as those in Italy and Germany in the nineteenth century. Wars of secession are best illustrated by the United States
Civil War and the recent Nigerian war. The key to all these
struggles is that they aimed at creating new authorities, a new regime, and new community without an explicit aim of changing the
distributive system. Finally, one can note ideological revolutions
of a non-Marxian type, where political and economic institutions
and the dominant value of society are changed but the mode of
production remains the same. In the twentieth century, fascism
has been the only successful variant of the ideological revolution.
In Germany and Italy the fascist revolutions changed the authorities, established totalitarian regimes, changed and expanded the
concept of community, and created a corporate state which increasingly affected the distributive system as the economy was
geared to a war economy.78
It seems readily evident that the neo-Hegelian theories of political
development might be embarrassed but would not be invalidated
by the occurrence of a palace coup in a modem society. Since
palace coups do not change the basic political or economic institutions of a society, they cannot constitute postmodernization.
Rebellions and wars of independence in a society designated as
having modem political and socio-economic institutions are inconsistent to a degree with the neo-Hegelian thesis because they
negate assumptions about the effectiveness of modem political institutions. There is, however, a lack of clarity in this area because
of the vagueness of the concept of modem political systems and
contradictory empirical application of the terms by the neoHegelian theorists. For example, Huntington views the parliamentary system of the French Fourth Republic as a modem sys7William Ebenstein, Today's Isms: Communism, Fascism, Capitalism,
Socialism (6th ed.; Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970), 121145. There is some disagreement on the exact nature of fascism and the
societies labeled fascist appear to differ significantly. There also is some
question as to whether or not fascist economies are distinctive. There does
seem to be agreement that Germany, Italy, and Japan represent a classical
type of fascism with economies at least distinctive in their war orientation.
For a general discussion of the issues, see S. J. Woolf, ed., The Nature of
Fascism (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1969).

REVOLUTIONAND INDUSThIALI:ZED SOCImETs
975
tem but notes that it was unable to deal effectively with the dissolution of the empire in the 1950s, a fault that resulted in a
military rebellion putting De Gaulle in power. De Gaulle shifted
the regime to a strong centralized presidential system which controlled both parliament and the bureaucracy. Presumably, this
too was modernization. Paradoxically, Huntington also argues
that a modern political system for future France and other modem
political systems will involve a movement toward the decentralized
traditional Tudor forms of the United States.76 At this point it appears that any shift in regimes within a modem political system
results by definition in another modern political system. In spite
of the ambiguity of neo-Hegelian theories as applied, it is reasonably clear that occurrence of rebellions in modem political systems
is inconsistent with the defined attributes of modem political institutions.
If rebellions and wars of independence in modem political systems are inconsistent with neo-Hegelian theories of political development, ideological revolutions in modern states flatly contradict
the theories. The type of revolution which is explicitly rejected as
a possibility in a modem political system is defined by Huntington
as "a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the
dominant values and myths of society, in its political institutions,
social structure, leadership, and govemment activity and policies."77
These are exactly the same social factors which change in a fascist
type of ideological revolution.78
76
Huntington, Political Order, 114, 19, and 138-139 respectively.

It should be noted that Huntington illustrates his non-Marxian description of ideological revolutions with the examples of France, Mexico,
Russia, China, and Cuba. All of these involved a change in the mode of
production, hence are a Marxian type of revolution. Apparently Huntington
is unaware that his theoretical description does not fit his illustrations. In
1902 Kautskyhad used a definition of revolution quite similar to that of Huntington's, but Kautskywas aware this was a narrowerdefinition than the Marxian conception. As Tucker points out, this narrower definition captures part
of the Marxian conception of revolution, but is very superficial. Tucker,
Marxian RevolutionaryIdea, 11.
78 For a concise description of the effect of the Nazi revolution on the
German civil bureaucracy, judiciary, and military institutions, see Frederic S.
Burin, "Bureaucracyand National Socialism: A Reconsiderationof Weberian
Theory," and for its effect on an aspect of the distributive system, see Hans
H. Gerth, "The Nazi Party: Its Leadership and Composition,"in Reader in
Bureaucracy, ed. Robert K. Merton et al. (New York: The Free Press,
77 Ibid., 264.

976
THE JOURNAL
OF POLITICS, VOL.
35, 1973
The successful fascist revolutions of the twentieth century would

clearly invalidate the neo-Hegelian theories if they occurred in
modern industrialized societies. Defenders of the neo-Hegelian
theories can, however, point to the relative agrarian nature of
Italian society at the time of the fascist revolution. Although Japan
did have a modern industrialized economy, neo-Hegelian defenders
can argue that the fascist takeover there was evolutionary and incomplete.79 The fascist revolution in Germany would be a pure
contradiction of the neo-Hegelian thesis that revolutions cannot
occur in a modem society, but the imposed character of the Weimar
government once again weakens the evidence. While the successful
fascist revolutions of the twentieth century cast considerable doubt
on the empirical validity of the neo-Hegelian thesis, they do not
unequivocally bury it.
The case against the neo-Hegelian thesis gains further strength
when one looks to post-World War II events. In Canada and
Northern Ireland we have seen the rise of strong national separatist
movements. The push of the national minorities has led to a
regime based on martial law and military repression in Northern
Ireland and to the suspension of essential democratic rights in
Canada. While neither instance has resulted in a fascist counterrevolution, both cases suggest that the potential for such a result
exists even in societies with an Anglo-American culture. In a
similar fashion, the push of blacks and radical students in the
United States has led students of revolution like Barrington Moore
to entertain the possibility of repressive counter-revolution as the
ultimate result.80 The strength of the Wallace movement in 1968
1952), 35-47 and 100-113. For an extended discussion of the composition
of the Nazi elite, especially on the plebeian background of the administrative
elite who led the movement, see Daniel Lerner, "The Nazi Elite," in World
Revolutionary Elites: Studies in Coercive Ideological Movements, ed. Harold
D. Lasswell and Daniel Lerner (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1965),
194-318.
79 See Moore, Social Origins, 291-309.
80 On the possibilities of fascism in Northern Ireland as the result of Catholic
protest and violence, see Anders Baserup, "The Politics of Protracted Conflict,"
Transaction, 7 (March 1970), 29-31. On the possibilities of martial law or
worse in the United States, see, Moore, "The Possibility for Revolution in the
United States: A Sober Assessment,"in The Failure of American Liberalism:
After the Great Society, ed. Marvin E. Gettleman and David Mermelstein
(rev. ed.; New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1971), 536-549.

977
lends support to this view. These events do not clearly negate the
neo-Hegelian thesis that revolution is not possible in a modem
political system, but placed together with the successful fascist
revolutions of the twentieth century the evidence casts such considerable doubt on the validity of the thesis that only the dogmatic
neo-Hegelians would assert that the facts require its acceptance.
Adequacy of the MarxianModel

The dubious nature of the neo-Hegelian model does not
confirm the Marxian model by default. A necessary aspect of
any Marxian revolution is that the dominant mode of production
must change. While the non-Marxian type of ideological revolution
changes the superstructure of society-the authorities, the regime,
the community, and the distributive system with its legitimizing
values-a Marxian revolution changes both the superstructure and
the dominant mode of production. Thus, even a considerable
amount of successful revolutionary violence in modem societies
does not necessarily confirm Marxian revolutionary theory. Only a
socialist revolution in an advanced capitalist society can confirm
the Marxian theory. A necessary aspect of the revolution is that
it destroys wage-labor as the dominant mode of production. In the
Third World, bourgeoisie-led revolutions, past or future, which
establish wage-labor as the dominant mode of production have
no direct bearing on the validity of the Marxian theory of revolution
as applied to modern industrial societies.81 The exact nature of the
type of revolution required to confirm the Marxian view of revolution in modem societies can be brought out by comparing capitalist
revolutions with the socialist revolution.
81The confusion on this point arises from the fact that we have had two
distinct types of modernizing bourgeois revolutions. The twentieth-century
bourgeois military revolutions in Mexico, Algeria, Peru, and Pakistan have accelerated the spread of wage-labor as the dominant mode of production and
have also solidified the market form of distributive system associated with
classical capitalism. See Wolf, Peasant Wars, 3-48, 212-247, 296-297; Anibol
Quizano, "Nationalism and Capitalism in Peru," Monthly Review, 23 (JulyAugust 1971), 1-122; Huntington, Political Order, 219-263. In contrast the
Communist revolutions in the Third World such as China, Cuba, and Vietnam
have introduced a neocapitalist distributive system while establishing wagelabor as the dominant mode of production. The confusion arises from the
error of viewing only the military revolutions as capitalist revolutions.

978
THE JOURNAL
OF POLMIICS, VOL.
35, 1973
The contrastbetween capitalist and socialist revolutionsis quite

sharp. The capitalistrevolutionoccurs in a predominantlyagrarian
society where the feudal institutions are rapidly decaying. It
establishes the dominance of a money economy. It destroys the
bond between serf and land and creates a work force of formally
free wage-laborersand a bourgeois class which owns or controls
the means of production. The capitalist revolution establishes as
the dominantideology the cult of materialefficiencyand growth as
the measureof man and his institutions. It establishesthe groundwork for the socialized or bureaucraticorganizationof production.
Finally, the capitalist revolution establishes the rule of the bourgeoisie throughthe political instrumentof the representativenationstate.82 On the other hand, the socialist revolution destroys the
money economy, destroyswage-labor,and reunitesthe workerwith
the means of productionthroughcollective ownershipin the means
of production. It destroys the cult of efficiency and productive
growthas the motivatingfactorsof economiclife and establishesindividual development as the goal of production. It destroys the
bureaucraticbonds which tie one's labor to a particularkind, time,
and place and destroysthe institutionsof the representativenationstate, replacing those institutionswith the transitionalrule of the
82See, generally, Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 57-66; Engels,
"Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,"90-112. In order to facilitate comparison
between the capitalist and socialist revolutions some of the language in the
text has modified the original Marxian terminology. For example "bureaucratic organization of production" was substituted for "socialized production."
Since the emphasis on profit motive and market distribution is restricted to
classical capitalism, it was necessary to expand the focus to the cult of efficiency and growth and a money economy which is characteristicof both classical
and neoclassical systems. The international competition between communist
and western political systems in terms of efficiency and growth in production
and in terms of spheres of influence is just as real and destructive as the
earlier domestic competition between firms in classical capitalist markets.
With the dominance of monopoly capitalism and state capitalism in the
domestic economies of advanced capitalist societies, the cyclical crises of overproduction are shifted to the world market. Finally, Marx's focus on the
parliamentary form of the bourgeois nation-state has been broadened to a
focus on the representative form of the nation-state so that communist states
with a nonparliamentaryform but bourgeois rule under the claim of representation of the proletarian interest can be accommodated. The real key to
bourgeois rule is that it is justified on the basis of representing the public
good or public interest.

REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALI ZED SOCIETIES
979
proletariatas a class.83 Most importantfor present purposesis the

class nature of the socialist revolutionwhich Marxand Engels saw
as "theself-conscious,independentmovementof the immensemajority, in the interest of the immense majority."84This immense
majorityis the proletariatclass, which of "all the classes that stand
face to face with the bourgeoisie,"is alone the only true revolutionary class.85
The evidence clearly points to the conclusion that no socialist
revolution in the Marxiansense has occurred, nor do the present
revolutionarymovements in advanced industrializedsocieties offer
strong evidence that the socialist revolution is near at hand. In
virtually all circumstances we see revolutionary movements by
minorities-whether they be student-ledas in Gernany, Italy, Japan,
and Mexico,or led by nationalisticminoritiesas in NorthernIreland
and Canada, or whether they constitute concurrentbut separate
movements of students and minorities as in the United States.
Rather than destroying the nation-state, they seek to reform it.
Ratherthan class-consciousness,the students are dominatedby role
83 Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Program," 116-123, 127-129; Marx and
Engels, Communist Manifesto, 80-95. In his discussion of the Paris Commune
of 1871, which he saw as a possible model for the future proletarian state of
the initial phase of socialism, Marx is quite careful to note the steps taken by
the Commune to prevent the establishment of a separate political class within
the proletariat. The frequent elections, working-classwages for all, the abolition of the police and army, the curtailment of bureaucratic privilege, and
the conversion of a talking parliament into a working Commune were all
elements aimed at destroying or minimizing the necessity of reliance on a political class to represent the proletariat. Karl Marx, "The Civil War in
France," in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works (New York:
InternationalPublishers, 1969), 288-301. On the other hand, Lenin interprets
Marx's discussion of the Commune in such a way as to emphasize the necessity of a political class ruling in the interest of the proletariat. Lenin, "State
and Revolution," 303-308. The differences are in degree and emphasis, but
they are differences.
84 Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 77; Lenin, on the other hand,
explicitly rejects the possibility that the proletariat will automatically acquire
revolutionary consciousness on their own. He also rejects the possibility of a
spontaneous revolution. Lenin argues that the creation of a party of professional revolutionariesis necessary for the building of revolutionary consciousness in the proletariat and for the success of the revolution. Lenin, "What
is to be Done?" in Essential Works of Lenin, ed. Christman,53-175.
85 Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 75.

980
THE JOURNAL
OF POLITICS, VOL.
35, 1973
consciousness and the ethnic minorities by national consciousness.8Rather than creating conditions for the socialist revolution, their
efforts to bare the repressive nature of the state in advanced industrialized societies are likely to create the conditions for establishment of martial law or a successful fascist revolution.87
The student-worker general strike in France in 1968 represents
the closest approximation to a Marxian revolution in a modem
political system. But even here the movements represented clear
minorities of the French population, and the joint efforts were more
the results of the commonality of their target-the De Gaulle
of their similarity in goals. Student demands
regime-than
focused on university reform. Workers were concerned about unemployment and the general decline of workers and unions vis~-vis the increasing nexus of power between corporate interests and
the De Gaulle regime. The centralization of French education
required the students to strike at the central government. The decline of parliamentary power and the marriage between political
executives and corporate interests in increasing pursuit of a favorable political-economic climate by joint govemment and industry
co-operation created a situation in which direct.confrontation between workers and the government would occur wheti economic
problems arose for the workers. Without an effective veto in
parliament and with the inadequacy of narrow trade union tactics
against a joint govemmental-coxporate complex, the workers will
predictably confront the government during economic crises.88
88For an elaboration of this line of argument, see Edward Malecki, "The
Myth of Openness: Consensual Elites in U. S. Policy Making" (paper read at
the 67th annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Ill., September 7-12, 1971); Gilbert Merkx, "Revolution in America?"
Monthly Review, 23 (January 1972), 25-42, distinguishes similar phenomena
in terms of cultural consciousness, which he sees as a diversion from class
consciousness.
87 Moore, "Possibility for Revolutionary Change," 547-549; Maurice Duverger, "An Impossible Revolution," in Kelly and Brown, eds., Struggles in the
State, 507-511.
88 For a partial breakdown on the number of students and workers including
distinctions in class background and academic major for students, see Stanley
Hoffman, "The French Psychodrama: De Gaulle's Anti-Communist Coup,"
and Jaques Ellul, "The Psychology of a Rebellion, May-June, 1968" in Kelly
and Brown, eds., Struggles in the State, 486-506; for a class interpretationof
the French worker's involvement, see also Myers, "Social Class and Political
Change," 408-412.

981
So long as these structuralelements remain the same in France,

it seems quite likely that in the future, discontent among students
and workers will result in direct confrontationswith the central
government. It is also clear, however, that so long as the causes
of their discontent are not identical and their specific demands are
distinct, co-operativeefforts will be at best the results of tactical
consciousnessrather than proletarianconsciousness. Under these
circumstances,the revolution if it does come will not be the
socialist revolution of classical Marxiantheory.
At this point it shouldbe obvious that neither the Marxiantheory
of revolutionas it applies to modern industrialstates nor the neoHegelian theory of political developmenthas been empiricallyconfirmed or disconfirmedin any clear and convincing manner. The
facts speak, but they speak ambiguously. This ambiguity is
especially the case for theories of revolution as they apply to the
future of industrial states, because several trends in the political
economy of modern industrial states could apply to the neoHegelian view as well as to the Marxianview of revolution and
modernsociety.
FUTURETRENDs
A majortrend in advanced industrialstates is the growth in size

and power of white-collarjobs. Observerslike Galbraithhave noted
that the increase of this technocraticclass has been associatedwith
a number of other trends toward greater rationalizationof the industrial system. Planning, control, and co-operation replace the
irrationalityof the market. The narrow and irrationalpursuit of
profit which dominated entrepreneurialcapitalism is increasingly
supplantedby the motivationalfactors of identificationand adaptation. An increasingly enlightened scientific estate identifies with
corporategoals and is driven to adapt and broaden these goals in
terms of its own social values. Because the dynamics of the industrial system are rooted in sophisticated technological requirements, the pressure of convergence is felt by all advanced industrialized societies regardless of their ideology. In short, Galbraith expects greater rationality and co-operation in the world
of modern industry.89 This interpretationof the evidence clcarly
89 Galbraith, New Industrial State, 13-188, 395-406.
For a discussion of
the new proletariat and its revolutionary potential, see James R. O'Connor,

982
THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 35,
1973
favors the neo-Hegelian view on the possibility of revolution in

modern society.
On the other hand, one can view the growth of the technocrats
not as the demise of the proletariat and derailment of the Marxian
engine of revolution, but rather as the final evolution of the proletariat in his journey to achieve his revolutionary potential. As the
mass labor force in an automated industrial society, the technocrats or mental workers are trapped in a bureaucratic form with
features equally as alienating as those of the factory system
which controlled the manual workers of an earlier phase of capitalism. The content of the job changes from manual to mental labor,
but, like the factory workers, the technocrats are separated from
both means of production and decisions of what to produce.
They remain in the proletarian position of wage-labor. Since ideas
are the basic commodity produced by technocrats, this mental proletariat, unlike the earlier manual proletariat, does possess the skills
necessary to run the economy and to evaluate intellectually the
economic system, thereby discovering for himself the superfluous
nature of the ownership class. As material production becomes increasingly automated and as the technocratic elements of the proletariat become increasingly dominant, the conditions for the
socialist revolution accordingly ripen. Thus, the trend toward the
greater number and power of white-collar workers in industrial
societies can readily be interpreted as supporting the Marxian
theory of revolution.
Another paradoxical trend of this era of modem industrial
societies is that of the increasing internationalization of the political
economy. This trend is reflected in the consolidation of national
economics like the European Economic Community (EEC) and
the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA), the coordination of international monetary policy and practice by the In"Merging Thought With Feeling" in The Revival of American Socialism, ed.
George Fisher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 22-40; while the
discussion in the text argues a somewhat similar position to O'Connor'sview
of growing class consciousness in the new proletariat, it explicitly focuses on
the mental worker and rejects the possibility of revolutionary consciousness
growing out of role consciousness of blacks, women, and students. Implicit
in O'Connor'sargument is the assumption that social conditions in advanced
capitalist societies are now ripe for revolution, but implicit in the text is that
the conditions are a long way from being ripe.

REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALIZED
SOCIETIES
983
ternational Monetary Fund (IMF), the co-ordination of foreign

trade by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
the growth of the multi-national corporations and the initial steps
toward world government as reflected in the League of Nations and
the United Nations.90 While the trend toward internationalization
of the political economy has been uneven and marked with temporary reverses, it can be argued that this trend represents the
pattern of rationalization and co-operation envisioned by the neoHegelians. As more nations become industrialized, the pattern
will be more firmly established.
On the other hand, one can view the intemationalization of the
political economy not as the natural movement toward rationality
and co-operation growing out of modem political systems which
have been touched by the spirit of science, but rather as a series of
steps toward consolidation made necessary by the contradictions
of capitalist economies. In this sense the current trend is part
of a longer movement with roots in the first half of the capitalist
cycle. In the initial phase of capitalism, the destructive competition among firms in the domestic markets was progressively replaced, first by monopoly, then, by joint planning by state and
corporate interests, and finally, by state ownership.
In the second phase of the capitalist cycle, with domestic competition either entirely eliminated or peripheral in the industrial
sectors of modem societies, competition between national economies
in the intemational markets became the leading destructive force of
capitalism. Attempts to control progressively the destructiveness
of this competition brought, first, the creation of intemational
cartels and then, joint planning by intemational agencies and national economics. The ultimate course leads to state ownership
of the means of production by a world govemment, just as the
logical course of earlier development of national markets led to
centralization of state power and the increasing merger of public
and private interests in running the economy.91 The anarchy of
laissez faire policies is just as destructive at the intemational level
90 For a brief discussion of these trends and some of their associated problems see Richard Bailey, Problems of the World Economy (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1967), 89-119.
91 Some aspects of these trends were noted by Lenin a half century earlier
in "Imperialismthe Highest State of Capitalism,"in The Essential Works of
Lenin, ed. Christman, 177-270, esp. 236-270.

984
THE JOURNAL
OF POLITICS, VOL.
35, 1973
as at the national level; hence, these policies will be replaced by one

advocating a strong central state to ward off the destructive effects
of international competition. This rationalization and integration
of the political economy of the capitalist epoch creates the final conditions for the socialist revolution. With nationalism eliminated as
a diversionary ideology and with the means of production concentrated in the hands of a single ownership class, the time is
ripe for a revolution by the immense majority on behalf of the immense majority.
These brief sketches of the possible future outcomes of present
trends are aimed at demonstrating the plausibility of both neoHegelian and Marxian interpretations of these trends. Other
trends could have been explored-such as that involving the increasing gap between the have and havenot nations-but the result would be the same: empirical evidence past, present, and
future simply does not unequivocally confirm or disconfirm either
the neo-Hegelian or the Marxian theories.
The implications of this conclusion are greater for the neoHegelian theories than for the Marxian theory of revolution, primarily because the neo-Hegelian theories have been hoisted to the
status of empirical theories (or verities?) by assumed Marxian default. The assumption has been that if Marx is wrong then the
neo-Hegelian theory of political development must be correct;
hence, no revolutions will occur in modem industrial societies.
Even if Marxian theory were clearly wrong, the fact that it is in
error would not confirm the neo-Hegelian viewpoint. We have
seen, however, that a plausible case can be made that the Marxian
theory of revolution as applied to modem industrial societies
has not been disconfirmed. Since the Marxian theory of revolution
enjoys empirical support at least comparable to that enjoyed by the
neo-Hegelian theory, the choice between them must rest on other
than empirical grounds.
The obvious conclusion is that the theories are selected in accordance with the normative desires of the dominant class in the
political system. This conclusion applies just as obviously to the
choice of revisionist Marxist theory in Communist societies as to the
choice of neo-Hegelian theory in non-Communist societies. In all
political systems, the socialization and reward systems are geared
to render unlikely the choice of any theories unacceptable to the
dominant political class. Theories which predict revolution in

REVOLUTION AND INDUSTPRIALIZED SOCIETIES
985
one's own society are obviously unacceptable to the dominant

class. Hence, we see attempts to eliminate Marxian theory in
classicalcapitalistsocieties, where its implicationsare revolutionary,
and its enthusiastic embrace in self-proclaimedsocialist societies
where it is counter-revolutionary. Just as neo-Hegelian theory
marksthe end of ideology in the West, revised Marxisttheory marks
the end of ideology in Communist societies. There are limits,
however, on this elite control of unacceptable theories. So long
as the empirical events are compatible with the political theories
acceptable to the dominant class, the intellectual class has little
reason to throw them over for a politically unacceptable theory,
even if it too fits the case. As Sheldon Wolin has persuasively
argued in an extensionof Thomas Kuhn'sthesis on the structureof
scientific revolutions,innovationsin political theory are not likely
unless an actual political crisis in the society occurs.92 While the
political crises in western political systemshave caused some reconsideration of the neo-Hegelian theories of political development,
one can assume that the negative evidence would have to be
much greaterfor the wholesale desertionof the westem intellectuals
fromthis theory. In the meantime,pointing out the normativeroots
of the theoretical commitmentto neo-Hegelian theory may reduce
the tendency to assert it as proven empiricaldogma.
92 Paradigms and Political Theories," in Politics and Experience, ed. Preston

King and B. C. Parekh (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 125153.


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Theories of Revolution and Industrialized Societies

Author(s): Edward S. Malecki

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2129215 .

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The theoreticalviews on the prospectof revolutionin industrialized

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REVOLUTION AND INDUSTIALIZED

Huntingtonthen goes on to argue that:

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REVOLUTION AND INDUST1IALIZED

western developmental theorists also agree with Hegel on the

ment, Huntington represents the vanguard of the tendencies described here.

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THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 35, 1973

the interest of "rear'individual freedom is achieved and anarchy

Determiningthe degree of fit between the phenomenaobserved

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REAPPRAISAL OF THE EVDENCE

The two critical empirical inadequacies allegedly invalidating the

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THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 35, 1973

revolutions which have occurred in the twentieth century and

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that these revisionswere made by men who were firstand foremost

The essence of the Leninist revision and the other revisions is to

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of the Paris Commune of 1871, stresses the lack of decisive action

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REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALI:ZED SOCIETIES

The Case for ClassicalMarxism

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stress the violent overthrow of government by a mass-based,

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REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALIZED SOCIETIES

It is quite clear that the Communist revolutions which have

Ibid., 66-79; and Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Program,"120-123.

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"On Historical Materialism,"56 and 55-61 generally.

30 Wolf, Peasant Wars, 300-302.

Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,"

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REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALIZED SOCIETIES

ground. Thus, in the Communist Manifesto (a) increasing class

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THE JOuRNAL OF POLICS,

importantly,had not Marxexplicitly stated that in the initial stages

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REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALIZED SOCIETES

of the capitalistera should be approximately2,500 A.D. ratherthan

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considerable state ownership of property can exist in a capitalist

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REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALIZED SOCIETIES

The critical fact of this mode of production is that the worker is

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REVOLUTION AND INDUSThIAIEJED

tively major.52 It is unique changes in the distributivesystem by

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with a particular blood line as the measure of loyalty.55 In the

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REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIALI:ZED SOCIETIES