Davies j curve original

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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
February, 1962 Volume 27, Number 1
TOWARDA THEORYOF REVOLUTION*
JAMESC. DAVIES
CaliforniaInstituteof Technology
Revolutionsare most likely to occur when a prolongedperiod of objective economicand
social developmentis followed by a short periodof sharpreversal.People then subjectively
fearthat groundgainedwith greateffortwill be quitelost; theirmoodbecomesrevolutionary.
The evidencefrom Dorr'sRebellion,the RussianRevolution,and the Egyptian Revolution
supportsthis notion; tentatively,so do data on othercivil disturbances.Variousstatistics-
as on rural uprisings,industrialstrikes, unemployment,and cost of living-may serve as
crudeindexesof popularmood.More useful,thoughless easy to obtain,are direct questions
in cross-sectionalinterviews.The goal of predictingrevolutionis conceivedbut not yet born
ormatured.
IN exhortingproletariansof all nations
to unite in revolution, because they
had nothing to lose but their chains,
Marx and Engels most succinctly presented
that theory of revolutionwhich is recognized
as their brain child. But this most famed
thesis, that progressive degradation of the
industrial working class would finally reach
the point of despair and inevitable revolt,
is not the only one that Marx fathered.In at
least one essay he gave life to a quite anti-
thetical idea. He described,as a precondition
of widespreadunrest, not progressivedegra-
dation of the proletariat but rather an im-
provement in workers' economic condition
which did not keep pace with the growing
welfare of capitalists and thereforeproduced
social tension.
A noticeableincreasein wagespresupposes
a rapidgrowthof productivecapital. The
rapid growth of productive capital brings
about an equally rapid growth of wealth,
luxury,socialwants,socialenjoyments.Thus,
althoughthe enjoymentsof the workershave
risen, the social satisfactionthat they give
has fallen in comparisonwith the increased
enjoymentsof the capitalist,which are in-
accessibleto the worker,in comparisonwith
the state of developmentof society in gen-
eral. Our desiresand pleasuresspringfrom
society; we measurethem, therefore,by so-
ciety andnot by the objectswhichserve for
their satisfaction. Because they are of a
social nature,they are of a relativenature.'
Marx's qualification here of his more fre-
quent belief that degradationproducesrevo-
lution is expressed as the main thesis by
de Tocqueville in his study of the French
Revolution. After a long review of economic
and social decline in the seventeenth century
and dynamic growth in the eighteenth, de
Tocqueville concludes:
So it wouldappearthat the Frenchfound
their condition the more unsupportablein
proportion to its improvement. . . . Revolu-
tionsarenot alwaysbroughtaboutby a grad-
ual declinefrom bad to worse.Nations that
have enduredpatiently and almost uncon-
* Several people have made perceptive suggestions
and generous comments on an earlier version of
this paper. I wish particularly to thank Seymour
Martin Lipset, Lucian W. Pye, John H. Schaar,
Paul Seabury, and Dwight Waldo.
1 The Communist Manifesto of 1848 evidently
antedates the opposing idea by about a year. See
Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (Anchor
Books edition), New York: Doubleday & Co.
(n.d.), p. 157; Lewis S. Feuer, Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and
Philosophy, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1959,
p. 1. The above quotation is from Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels, "Wage Labour and Capital,"
Selected Works in Two Volumes, Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1955, vol. 1, p. 94.
S

6 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW
sciously the most overwhelmingoppression
often burstintorebellionagainsttheyokethe
momentit beginsto growlighter.The regime
whichis destroyedby a revolutionis almost
always an improvementon its immediate
predecessor. . . . Evils which are patiently
enduredwhen they seem inevitablebecome
intolerablewhenoncetheideaof escapefrom
them is suggested.2
On the basis of de Tocqueville and Marx,
we can chooseone of these ideas or the other,
which makes it hard to decide just when
revolutions are more likely to occur-when
there has been social and economicprogress
or when there has been regress. It appears
that both ideas have explanatory and pos-
sibly predictivevalue, if they are juxtaposed
and put in the propertime sequence.
Revolutions are most likely to occurwhen
a prolongedperiodof objectiveeconomicand
social development is followed by a short
period of sharp reversal. The all-important
effect on the minds of people in a particular
society is to produce, during the formerpe-
riod, an expectation of continued ability to
satisfy needs-which continue to rise-and,
during the latter, a mental state of anxiety
and frustrationwhen manifest reality breaks
away from anticipated reality. The actual
state of socio-economic development is less
significant than the expectation that past
progress, now blocked, can and must con-
tinue in the future.
Political stability and instability are ulti-
mately dependenton a state of mind,a mood,
in a society. Satisfied or apathetic people
who arepoor in goods, status, and powercan
remain politically quiet and their opposites
can revolt, just as, correlatively and more
probably, dissatisfied poor can revolt and
satisfied rich oppose revolution.It is the dis-
satisfiedstate of mind ratherthan the tangi-
ble provision of "adequate"or "inadequate"
supplies of food, equality, or liberty which
produces the revolution. In actuality, there
must be a joining of forces between dissatis-
fied, frustrated people who differ in their
degree of objective, tangible welfare and
status. Well-fed, well-educated, high-status
individuals who rebel in the face of apathy
among the objectively deprived can accom-
plish at most a coup d'etat. The objectively
deprived, when faced with solid opposition
2A. de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the
FrenchRevolution(trans.by John Bonner),N. Y.:
Harper& Bros., 1856, p. 214. The Stuart Gilbert
translation,GardenCity: Doubleday & Co., Inc.,
1955, pp. 176-177, gives a somewhatless pungent
versionof the samecomment.L'Ancienregimewas
first publishedin 1856.
3 Revolutions are here defined as violent civil
disturbancesthat cause the displacementof one
rulinggroupby anotherthat has a broaderpopular
basisfor support.
00
Expected need satisfaction ,- -
A,' I
Actual need satisfaction An intolerable gap
between what people
want and what they get
ZW/ A tolerable gap between
_ what people want and
what they get
oj I | Revolution occurs at
IAh1o, this time
0 TIME
FIGURE1. NEEDSATISFACTiONANDREVOLUTION

A THEORY OF REVOLUTION 7
of people of wealth, status, and power, will
be smashed in their rebellion as were peas-
ants and Anabaptists by Germannoblemen
in 1525and East Germansby the Communist
elite in 1953.
Before appraising this general notion in
light of a series of revolutions,a word is in
orderas to why revolutionsordinarilydo not
occur when a society is generally impover-
ished-when, as de Tocqueville put it, evils
that seem inevitable are patiently endured.
They areenduredin the extremecasebecause
the physical and mental energies of people
are totally employedin the processof merely
staying alive. The Minnesotastarvationstud-
ies conducted during World War II 4 indi-
cate clearly the constant pre-occupation of
very hungry individuals with fantasies and
thoughtsof food. In extremis,as the Minne-
sota research poignantly demonstrates, the
individual withdrawsinto a life of his own,
withdrawsfrom society, withdrawsfrom any
significantkind of activity unrelatedto stay-
ing alive. Reports of behavior in Nazi con-
centration camps indicate the same preoc-
cupation.5 In less extreme and barbarous
circumstances, where minimal survival is
possiblebut little more, the preoccupationof
individuals with staying alive is only miti-
gated. Social action takes place for the most
part on a local, face-to-face basis. In such
circumstancesthe family is a-perhaps the
major-solidary unit 6 and even the local
community exists primarily to the extent
families need to act together to secure their
separatesurvival.Suchwas life on the Amer-
ican frontier in the sixteenth through nine-
teenth centuries. In very much attenuated
form, but with a substantial degree of social
isolation persisting, such evidently is rural
life even today. This is clearly related to a
relatively low level of political participation
in elections.7 As Zawadzki and Lazarsfeld
have indicated,8preoccupationwith physical
survival, even in industrial areas, is a force
strongly militating against the establishment
of the community-sense and consensus on
joint political action which are necessary to
induce a revolutionary state of mind. Far
from makingpeople into revolutionaries,en-
duringpoverty makes for concernwith one's
solitary self or solitary family at best and
resignationormute despairat worst.When it
is a choice between losing their chains or
their lives, people will mostly choose to keep
theirchains,a fact whichMarxseemsto have
overlooked.9
It is when the chains have been loosened
somewhat,so that they can be cast off with-
out a high probability of losing life, that
people are put in a condition of proto-
rebelliousness. I use the term proto-rebel-
liousnessbecausethe moodof discontentmay
be dissipated before a violent outbreak oc-
curs. The causes for such dissipationmay be
natural or social (including economic and
political). A bad crop year that threatens a
return to chronic hunger may be succeeded
by a year of natural abundance. Recovery
from sharp economic dislocation may take
the steam from the boiler of rebellions The
slow, grudging grant of reforms, which has
been the political history of Englandsince at
least the Industrial Revolution, may effec-
tively and continuouslyprevent the degreeof
frustration that produces revolt.
4The full report is Ancel Keys et al., The
Biology of Human Starvation,Minneapolis:Uni-
versity of MinnesotaPress, 1950. See J. Brozek,
"Semi-starvationand Nutritional Rehabilitation,"
Journalof ClinicalNutrition, 1, (January, 1953),
pp. 107-118for a brief analysis.
5E. A. Cohen, Human Behavior in the Con-
centrationCamp,New York: W. W. Norton&Co.,
1953,pp. 123-125,131-140.
6 For community life in such poverty, in
MezzogiornoItaly, see E. C. Banfield,The Moral
Basis of a BackwardSociety, Glencoe,Ill.: The
Free Press, 1958.The author emphasizesthat the
nuclearfamilyis a solidary,consensual,moralunit
(see p. 85) but even within it, consensusappears
to break down, in outbreaksof pure, individual
amorality-notably between parents and children
(seep. 117).
7SeeAngusCampbellet al., TheAmericanVoter,
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960, Chap. 15,
"AgrarianPolitical Behavior."
8B. Zawadzkiand P. F. Lazarsfeld,"The Psy-
chological Consequences of Unemployment,"
Journal of Social Psychology,6 (May, 1935), pp.
224-251.
9 remarkableand awesome exception to this
phenomenonoccurred occasionallyin some Nazi
concentrationcamps,e.g., in a Buchenwaldrevolt
againstcapriciousrule by criminalprisoners.Dur-
ing this revolt,one hundredcriminalprisonerswere
killed by political prisoners.See Cohen, op. cit.,
p. 200.
10See W. W. Rostow, "BusinessCycles,Harvests,
and Politics: 1790-1850," Journal of Economic
History, 1 (November,1941), pp. 206-221 for the
relation between economic fluctuation and the
activities of the Chartistsin the 1830sand 1840s.

A revolutionarystate of mind requiresthe
continued, even habitual but dynamic ex-
pectation of greater opportunity to satisfy
basic needs, which may range from merely
physical (food, clothing, shelter, health, and
safety from bodily harm) to social (the af-
fectional ties of family and friends) to the
need for equal dignity and justice. But the
necessary additional ingredient is a persist-
ent, unrelentingthreat to the satisfaction of
these needs: not a threat which actually
returnspeopleto a state of sheersurvivalbut
which puts them in the mental state where
they believe they will not be able to satisfy
one or more basic needs. Although physical
deprivationin somedegreemay be threatened
on the eve of all revolutions, it need not
be the prime factor, as it surely was not in
the AmericanRevolution of 1775. The cru-
cial factor is the vague or specific fear that
groundgained over a long periodof time will
be quickly lost. This fear does not generate
if there is continued opportunity to satisfy
continually emerging needs; it generates
when the existing governmentsuppresses or
is blamedfor suppressingsuch opportunity.
Three rebellions or revolutions are given
considerable attention in the sections that
follow: Dorr'sRebellionof 1842, the Russian
Revolution of 1917, and the Egyptian Revo-
lution of 1952. Brief mention is then made
of several other major civil disturbances,all
of which appear to fit the J-curve pattern.'1
After consideringthese specificdisturbances,
some general theoretical and researchprob-
lems are discussed.
No claim is made that all rebellionsfollow
the pattern, but just that the ones here pre-
sented do. All of these are "progressive"
revolutionsin behalf of greaterequality and
liberty. The question is open whether the
patternoccursin suchmarkedlyretrogressive
revolutions as Nazism in Germany or the
1861 Southernrebellionin the United States.
It will surely be necessary to examine other
progressiverevolutionsbefore one can judge
how universal the J-curve is. And it will be
necessary,in the interestsof scientificvalida-
tion, to examinecasesof seriouscivil disturb-
ance that fell short of producing profound
revolution-such as the Sepoy Rebellion of
1857 in India, the PullmanStrike of 1894 in
America, the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 in
China,and the GreatDepressionof the 1920s
and 1930s as it was experiencedin Austria,
France,GreatBritain,and the United States.
The explanationfor such still-bornrebellions
-for revolutionsthat might have occurred-
is inevitably morecomplicatedthan for those
that come to term in the "normal"course of
political gestation.
DORR'S REBELLION OF 1842
Dorr's Rebellion12 in nineteenth-century
Americawas perhaps the first of many civil
disturbancesto occurin Americaas a conse-
quence,in part, of the IndustrialRevolution.
It followed by three years an outbreak in
England that had similarroots and a similar
program-the Chartistagitation.A machine-
operatedtextile industrywas first established
in Rhode Island in 1790 and grew rapidly as
a consequenceof domestic and international
demand, notably during the Napoleonic
Wars. Jefferson'sEmbargo Act of 1807, the
War of 1812, and a high tariff in 1816 fur-
ther stimulatedAmericanindustry.
Rapid industrial growth meant the move-
ment of people from farms to cities. In Mas-
sachusetts the practice developed of hiring
mainly the wives and daughters of farmers,
whose incomewas thereby supplementedbut
not displaced by wages. In Rhode Island
whole families moved to the cities and be-
camecommittedto the factory system. When
times were good, industrialized families
earnedtwo or three timeswhat they got from
the soil; when the mills were idle, there was
not enoughmoney for bread.13From 1807 to
1815 textiles enjoyed great prosperity; from
1834 to 1842 they suffereddepression,most
severely from 1835 to 1840.Prosperityraised
expectationsand depressionfrustratedthem,
11 This curve is of course not to be confused with
its prior and altogether different use by Floyd
Allport in his study of social conformity. See F. H.
Allport, "The J-Curve Hypothesis of Conforming
Behavior,"Journal of Social Psychology,5 (May,
1934), pp. 141-183, reprinted in T. H. Newcomb
& E. L. Hartley, Readingsin Social Psychology,
N. Y.: Henry Holt & Co., 1947, pp. 55-67.
12 I am indebted to Beryl' L. Crowe for his
extensive research on Dorr's Rebellion while he was
a participant in my political behavior seminar at
the University of California, Berkeley, Spring 1960.
13 Joseph Brennan, Social Conditions in Industrial
Rhode Island: 1820-1860; Washington, D. C.:
Catholic University of America, 1940, p. 33.

particularly when accompaniedby stubborn
resistance to suffrage demands that first
stirred in 1790 and recurredin a wave-like
pattern in 1811 and then in 1818 and 1820
following suffrage extension in Connecticut
and Massachusetts. The final crest was
reached in 1841, when suffrageassociations
met and called for a constitutional conven-
tion.14
Against the will of the government, the
suffragistsheld an electionin which all adult
males were eligible to vote, held a constitu-
tional convention composed of delegates so
elected and in December 1841 submitted the
People's Constitutionto the same electorate,
which approvedit and the call for an election
new constitution was "of no binding force
whatever" and any act "to carry it into
effect by force will be treason against the
state." The legislature passed what became
known as the Algerian law, making it an
offense punishable by a year in jail to vote
in the April election, and by life imprison-
ment to hold office under the People's Con-
stitution.
The rebels went stoutly ahead with the
election,and on May 3, 1842inauguratedthe
new government.The next day the People's
legislaturemet and respectfullyrequestedthe
sheriff to take possession of state buildings,
which he failed to do. Violence broke out
on the 17th of May in an attempt to take
People's Constitution; legislature calls it treason
z
2 Severe economic slump 1835-40
U- ~~~~Prosperityin l3~O7
?> ~~~~~~textiles=4
en~ First mechanized Increasing agitation cY
tetlm;Ills f or suf f rage* 1
w
1785 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840
FIGURE 2
of state officersthe following April, to form
a new government under this unconstitu-
tional constitutions
These actions joined the conflict with the
establishedgovernment.Whenasked-by the
dissidents-the state supremecourt rendered
its private judgmentin March 1842 that the
over a state arsenalwith two British cannon
left over from the RevolutionaryWar. When
the cannonmisfired,the People'sgovernment
resigned.Sporadicviolence continuedfor an-
other month, resulting in the arrest of over
500 men, mostly textile workers,mechanics,
and laborers. The official legislature called
for a new constitutional convention, chosen
by universal manhood suffrage, and a new
constitution went into effect in January,
1843. Altogether only one person was killed
in this little revolution, which experienced
violence, failure, and then success within the
space of nine months.
It is impossiblealtogether to separate the
experienceof rising expectationsamong peo-
ple in Rhode Island from that among Amer-
icans generally. They all shared historically
the struggle against a stubborn but ulti-
mately rewarding frontier where their self-
confidence gained strength not only in the
daily processof tilling the soil and harvesting
14 The persistent demand for suffrage may be
understood in light of election data for 1828 and
1840. In the former year, only 3600 votes were
cast in Rhode Island, whose total population was
about 94,000. (Of these votes, 23 per cent were
cast for Jackson and 77 per cent for Adams, in
contrast to a total national division of 56 per cent
for Jackson and 44 per cent for Adams.) All votes
cast in the 1828 election amount to 4 per cent of
the total Rhode Island population and 11 per cent
of the total U. S. population excluding slaves. In
1840, with a total population of 109,000 only 8300
votes-8 per cent-were cast in Rhode Island, in
contrast to 17 per cent of the national population
excluding slaves.
15 A. M. Mowry, The Dorr War, Providence,
R. I.: Preston & Rounds Co., 1901, p. 114.

the crops but also by improving their skill
at self-government.Winning their war of in-
dependence, Americans continued to press
for more goods and more democracy. The
pursuitof economicexpectationswas greatly
facilitated by the growth of domestic and
foreign trade and the gradual establishment
of industry. Equalitarian expectations in
politics were satisfied and without severe
struggle-in most Northern states-by suf-
frage reforms.
In Rhode Island, these rising expectations
-more goods, more equality, more self-rule
-were countered by a series of containing
forces which built up such a head of steam
that the boiler crackeda little in 1842. The
textile depression hit hard in 1835 and its
consequenceswere aggravated by the Panic
of 1837. In addition to the frustration of
seeing their peers get the right to vote in
other states, poor people in Rhode Island
were now beset by industrial dislocation in
which the machines that broughtthem pros-
perity they had never before enjoyed now
were bringing economic disaster. The ma-
chines could not be converted to produce
food and in Rhode Island the machine
tenders could not go back to the farm.
When they had recovered from the pre-
occupation with staying alive, they turned
in earnestto theirdemandsfor constitutional
reform. But these were met first with in-
difference and then by a growing intransi-
gence on the part of the governmentrepre-
senting the propertied class. Hostile action
by the state supreme court and then the
legislature with its Algerianlaw proved just
enough to break briefly the constitutional
structure which in stable societies has the
measureof powerand resiliencenecessary to
absorb social tension.
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1917
In Russia's tangled history it is hard to
decide when began the final upsurge of ex-
pectations that, when frustrated, produced
the cataclysmic events of 1917. One can
truly say that the real beginning was the
slow modernizationprocess begun by Peter
the Great over two hundredyears before the
revolution. And surely the rationalist cur-
rents from France that slowly penetrated
Russian intellectual life during the reign of
Catherinethe Great a hundredyears before
the revolution were necessary, lineal ante-
cedents of the 1917 revolution.
Without denying that there was an ac-
cumulationof forcesover at least a 200-year
period,'6 we may nonetheless date the final
upsurgeas beginningwith the 1861 emanci-
pation of serfs and reaching a crest in the
1905 revolution.
The chronic and growing unrest of serfs
before their emancipation in 1861 is an
ironic commentary on the Marxian notion
that human beings are what social institu-
tions make them. Although serfdom had
been shaping their personality since 1647,
peasants became increasingly restive in the
second quarter of the nineteenth century.'7
The continued discontent of peasants after
emancipation is an equally ironic commen-
tary on the belief that relievingone profound
frustration produces enduring contentment.
Peasants ratherquickly got over their joy at
being untied from the soil after two hundred
years. Instead of declining, rural violence
increased.'8Having gained freedom but not
much free land, peasants now had to rent or
buy land to survive: virtual personalslavery
was exchanged for financial servitude. Land
pressuregrew,reflectedin a doublingof land
prices between 1868 and 1897.
It is hardthus to tell whetherthe economic
plight of peasants was much lessened after
emancipation.A 1903 governmentstudy in-
dicated that even with a normal harvest,
average food intake per peasant was 30 per
cent below the minimum for health. The
only sure contrary item of evidence is that
the peasant population grew, indicating at
least increasedability of the land to support
life, as the followingtable shows.
16 Thereis an excellentsummaryin B. Brutzkus,
"The Historical Peculiarities of the Social and
Economic Developmentof Russia,"in R. Bendix
and S. M. Lipset,Class,Status,andPower,Glencoe,
Ill.: The Free Press, 1953,pp. 517-540.
17 Jacqueriesrose from an averageof 8 per year
in 1826-30 to 34 per year in 1845-49. T. G.
Masaryk,The Spirit of Russia,London:Allen and
Unwin, Ltd., 1919, Vol. 1, p. 130. This long,
careful, and rather neglected analysis was first
publishedin Germanin 1913 under the title Zur
RussischenGeschichts-und Religionsphilosophie.
18Jacqueriesaveraged350 per year for the first
threeyearsafter emancipation.Ibid., pp. 140-141.

TABLE 1. POPULATION OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA
(1480-1895)
Average Annual
Population Increase Rate of
in Millions in Millions Increase*
1480 2.1
1580 4.3 2.2 1.05%
1680 12.6 8.3 1.93%
1780 26.8 14.2 1.13%
1880 84.5 57.7 2.15%
1895 110.0 25.5 2.02%
* Computed as follows: dividing the increase by
the number of years and then dividing this hypo-
thetical annual increase by the population at the
end of the preceding 100-year period.
Source for gross population data: Entsiklo-
pedicheskii Slovar, St. Petersburg, 1897, vol. 40,
p. 631. Russia's population was about 97%orural
in 1784, 91% in 1878, and 87% in 1897. See
Masaryk, op. cit., p. 162n.
The land-population pressure pushed
peopleinto towns and cities, wherethe rapid
growthof industry truly affordedthe chance
for economic betterment. One estimate of
net annual income for a peasant family of
five in the rich blackearth area in the late
nineteenth century was 82 rubles. In con-
trast, a "good" wage for a male factory
workerwas about 168 rublesper year. It was
this difference in the degree of poverty
thatproducedalmosta doublingof the urban
population between 1878 and 1897. The
number of industrial workers increased al-
most as rapidly. The city and the factory
gave new hope. Strikes in the 1880s were
met with brutal suppression but also with
the beginning of factory legislation, includ-
ing the requirementthat wages be paid reg-
ularly and the abolition of child labor. The
burgeoning proletariat remained compara-
tively contented until the eve of the 1905
revolutions
Thereis additional,non-economicevidence
to support the view that 1861 to 1905 was
the period of rising expectations that pre-
ceded the 1917 revolution. The administra-
tion of justice before the emancipation had
largely been carried out by noblemen and
landownerswho embodied the law for their
peasants. In 1864 justice was in principleno
longer delegated to such private individuals.
Trials becamepublic, the jury system was in-
troduced, and judges got tenure. Corporal
punishmentwas alleviatedby the elimination
of runningthe gauntlet, lashing, and brand-
ing; caning persisted until 1904. Public joy
at these reformswas widespread.For the in-
telligentsia, there was increased opportunity
to thinkand write and to criticizeestablished
institutions,evensacrosanctabsolutismitself.
But Tsarist autocracyhad not quite aban-
doned the scene. Having inclined but not
bowed, in granting the inevitable emancipa-
tion as an act not of justice but grace, it
sought to maintainits absolutist principleby
concedingreformwithout acceptinganything
like democratic authority. Radical political
and economic criticism surged higher. Some
strong efforts to raise the somewhatlowered
floodgates began as early as 1866, after an
unsuccessful attempt was made on the life
of AlexanderII, in whosenameserfshad just
gained emancipation.When the attempt suc-
ceeded fifteen years later, there was increas-
ing state action underAlexanderIII to limit
constantly rising expectations. By suppres-
sion and concession, the last Alexandersuc-
ceeded in dying naturally in 1894.
When it became apparent that Nicholas
II sharedhis father'sideas but not his force-
fulness, oppositionof the intelligentsiato ab-
solutismjoinedwith the demandsof peasants
and workers,who remainedloyal to the Tsar
but demandedeconomicreforms.Startingin
1904, there developed a "League of De-
liverance"that coordinatedeffortsof at least
seventeen other revolutionary, proletarian,
or nationalistgroupswithin the empire.Con-
sensus on the need for drastic reform, both
political and economic, established a many-
ringedcircusof groupssharingthe same tent.
These groups were geographically distrib-
uted from Finland to Armeniaand ideologi-
cally fromliberalconstitutionaliststo revolu-
tionaries made prudent by the contrast be-
tween their own small forces and the power
of Tsardom.
Events of 1904-5 mark the general down-
ward turning point of expectations, which
19 The proportion of workers who struck from
1895 through 1902 varied between 1.7 per cent
and 4.0 per cent per year. In 1903 the proportion
rose to 5.1 per cent but dropped a year later to 1.5
per cent. In 1905 the proportion rose to 163.8 per
cent, indicating that the total working force struck,
on the average, closer to twice than to once during
that portentous year. In 1906 the proportion
dropped to 65.8 per cent; in 1907 to 41.9 per cent;
and by 1909 was down to a "normal" 3.5 per cent.
[bid., p. 175n.

people increasinglysaw as frustratedby the
continuationof Tsardom.Two majorand re-
lated occurrencesmade 1905 the point of no
return. The first took place on the Bloody
Sunday of January 22, 1905, when peaceful
proletarian petitioners marched on the St.
Petersburg palace and were killed by the
hundreds.The myth that the Tsar was the
gracious protector of his subjects, however
surroundedhe might be by malicious ad-
visers, was quite shattered. The reaction
was immediate, bitter, and prolonged and
was not at all confinedto the working class.
Employers, merchants, and white-collar of-
ficials joined in the burgeoning of strikes
which brought the economy to a virtual
standstill in October. Some employers even
continued to pay wages to strikers. Univer-
sity students and faculties joined the revo-
lution. After the great October strike, the
peasants ominously sided with the workers
and engaged in riots and assaults on land-
owners.Until peasantsbecameinvolved,even
some landownershad sided with the revolu-
tion.
The other major occurrencewas the dis-
astrousdefeat of the Russian army and navy
in the 1904-5 warwithJapan.Fundamentally
an imperialist venture aspiring to hegemony
over the people of Asia, the war was not re-
gardedas a people's but as a Tsar's war, to
save and spreadabsolutism.The military de-
feat itself probably had less portent than
the return of shattered soldiers from a fight
that was not for them. Hundreds of thou-
sands, wounded or not, returned from the
war as a visible, vocal, and ugly reminder
to the entire populace of the weakness and
selfishness of Tsarist absolutism.
The years from 1905 to 1917 formed an
almost relentless procession of increasing
misery and despair.Promisingat last a con-
stitutional government,the Tsar, in October,
1905, issued from on high a proclamation
renouncingabsolutism, granting law-making
power to a duma, and guaranteeingfreedom
of speech, assembly, and association. The
first two dumas, of 1906 and 1907, were
dissolved for recalcitrance. The third was
made pliant by reduced representation of
workersand peasants and by the prosecution
and convictionof protestantsin the first two.
The brief period of a free press was suc-
ceeded in 1907 by a reinstatement of cen-
sorship and confiscation of prohibited pub-
lications. Trial of offenders against the
Tsar was now conducted by courts martial.
Whereas there had been only 26 executions
of the death sentence, in the 13 years of
Alexander II's firm rule (1881-94), there
were4,449 in the years 1905-10, in six years
of Nicholas II's soft regimen.20
But this "white terror,"which caused de-
spair among the workers and intelligentsia
in the cities, was not the only face of misery.
For the peasants, there was a bad harvest
in 1906 followed by continued crop failures
in several areas in 1907. To forestall ac-
tion by the dumas, Stolypin decreeda series
of agrarianreformsdesignedto breakup the
power of the rural communesby individual-
izing land ownership.Between these acts of
God and government,peasants were so pre-
occupiedwith hungeror self-aggrandizement
as to be dulled in their sensitivity to the
revolutionary appeals of radical organizers.
After more than five years of degrading
terror and misery, in 1910 the country ap-
peared to have reached a condition of ex-
haustion. Political strikes had fallen off to
a new low. As the economy recovered, the
insouciance of hopelessness set in. Amongst
the intelligentsia the mood was hedonism,or
despair that often ended in suicide. Indus-
trialists aligned themselves with the govern-
ment. Workersworked.But an upturnof ex-
pectations, inadequately quashed by the
police, was evidenced by a recrudescenceof
political strikes which, in the first half of
1914-on the eve of war-approached the
peak of 1905. They sharply diminisheddur-
ing 1915 but grewagain in 1916 and became
a generalstrike in February 1917.21
Figure 3 indicates the lesser waves in the
tidal wave whose first trough is at the end
of serfdom in 1861 and whose second is at
the end of Tsardom in 1917. This fifty-six
year periodappearsto constitutea singlelong
phase in which popular gratification at the
20 Ibid., p. 189n.
21In his History of the Russian Revolution,
Leon Trotsky presents data on political strikes
from 1903 to 1917. In his Spirit of Russia, Masaryk
presents comparable data from 1905 through 1912.
The figures are not identical but the reported yearly
trends are consistent. Masaryk's figures are some-
what lower, except for 1912. Cf. Trotsky, op. cit.,
Doubleday Anchor Books ed., 1959, p. 32 and
Masaryk, op.. cit. supra, p. 197n.

termination of one institution (serfdom)
rather quickly was replaced with rising ex-
pectationswhichresultedfromintensifiedin-
dustrializationand which were incompatible
with the continuationof the inequitable and
capriciouspowerstructureof Tsarist society.
The small trough of frustration during the
repressionthat followed the assassinationof
AlexanderII seemsto have only brieflyinter-
rupted the rise in popular demand for more
goods and more power. The trough in 1904
indicatesthe consequencesof warwith Japan.
The 1905-6 troughreflects the repressionof
War starts with Japan, 1904
Period of severe
repression
z Wor starts with
O /
Germany, 1914
o ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Periodof
U. Assassination of economic
U)
rcvr~
_... Alexander IA, 1881 Period of civilian
U)
X /and military distress
o Emancipation of I
W serfs, 1861 First Marxist party founded in
z exile but in secret contact with o l r
Russia, 1883 eln.
1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920
FIGuRE 3
January 22, and after, and is followed by
economicrecovery.The final downturn,after
the first year of war, was a consequence of
the dislocationsof the Germanattack on all
kinds of concertedactivities other than pro-
duction for the prosecution of the war. Pa-
triotism and governmental repression for a
timesmothereddiscontent.The inflationthat
developed in 1916 when goods, including
food, became severely scarce began to make
workers self-consciously discontented. The
conduct of the war, including the growing
brutality against reluctant, ill-provisioned
troops, and the enormous loss of life, pro-
duced the same bitter frustration in the
army.22Whencivilian discontentreachedthe
breakingpoint in February, 1917, it did not
take long for it to spread rapidly into the
armed forces. Thus began the second phase
of the revolutionthat really started in 1905
and endedin death to the Tsar and Tsardom
-but not to absolutism-when the Bolshe-
viks gained ascendancy over the moderates
in October.A centuries-longhistory of abso-
lutismappearsto havemadethis post-Tsarist
phase of it tragicallyinevitable.
THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION OF 1952
The final slow upsurge of expectations in
Egypt that culminatedin the revolutionbe-
gan when that society became a nation in
1922, with the British grant of limited inde-
pendence. British troops remainedin Egypt
to protect not only the Suez Canal but also,
ostensibly, to preventforeignaggression.The
presence of foreign troops served only to
heightennationalistexpectations,whichwere
excited by the Wafd, the political organiza-
tion that formed public opinion on national
ratherthan religiousgroundsand helped es-
tablish a fairly unifiedcommunity-in strik-
ing contrast to late-nineteenth century Rus-
sia.
But nationalist aspirations were not the
only rising expectations in Egypt of the
1920s and 1930s. World War I had spurred
industrialization,which openedopportunities
for peasantsto improve,somewhat,theirway
of life by workingfor wages in the cities and
also opened great opportunitiesfor entrepre-
neurs to get rich. The moderately wealthy
got immoderately so in commodity market
speculation, finance, and manufacture, and
the uprooted peasants who were now em-
ployed, or at any rate living, in cities were
22 See Trotsky, op. cit., pp. 18-21 for a vivid
pictureof risingdiscontentin the army.

relieved of at least the notion that poverty
and boredommust be the will of Allah. But
the incongruity of a money-based modern
semi-feudality that was like a chariotwith a
gasoline engine evidently escaped the atten-
tion of ordinary people. The generation of
the 1930s could see more rapid progress,
even for themselves, than their parents had
even envisioned.If conditionsremainedpoor,
they could always be blamedon the British,
whoseeconomicand militarypowerremained
visible and strong.
Economic progresscontinued, though un-
evenly, during World War II. Conventional
exports,mostly cotton, actually declined,not
even reaching depression levels until 1945,
but direct employment by Allied military
forcesreacheda peak of over 200,000 during
the most intense part of the African war.
Exports after the war rose steadily until
1948, dipped, and then rose sharply to a
peak in 1951 as a consequenceof the Korean
war. But in 1945 over 250,000 wage earn-
ers23 -probably over a third of the working
force-became jobless. The cost of living by
1945 had risen to three times the index of
1937.24 Manual laborerswere hit by unem-
ployment; white collar workers and profes-
sionals probably more by inflation than un-
employment. Meanwhile the number of mil-
lionaires in pounds sterling had increased
eight times duringthe war.25
Frustrations, exacerbated during the war
by Germanand thereafter by Soviet propa-
ganda, were at first deflected against the
British26 but gradually shifted closer to
home. Egyptian agitators began quoting the
Koranin favor of a just, equalitariansociety
and against great differences in individual
wealth. There was an ominous series of
strikes, mostly in the textile mills, from
1946-8.
At least two factors stand out in the post-
ponementof revolution.The first was the in-
satiable postwar world demand for cotton
and textiles and the second was the surge of
solidarity with king and country that fol-
lowed the 1948 invasion of the new state of
Israel. Israel now supplementedEngland as
an object of deflected frustration. The dis-
astrous defeat a year later, by a new nation
with but a fifteenth of Egypt's population,
was the beginningof the end. This little war
had struck the peasant at his hearth,when a
shortage of wheat and of oil for stoves pro-
vided a daily reminderof a weak and cor-
rupt government.The defeat frustratedpop-
ular hopes for national glory and-with even
more portent-humiliated the army and so-
lidified it against the bureaucracy and the
palace which had profiteeredat the expense
of national honor. In 1950 began for the
first time a direct and open propagandaat-
tack against the king himself. A series of
peasant uprisings, even on the lands of the
king, took place in 1951 along with some 49
strikes in the cities. The skyrocketing de-
mandfor cotton after the start of the Korean
Warin June, 1950was followedby a collapse
in March, 1952. The uncontrollableor un-
controlled riots in Cairo, on January 26,
1952, marked the fiery start of the revolu-
tion. The officers'coup in the early morning
of July 23 only made it official.
OTHER CIVIL DISTURBANCES
The J-curveof risingexpectationsfollowed
by their effective frustrationis applicableto
otherrevolutionsand rebellionsthan just the
three already considered.Leisler's Rebellion
in the royal colony of New Yorkin 1689 was
a briefdress-rehearsalfor the AmericanRev-
olution eighty-six years later. In an effort
to make the colony serve the crown better,
duties had been raisedand-werebeing vigor-
ously collected. The tanning of hides in the
23 C. Issawi, Egypt at Mid-Century: An Eco-
nomic Survey, London: Oxford University Press,
-1954, p. 262. J. & S. Lacouture in their Egypt in
Transition, New York: Criterion Books, 1958, p.
100, give a figure of over 300,000. Sir R. Bullard,
editor,The MiddleEast: A Politicaland Economic
Survey, London: Oxford University Press, 1958,
p. 221 estimates total employment in industry,
transport, and commerce in 1957 to have been
about 750,000.
24 International Monetary Fund, International
Financial Statistics, Washington, D. C. See monthly
issues of this report, 1950-53.
25 J. andS. Lacouture,op. cit., p. 99.
26 England threatened to depose Farouk in Feb-
ruary 1942, by force if necessary, if Egypt did not
support the Allies. Capitulation by the government
and the Wafd caused widespread popular dis-
affection. When Egypt finally declared war on the
Axis in 1945,the prime ministerwas assassinated.
See J. & S. Lacouture, op. cit., pp. 97-98 and
Issawi, op. cit., p. 268.

colony was forbidden,as was the distillation
of liquor. An embargo was placed on un-
milledgrain,which hurt the farmers.After a
long period of economic growth and sub-
stantial political autonomy, these new and
burdensomeregulations produced a popular
rebellion that for a year displaced British
sovereignty.27
The American Revolution itself fits the
J-curve and deserves more than the brief
mention here given. Again prolonged eco-
nomic growth and political autonomy pro-
z
0
War with Israel,o I
/4~~~~~~~~~~~1948-9
U..
XI) Postwar unrest
Koreanwar
< Farouk takes throne and prosperity,1950-1
a British troops withdraw
W to Suez, 1936 Warprosperity
z Egyptianindepen-
dence, 1922
1920 1930 1940 1950
IGU RE 4
duced continually rising expectations. They
became acutely frustrated when, following
the Frenchand Indian War (which had cost
Englandso much and the colonies so little),
England began a series of largely economic
regulationshaving the same purposeas those
directedagainst New York in the preceding
century. From the 1763 Proclamation (clos-
ing to settlement land west of the Appala-
chians) to the Coercive Acts of April, 1774
(which among other things, in response to
the December, 1773 Boston Tea Party,
closed tight the port of Boston), Americans
were beset with unaccustomed manifesta-
tions of British power and began to resist
forcibly in 1775, on the Lexington-Concord
road.A significantdeclinein tradewith Eng-
land in 177228 may have hastened the matu-
ration of colonial rebelliousness.
The curve also fits the French Revolution,
which again merits moremention than space
here permits. Growing rural prosperity,
markedby steadily rising land values in the
eighteenth century, had progressed to the
point wherea thirdof Frenchland was owned
by peasant-proprietors.Therewerethe begin-
nings of large-scale manufacturein the fac-
tory system. Constant pressureby the bour-
geoisie against the state for reformswas met
with considerable hospitality by a govern-
ment already shifting from its old landed-
aristocraticand clerical base to the growing
middle class. Counterto these trends, which
would per se avoid revolution,was the feudal
reaction of the mid-eighteenth century, in
which the dying nobility sought in numerous
naggingways to retainand reactivateits per-
quisites againsta resentfulpeasantryand im-
portunate bourgeoisie.
But expectations apparently continued
rising until the growing opportunities and
prosperity rather abruptly halted, about
1787. The fiscal crisis of the governmentis
well known, much of it a consequence of a
1.5 billion livre deficit following interven-
27See J. R. Reich, Leisler'sRebellion,Chicago:
Universityof ChicagoPress,1953.
28 See U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical
Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to
1957, Washington,D. C., 1960,p. 757.

tion against Britain in the Americanwar of
independence.The threat to tax the nobility
severely-after its virtual tax immunity-
and the bourgeoisiemore severely may in-
deed be said to have precipitatedthe revolu-
tion. But less well-known is the fact that
1787 was a bad harvest year and 1788 even
worse; that by July, 1789 bread prices were
higher than they had been in over 70 years;
that an ill-timed trade treaty with England
depressedthe prices of French textiles; that
a concurrent bumper grape crop depressed
wine prices-all with the result of making
desperatethe plight of the large segment of
the populationnow dependenton other pro-
ducers for food. They had little money to
buy even less bread. Nobles and bourgeoisie
were alienated from the government by the
threat of taxation; workers and some peas-
ants by the threat of starvation. A long
period of halting but real progress for vir-
tually all segmentsof the populationwas now
abruptlyendedin consequenceof the govern-
ment's efforts to meet its deficit and of eco-
nomic crisis resulting from poor crops and
poor tariffpolicy.29
The draft riots that turned the city of
New York upside down for five days in
July, 1863 also follow the J-curve. This
severe local disturbance began when con-
scription threatened the lives and fortunes
of workingmenwhose enjoyment of wartime
prosperity was now frustrated not only by
military service (which could be avoided by
paying $300 or furnishing a substitute-
neither means being available to poor
people) but also by inflation.30
Even the riots in Nyasaland, in February
and March, 1959, appear to follow the pat-
tern of a period of frustrationafter expecta-
tions and satisfactionshave risen.Nyasaland
workers who had enjoyed the high wages
they were paid during the construction of
the Karibadamin Rhodesiareturnedto their
homes and to unemployment,or to jobs pay-
ing $5 per month at a time when $15 was
considered a bare minimum wage.31
Onenegativecase-of a revolutionthat did
not occur-is the depressionof the 1930s in
the United States. It was severe enough, at
least on economicgrounds,to have produced
a revolution. Total national private produc-
tion income in 1932 revertedto what it had
been in 1916. Farmincome in the same year
was as low as in 1900; manufacturingas low
as in 1913. Constructionhad not been as low
since 1908. Mining and quarryingwas back
at the 1909 level.82For much of the popu-
lation, two decadesof economicprogresshad
been wiped out. There were more than spo-
radic demonstrationsof unemployed,hunger
marchers,and veterans. In New York City,
at least 29 people died of starvation. Poor
people could vividly contrast their own past
condition with the present-and their own
present condition with that of those who
were not seriously suffering. There were
clearly audiblerumblesof revolt. Why, then,
no revolution?
Several forces worked strongly against it.
Among the most depressed, the mood was
one of apathy and despair,like that observed
in Austria by Zawadzki and Lazarsfeld. It
was not until the 1936 election that there
was an increasedturnoutin the nationalelec-
tion. The great majority of the public shared
a set of values which since 1776 had been
officialdogma-not the dissidentprogramof
an alienated intelligentsia. People by and
largewere in agreement,whetheror not they
had succeeded economically, in a belief in
individual hard work, self-reliance, and the
promise of success. (Among workers, this
non-class orientation had greatly impeded
the establishment of trade unions, for ex-
ample.) Those least hit by the depression-
the upper-middleclass businessmen,clergy-
men, lawyers, and intellectuals-remained
rathersolidly committed not only to equali-
tarianvaluesand to the establishedeconomic
system but also to constitutional processes.
There was no such widespreador profound
alienation as that which had cracked the29 See G. Lefebvre, The Coming of the French
Revolution, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1947, pp. 101-109, 145-148, 196. G. Le Bon, The
Psychology of Revolution, New York: G. Putnam's
Sons, 1913, p. 143.
30 The account by Irving Werstein, July 1863,
New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1957, is journal-
istic but to my knowledge the fullest yet available.
81 E. S. Munger, "The Tragedy of Nyasaland,"
American Universities Field Staff Reports Service,
vol. 7, no. 4 (August 1, 1959), p. 9.
32 See U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical
Statistics of the United States: 1789-1945,Wash-
ington, D. C.: 1949, p. 14.

A THEORYOF REVOLUTION 17
loyalty of the nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie,
armed forces, and intelligentsia in Russia.
And the national political leadership that
emergedhadconstitutionalismalmostbredin
its bones.The majorthreatto constitutional-
ism came in Louisiana; this leadership was
unable to capturea national party organiza-
tion, in part because Huey Long's arbitrari-
ness and demagogywere mistrusted.
The major reason that revolution did not
nonetheless develop probably remains the
vigor with which the national government
attacked the depressionin 1933, when it be-
came no longer possible to blame the gov-
ernment. The ambivalent popular hostility
to the businesscommunitywas containedby
both the action of government against the
depressionand the government'spractice of
publicly and successfully eliciting the co-
operationof businessmenduring the crucial
monthsof 1933.A failurethen of cooperation
could have intensified rather than lessened
popular hostility to business. There was no
longer an economic or a political class that
could be the object of widespread intense
hatredbecauseof its indifferenceor hostility
to the downtrodden.Had Roosevelt adopted
a demagogic stance in the 1932 campaign
and gained the loyalty to himself personally
of the Armyand the F.B.I., theremight have
been a Nazi-type "revolution,"with a pot-
pourri of equalitarian reform, nationalism,
imperialism, and domestic scapegoats. Be-
cause of a conservatism in America stem-
ming from strong and long attachment to
a valuesystem sharedby all classes, an anti-
capitalist, leftist revolution in the 1930s is
very difficultto imagine.
SOME CONCLUSIONS
The notion that revolutions need both a
period of rising expectations and a succeed-
ing periodin which they are frustratedqual-
ifies substantially the main Marxian notion
that revolutionsoccur after progressivedeg-
radationand the de Tocqueville notion that
they occur when conditions are improving.
By putting de Tocqueville before Marx but
without abandoning either theory, we are
better able to plot the antecedents of at
least the disturbanceshere described.
Half of the general,if not common, sense
of this revised notion lies in the utter im-
probability of a revolution occurring in a
society where there is the continued, unim-
peded opportunityto satisfy new needs, new
hopes, new expectations. Would Dorr's re-
bellion have become such if the established
electorate and government had readily ac-
ceded to the suffragedemandsof the unprop-
ertied? Would the Russian Revolution have
taken place if the Tsarist autocracy had,
quite out of character, truly granted the
popular demands for constitutional democ-
racy in 1905? Would the Cairoriots of Jan-
uary, 1952 and the subsequentcoup actually
have occurredif Britain had departed from
Egypt and if the Egyptian monarchy had
established an equitable tax system and in
other ways alleviated the poverty of urban
masses and the shame of the military?
The other half of the sense of the notion
has to do with the improbability of revolu-
tion taking place where there has been no
hope, no period in which expectations have
risen. Such a stability of expectations pre-
supposes a static state of human aspirations
that sometimes exists but is rare. Stability
of expectations is not a stable social con-
dition. Such was the case of American In-
dians (at least from our perspective) and
perhaps Africans before white men with
Bibles, guns, and other goods interrupted
the stability of African society. Egypt was
in such a condition, vis-a-vis modernaspira-
tions, before Europe became interested in
building a canal. Such stasis was the case in
Nazi concentration camps, where conform-
ism reachedthe point of inmatescooperating
with guards even when the inmates were
told to lie downso that they could be shot.33
But in the latter case there was a society
with externally induced complete despair,
and even in thesecampstherewereoccasional
rebellionsof sheerdesperation.It is of course
true that in a society less regimented than
concentration camps, the rise of expecta-
tions can be frustratedsuccessfully, thereby
defeating rebellion just as the satisfaction
of expectationsdoes. This, however,requires
the uninhibited exercise of brute force as it
was used in suppressing the Hungarian re-
bellion of 1956. Failing the continuedability
33 Eugen Kogon, The Theory and Practice of
Hel, New York: Farrar,Straus & Co., 1950, pp.
284-286.

and persistent will of a ruling power to use
such force, there appearsto be no sure way
to avoid revolution short of an effective,
affirmative,and continuous response on the
partof establishedgovernmentsto the almost
continuouslyemergingneedsof the governed.
To be predictive, my notion requires the
assessmentof the state of mind-or morepre-
cisely, the mood-of a people.This is always
difficult, even by techniques of systematic
public opinion analysis. Respondents inter-
viewedin a countrywith a repressivegovern-
ment are not likely to be responsive. But
there has been considerable progress in
gathering first-handdata about the state of
mind of peoples in politically unstable cir-
cumstances. One instance of this involved
interviewing in West Berlin, during and
after the 1948 blockade, as reported by
Buchanan and Cantril. They were able to
ascertain, however crudely, the sense of
securitythat people in Berlin felt. There was
a significant increase in security after the
blockade.34
Anotherinstance comes out of the Middle
Eastern study conducted by the Columbia
University Bureau of Applied Social Re-
searchand reportedby Lerner.35By directly
askingrespondentswhetherthey werehappy
or unhappy with the way things had turned
out in their life, the interviewersturned up
dataindicatingmarkeddifferencesin the fre-
quency of a sense of unhappiness between
countriesand between"traditional,""transi-
tional," and "modern" individuals in these
countries.36There is no technicalreasonwhy
such comparisonscould not be made chron-
ologically as well as they have been geo-
graphically.
Other than interview data are available
with which we can, from past experience,
make reasonableinferences about the mood
of a people. It was surely the sense for the
relevanceof such data that led Thomas Ma-
saryk before the first World War to gather
facts about peasant uprisingsand industrial
strikes and about the writingsand actions of
the intelligentsia in nineteenth-centuryRus-
sia. In the present report, I have used not
only such data-in the collection of which
other social scientists have been less assidu-
ous than Masaryk-but also such indexes as
comparativesize of vote as between Rhode
Island and the United States, employment,
exports, and cost of living. Some such in-
dexes, like strikes and cost of living, may be
rather closely related to the mood of a
people; others, like value of exports, are
much cruder indications. Lest we shy away
from the gathering of crude data, we should
bear in mind that Durkheim developed his
remarkableinsights into modern society in
large part by his analysis of suicide rates.
He was unable to rely on the interviewing
technique. We need not always ask people
whether they are grievously frustrated by
their government; their actions can tell us
as well and sometimes better.
In his Anatomyof Revolution,CraneBrin-
ton describes "some tentative uniformities"
that he discoveredin the Puritan, American,
French, and Russian revolutions.87The uni-
formities were: an economically advancing
society, class antagonism,desertion of intel-
lectuals,inefficientgovernment,a rulingclass
that has lost self-confidence,financialfailure
of government, and the inept use of force
against rebels. All but the last two of these
are long-range phenomena that lend them-
selves to studies over extended time periods.
The first two lend themselves to statistical
analysis. If they serve the purpose, tech-
niques of content analysis could be used to
ascertaintrendsin alienationof intellectuals.
Less rigorousmethods would perhaps serve
better to ascertain the effectiveness of gov-
ernment and the self-confidence of rulers.
Because tensionsand frustrationsarepresent
at all times in every society, what is most
seriously needed are data that cover an ex-
tended time period in a particular society,
so that one can say there is evidence that
84 W. Buchanan, "Mass Communication in
Reverse,"InternationalSocial Science Bulletin, 5
(1953), pp. 577-583,at p. 578.The full study is W.
Buchananand H. Cantril,How Nations See Each
Other,Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953,
esp. pp. 85-90.
83 Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional
Society, Glencoe,Ill.: Free Press, 1958.
86 Ibid., pp. 101-103.See also F. P. Kilpatrick&
H. Cantril,"Self-AnchoringScaling,A Measureof
Individuals'Unique Reality Words,"Journal of
IndividualPsychology, 16 (November, 1960), pp.
158-173.
37 See the revised edition oft 1952 as reprinted
by VintageBooksjInc., 1957,pp. 264-275.

MASSSOCIETYAND EXTREMISTPOLITICS 19
tension is greater or less than it was N
years or months previously.
We need also to know how long is a long
cycle of rising expectations and how long is
a brief cycle of frustration.We noted a brief
periodof frustrationin Russia after the 1881
assassination of Alexander II and a longer
periodafter the 1904 beginningof the Russo-
Japanese War. Why did not the revolution
occur at either of these times rather than in
1917? Had expectations before these two
times not risen high enough?Had the subse-
quent decline not been sufficientlysharp and
deep? Measuring techniques have not yet
been devised to answer these questions. But
their unavailability now does not forecast
their eternal inaccessibility. Physicists de-
vised useful temperature scales long before
they came as close to absolute zero as they
have recently in laboratory conditions. The
far more complex problems of scaling in so-
cial science inescapably are harder to solve.
We therefore are still not at the point of
being able to predict revolution, but the
closer we can get to data indicating by in-
ference the prevailingmood in a society, the
closerwe will be to understandingthe change
from gratification to frustration in people's
minds. That is the part of the anatomy, we
are foreverbeing told with truth and futility,
in which wars and revolutions always start.
We should eventually be able to escape the
embarrassmentthat may have come to Lenin
six weeks after he made the statement in
Switzerland, in January, 1917, that he
doubted whether "we, the old [will] live to
see the decisive battles of the coming revo-
lution."38
38Quotedin E. H. Carr, A History of Soviet
Russia, vol. 1, The Bolshevik Revolution: 1917-
23, London: Macmillan,1950,p. 69.
MASS SOCIETY AND EXTREMIST POLITICS
JOSEPH R. GUSFIELD
Universityof Illinois
Theoriesof masspoliticsattempt to explainthe sourcesof politicalextremismby character-
istics of masssocieties.Such theoriesare criticizedon the groundsthat they assumeadherence
to democraticnormsunderpluralistconditionsevenwhensuch normsfrustrateintenselyheld
values. Mass politics theoriesignore the culturalcohesion necessaryto sustain democratic
politics. Conditionsof mass societies also provide support to democraticpolitical norms
through the consequencesof mass communications,equalitarianism,and bureaucratization
for national societies. Isolation from mass culture accentuateslocal sources of extremist
response.
A DOMINANT streamof thoughtin cur-
rent political sociology explains many
contemporary anti-democratic move-
ments as products of a distinctive social or-
ganization-Mass Society. Writers who uti-
lize this approach have maintained that
modern,Western societies increasingly show
characteristics of mass organization which
sharply differ from the features of such so-
cieties in the nineteenthand earliercenturies.
Mass societies, in this view, demonstrate a
form of politics in which traditional socio-
logical concepts, such as class or culture, are
not relevant to an understanding of the
sources,genesis, or careersof extremist,anti-
democratic political movements. Mass poli-
tics is the form of political action unique to
mass societies. As modern democratic socie-
ties become mass societies, we may then an-
ticipate that political crises are likely to
generate extremist, anti - democratic re-
sponses. Leading advocates of this theory
of "mass politics," in whole or part, are
Hannah Arendt, Erich Fromm, Karl Mann-
heim, William Kornhauser, Robert Nisbet,
and Philip Selznick.1This paper is a critical
' The following relevant writings embody the
theory of mass politics: Hannah Arendt, The
Originsof Totalitarianism,New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Co., 1954; Erich Fromm,EscapeFrom

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