A Critical Review of Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.

Classical and Marxist scholarly. Politics of modernization. Not only one route to the modern world.

Set: economic relationships, class struggle (bourgeois revolution, revolution from above, peasant rev.)

Cost of modernization: legal violent suffering on peasants, popular suffering and collective violence.

Agrarian  industrial societies. Commercialization  Industrialization.

Patterns of Moore’s routes:

1. Critical class structure

2. Revolutionary political conflict

3. Systematic political outcome

Britain, FR, US different social structures  Civil wars and different class struggle.

Key variables:

1. Strength of bourgeois or commercial impulse (strong BR, FR 18c., US 19c., medium GM JP, weak RUS, CH)

2. Form of commercial agriculture: labor-repressive or market

3. Peasant revolutionary potential

Leading to Fascism: labor-repressive system started in opposition to central government.

Problems of Moore’s theory:

1. Strength of bourgeois or commercial impulse

2. Distinction between market and labor repressive (Prussia as labor repressive and England? Every market and property system need political banking ). Depends upon economic adaptivenes and strength.

3. Inadequate class struggle and class coalition (vague role of the state, dominant class, exception political balance Bonaparte and Bismarck. Ruling class is not potentially governing class.)

Marxist theory about the role of the state:

State organizations (to create a new mode of production) + elites vs. long run economic interests of dominant class.

Commercial or bourgeois impulse.

Effect on class orientations:

-if strong (FR)  peasant are for pro-private poverty + find urban allies

-if weaker  bourgeois do not worth as economic junior partner

England.

No bureaucracy and liberal development. English revolution (anti democratization and to retard industrialization). Liberal oligarchy  industrial democracy.

Religious and political issues  economic conflict.

Commercialized agriculture, no centralized bureaucratic apparatus, no strong army. Ruled upper class.

Japan (Meiji restoration: abolition of daimyo and samurai rights, launch of major industries) & Germany.

Bureaucracy and revolution from above. No violent popular revolution is necessary to weep away feudal obstacles to industrialization.

To promote industrialization:

1. Centralizing and rationalizing the political power

2. Powerful military machine

3. Spread of national identity

Germany. Prussian successful adaptation to capitalist agriculture  economic development of Germany.

Bureaucracy and agrarian state.

1. Weak bureaucracy is useless for agrarian state. England.

2. High bureaucracy and centralized agrarian state  potential instrument for external and internal crisis

3. High bureaucracy and agrarian state  against the class interests

Rueschemeyer. Introduction: The problem of Capitalist development and democracy.

Relations between capitalism and democratization. Rare in agrarian societies  autocracy or oligarchy

Democracy is the characteristic political form of capitalism. Capitalism  democracy. State’s responsibility to parliament, fair elections, freedom, suffrage etc.

Democratization: 1) political equality, 2) balance among classes and class coalitions (class struggle)

Mill: fear of false democracy.

Marx: universal suffrage  major step from capitalism to socialism.

Return to democracy SP, PT, GR, Latin America.

Lipset: middle class is important and upper and lower classes are enemies for democracy

Moore: labor repressive + bourgeoisie – enemies.

Upper class: supply labor – enemies.

Bourgeoisie: opposed political inclusion of lower class - enemies. Interested in labor, good and services, monopolies, taxes and tariff barriers etc.

Middle class: consolidation of democracy. But if they are threatened they support authoritarian alternative

Peasantry and rural: pro-democratic force

Working class: small and weak.

Political parties as mediators in installation and consolidation of democracy. Need 2 or more strong parties.

Landowners: negative role. Landlords too because they were the dominant class of agrarian feudalism. They had economic and political powers and did not want to loose. Peasants interests were threaten.

CLASH of INTERESTS obstructs democratization.