States and Social Revolutions
A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China
Theda Skocpol
£19.95
May 1979 | Paperback (Hardback) | 448 pages | ISBN: 0521294991
In stock
State structures, international forces, and class relations: Theda Skocpol
shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of
social-revolutionary transformations. From France in the 1790s to Vietnam
in the 1970s, social revolutions have been rare but undeniably of enormous
importance in modern world history. States and Social Revolutions provides
a new frame of reference for analyzing the causes, the conflicts, and the
outcomes of such revolutions. And it develops in depth a rigorous,
comparative historical analysis of three major cases: the French Revolution
of 1787 through the early 1800s, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the
1930s, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the 1960s. Believing that
existing theories of revolution, both Marxist and non-Marxist, are
inadequate to explain the actual historical patterns of revolutions, the
author urges us to adopt fresh perspectives. She argues for structural
rather than voluntarist analysis, and for an emphasis on the effects of
transnational and world-historical contexts upon domestic political
conflicts. Above all, she maintains that states conceived as administrative
and coercive organizations potentially autonomous from class controls and
interests must be made central to explanations of revolutions.
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