theda skocpol, states and social revolutions (1979)

chapter 1

(4): definition of social revolutions

1. coincidence of structural change with class upheaval
2. coincidence of political with social transformation

(14): three major principles of analysis need to be stressed, she's suggesting

1. structural perspective (14-18)
2. international and world-historical context (19-24)
3. the potential autonomy of the state (24-33)
   

(14-17): a critique of voluntarism and 'purposive' accounts of revolutions being led by vanguards -- 'revolutionary movements rarely begin with a revolutionary intention' [but then it becomes difficult, if you take this too far, to account for contingency and organization, etc.; surely structuralism can be overemphasized?]

(20): important reminder that the international context is crucial (totality insight) (see 23, structures of world economy, state system; and "world-time")

(22): a State-centered conception of the State ("interdependent with world capitalism"), which demands interrogation.

(27): argument that Marxists and Tilly haven't looked seriously at clashes between dominant elites and State rulers.

(29): in a way, five reasons to care about the State

1. political crises have expressed contradictions in the structures of the Old Regime
2. the protagonists of these conflicts have formed as interest groups around state structures
3. the vanguard parties have been responsible for State-building, without which revolution makes no sense
   
4. social revolutions have changed State structures as much as they have changed class relations
   
5. effects of revolution have been due to the changes in State form, as well

(29): the notion of the potential autonomy of the State [not a new kind of voluntarism? taking the State seriously is a welcome reminder; arguing that it is potential autonomous in a way that Marxists haven't recognized seems to beg all sorts of questions, though]

(32): important--not interested in the breakdown of 'legitimacy', really, as much as the breakdown of the 'capacity to coerce'

(34): Marxists haven't recognized how important the variable of State strength is.

(41): social revolutions as a triple conjuncture

1. incapacitation of central State machineries
2. widespread rebellion by lower-classes, notably peasants
3. attempts by political leaderships to consolidate State power

chapter 2

(48): the fundamental tensions in these three cases were the tensions between producing classes and landed classes, and between landed classes and State (not commercial-industrial classes and anyone else)

(49): [State in feudalism vs. State in capitalism? or is the question simply about State and autonomous sources of revenue.]

(50-51): key dynamic, then--the context of escalating international competition placed pressure on centralized monarchies, who in turn put pressure on their landed elites. in France and China a strong landed class responded by incapacitating the State, in effect. in Russia, the nobility were weaker--however, the State was still unable to carry out the requisite reforms, and it still fell into protracted political crisis.

(51-67): FRANCE

• (54): serious competition putting pressures on royal capacities
• (55): relatively backward agriculture
• (56): a dominant class that was neither 'feudal' nor 'capitalist--surplus appropriation was a melange of rents/dues, but also redistribution accomplished through the State, itself
• (61): revenue problem of the French State
• (64): key--power of the landed elite (she will say their 'political power') prevents the State from moving against them [doesn't this highlight the lack of autonomy of the State, fundamentally?]
• (65): army was reluctant to move against privilege

(67-81): CHINA

• (71): gentry class based upon office-holding and ownership of liquid wealth/surplus land
• (75): key--State was confronted by acute crises (peasant revolts, population pressures) -- but the way in which it repressed these simply stregnthened the hands of the gentry, making centralization/reform/development impossible. And ultimately making the political crisis more acute.
  

(80-81): summary of China/France similarities--useful

(81-99): RUSSIA

• (82): free of feudal shackles--a particularly efficient bureaucracy was possible
• (85): after the defeat in the Crimean War, State successfully implemented reforms (including Emancipation of serfs in 1861, creation of zemstvos, etc.)
• (86-87): important--State moving to expropriate landlords, acquiring its own sources of surplus, which obviously increase its autonomy (passing them out as rewards for State service, instead). becoming less dependent on the landed elite.
  
• (89): important--however, reforms fail to spur the modernization of agriculture [now here redemption payments figure centrally--yet aren't the existence redemption payments a sign that the State doesn't possess the requisite autonomy to eviscerate its landed class?]
• (90): contrast w/ China, where the argument is that the gentry were much more powerful viz-a-viz the State
• (91): Witte's program of crash industrialization in the 1890s (behind tarriff walls, etc. -- laissez-faire didn't work)
  
• (92): industrialization creates grave digger
• (94): key--but, at its root, this didn't solve the problems brought on by international military competition. decisive problem remained the low rate of growth in agriculture.
  
• (95): 1905 vs. 1917 is simply a question of differential state capacity. State can repress in 1905 because troops are back by 1906. this is not the case in 1917.
  

(99): summary passage for France, China, and Russia re: Old Regimes

(100-104): Meiji Restoration in Japan--why?

1. absence of a powerful landed upper class in Tokugawa Japan
   
2. no breakdown in State capacity--this was a revolution from above
3. bureaucratic reforms were pursued (as in Russia), that were successful in ensuring economic take-off (unlike Russia)

(104-109): Prussian Reform Movement--how come, given Prussia had Junkers?

1. a better-organize bureaucracy--upper-classes didn't infiltrate the State apparatus [seems crucial to the explanation]
   
2. upper-classes made a pact, with the State, in effect--they were willing to surrender kingdom-wide authority
3. emancipation in Prussia succeeded in modernizing agriculture, because Prussia had large, commercially-oriented estates (unified management pursued innovative techniques, etc.)

(109-111): chapter summary

chapter 3

(113): peasants as protagonists -- their revolt was a necessary ingredient, but urban workers' revolt was not [dubious--could Russia have been consolidated without an urban workers' challenge?]

(115-117): thesis--Skocpol focusing on three factors

1. the kinds of solidarity of peasant communities
2. degreees of peasant autonomy from day-to-day supervision
3. relaxation of State coercive sanctions against peasantry
   

(118-128): FRANCE

• (123-124): in short--1. creation of collective communities (see also 126), through cahiers; 2. disorganization of upper strata; 3. lack of repressive capacity, of National Assembly; 4. urban forces against 'aristocratic reaction'
• (127): important--the Revolution stregnthened private property and individualism--agrarian revolution of 1789-1793 left peasants more divided (unlike Emancipation of Serfs in Russia)
  

(128-): RUSSIA

• (129-133): 1. emancipation left serfs worse off, bogged down by redemption payments; 2. obschina remained form of land tenure, thus collective institutions were still strong; 3. many were still rentiers, and thus in a very precarious economic situation; 4. the mir was the center of political authority, as emancipation reduced the serfs political dependence on the State.
  
• (133): area was ripe for rebellions, all that was needed was end to coercive controls--which happened in 1917
• (135): Stolypin reforms--noticed communal institutions, but didn't really work
• (137): France vs. Russia [in France they respected private property, etc.; in Russia it was levelling--but this has everything to do with political leadership, it would seem to me. to suggest that this is determined by economic structure seems problematic. it could only be the case if 'collective institutions' didn't exist at all in France, and they existed everywhere in Russia. otherwise something else is doing the work, no? certainly she notes other factors. but surely political leadership must be one--and maybe the most important? would 'levelling' have happened if the Bolsheviks hadn't existed to recognize the seizures?]

(142): in England you had a revolution that didn't displace a landed upper class, that didn't trigger widespread peasant revolts--b/c, she's arguing, of (1) enclosures. capitalist agriculture made it not possible; and (2)no peasant-run village assemblies in England. much weaker collective institutions.

(145-146): in Prussia you didn't have successful peasant rebellions because of the State's capacity to repress peasant rebellions. moreover, E. of the Elbe you had Junkers who didn't give the serfs any breathing room--serfs had fragmented landholdings, and landlords had a monopoly on administrative sovereignty.

(147): CHINA

• (148): in China, collective identity and freedom from landlord control had to be created ('base areas')--they didn't prexist the revolutionary interregnum.
• (149): both collecitve institutions, and freedom from sociopolitical control were absent, in effect.
  
• (151): in previous rebellions, peasants had to be led by gentry--they didn't have their own communal institutions
• (152): the Chinese gentry were strong, but now they're being portrayed as locally-centered. capable of undermining the State but incapable of providing unified administrative apparatus. [it feels like everything is going on at once--will need to think about this more--is this fair?]
• (153): CCP leadership is critical [again, we can ask why this isn't the case in Russia?]
  

(154-155): summary of Part I

Chapter 4

(168): Revolutionaries as 'state-builders' [very slippery slope]

(170-171): argument that revolutionary ideologies are immaterial to the analysis of the post-Revolution [extremely problematic]

Chapter 6

(207): key--in Russia, the liberals were much, much weaker than in France [is this not a permanent revolution argument?]

(210): liberal incapacity, in short

(211): important--peasant incapacity, too -- couldn't constitute a new national order, by themselves [but this is precisely why revolutionary leadership is important, in all cases. shouldn't we look here for differences between France and Russia, as well, for example? (as mentioned earlier)]

(214): a deceptive presentation of the disbanding of the Constituent Assembly [precisely because she's decided not to think seriously about the principles behind it--the default interpretation for everything is for 'reasons of State']

(221-225): Skocpol's presentation of NEP and the scissors crisis (argument, here, is that Bukharin's proposal was impossible b/c of lack of market legacy; Stalin's proposal was necessary, but was bound to come at massive cost). [whatever else there is to say, have to push back on the attempt to link this to the Old Regime--surely 'habits' don't matter as much as the 'scissors'. if you give them prices, they will produce.]

(224): ridiculous to say that the quasi-psychological 'need' for was driving the alternatives

(226-227): consolidation of State-Party system

(227): upward mobility

(228-229): fate of workers and peasants

1. trade unions neutered by 1928
2. living standards deteriorated markedly in the 1930s
3. collective farmers for peasants, where they were intensely exploited
   
4. high food prices to extract surplus from workers

(230-231): hierarchies and coercion were re-established

(232): in sum--all of this were the imperatives that confronted a State under international pressures that needed heavy-industrialization, but was presiding over a predominantly agrarian society

(233-235): notes that all this brings back bourgeois/proletarian distinction. but her contribution is to stress that this unfolds in a context. [fair enough--but you've set yourself a strawman.]

- - - - - -

(1) her structuralism/voluntarism discussion makes it very difficult to have any serious room for (a) contingency and (b) organization in the argument.

(2) "the potential autonomy of the State." it is unclear what role, exactly, this is playing in her argument. empirically, the analyses of the Old Regime, to my mind, prove precisely the opposite--that in all of these cases, the State is unable to move against its landed class successfully (in France and China it doesn't; in Russia it does but the reforms are ineffectual). theoretically, the question is obvious--insofar as the State requires resources, it can't have total autonomy until it has autonomous ways to extract surplus. the extent to which this is true about the three cases is hard to establish, but this should be recognized. why should the capacity of the State rise and fall with the 'political' power of landlords (i.e., whether the gentry have been integrated into the state apparatus, as in France and China)? why not with their economic power?

(3): her discussion of peasant 'community' seems hurried. isn't it difficult to generalize across nations? see pg. 137 discussion of France and Russia, post-revolution, where she clearly neglects political leadership as one of the factors. why, when in Russia these communal institutions are limited to one part of the country (C. Steppes) does agrarian revolt of a 'leveling' kind take place everywhere? are the other factors not doing more work? [she acknowledges the critical importance of the CCP, remember--though the implication is that this is exceptional]

(4): her treatment of the scissors crisis is poor, insofar as she harkens back to "Old Regime" legacies rather than contemporary factors. we need to foreground the actual dilemma.

(5): strawman treatment of the bourgeois/proletarian distinction (re: political leadership, again), on pp 233-235.

(6): deceptive presentation of the disbanding of the Constituent Assembly, precisely because she's decided to not take revolutionaries' aims seriously. it's fine to say their confronted with competing imperatives; but it's ludicrous to say that everyone can be understood as a State-builder.