andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, the argument that misery provokes
> revolt does not seem to be very well supported by the
> empirical evidence. Certainly misery does not provoke
> revolt typically or in any straightforward mechanical
> fashion. Most of humankind has been miserable for most
> of its existence in civilization, but revolts are
> uncommon. One thesis, I don't know how it is regarded
> by contemporary scholarship, is that revolts tends to
> accompany "rising expectation," they occur when the
> badly off see a prospect for improvement that is
> coming, but not fast enough.
That ("rising expectations") has always been my theory but I don't know how it can be either empirically or theoretically demonstrated. (I once read that economic conditions were improving, at least slightly, at the time of both the French and the Russian revolutions.) In any case, for reasons you give, the idea that misery can trigger revolution is _highly_ unlikely.
Revolution is concrete, and I am sceptical that there can be a general theory of revolution (outside of more or less tautological rules of thumb) applicable to all revolutions. This I think is/was the central point of the contrast between "marxism-leninism" (a general theory of the capitalist epoch) and "mao _thought_" (principles uniquely relevant to the conditions of China in the 1930s and hence _not_ (pace various western "maoists") exportable. The Chinese or Mao or someone apparently changed their mind on this when they dreamt up the nonsensical "Theory of the Three Worlds."
Carrol