andie nachgeborenen :
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.
^^^^ CB: Most of the time misery hasn't provoked revolt. However, of all the revolts that have occurred, how many were by people who were not miserable ? I had said i"t's not so much the cyclical downturns, but the permanent mass impoverishment, wars , etc." It's people who are miserable all of their lives who are candidates for revolt.
As to rising expectations, that is in agreement with what I said in response to Seth: Marx didn't hold that the insurrection would necessarily occur provoked by a recession-depression, i.e. during falling expectations.
Notice, revolutions are rare events.
^^^^ Andie:
Other conditions: organization, political leadership, a sense of injustice and having been wronged, a vision of better alternative, a political tradition of resistance, living memory of success or some positive value to the struggle, resources necessary for efficacy, are unsurprisingly also involved. Otherwise Dostoevsky's remark that "Man is the animal that can get used to anything" seems to apply all too well.
Moreover, with capitalist misery,there is a further problem, because capitalism undermines a lot of the conditions for revolt against misery by promoting individualism, dividing the oppressed, appearing to operate automatically (thereby undermining the sense of injustice), and so forth. That is not to say that revolt is impossible, but that mere capitalist misery is not sufficient for it.
^^^^ CB: Yes, it takes more than misery, and agree on capitalism's counter-revolutionary processes, although , as I say most of the time in history even before capitalism, people aren't revolting , so the other modes of production had successful anti-revolutionary processes, as well.
According to Lenin it takes an organization of professional revolutionaries who inject class and socialist consciousness into the masses of the working class. And , of course, empirically, Lenin's theory worked.
In Russia 1917, there was longstanding , mass misery. I don't know that there was a cyclical downturn at the time of insurrection. The crisis aspect was WWI.