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SOCIAL ORIGINS OF DIC TATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY Lord and Peasant in the MakinB of the Modern World BARRINGTON MOORE, JR PENGUIN UNIVERSITY BOOKS

Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia First published in the U.S.A. 1966 Published in Great Britain by Allen Lane The Penguin Press 1��7 Published in Peregrine Books 1919 Reissued in Penguin University Books 1973 Reprinted 1974 Copyright �� Barrington Moore, Jr, 1966 Made and printed in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd Aylesbury, Bucks Set in Monotype Spectrum This volum. was prepared under a grant ['om the Carnegie Corporation oj New York. That Corporation is not, however, the author, owner, publisher, or proprietor of this publication and is not to be understood as approviTlg by virtue of its grant any oj the statements made or views expressed {herein. To E.C.M, This book is sold subject to the condItion that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

PENGUIN UNIVERSITY BOOKS SOCIAL ORIGINS OF DICT ATQRSHIP AND DEMOCRACY Dr Barrington Moore Jr was born in Washington, D.C., on 12 May 1913. He was educated at Williams College, where he took a degree in Greek and Latin, and at Yale University where he gained a Ph.D. in Sociology. He is now lecturer in Sociology and Senior Research Fellow at the Russian Re- search Center at Harvard University. His books include Soviet Politics, The Dilemma oJPower, Terror and Progress, USSR, Political Power and Social Theory, A Critique oJPure Tolerance (co-author with Robert P. Wolff and Herbert Marcuse) and The Critical Spirit: Essays In Honour oj Herbert Marcuse (co-editor with K. H. Wolff). Among his most recent essays in periodicals are 'Thoughts on Vio- lence and Social Change' 'On Rational Inquiry in Universities Today' and 'Revolution in America?' He was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award (1967), and the MacIver Award (1968) for his book Social Origins oJDictatorship and Democracy.

Contents Preface and Acknowledgments PART ONE REVOLUTIONARY ORIGINS OF CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY Chapter I. England and the Contributions of Violence to Gradualism I. Aristocratic Impulses behind the Transition to Capitalism in the Countryside 2. Agrarian Aspects of the Civil War 3. Enclosures and the Destruction of the Peasantry 4. Aristocratic Rule for Triumphant Capitalism Chapter II. Evolution and Revolution in France I. Contrasts with England and their Origins 2. The Noble Response to Commercial Agriculture 3. Class Relationships under Royal Absolutism 4. The Aristocratic Offensive and the Collapse of Absolutism 5. The Peasants' Relationship to Radicalism during the Revolution 6. Peasants against the Revolution: The Vendee 7 . Social Consequences of Revolutionary Terror 8. Recapitulation Chapter III. The American Civil War: The Last Capi- talist Revolution I. Plantation and Factory: An Inevitable Conflict? viii 3 3 14 20 29 40 40 45 56 62 70 92 101 ro8 III III

vi SOCIAL ORIGINS OF DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY ���. Three Forms of American Capitalist Growth I IS 3. Toward an Explanation of the Causes of the War 131 4. The Revolutionary Impulse and its Failure 141 5. The Meaning of the War 149 PART TWO THREE ROUTES TO THE MODERN WORLD IN ASIA Note: Prolilems in Comparing European and Asian Po- litical Processes Chapter IV. The Decay of Imperial China and the Ori- gins of the Communist Variant I. The Upper Classes and the Imperial System 2. The Gentry and the World of Commerce 3. The Failure to Adopt Commercial Agriculture 4. Collapse of the Imperial System and Rise of the Warlords 5. The Kuomintang Interlude and its Meaning 6. Rebellion, Revolution, and the Peasants Chapter V. Asian Fascism: Japan I. Revolution from Above: The Response of the Ruling Classes to Old and New Threats ���. The Absence of a Peasant Revolution 3. The Meiji Settlement: The New Landlords and Capitalism 4. Political Consequences: The Nature of Japanese Fasci���m Chapter VI. Democracy in Asia: India and the Price of Peaceful Change I. Relevance of the Indian Experience 2. Mogul India: Obstacles to Democracy 3. Village Society: Obstacles to Rebellion 4. Changes Produced by the British up to 1857 s. Pax Britannica 1857 - 1947: A Landlord's Para- dise? 159 161 174 178 181 1 87 201 118 154 275 291 314 317 3 30 341 353 162 218 314

Contents vii 6. The Bourgeois Link to the Peasantry through Nonviolence 370 7. A Note on the Extent and Character of Peasant Violence 378 8. Independence and the Price of Peaceful Change 385 PART THREE THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS AND �� PROJECTIONS Chapter VII. The Democratic Route to Modern Society 413 Chapter VIII. Revolution from Above and Fascism 433 Chapter IX. The Peasants and Revolution 453 Epilogue: Reactionary and Revolutionary Imagery 484 Appendix: A Note on Statistics and Conservative His- toriography 509 Bibliography 524 Index 547

Preface and Acknowledgments THIS BOOK ENDEAVORS TO EXPLAIN the varied political roles played by the landed upper classes and the peasantry in the transformation from agrarian societies (defined simply as states where a large ma- jority of the population lives off the land) to modern industrial ones. Somewhat more specifically, it is an attempt to discover the range of historical conditions under which either or both of. these rural groups have 'become important forces behind the emergence of Western parliamentary versions of democracy. and dictatorships. of the right and the left, that is, fascist and communist regimes. Since no problem ever comes to the student of human society out of a blue and empty sky, it is worthwhile to indicate very briefly the considerations behind this one. For some time before be- ginning this work in earnest more than ten years ago, I had become skeptical of the thesis that industrialism was the main cause of twen- tieth-century totalitarian regimes, because of the very obvious fact that Russia and China were overwhelmingly agrarian countries when the communists established themselves. For a long time before that I had been convinced that adequate theoretical comprehension of political systems had to come to terms with Asian institutions and history. Hence it seemed at least a promising strategy to inves- tigate what political currents were set up among the classes who lived off the countryside and to devote as much attention to Asian as to Western societies. The book pres���nts first (in Part I) a discussion of the demo- cratic and capitalist route to the modern age as this transformation worked itself out in England, France, and the United States. My original intention had been to complete this section with similar chapters on Germany and Russia in order to show how the social

Preface and Acknowledgments origins of fascism and communism in Europe differed from those of parliamentary democracy. With some misgivings I decided to dis- card these two chapters, partly because the book was already quite long, partly because first-rate accounts became available during the Course of writing to which it was impossible for me to add any- thing by way of interpreting the social history of these two coun- tries. At the same time I have still drawn freely on German and Russian materials for the purpose of comparative illustration and in the theoretical discussion of Part III. The bibliography lists the Sources that have formed the basis of my conception of German and Russian social history. Abandoning explicit accounts of Ger- many and Russia has at least the compensating advantage of per- mitting more extended discussion (in Part II) of the Asiatic versions of fascism, communism, and parliamentary democracy, in Japan, China, and India, where agrarian problems remain acute. Since the history and social structure of these countries is often quite un- known to educated Western readers, critics may show some indul- gence to an author who writes more. about what he knows less. Against such a selection of cases it is possible to object that the range is too wide for effective coverage by one person and too nar- row to yield sound generalizations. About the possibility that the undertaking was too big it would be inappropriate for the author to say more than that there have been many times when he would have agreed heartily. Critics of the second type.might point out that none of the smaller states - Switzerland, Scandinavia, or the Low Countries on the democratic side, the smaller areas of communist victory or control on the other, such as Cuba, the satellites of East- ern Europe, North Vietnam, North Korea - receive any consider- ation. How is it possible to generalize about the growth of Western democracy or of cOlIlmunism while excluding them? Does not the exclusion of the smaller Western democratic states produce a cer- tain antipeasant bias throughout the whole book? To this objection there is, I think, an impersonal answer. This study concentrates on certain important stages in a prolonged social process which has worked itself out in several countries. As part of this process new social arrangements have grown up by violence and in other ways

:x SOCIA��� ORIGINS OF DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY which have made certain countries political leaders at different points in time during the first half of the twentieth century. The focus of interest is on innovation that has led to political power, not on the spread and reception of institutions that have been ham- mered out elsewhere, except where they have led to significant power in world politics. The fact that the smaller countries depend economically and politically" on big and powerful ones means that the decisive causes of their politics lie outside their own boundaries. It also means that their political problems are not really comparable to those of larger countries. Therefore a general statement about the historical preconditions of democracy or authoritarianism cover- ing small countries as well as large would very likely be so broad as to be abstractly platitudinous. From this standpoint the .analysis of the transformation of agradan society in specific countries produces results at least as re- warding as larger generalizations. It is important, for example, to know how the solution of agrarian problems contributed -to the es- tablishment of parliamentary democracy in England and the failure as "yet to solve very different ones constitutes a threat to democracy in India. Furthermore, for any given country one is bound to find lines of causation that do not fit easily into more general theories. Conversely too strong a devotion to theory always carries the dan- ger that one may overemphasize facts that fit a theory beyond their importance in the history of individual countries. For these reasons the interpretation of the transformation in several countries takes up the largest part of ���he book. In the effort to understarid the history of a specific country a comparative perspective can lead to asking very useful and some- times new questions. There "are further advantages. Comparisons can serve as a rough negative check on accepted historical explana- tions. And a comparative approach may lead to new historical gen- eralizations. In practice these features constitute a single intellectual process and make such a" study more than a disparate collection of interesting cases. For example, after noticing that Indian peasants have suffered in a material way just about as much as Chinese peas- ants during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries without generat-

Preface and Acknowledgments xi ing a massive revolutionary movement, one begins to wonder about traditional explanations of what took place in both societies and becomes alert to factors affecting peasant outbreaks in other coun- tries, in the hope of discerning general causes. Or after learning about the disastrous consequences for democracy of a coalition be- tween agrarian and industrial elites in nineteenth- and early twen- tieth-century Germany, the. much discussed marriage of iron and rye - one wonders why a similar marriage between iron and cotton did not prevent the coming of the Civil War in the United States and so one has taken a step toward specifying configurations favor- able and unfavorable to the establishment of modern Western de- moo-acy. That comparative analysis is no substitute for detailed investigation of specific cases is obvious. Generalizations that are sound resemble a large-scale map of an extended terrain, such as an airplane pilot might use in crossing a continent. Such maps are essential for certain purposes just as more detailed maps are necessary for others. No one seeking a prelimi- nary orientation to the terrain wants to know the location of every house and footpath. Still, if one explores on foot - and at present the comparative historian does exactly that a great deal of the time - the details are what one learns first. Their meaning and relation- ship emerges. only gradually. There can be long periods when the investigator feels lost in an underbrush of facts inhabited by special- ists engaged in savage disputes about whether the underbrush is a pine forest or a tropical jungle. He is \lnlikely to emerge from such encounters without scratches and bruises. And if he draws a map of the area he has visited, one of the natives may well accuse�� him of omitting his own house and clearing, a sad event if the researcher has actually found much sustenance and refreshment there. The outcry is likely to be all the sharper if at the end of the journey the explorer tries to set down in very brief form for those who may come later the mOst striking things that he has seen. That is exactly what I shall try to do now, to sketch in very broad strokes the main findings in order to give the reader a preliminary map of the terrain we shall explore together. In the range of cases examined here one may discern three

SOCIAL ORIGINS OF DIcrATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY main ,historical routes from the preindustrial to the modern world. The first of these leads through what I think deserve to be called bourgeois revolutions. Aside from the fact that this term is- a red flag to many scholars because of its Marxist connotations, it has other ambiguities and disadvantages. Nevertheless, for reasons that will appear in due course I think it is a necessary designation for certain violent changes that took place in English, French, and American societies on the way to becoming modern industrial de- mocracies and that historians connect with the Puritan Revolution (or the English Civil War as it is often called as well), the French Revolution, and the American Civil War. A key feature in such revolutions is the development of a group in society with an inde- pendent economic base, which attacks obstacles to a democratic version of capitalism that have been inherited fr!=,m the past. Though a great deal of the impetus has comeo"from trading and manufactur- ing classes in the cities, that is very far from the whole story. The allies this bourgeois impetus has found, the enemies it has encoun- tered, vary sharply from case to case. The landed upper classes, our main concern at the start, were either an important part of this cap- italist and democratic tide, as in England, or if they opposed it, they were swept aside in the convulsions of revolution or civil war. The same thing may ,be said about the peasants. Either the main thrust of their political efforts coincided with that toward capitalism and political qemocracy, or else it was negligible. And it was negligible eith!!r because capitalist advance destroyed peasant society or be- cause this advance began in a new country, such as the United States, without a real peasantry. The first and earlier route through the great revolutions and civil wars led to the combination of capitalism and Western democ- racy. The second route has also been capitalist, but culminated dur- ing the twentieth century in fascism. Germany and Japan are the obvious cases, though only the latter receives detailed treatment in this study for reasons given above. I shall call this the capitalist and reactionary form. It amounts to a form of revolution from above. In these countries the bourgeois impulse was much weaker. If it took a revolutionary form at all, the revolution was defeated. After-

Preface and Acknowledgments xiii ward sections of a relatively weak commercial and industrial class relied on dissident elements in the older and still dominant ruling classes, mainly recruited from the land, to put through the political and economic changes required for a modern industrial society, un- der ��the auspices of a semi-parliamentary regime . . Industrial devel- opment may proceed rapidly under such auspices. But the outcome, after a brief and unstable period of democracy, has been fascism. The third route is of course communism, as exemplified in Russia and in China. The great agrarian bureaucracies of these countries served to inhibit the commercial and later industrial impulses even more than in the preceding instances. The results were twofold. In the first place these urban classes were too weak to constitute even a junior partner in the form of modernization taken by Germany and Japan, though there were attempts in this direction. And in the absence of more than the most feeble steps toward modernization a huge peasantry remained. This stratum, subject to new strains and stresses as the modern world encroached upon it, provided the main destructive revolutionary force that overthrew the old order and propelled these countries into the modern era under communist leadership that made the peasants its primary victims. Finally, in India we may perceive still a fourth general pattern that accounts for the weak impulse toward modernization. In that country so far there has been neither a capitalist revolution from above or below, nor a peasant one leading to communism. Likewise the impulse toward modernization has been very weak. On the other hand, at least some of the historical prerequisites of Western democracy did put in an appearance. A parliamentary regime has existed for some time that is considerably more than mere fa���ade. Because the impulse toward modernization has been weakest in India, this case stands somewhat apart from any theoretical scheme that it seems possible to construct for the others. At the same time it serves as a salutary check upon such generalizations. It is especially useful in trying to understand peasant revolutions, since the degree of rural misery in India where there has been no peasant revolution is about the same as in China where rebellion and revolution have been decisive in both premodern and recent times.