Rook Reviews /1121 "Reflexively Modern." However, When I Called Our Pre-Postmodern Plumber, He Chuckled and Said, "It Don't Work 'Round Here

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Rook Reviews /1121 "reflexively modern." However, when I called our pre-postmodern plumber, he chuckled and said, "It don't work 'round here ... but if you want me to put one in, I will. No guarantee, though. "T had spent much time and hope planning my emancipation from The Dead Hand of Tradi- tion, with the aid of an expensive computer and a stack of printer paper. Yet obdurate structure, social and physical, had the last laugh. And it al- ways will. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/75/3/1121/2233538 by guest on 01 October 2021

Social Revolutions in the Modern World. By Theda Skocpol. Cambridge University Press,1994.354 pp.

Reviewer: DANIEL CHIROT, University of Washington Theda Skocpol's essays in Social Revolutions in the Modern World have already been reviewed by such noted social scientists as Charles Tilly and Francis Fukuyama. Ten of the twelve essays were published in the 1970s and early 1980s, two are from the late 1980s, and only the conclusion was written for this book. Moreover, neither social revolutions nor historical sociology as it was practiced during the 1970s and 1980s are among Skocpol's main interests these days. Rather, the history of social welfare in the U.S. and contemporary policy controversies about health care are the focus of her attention. Why, then, is it important to discuss this book once more? Because it more or less unwittingly marks the death of a type of sociology that once attracted some of the best minds in the discipline but that contained within itself contradictions that could not be resolved. How that happened is worth knowing. Rereading the older essays in the book is a reminder of how refreshing, intelligent, thorough, and professionally courageous they were. This is especially true of her critiques of two of the leading icons in historical sociology at that time, Barrington Moore and Immanuel Wallerstein. In her 1973 critique of Moore's already classic work on political modernization and revolution, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Skocpol did something very few young scholars could have done. She acknowledged the greatness of the book and her debt to Moore, her teacher at Harvard, but at the same time she exposed what was almost its fatal flaw. By re- maining so closely tied to traditional Marxist class analysis, Moore neglected the role of the state administration and rulers, who could be and often were independent actors with their own interests; and he entirely overlooked the international setting in which modernization occurred. These were precisely the points she would make in her own 1979 book, Stafes and Social Revolutions. Moore also took the impulse to economic de- velopment for granted, thus missing the key ingredient in the important modern revolutions, namely, the failure of old regimes to keep up with the most advanced, and therefore most threatening parts of the world. Thus, as 1122 / Social Forces 75:3, March 1997 she puts it, "Social Origin's [sic] entire structure of assumptions and sequence- explanations collapses." She was absolutely right. Skocpol herself would go on in States and Social Revolutions and in some of the essays in this collection (especially the one co-authored with Ellen Kay Trimberger) to posit an evolutionary-functionalist argument: So- cieties ruled by classes and systems unable to keep abreast of international competition and directly threatened by that lag were the ones ripe for

revolution. Revolution was not, as traditional Marxists had claimed, the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/75/3/1121/2233538 by guest on 01 October 2021 exclusive or even primary product of internal class conflicts set off by commercialization and economic modernization. Yes, such processes en- gendered discontent and conflict, but these were endemic in agrarian states anyway, and their presence could hardly explain why, in some cases, there were revolutions, while in most there were not. Nor were the immediate winners of revolutions likely to be the vanguard representatives of the next ruling class, but rather, in the case of France, Russia, and China, a newly invigorated and nationalist state bureaucracy whose chief accomplishment would be massive military mobilization of the nation. Skocpol would certainly deny that she is an evolutionary functionalist, because in the 1970s, and to some extent to this day, this was viewed as the theoretical stance of an older generation of "reactionaries" in sociology. Nevertheless, that is the essence of her argument. Her 1977 review of Immanuel Wallerstein's sanctified first volume on the birth of The Modern World System was considerably more devastating than her criticism of Moore because it exposed its essential argument as a sham rather than as a fruitful error. Wallerstein's argument, she found, turned out to be both teleological and tautological. "Repeatedly," she writes, "he argues that things at a certain time and place had to be a certain way to bring about later states or developments that accord with what his system model of the world capitalist economy requires or predicts." Thus, when certain facts fit his requirements, he includes them. But when they do not, Wallerstein leaves them out "or (more frequently) they are discussed, perhaps at length, only to be explained in ad hoc ways and/or treated as 'accidental' in relation to the supposedly more fundamental connections emphasized by the world-systems theory." This statement comes about as close to an accusation of fundamental intellectual dishonesty as it is possi- ble to make without actually calling it that. But she then retreats and in- stead ascribes Wallerstein's methodological obfuscation to the fact that he was so eager to discredit modernization theory that he feli into the trap of using its categories and ways of thinking. However grave some of their errors, without Moore and Wallerstein, there would not have been the "historical sociology" of the 1970s and 1980s, at least not as we knew it. It is true that were other established mas- ters in the field (who get criticized much less in Skocpol's essays): Rein- hard Bendix, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Eric Wolf, Charles Tilly. Yet, none of them had the electrifying impact on graduate students and young scholars that Moore and Wallerstein had. In exposing their basic errors, therefore, Book Reviews / 1123 Skocpol actually exposed the contradictions that ultimately would under- mine the whole enterprise. Now, two decades later, with the war In Viet- nam a historical memory, with revolutionary communism dead, and with American sociology ever more concerned with internal social problems of race and gender, the ideological enthusiasm that once papered over these fundamental flaws has been stripped away. Revolutionary Marxist historical sociology is on its death bed.

Skocpol was not, however, willing to take on, or even recognize the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/75/3/1121/2233538 by guest on 01 October 2021 basic reason for this failure. Nor is she prepared to do so now. Moore and Wallerstein, and in fact the entire field of historical sociology they in- spired, began and remained an essentially anti-American, anti-bourgeois movement for whom empirical analysis was only a means to a greater ideological goal. Skocpol, whose devotion to very high professional stan- dards are unquestionable, and within the ranks of historical sociology almost unmatched, could not confront this ideology head on because it would have alienated her from the field and from her generation of intel- lectuals. To resolve this contradiction in her otherwise exceptionally per- ceptive evaluation of others in the field, she convinced herself that ideology is unimportant, both for social revolutions, and therefore, presumably, for historical sociology itself. Moore's conviction that communism was the only good path toward modernization in the twentieth century came out most clearly in his com- parison of India and China. India's suffering without end was contrasted to China's brutal but efficient revolutionary modernization. What Moore missed because of his ideological blinders was that India's slow economic growth for decades after independence was caused by its autarkic and socialist policies, not by the absence of revolution, and this was a function of its leaders' ideological convictions. Meanwhile, China's supposed successes had, by the time he wrote his book, already caused some 30 million completely needless deaths through starvation during the Great Leap For- ward, also because of the ideological fantasies of its leaders. China would not become an economic successes until Mao had almost wrecked the country during the Cultural Revolution, and the surviving leaders after his death drastically changed course. Wallerstein's ideology was more coherent than Moore's. He wanted to promote world socialist revolution and expose capitalism as an unnatural and evil system. It was therefore impossible to discuss the rise of capitalism as if it were fundamentally anything more than a system of efficient piracy. This is why, for example, his model required the seventeenth century Netherlands to be ruled by a strong state, even though one did not exist there. Wallerstein could not accept the notion that there is something inherently dynamic and creative about societies in which entrepreneurs have great freedom to engage in their business. Wealth could only result from organized force used to systematically exploit the weak. There fol- lowed a whole series of distortions — including a complete neglect of the roots of European scientific and technological progress. These mistakes 1124 / Social Forces 75:3, March 1997 were not just a matter of falling into the trap of using the categories of his theoretical opponents, but were the logical consequence of his original ideological intent. Repeatedly, historical sociologists have made errors like this because of their ideological distaste for, and misunderstanding of, how capitalism works. When Skocpol rips into Jeffery Paige's Agrarian Revolution, she ac- cuses him of simply getting his history wrong in order to prove his case

that landless peasants are the only genuinely revolutionary agrarian forces. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/75/3/1121/2233538 by guest on 01 October 2021 But Paige was, and still is, a romantic, revolutionary Marxist. For better or for worse, the only evidence that counts for him is the one that fits his particular faith. This is not a matter of dishonesty anymore than it is for Wallerstein, and certainly it is not caused in either case by stupidity or lack of attention to detail. One cannot blame a faithful Christian for accepting what evidence there is that there was a resurrection, and of rejecting any contrary assertion. It is true that most of those who fell in love historical sociology in the 1970s were swept up by its exhilarating revolutionary implications. They failed to see how ideological and limited it was, and how greatly its popu- larity depended on the political circumstances of that time. Theda Skocpol was more careful. She saw the mistakes being made by the major figures in this field, and though she was sympathetic to some of the political implications of their work, she was herself sufficiently unideological and brutally objective to expose their errors. But her own sense that ideology was ir- relevant made it impossible for her to take the next step. In her concluding essay she claims that her work, which remedied some of the most severe flaws in the sociological analysis of the Marxists, laid the base for a vigorous and healthy contemporary kind of comparative historical sociology. But this is a hollow claim, and both her own career choices and the state of the field show this. There is far lens interest within sociology for this kind of work than there was when American imperialism was a contentious issue on every campus. Broad comparative historical work is viewed as suspiciously as ever by most historians. Considerations of postmodern culture, identity, and meaning preoccupy the "soft" social sciences like cultural anthropology, and for that, the kind of logically rig- orous class, structural, and institutional analysis demanded by Skocpol is inappropriate. Political Science wants rational choice. This means, as she points out in attacking a rather extreme, and almost caricatured version of rational choice theory in art article by Edgar Kiser and Michael Hechter, impatience with detail, scrounging through historical material to prove a theoretical point that is already widely accepted, and complete lack of interest in what actually happened in the past. Compared to both "porno" and "rat-choice" versions of historical sociology, the old-fashioned Marx- ists were far more engaging and relevant to our understanding of what bas moved modern history, no matter how ideologically biased they were. To fully explain the extent of the failure of revolutionary historical sociology it is necessary to grapple with what is lacking in Skocpol's own Book Reviews / 1125 work in this area. In a move that testifies to her own intellectual courage, she acknowledges the importante of her best critic, William H. Sewell Jr., by including one of his essays in this book. Simply put, Sewell claims that particular ideological circumstances count. The French Revolution took place in an intellectual climate that widely accepted Enlightenment thinking. Not just class interests, the international setting, and bureaucratic ma- neuvering, but the ways in which political movements and powerful indi-

viduals were thinking made a big difference in the outcomes of revolu- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/75/3/1121/2233538 by guest on 01 October 2021 tions. The argument between Skocpol and Sewell is an old one and is really between whole fields and philosophies of social science and history. It is hardly likely to be resolved soon. But it is particularly well expressed in the exchange in this book. Sewell is fundamentally right. Skocpol's attempt to get around ideology, including a somewhat lame attempt to show that the Iranian Revolu- tion of 1979 fits her theory, leads her to a dead end. She is quite right to in- sist that it is impossible to predict revolutions by looking at the ideology of revolutionaries, because structural conditions determine whether or not revolutions take place at all. But where she errs, as Sewell points out, is to neglect the ideological intent of those who take power. Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ceausescu, Pol Pot, Castro, the Sandinistas, the Iranian clerics, or for that matter, Hitler (one of the major revolutionaries of our century who cannot be recognized as such by the peculiar insistence of Marxist historiography that he was a representative of bourgeois interests) were utopian visionaries who tried to impose their theories on recal- citrant humans. Therein lies the tragedy of the twentieth century, and somehow, it was all missed by historical sociology. Leaving aside the French Revolution and concentrating only on the twentieth century, it turns out that there is no case of what Skocpol defines as successful social revolution that has actually succeeded, though in Iran the inevitable ulti- mate failure is still sometime in the future. Great political philosophers, such as Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper, and many historians have analyzed the general reasons for these failures, but they do not appear in the pages of Social Revolutions in the Modern World. In the end, it was not the peasants or the workers, or international forces, or nationalist bureaucrats that made the great revolutionary leaders of our century mass murderers (who came closer to destroying their societies than saving them), it was their ideology and the opportunity for evil afforded them by the chaos in their societies. Skocpol is excellent when she analyzes the structural conditions that led to such chaos, but entirely silent about the causes and outcomes of various ideological movements. The few sociologists who have made heroic attempts to keep the field of historical sociology going by broadening it to include matters of culture and ideology are either neglected by Skocpol in her concluding essays, or patronizingly dismissed. Jack Goldstone, probably her most distinguished student so far, is rightly praised for his demographic slant to the analysis of structural crises that lead to revolution, but chastised for trying to in- 11261 Social Forces 75:3, March 1997 troduce concepts of ideological legitimacy and culture. Goldstone did this in response to the fall of communism in Europe in 1989, and however in- complete his thinking is so far in this area, he is on the right track to try to add this dimension to his analysis. Liah Greenfeld is not mentioned at all. Her ambitious book, National- ism, tried to explain the rise of this most powerful of all modern ideologies and to connect the failed totalitarian ideologies of Russia and Germany to

specific, historically grounded intellectual cultures. Though her work is Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/75/3/1121/2233538 by guest on 01 October 2021 deeply flawed in many ways, it also suggests a new and very fruitful path that historical sociology might take by concentrating on ideological and cultural social history rather than on structural-materialist analysis. Na- tionalism has been widely discussedj it has been praised as a work of genius and bitterly criticized. This should make it a natural target for Skocpol. But even though Skocpol had thoroughly read Greenfeld's work years before it was published in 1992, and has strong opinions about it, she refuses to engage it in her lengthy concluding essay. In fact, rather than confronting its antimaterialist, antistructural argument head on in public debate, she tried to suppress the publication of the book behind the scenes. Nor is John A. Hall's Powers and Liberties mentioned in her conclusion, and neither is his interesting work on civil society. Rogers Brubaker, whose comparative work on European citizenship is fascinating, is absent, too. These and other sociologists are trying to keep alive historical sociology, but they do not appear to interest Skocpol because they are not structural materialists. But if historical sociology is to survive as a field, it will have to take ideology, and, more broadly, culture more seriously. And it will have to break more decisively with Marxist class analysis. Theda Skocpol went part of the way, but she now rejects those who would go fur- ther. At one time, when Sewell criticized her, she was willing to debate these issues publicly, but now she is not. That is understandable, but not necessarily excusable.

Conflicts and New Departures in World Society. Edited by Volker Bornschier and Peter Lengyel. Transaction Publishers, 1994. 409 pp. Cloth, $49.95.

Reviewer: DAVID A. SMITH, University of California, Irvine The World Society Foundation is headquartered in the Sociological Insti- tute at the University of Zurich and provides small grants (most under $40,000) for scholarly research. The foundation "favors no particular school of thought, but is open to different theoretical and methodological approaches to the social scientific study of world society." This book is the third volume in a series reporting results from this funded research. The idea of a Swiss foundation promoting studies of the structures of and changes in world society intrigued me. The very catholic approach