Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Moore Barrington

Author:Moore, Barrington [Moore, Barrington]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2003-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

As one looks back over the history of the Japanese village since the seventeenth century, the feature most likely to strike the historian is its continuity. The oligarchical structure, internal solidarity, and effective vertical ties with higher authority all survived with very little change the transition to modern production for the market. At the same time, historical continuity itself provides no explanation; it is something that requires explanation, especially when so much else has changed. The essence of the explanation, I would urge, lies in the fact that the landlords maintained most of the old village structure because through it they could extract and sell enough of a surplus to stay on top of the heap. Those who did not make the grade provided recruits for agrarian pseudoradicalism. The substitution of tenancy relations for pseudokinship was the only institutional change needed. All this was possible only in a rice culture, where, as events were to show, traditional methods could greatly raise productivity. Unlike the English landlord of the eighteenth century, the Prussian Junker in the sixteenth, or Russian Communists in the twentieth, the Japanese ruling classes found that they could get their way without destroying the prevailing peasant society. If working through the traditional social structure had not brought results, I doubt that the Japanese landlord would have spared the village any more than did landlords elsewhere.

The adaptability of Japanese political and social institutions to capitalist principles enabled Japan to avoid the costs of a revolutionary entrance onto the stage of modern history. Partly because she escaped these early horrors, Japan succumbed in time to fascism and defeat. So did Germany for very broadly the same reason. The price for avoiding a revolutionary entrance has been a very high one. It has been high in India as well. There the play has not yet reached the culminating act; the plot and the characters are different. Still, lessons learned from all the cases studied so far may prove helpful in understanding what the play means.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.