Ideologies and Social Revolutions: Reflections on the French Case

Abstract

This article was inspired-perhaps I should say provoked-by Theda Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions. 1 I believe that her book deserves the general acclaim it has received as a model of comparative historical analysis and as a brilliant contribution to the sociology of revolutions. But I also believe that Skocpol's treatment of the role of ideology in revolution is inadequate. This article begins by developing an alternative to Skocpol's conception of ideology, then demonstrates how this alternative conception can help to illuminate the history of the French Revolution, and concludes with some suggestions for future comparative studies of revolutions. Skocpol's goal in States and Social Revolutions is to specify, by means of a comparative historical analysis, the causes and the outcomes of the three great social revolutions of modern times: the French, the Russian, and the Chinese. She analyzes revolutions from what she terms a "non-voluntarist, structuralist perspective,"2 emphasizing three fundamental structural relations: (1) between classes (especially landlords and peasants), (2) between classes and states, and (3) between different states in international relations. To summarize a very complex and subtle argument, Skocpol sees a particular combination of conditions as being conducive to social revolution: (1) wellorganized and autonomous peasant communities, (2) a dominant class of absentee agricultural rentiers who are highly dependent on the state, and (3) a semibureaucratized state that falls behind in military competition with rival states. When these three conditions are present, as they were in different ways in France, Russia, and China, the result can be social revolution-a breakdown of the state, a peasant uprising, a transformation of class relations, and, eventually, a massive consolidation of bureaucratic power in a new state. One of Skocpol 's most important contributions to the history and sociology of revolutions is her approach to the problem of multiple causation. All serious analysts agree that the causes of revolutions are complex. But in the face of this complexity they usually employ one of two strategies: a "hierarchical" strategy of asserting the primacy of some type of cause over the