Social Revolution: A Latin American Perspective

Abstract

The more celebrated comparative studies of social revolutions have tended to concentrate on European and Asian cases, especially the great triad of France, Russia and China. With the exception of Wolf (1973), they have given little attention to Latin America. Moore hazards the passing observation that many Latin American cases may fit within his category of 'semiparliamentary governments', engaged on a 'revolution from above' (Moore, 1969: 438); Skocpol obliquely mentions?and misinterprets?the Mexican Revolution (Skocpol, 1979:288). Brinton (1965), Johnson (1968), Baechler (1975)?to name but a selection?confine themselves rigorously to the Old World. In short, the 'great' Latin American revolutions?Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba?have rarely been integrated into the mainstream debate concerning the causes, character and consequences of social revolution. This paper suggests some tentative conclusions concerning these revolu? tions, their place within the broader category of social revolution, and certain theories which claim to illuminate that category. Part of the exercise is negative: I criticise both the state-centred approach favoured by Skocpol and, more generally, theories which purport to find recurrent patterns in the etiology or process of revolutions. More positively, I argue the importance of class relations as against state-building in the analysis of revolutions, and I suggest that conventional chronological and geographical compartments (such as 'twentieth century' and 'Third World') are often misleading and should be broken down. Recent theories have tried to put the state back into revolutionary etiology. Skocpol's influential thesis seeks to show that the diagnostic feature of social revolutions has been their intimate relationship, both causal and functional,