I'd rather be a hammer than a nail? (A Short History of Social Revolutions)

"Administrative and military breakdowns of the autocracies inaugurated social-revolutionary transformations." 112 This is a precondition for social revolution. With the sounds of the crumbling old regime in the distance and the smoke still bellowing in the air a new variable marches on the horizon, yes the mighty peasants wrapped in a shroud of party ideology and whistling to the cadence of the urban proletariat. Standing on shattered ground are the landlords and the gentry, coat of arms and ducats in hand, waiting for divine reprieve?

"They (peasants) struggled for concrete goals-typically involving access to more land, or freedom from claims on their surpluses." 112 This struggle was the beginning of the end for the landed class. The struggle was perpetuated by solidarity, autonomy and the relaxation of state controls for the peasant class. Give them in inch and they will take a mile. Specifically, the noble noose was loosened through kinship groups, community institutions, historically specific arrangements, agrarian rental systems and local government.

Examples of such historical bamboozling:

The French peasants in the late 1700's were landowners, which give them control of the land itself, developing a sense of fortitude and strength, which the peasants should never have or get away with. Moreover, the rental claims were amassing at an ever-climbing pace. Proprietorial rent payments, seigneurial dues and income taxation dug at the core of peasant life and began to fester, leaving sores of discontent and anguish. And then the blister popped. Ahh the ooze of revolution saturated with hate and displaced rage.

This ooze needed a virus to create an infection, which would bring any state structure to its knees, a disease of economic distress. Now the preverbal shit hits the fan, harvest failure, unemployment, estates general called, payment of taxes end and bread riots scream through the countryside; the echoes of 'let them eat cake' bounce off cave walls in the Rhone region to the delight of no one.

And in mother Russia life is cold, hard and full of borsch. Red faces cry in their beet soup as emancipation only brings doubt and disillusionment with the tsarist plan of reorganization and industrial manipulation. But at least they have the obshchina and temperatures in the teens during March. The peasant in the face of reinforced nobility and no real individualism (Mill is overrated anyway) begins to stand a little taller and realizes that mother Russia is the man in the mirror. For, "the overall effect of the post Emancipation measures (were) to increase the peasants collective handling of their own local political affairs and thus to render the villages more autonomous and solidarity against outsiders." 132 More power and nothing to do, a recipe for frustration and conflagration. The missing ingredient was a failed war. But wait the Japanese are willing to supply a little sugar to the revolutionary cake of mother Russia. Crushed by the island nation mother Russia was reeling in disbelief and the peasants were ripe for a massive uprising. Fortunately for the tsarist hierarchy the military was able to regroup just in time to clamp down on those bothersome peasants. But the die had been cast.



States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China
-by Theda Skocpol (citied works)