States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China

Citation

Skocpol, T. (2015). States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Canto Classics ed.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1979.)

Chapter Summary

The book has a preface, an introduction, seven chapters in two parts, and a conclusion, about 420 pages in the 2015 Canto Classics reprint, with notes and a bibliography taking up roughly the last 130 pages. In her preface Skocpol says the work offers a frame of reference rather than fresh evidence: it uses comparative history to explain the causes and outcomes of the French Revolution (1787–1800), the Russian Revolution (1917–1921) and the Chinese Revolution (1911–1949), after a critical look at the assumptions behind existing theories of revolution.

Chapter 1: Explaining Social Revolutions: Alternatives to Existing Theories

The programmatic chapter. Skocpol examines the explanations of revolution that were then standard, Marxist and non-Marxist alike, and argues that they do not fit the historical pattern of actual revolutions. She sketches the principles of a different analysis that puts states, understood as administrative and coercive organisations, at the centre. The remaining chapters apply this programme.

Part I, Chapters 2–3: Old-Regime States in Crisis; Agrarian Structures and Peasant Insurrections

Part I explains the causes of revolution in France, Russia and China. Chapter 2 traces the state and class structures and international position of the Bourbon, Tsarist and Imperial Chinese old regimes, with particular emphasis on how these states fell into crisis. Chapter 3 turns to the countryside, to the structures that made peasant insurrections possible during the revolutionary interregnums.

Part II, Chapters 4–7: What Changed and How: A Focus on State Building; The Birth of a "Modern State Edifice" in France; The Emergence of a Dictatorial Party-State in Russia; The Rise of a Mass-Mobilizing Party-State in China

Part II is about outcomes. Chapter 4 sets out what changed in the three revolutions and why state building is the focus; Chapters 5–7 then follow each country in turn: a modern state structure in France, a dictatorial party-state in Russia and a mass-mobilizing party-state in China.

Conclusion

The final chapter gathers the argument about the causes and outcomes of social revolutions into general conclusions about revolutions and the place of the state in explaining them.

Key Concepts

Chapter 1

• Social revolution: the type of transformation the book sets out to explain, rare but of great importance in modern history.
• State as an autonomous organisation: the claim that states are administrative and coercive organisations potentially independent of class controls and interests.

Part I

• Old-regime state crisis: the breakdown of the Bourbon, Tsarist and Imperial Chinese states, the main subject of Chapter 2.
• Peasant insurrection: how agrarian structures made rural revolt possible, the subject of Chapter 3.

Part II

• State building: the focus for judging the outcomes of revolution.
• Party-state: the form that the post-revolutionary state took in Russia and China, in contrast with the French outcome.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear explanatory claim. The publisher's description is direct: states, international forces and class relations together explain revolutions, and the state must be central. Everything from the structure of the chapters to the conclusion serves that claim.
• Three cases treated at length. Pairing a causal part with an outcomes part, and giving France, Russia and China a chapter each in the second, shows how a comparative argument is organised.
• Recognised importance. Charles Tilly, quoted on the Cambridge page, calls it a book "worth studying, refuting, testing, elaborating, and emulating". Lewis Coser predicted in the New York Times Book Review that it would be a landmark in the study of the sources of revolution.
• Arguments rather than new evidence. The preface says the book is of the argumentative kind, a feature that makes it useful as a model of how to build and defend an explanation.

Limitations

• Three cases only. The argument rests on three revolutions, so any reader will want to ask how far it extends to others.
• Historical knowledge assumed. The chapter titles refer to the Bourbon, Tsarist and Imperial Chinese old regimes and the Bolshevik and Chinese Communist party-states; readers new to these histories will need some background reading.
• A 1979 text. The 2015 Canto Classics edition reissues the book first published in 1979, so later work on revolutions has to be read separately.
• Scholarly apparatus. Roughly the last 130 pages are notes and bibliography, which suits scholars but means the main text is shorter than the page count suggests.

Where It Fits in the Course

The political sociology list has two textbook surveys, Orum and Dale's Political Sociology and Nash's Contemporary Political Sociology, a short orientation in Clemens's What Is Political Sociology?, and an ethnography of political feeling in Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land. Skocpol is a different kind of book: a single sustained comparative-historical argument about states and revolutions, best read after a survey has introduced the state, power and class.

Tilly's Coercion, Capital and European States is its closest companion, since it also treats the state as an organisation shaped by coercion and war, but over a thousand years of European history rather than three revolutions. Read them together to compare how each builds a historical argument about states.

How to Use This Book

The book suits advanced undergraduates and graduate students in sociology, political science and history who want to study revolutions, state power or comparative-historical method. A first course in political sociology or comparative politics and some knowledge of modern French, Russian and Chinese history are enough to start.

Read the preface and Chapter 1 first, since they state the argument and the theories it challenges. Then choose one country at a time: read the relevant part of Chapter 2, the relevant part of Chapter 3, and the matching chapter from 5 to 7, using Chapter 4 as the bridge. Finish with the conclusion. For a seminar on method, Chapter 1 and the conclusion alone make a compact pair.