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26 J. Conflict Resol. 3 (1982)

handle is hein.journals/jcfltr26 and id is 1 raw text is: Scarcity and Inequality PROLOGUE TO THE ONSET OF MASS REVOLUTION MANUS I. MIDLARSKY Department of Political Science University of Colorado, Boulder This study examines the relationship between scarcity and inequality, especially in the comparison between the behavior of agrarian and industrial societies. Specifically, we ask why it is that major revolutions almost always occur in predominantly agrarian societies but almost never in industrial ones. Whereas industrialized countries experience increased equality with increased abundance, and follow a hypothesized curvilinear function, this is not true for agrarian societies as evidenced in three data sets. Redistributive and authenticating revolutions follow from the scarcity condition. Exponential distributions of landholdings and increased inequality are found to apply in agrarian, prerevolutionary situations. Land inequality is a potent predictor of mass revolution. Population growth is found to be a major source of inequality, and the emergence of inequality even in advanced industrial societies suggests certain similarities with the early stages of the agrarian sector. Thus, the future stability of the more industrialized countries may be threatened. In recent years, the importance of agrarian social structure has come to be emphasized in the study of revolution. This is seen in Paige's (1975) analysis of agrarian revolution, Skocpol's (1979) treatment of major revolutions of the contemporary period, and Trimberger's (1978) analysis of the consequences of revolution. Despite the now prevalent understanding of major revolutions such as the French, Russian, or Chinese as having arisen in predominantly agrarian societies with AUTHOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Peace Science Society (International), Western Section, Stanford, California, February 26-27, 1979, and incorporates material presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Boston, Massachusetts, August 27-31, and the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.,August 31-September JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 26 No. 1, March 1982 3-38 @ 1982 Sage Publications, Inc. 3 from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

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