solidarity of the rebels; possession of a special linguistic code provides for an
autonomous system of communication’ (Wolfe, 1968, p. 292).
Finally, revolution in agrarian societies is dependent on the threat to the
peasantry from the upper classes. Wolfe identifies the middle peasants as
those who conform to the model later provided by Barrington Moore of rev-
olutionary potential under the impact of commercial agriculture. The mid-
dle peasants in the countries studied by Wolfe were most vulnerable to the
changes brought about by commercialization – population growth, compe-
tition from other landlords, the loss of rights to grazing land and water,
falling prices, interest payments and foreclosures – while remaining locked
into traditional social structures of mutual aid between kin and neighbours.
Moore’s study compared societies in which revolution occurred with
those where it did not though it might have been expected to. A number of
hypotheses offering explanations of why peasant-based revolutions
occurred were tested to discover ‘what kinds of social structures and histor-
ical situations produce peasant revolutions and which ones inhibit or
prevent them’ (Moore, B., 1973, p. 453).
First, a number of plausible explanations were discarded. The theory that
revolution among the peasantry occurs when the situation of the peasantry
deteriorates markedly under the impact of commerce and industry is dis-
missed because of the case of India, where the deterioration in the economic
position of the peasantry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was
as great as in China but where the political behaviour of the Indian peas-
antry was very different. The proposition that ‘a large rural proletariat of
landless labour is a potential source of insurrection and revolution’ also falls
foul of the historical evidence from China, where the ‘revolutionary
upsurges of 1927 and 1949 were certainly not those of a rural proletariat
working huge landed estates’ (p. 455).
Religion might be thought to be the crucial variable, with Hinduism
accounting for the passivity of the Indian peasantry. However, Moore argues
that religions teaching resignation, acceptance, fatalism and the legitimacy
of the social and political order are the product of urban and priestly classes
and by no means necessarily part of peasant beliefs. Even though heretical
movements in Asia have broken out from time to time, they have not uni-
versally accompanied important peasant upheavals.
Moore’s conclusion is that such explanations have concentrated too much
on the actions of the peasantry and not enough on the actions of the upper
classes. What determined whether the peasantry was revolutionary was the
response of the upper class to the challenge of commercial agriculture.
Revolution is most likely when the aristocracy damages the interests of the
248 Understanding Third World Politics