Rethinking Revolutions and Collective Violence: Studies on Concept, Theory and Methodby Rod Aya

Rethinking Revolutions and Collective Violence: Studies on Concept, Theory and Method byRod AyaReview by: Brian MeeksSocial and Economic Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1 (MARCH 1992), pp. 213-222Published by: Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the WestIndiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27865059 .

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Social and Economic Studies 41:1 (1992) ISSN: 0037-7651

REVIEW ESSAYS

Rethinking Revolutions and Collective Violence: Studies on Con

cept, Theory and Method. Rod Aya. Heb Spinhuis Publishers, 1990, ISBN 90-73052-08-4; 195 pp.

Twentieth century social scientific thinking on the subject of revolution can perhaps, be categorised as a series of four successive

waves.1 The first, best exemplified by the work of Crane Brinton,

George Pettee, G. Lebon2 and others adopted ad hoc anatomical or

psychological schema to suggest that revolutions were essentially violent illnesses on the body politic, aberrations from the norm which needed to be avoided, or if acquired, eliminated as urgently as possible. Hurried responses to the post world war one European

revolutionary wave, they were rooted in thin methodological soil.

While making pointed observations on the tendency of revolutions to follow a typical routine, usually ending in a Thermidorian outcome, they were considered inadequate to address the post second world war revolutionary wave, which was concentrated

for the most part in the newly independent countries of the

"Third World". For this task, a new school of largely American

social scientists emerged to do battle. Rooted in a positivist and

quantitative tradition, scholars like Ted Gurr, James Davies, the

Feierabends and Chalmers Johnson,3 sought, travelling through

anthropological, sociological and political science streams to

understand revolutions, which were often equated with collective

violence. Behind the flashing lights of massive data collection

techniques, this wave came to a remarkable similar set of conclu

sions: revolutions were caused by accumulated frustrations. When

these frustrations reached a certain critical mass, they burst out in

revolutionary upheavals. The point was, how to prevent the vol

cano from exploding. Out of a series of trenchant criticisms of these

hypotheses, a third school emerged gradually, beginning with

Barrington Moore's Social Origins ofDic?^rship and Democracy and Eric Wolfs Peasant wars of the TwentietkCentury and ending pp 213-240



214 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES

at its high point in Hieda Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions, first appearing in 1979.4 In short, Skocpol represented a qualitative advance over the earlier wave because she shifted focus from the

notion of diffuse, frustrated masses as the engine of revolt to the state. She emphasized the position of the state in a competitive world of nation states and focused on the competition between

elites in charge of and around the state apparatus. She asserted that it was at the conjuncture where old regimes faced unprecedented pressures from both outside and within, that revolutionary situ

ations emerged. Further, Skocpol proceeded beyond the second wave theorists' primary concern with the causes of revolutions to

look also at their outcomes. The character of popular uprisings which accompanied the revolutionary crisis, and the degree of

autonomy of these forces from the revolutionary vanguard, were

factors which came together to help dictate the character of the post

revolutionary regime.

However, while Skocpol was regarded as making significant advances over the earlier school, nagging problems remained with

her analysis. Dunn, for example, argued that it placed too much

emphasis on structural factors;5 Hermassi that it focused too nar

rowly on the so-called "Great Revolutions";6 and Farhi and Goldfrank

that it placed insufficient importance on the role of ideological and cultural factors in understanding the phenomenon.7 Beyond Skocpol, we might suggest, a fourth wave is emerging which is trying to

adopt the methodological lessons learnt from the Skocpolian oeuvre, while at the same time incorporating the role of agency, ideology and culture in a less positivist and determinisi approach to the subject.

Roy Aya's book Rethinking Revolutions and Collective Violence is a product of this fourth wave of thought. Designed primarily for the social historian or specialist political scientist student of revolution, it is nonetheless an eminently readable commentary on the subject, witty and biting in parts, if somewhat belaboured by excessive footnotes. In attempting to construct his

alternative approach to the understanding of revolutions, Aya goes



Review Essays 215

through three stages: He begins by attempting to redefine revolu tions; he then engages in a dismissive critique of what he calls the

"volcano" theorists; finally, he presents an alternative methodo

logical approach based on a "political" model, utilizing the notion

of "vicarious problem solving". In this, he is largely successful in

throwing light on the tactics of revolutionary elites in revolution

ary situations, but falls short in so far as he provides little help for an understanding of the occurrence of revolutions in the sweep of

history or the recurrence of revolution as myth, symbolising

change and progress.

Aya begins by recognizing that there are serious conceptual problems inherent in the generic definition of revolution. Many studies have rushed headlong into the factual evidence of specific "revolutions" without a clear conceptualization of the phenome non. The concept, he suggests, can be broken down into three

distinct areas: first, revolutionary intentions, where the aim of the

primary actors is to radically transform; secondly, revolutionary outcomes, or the fact of radical transformation; thirdly, revolution

ary situations, where "dual power" exists and contending forces battle for state power. None of these, he argues, can be reduced into

the others:

Revolutionary situations often do not owe to revolu

tionary intentions or lead to revolutionary outcomes.

Those who do much to bring such situations and out

comes about often do not mean to. And those who do most to transform society often do so only after the

revolutionary situation in which they take power is

past.8

This disconnection in the three aspects of revolution is equally captured in the disconnection in the stages of any revolutionary process. Revolutions are not pre-determined, one-track "locomo

tives" Aya posits, but rather, they develop to the extent that a

tentative and cumulative sequence of events fits together to yield what is usually an unprecedented outcome. What is needed is a way of defining revolutions which




... sensitizes one to the causes and effects of contingent

steps in a cumulative sequence rather than trample them

down under a forced march of historical inevitability.9

With this initial fusillade, he launches a campaign against all macro determinists, with the most successful engagement waged against those he identifies as volcano theorists.

Ted Gurr, Chalmers Johnson and company based their exten

sive statistical research on the simplistic assumption that in socie

ties undergoing stress, people get frustrated and when they are

sufficiently mad, revolutions break out. Rapid change, the argu ment went, led inevitably to discontent and discontent eventually led to revolution. In the best part of his study, Aya showed that this approach suffered from serious errors of reductionism. It assumed

that specific grievances automatically led to general discontent. It

ignored the presence of identifiable action groups in real revolu

tionary situations and substituted instead the abstract notion of

anonymous, discontented masses. Further, it assumed that discon

tent inevitably led to revolt, when apathy or anomie might have

been equally possible alternatives. It was not that grievances and

discontent are pre-requisites for revolt, as in his metaphor oxygen is for a fire, but it is unsupportable to say, therefore, that they are the cause of the fire. Thus, Aya dismisses the volcanic school and, it

should be mentioned, he does so with biting panache, as in his

critique of Smelser's all-encompassing attempt to understand why societies change, the Theory of Collective Behaviour,10 which he

describes as:

Tediously long winded, soporifically repetitious, mad

deningly opaque, yet impressively ingenious (with sporadic flashes of brilliant insight), Smelser's Collec tive Behaviour has got what it takes to be most influen

tial in social theory.11

It is on this field, constructed out of a redefinition of revolutions and a dismissal of one school of thought that Aya seeks to construct his own approach.



Review Essays 217

Borrowing political and state centred notions from Tilly,14 Clauswitz13 and Skocpol in that order, he argues essentially that

revolutions can be understood as in Clauswitz' well known defini

tion of war, as a continuation of politics by other means. Political actors go beyond diplomatic means to solve disputes and resort to

violence only rarely. For this to happen, he argues, a number of

conditions must be fulfilled including: a) the blocking of the avenues to peaceful resolution; b) the capability of the actors to act in concert, due to the possession of appropriate assets, organisation and know-how; c) the feeling on the part of the actors that they could get away with the action, thanks to the existence of coalition

partners, the collapse of central authority or both; d) finally, he in cludes the rider that the intention of these actors was rarely to revolutionise society but to get (or keep) things they felt rightfully entitled to. At the heart of Aya's enterprise can be found his

adaptation of rational choice theory.14 It is via a methodology which he characterizes as one of "vicarious problem solving" that we can understand revolutionary situations; then, having identified

the crisis at the top, we might attempt to trace the passage of accu

mulated events until we arrive at the revolutionary outcome:

The combined result is a focus on political goals and constraints ? the contenders' aims and tactical power chances, including the occurrence of power struggles in

government that, without warning, may open the politi cal arena to popular intervention.15

By focusing on the activities of those players "above" ? on the

power struggles of those in and around the state ? Aya separates his outlook from the volcano theorists and attains his closest

proximity to Skocpol's state centred approach. However, unlike

Skocpol whose focus is on the tension between states in an interna

tional system and national class forces in and around the state, in

other words, a profoundly structuralist analysis, with little room

for agents, Aya bases his conclusion precisely on the rational or

"satisficing" choices real human players make in given conjunctu ral situations. While he admits that different economic epochs may




determine the form of various revolutionary (and non-revolution

ary) struggles, the actual outbreak of revolution is to be determined

by irreconcilable divisions at the top, understood through the

methodology of vicarious problem solving.

My own study of three Twentieth Century Caribbean revolu

tions16 suggests that there is a great deal of validity to Aya's proposal. In Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada, it was crisis up above which led to revolutionary situation. An aggressive faction or

personality intervened to upset or take advantage of instability in a

previously stable arrangement of power sharing between statai and

economic elites. This occurred in a shifting international context

which revealed weaknesses in the hegemonic relationship between the small state and the dominant power and provided opportunities for the reorganisation of the national state and perhaps of the

hegemonic relationship itself. In this window, excluded elites,

potential state builders, who feel aggrieved because of what they consider as their unwarranted and unjust exclusion from power, seek allies to violently unblock the blocked system of elite circula

tion and in the international opening, move aggressively to take state power. The extent of popular intervention from below, fuelled

by a largely different agenda of popular grievances and coupled to

specific histories with varying degrees of relatively autonomous

organisation, helps to determine the potential for democracy and

popular involvement in the revolutionary outcome. Popular inter

vention, however appears to be far less important in the actual

genesis of the revolutionary situation. One further factor of impor tance, and which is understated in Aya, is what I refer to as the "cumulative and available ideological context", or the available

political and state building ideas which define the horizons within which the revolutionary elites operate. It is the cumulative and available ideological context which helps to dictate the tactics chosen for the seizure of power and thus the likelihood of initial success, and beyond that the possible democratic profile of the post revolutionary regime.



Review Essays 219

However, while Aya's approach to rational choice steers

clear of a certain mode of crass determinism and captures effec

tively the "tentativeness" in revolutionary eventuation, it falls flat in a few critical areas. Most notably, he throws little light on

what we might term the "rhythm of revolution," or the recurrence

of distinct revolutionary waves throughout modern history. Hali

day,17 for example, identifies an early Twentieth Century wave

involving countries which had avoided outright colonization, but were subject to partial modernization by capital, including Persia,

Egypt, Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Mexico. After the Second

World War until 1954, a further wave saw revolutions occurring in

Albania, Yugoslavia, China, Korea, Vietnam and Bolivia, and un

successful attempts in the Philippines, Malaya, Iran and Guate

mala. A third wave between 1958 and 1962 led to successful revo

lutions in Iraq, North Yemen, Cuba, the Congo and Algeria and

then there is a long break, until between 1974 and 1980, some fourteen revolutions occurred, largely in the Third World. Perhaps

Walter Goldfrank is closest to understanding the causal factor for theses waves in identifying the "permissive world context" ? or a

temporary lapse in the strength and/or vigilance of hegemonic powers

? as a necessary condition for successful revolution. This

leaves, however, a further question unanswered, as to why these

lapses occur. The only person who seems to frontally address this

question is Immanuel Wallerstein, whose World Systems analy sis,18 with its long waves and economically determined crises,

attempts to reassert the Marxist vision of revolution, driven how

ever, on a global, not a national, scale. All previous "revolutions", Wallerstein argues, have been mere revolts, or signposts on the way to the possible, if not inevitable, world revolution. The irony is that

Wallerstein's approach, which at least provides an explanation for

revolutionary waves, is diametrically opposed in methodology and

spirit to Aya's rational choice, with its central emphasis on human

intervention. While Aya's vicarious problem solving does seem to

be a useful tool at the moment of revolutionary crisis to suggest the immediate course events might take, it does little to fill in the larger and obviously very important global/historical picture.



220 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIIC STUDIES

Further, in trying to divorce the study of revolution from what he calls the "hocus-pocus of classist dogma," Aya loses sight of what we might term the myth of revolution. At least since the French Revolution, the word has been invoked either as a synonym for human progress and improvement, or as the ultimate descent into barbarism. The persistence of the "progress" myth, despite the

frustrations, defeats and Thermidorian outcomes of so many revo

lutions, merits further explanation. There is too little room in Aya's rational choice for this etMcal/mythical dimension, which so often invoked, is a motivating force in its own right. The words of the Jamaican reggae hero Bob Marley, when he sings

It takes a revolution

to make a solution19

capture the popular myth as they suggest the power the myth might have to influence the policies of real men in revolutionary situ ations. Might not rational choice theory strengthen its analytical usefulness by recognizing that a powerful motivation of at least some revolutionaries in some situations is the ideal of making a

better world? Might not the study of revolution, clinical and value

free as we might strive to make it, be placed on a grid which would

examine the extent to which they contributed to or retarded an historical tendency towards democracy and human liberation?

Might not, in other words, the ethical question be introduced as a

legitimate element in social analysis? Aya successfully carries us away from sterile, mechanical

interpretations of history to correctly focus on the human agent as the critical variable; but his is a human agent whose capacity for

thought and action is herself narrowly defined by a limiting, mechanical notion of human imagination and possibility. Freedom and democracy are real human desires which help to explain why the myth of revolution has persisted. Aya misses this central mark in what is otherwise, a thought-provoking book.

Brian Meeks Department of Government

UWI, Mona



Review Essays 221

NOTES

1See Jack Goldstone, Theories of Revolution: The Third Genera

tion, in World Politics, No. 32? 1979, and Brian Meeks, Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory: An Assessment of Cuba, Nicara

gua and Grenada, forthcoming, Macmillan, 1992. 2 See Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, Jonathan Cape,

Great Britain, 1953, George Pettee, The Process of Revolution, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1913 and G. LeBon, The Psychology of Revolution, Putnam, New York, 1913.

3See Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1971, James Davies, (ed) When Men Revolt and Why: A Reader in Political Violence and Revolution, Free Press, New York, 1971, Ivo . Feierabend and Rosalind Feierabend, "Aggressive Behavi our Within Polities, 1948-1962: A Cross National Study," in Davies (ed.) 1971, and Chalmers Johnson, Revolutionary Change, Little, Brown,

Boston, 1966.

4See Barrington Moore, social Origins of Dictatorship and Demo

cracy: Lord and Peasantry in the Making of the Modern World, Beacon, Boston, 1972, Eric Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, Harper and Row, New York, 1969, and Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China,

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979. 5 John Dunn, Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis

of a Political Phenomenon, (2nd edition) Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, 1989.

6Elbaki Hermassi, "Toward a Comparative Study of Revolutions," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 18, No. 2, April, 1976.

7Set Farideh Farhi, "State Disintegration and Urban Based Revo

lutionary Crisis: A Comparative Analysis of Iran and Nicaragua," Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 1988, and Walter

Goldfrank, "Theories of Revolution and Revolution Without Theory", Theory and Society, Vol. 7, Nos. 1 and 2,1979.

8Rod Aya, Rethinking Revolutions and Collective Violence: Stud ies on Concept, Theory, and Method, Het Spinhuis, Amsterdam, 1990, p. 5.




9 Aya, p. 18.

10SeeNeil Smelser, Theory of Collective Behaviour, Routledgeand Kegan Paul, Great Britain, 1961.

11 Aya pp. 34-5.

12See for example, Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. 1978 and Big Structures, Large Pro

cesses, Huge Comparisons, R?ssel Sage Foundation, New York, 1984.

13Carl von Clauswitz, On War, Princeton University Press, Prince

ton, 1976.

14For a reasonable statement on rational choice theory see Jon

Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979 and Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979. For a useful and recent critique, see Alex Callinicos, Making History, Polity, Cambridge, 1989.

15Aya, p. 65.

16Brian Meeks, Caribbean Revolutions... Forthcoming, Macmil

lan, 1992.

17See Fred Halliday, Cold War, Third World: An Essay on Soviet US Relations, Hutchinson Radius, London, Sydney, 1990.

18See Immanuel Wallerstein, The Politics of the World Economy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984.

19Bob Marley, Revolution, Cayman Music, 1974.



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Rethinking Revolutions and Collective Violence: Studies on Concept, Theory and Methodby Rod Aya