Review Essay

Abstract

So far in modern world history, social revolutions, though they have entailed elements of class conflict, have plainly not conformed to Marx's theoretical expectations or moral vision. They have occurred in agrarian countries caught behind foreign competitors, not in the most advanced capitalist industrial nations. And even those revolutions that have expropriated domestic capitalist classes in the name of socialist ideals have hardly resulted to date in the prosperous, democratic communist societies envisaged by Marx. (Skocpol, p. 292)