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The Crisis of Legitimacy and the Origins of Social Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Herbert S. Klein
Herbert S. Klein*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Chicago
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Extract

One of the most neglected fields in current social science research until quite recently has been the problem of revolution. While some progress has been made in defining the stages of development once a revolutionary process has begun, and in clarifying the differences between revolts and social revolutions in the context of the underdeveloped world, the whole area of origins still remains a largely unexplored field. The debate is still quite fierce as to whether revolutionaries are marginal or integrated persons; or whether revolutions begin because of too rapid industrialization or because of too little; because of actual exploitation or because of rising expectations. In short, there has been a multiplicity of theories, but few concrete tests of many of these propositions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 1968 , pp. 102 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1968

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References

1 For an excellent survey of contemporary historical and sociological thought on the problem of revolutions, see Stone, Lawrence, “Theories of Revolution,” World Politics, XVIII, No. 2 (January, 1966), 159-76CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also worth consulting are the recent pioneering studies by Chalmers Johnson attempting to place the problem of revolution within the context of contemporary theory on social structure and its disfunctions: Revolution and the Social System (Stanford: Hoover Institute Studies, 1964), and Revolutionary Change (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1966).

2 A recent survey of the literature on these three major revolutions is the study by Blasier, Cole, “Studies of Social Revolution: Origins in Mexico, Bolivia and Cuba,” Latin American Research Review, II, No. 3 (Summer, 1967), 28–64.Google Scholar

3 A very fine survey of Peruvian society is contained in the study by Ford, Thomas R., Man and Land in Peru (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1955)Google Scholar.

4 For a general survey of Peruvian labor and political radicalism see Victor Alba, Historia del movimiento obrero en América Latina (México: Libreros Mexicanos Unidos, 1964), pp. 166-68, 192-93, 394-98. On the origins and ideology of the APRA, among the best studies are Eugenio Chang-Rodriguez, La literatura política de Gonzalez Prada, Mariátegui y Haya de la Torre (México: Andrea, 1957), and Kantor, Harry, The Ideology and Program of the Peruvian Aprista Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953)Google Scholar.

5 To give some general comparative statistics, government income in Peru (1959) was estimated at $US 225.2 million, while for Bolivia, the estimate (1962) was a bare $US 17.6 million. Illiteracy, another prime indicator, was some 68.9% for Bolivia (1950 census), as compared to only 57.6% for Peru (1940 census), while the culturally defined “Indian” population stood at 63% and 45% respectively. Finally as for urban population, this was estimated in the 1950's for both states to be some 44.3% for Peru and 33.9% for Bolivia. These comparative data are taken from Donald S. Castro, et ah, Statistical Abstract of Latin America, 1963 (Los Angeles: Center of Latin American Studies, U.C.L.A., 1963).

6 For an analysis of the career of the most important of these so-called “tin barons” see Herbert S. Klein, “The Creation of the Patino Tin Empire,” Inter-American Economic Affairs, 19, No. 2 (Autumn, 1965), 3-23.

7 For good general surveys of this period see: Alcides Arguedas, Historia general de Bolivia (el proceso de la nacionalidad), 1809-1921 (La Paz: Amo Hermanos, 1922), and Enrique Finot, Nueva historia de Bolivia (ensayos de interpretación sociológica) (2d.ed.; La Paz: Gisbert y Cía., 1954).

8 For an analysis of the politics of the Republican era of the 1920's, the best surveys are the two volumes in the “Historia de Bolivia Series” of Porfirio Díaz Machicao, Saavedra, 1920-1925 (La Paz: Alfonso Tejerina, 1956) and his Guzmán, Siles, Blanco-Galindo, 1925-1931 (La Paz: Gisbert y Cía, 1955).

9 The figure of ca. 300,000 literates in 1930 is a rough estimate taken from dividing the difference between the 1900 census, which listed 200,000 literates and the 1950 census, which gives 530,000. Asthenio Averanga Mollinedo, Aspectos generales de la población boliviana (La Paz: Editorial Argote, 1956), pp. 99, 101.

10 For the dominance of liberal ideology and its particular form of expression see Francovich, Guillermo, El pensamiento boliviano en el siglo XX (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1956)Google Scholar.

11 On the development of the Bolivian labor movement, the best study is by Augustín Barcelli S., Medio siglo de luchas sindicales revolucionarias en Bolivia, 1905-1955 (La Paz: n.p., 1956).

12 On the Salamanca regime (1930-1934), see Machicao, Porfirio Diaz, Historia de Bolivia, Salamanca, la guerra del Chaco, Tejada Sorzano, 1931- 1936 (La Paz: Gisbert y Cía, 1955)Google Scholar. Also crucial for an understanding of the immediate prewar period is the excellent biography by David Alvestegui, Salamanca, su gravitación sobre el destino de Bolivia (3 vols.; La Paz: Talleres Gráficos Bolivianos, 1957-1962).

13 On the involvement of Salamanca in the cause of the Chaco War see Porfirio Díaz Machicao, Salamanca, pp. 60ff. The documents on this are found in Eduardo Arze Quiroga (ed.), Documentos para una historia de la guerra del Chaco, seleccionados del archivo de Daniel Salamanca (3 vols.; La Paz: Editorial Don Bosco, 1951-1960), I, 50-52, 83-96, 135-73, 233ff.

14 For a detailed study of the war, see the account by David H. Zook, Jr., The Conduct of the Chaco War (New York: Bookman Associates, 1960).

15 On the military revolt, see Colonel Julio Díaz Arguedas, Como fué derrocado el hombre símbolo (Salamanca), un capítulo de la guerra con Paraguay (La Paz: Fundación Universitaria Simón I. Patino, 1957).

16 For a detailed discussion of this crucial period see the two-part article of Herbert S. Klein, “David Toro and the Establishment of ‘Military Socialism’ in Bolivia,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XLV, No. 4 (February, 1965), 25-52; and “Germán Busch and the Era of ‘Military Socialism’ in Bolivia,” ibid., XLVII, No. 2 (May, 1967), 166-84. Also see Augusto Céspedes, El dictador suicida, 40 años de historia de Bolivia (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1956).

17 See ibid., p. 231, and El Diario (La Paz), March 12, 1940, for the 1940 vote. On the 1951 election see Foreign Area Studies Division, U. S. Army Handbook for Bolivia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), p. 358.

18 The idea of the essential dual class nature of Latin American society in subjective terms, as viewed by the middle class, is in sharp opposition to the position taken by John J. Johnson in Political Change in Latin America, The Emergence of the Middle Sectors (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958).

19 For the debate surrounding the Constitution, its significance, and its provisions, see Herbert S. Klein, “Social Constitutionalism in Latin America: The Bolivian Experience of 1938,” The Americas, Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, XXII, No. 3 (January, 1966), 258-76.

20 On the confiscation of the Standard Oil Company, see Herbert S. Klein, “American Oil Companies in Latin America: The Bolivian Experience,” Inter- American Economic Affairs, 14, No. 2 (Autumn, 1964), 47-72.

21 Also, as Chalmers Johnson has pointed out, defeat of the military in a foreign war can prove a crucial “accelerator” in bringing about a revolution since it badly weakens or destroys “the ultimate weapon against revolution held by the status quo elite, the Army.” Chalmers Johnson, Revolution and the Social System, p. 21.

22 Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man, The Social Bases of Politics (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1963), pp. 64ff. The question of the relations between rapid economic change and political discontent is also developed in the study of Mancur Olson, Jr., “Rapid Economic Change as a Destabilizing Force,” Journal of Economic History, XXIII, No. 4 (December, 1963), 529-58. More relevant to the Latin American experience is the thesis offered by James C. Davis, which stresses the non-marginality of the revolutionary man and the causal factors as being more related to states of mind of the various classes, particularly their pattern of expectations. James C. Davis, “Toward a Theory of Revolution,” American Sociological Review, XXVII, No. 1 (February, 1962). 5-19.

23 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, translated and ed. by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1947), p. 328. The third possible source of legitimacy can be based, according to Weber, on charismatic grounds.