Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World

This classic work of comparative history explores why some countries have developed as democracies—and others as fascist or communist dictatorships.

Originally published in 1966, this classic text is a comparative survey of some of what Barrington Moore considers the major and most indicative world economies as they evolved out of pre-modern political systems into industrialism. But Moore is not ultimately concerned with explaining economic development so much as exploring why modes of devel...