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...