| Chapter 2: | Pattern of the Insurrection and Modernity |
which he predicted would be caused by an inevitable class conflict. Marx wrote in Wage, Labor, and Capital:
A noticeable increase in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. The rapid growth of productive capital brings about an equally rapid growth of wealth, luxury, social wants, and social enjoyments. Thus, although the enjoyments of the workers have risen, the social satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased enjoyments of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the state of development of society in general. Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects, which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of “social” nature, they are of a “relative” nature.22
Edward and Brinton, although arguing from a different perspective than Marx’s conceptions, also agree that it is not the actual deprivation of socioeconomic status as such that matters in elite agitation, but rather their perception of a relative gap where one group is unjustly deprived relative to another group at a specific space in time.23
The “climb and fall” hypothesis is advanced by James C. Davies as follows:
Revolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and social development is followed by a short period of sharp reversal. The all-important effect on the minds of people in a particular society is to produce, during the former period, an expectation of continued ability to satisfy needs—which continue to rise—and during the latter, a mental state of anxiety and frustration when manifest reality breaks away from anticipated reality. The actual state of socioeconomic development is less significant than the expectation that past progress, not blocked, can and must continue in the future.24