Barrington Moore Jr.
Barrington Moore Jr. was an American political sociologist known for comparative historical analyses of class, state formation, and regime outcomes. His seminal work, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), examined how class alliances shaped democratic, fascist, and communist trajectories.
Books
This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.
-
1. Injustice
The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt
A sociological exploration of how people come to perceive wrongs, why moral outrage sometimes produces collective rebellion and more often dissolves into obedience, and how institutions shape both outcomes. It argues that experiences of injustice are relational and context-bound, highlighting the roles of humiliation, arbitrary authority, shifting norms, and comparison groups, while showing how organization, ideology, and risk transform grievances into action. By blending moral psychology with historical and contemporary cases, it critiques purely economic explanations and illuminates the social foundations that stabilize domination or catalyze revolt.
Purchase from Bookshop.org -
2. Social Origins Of Dictatorship And Democracy
Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World
A comparative historical study arguing that the balance of power and alliances among landed elites, peasants, and the bourgeoisie shaped distinct paths to modern politics—liberal democracy, fascism, or communism. Examining cases such as England, France, the United States, Germany, Japan, China, and Russia, it shows how agrarian class structures, commercialization of agriculture, and coercive state capacities produced outcomes ranging from bourgeois-led democracies to conservative authoritarianism or peasant revolutions, encapsulated in the dictum “no bourgeois, no democracy.”
Purchase from Bookshop.org