SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION

The Nature of Revolution

"...revolution is seldom so sudden, so spectacular, so disorganizing...

The course of social change is lower, deeper.

The reversal of social attitudes toward the basic institutions of the community is not alone the work of a skirmish between Roundheads and Cavaliers, the storming of a Bastille, a Boston Tea Party, or the mutiny of a few regiments of the Russian Imperial Guard.

Revolution is rather the final critical culmination of a long series of social changes.

The crumbling institutional controls break down.

The basic consensus of the society is dissipated.

Chaos and turmoil are inevitable until a new consensus is evolved.

A revolution is a cumulative rather than a precipitate crisis."

pages 972-973 of Chapter 24 in Part 5 from:

SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION

REVISED EDITION

MABEL A. ELLIOTT, Ph.D.
Associate professor of Sociology
University of Kansas
and
FRANCIS E. MERRILL, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dartmouth College

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1934, 1941, by Harper & Brothers