The Theory of Social Revolutions

Theory of Social Revolutions, by
Brooks Adams

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Title: The Theory of Social Revolutions
Author: Brooks Adams
Release Date: January 6, 2004 [EBook #10613]
Language: English
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THE THEORY OF SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS
BY

BROOKS ADAMS

1913

PREFATORY NOTE
The first chapter of the following book was published, in substantially
its present form, in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1913. I have to thank
the editor for his courtesy in assenting to my wish to reprint. The other
chapters have not appeared before. I desire also to express my
obligations to my learned friend, Dr. M.M. Bigelow, who, most kindly,
at my request, read chapters two and three, which deal with the
constitutional law, and gave me the benefit of his most valuable
criticism.
Further than this I have but one word to add. I have written in support
of no political movement, nor for any ephemeral purpose. I have
written only to express a deep conviction which is the result of more
than twenty years of study, and reflection upon this subject.
BROOKS ADAMS.
QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS, May 17, 1913.

CONTENTS
I. THE COLLAPSE OF CAPITALISTIC GOVERNMENT
II. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE JUDICIAL FUNCTION
III. AMERICAN COURTS AS LEGISLATIVE CHAMBERS
IV. THE SOCIAL EQUILIBRIUM

V. POLITICAL COURTS
VI. INFERENCES
INDEX [not included in this etext]

THE THEORY OF SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS
CHAPTER I
THE COLLAPSE OF CAPITALISTIC GOVERNMENT
Civilization, I apprehend, is nearly synonymous with order. However
much we may differ touching such matters as the distribution of
property, the domestic relations, the law of inheritance and the like,
most of us, I should suppose, would agree that without order
civilization, as we understand it, cannot exist. Now, although the
optimist contends that, since man cannot foresee the future, worry
about the future is futile, and that everything, in the best possible of
worlds, is inevitably for the best, I think it clear that within recent years
an uneasy suspicion has come into being that the principle of authority
has been dangerously impaired, and that the social system, if it is to
cohere, must be reorganized. So far as my observation has extended,
such intuitions are usually not without an adequate cause, and if there
be reason for anxiety anywhere, it surely should be in the United States,
with its unwieldy bulk, its heterogeneous population, and its complex
government. Therefore, I submit, that an hour may not be quite wasted
which is passed in considering some of the recent phenomena which
have appeared about us, in order to ascertain if they can be grouped
together in any comprehensible relation.
About a century ago, after, the American and French Revolutions and
the Napoleonic wars, the present industrial era opened, and brought
with it a new governing class, as every considerable change in human
environment must bring with it a governing class to give it expression.
Perhaps, for lack of a recognized name, I may describe this class as the

industrial capitalistic class, composed in the main of administrators and
bankers. As nothing in the universe is stationary, ruling classes have
their rise, culmination, and decline, and I conjecture that this class
attained to its acme of popularity and power, at least in America,
toward the close of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. I draw
this inference from the fact that in the next quarter resistance to
capitalistic methods began to take shape in such legislation as the
Interstate Commerce Law and the Sherman Act, and almost at the
opening of the present century a progressively rigorous opposition
found for its mouthpiece the President of the Union himself. History
may not be a very practical study, but it teaches some useful lessons,
one of which is that nothing is accidental, and that if men move in a
given direction, they do so in obedience to an impulsion as automatic
as is the impulsion of gravitation. Therefore, if Mr. Roosevelt became,
what his adversaries are pleased to call, an agitator, his agitation had a
cause which is as deserving of study as is the path of a cyclone. This
problem has long interested me, and I harbor no doubt not only that the
equilibrium of society is very rapidly shifting, but that Mr. Roosevelt
has, half-automatically, been stimulated by the instability about him to
seek for a new centre of