... areas. What are these five elements that alter and illuminate our times? One determinant is the response the agrarian elite has to commercialization, and closely linked with this element is the extent to which this upper-class participates, or fails to participate, in a revolutionary break with the past (430-31). Another two factors are the relationship that the agrarian upper class has with both the peasants and the bourgeoisie; it is significant if an alliance is formed with either or neither. The last factor is the degree to which power is decentralized in pre-modern social structure, in other words, the relationship the nobility have with the central authority (423). It is these five variables that Moore argues answers the crucial question of how major areas of the world advanced into the modern one it is today. Written during the Cold War while the memory of fascism was still vivid, Social Origins provided ...

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