ABSTRACT
The relationships of famine and impoverishment to revolution and war are far less close than the association with pestilence. Famine and impoverishment may facilitate revolution or war only when certain conditions are present; they do not necessarily cause such conflicts. The popular idea that revolutions always occur in periods of intense poverty is not accurate. By causes of a calamity are meant two kinds of conditions. First, there is the necessary condition or cause, without which the calamity cannot occur. Second, there are supplementary conditions, that do not hinder or neutralize but rather facilitate the realization of the consequences of the necessary condition, thus making the necessary cause a sufficient cause. A revolution rarely conquers any strong class or group. It usually takes "the empty place" occupied by the softened, demoralized, and parasitical posterity of the great forefathers who established the aristocratic, governing stratum of society.
