ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an article that in some of its language appears to be in the conventional tradition of socioeconomic analysis. This is because it flatly says that revolution is most likely to occur when a prolonged period of socioeconomic upswing is followed by a short and sharp reversal of the long upswing. The graph of the J curve more accurately represents the article's author's viewpoint than the socioeconomic statement. In addition to the J curve hypothesis, there are alternative and additional explanations for the development of the revolutionary state of mind. A close look at the events immediately preceding the outbreak of a period of violence always seems to reveal such acts as the violent suppression of a demonstration, the roughing-up of a worker or poor farmer or a black—or some other event in which there is a clearcut but scarcely visible downturn in the (mental) belief that rewards will continue to meet expectations.
