ABSTRACT
Barrington Moore’s intensely independent approach to the problems leads him to find all of the major conflicting schools of thought wanting: injustice is, refreshingly, a sustained argument with the evidence and with the reader, rather than with other writers. Like his history, Barrington Moore’s general analysis of the ways in which people begin to emancipate themselves from repression and self-repression – an analysis which draws critically upon an immense range of literature from anthropology, psychoanalysis, experimental psychology and political science, as well as social and political history – also suggests that such developments tend to be cumulative. Clandestine violence or counter-terrorism raised issues of a different kind. Political killings or arson were the acts of individuals or small groups, not of crowds, and such acts were likely to be premeditated and carefully planned. The Nazi regime succeeded in oppressing and exploiting the German working class and in destroying its resistance until the military defeat of 1945.
