ABSTRACT
A good understanding of some basic sociological and historical concepts should prove very useful in understanding revolutionary phenomena. Revolutions are distinctly modern phenomena, limited at most to the last 500 years. They are a product of the modern world specifically because of the enormous changes wrought by the rise of modern capitalism and the growth of the modern state. Wilbert Moore thinks of revolutions as a form of change that involves violence, that engages a large portion of the population, and that produces a transformation of the overall structure of government. Third World political revolutions have occurred in Mexico in 1911 and, much more recently, in the Philippines in 1986 when Ferdinand Marcos was ousted from power and replaced by a new government.