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Published by EH.NET (January 2003)
Jack Barkstrom, _Poverty, Wealth, Dictatorship, Democracy: Resource
Scarcity and the Origins of Dictatorship_. Golden, CO: Pericles Press,
2002. v + 535 pp. $21.95 (paperback), ISBN: 0-9610224-0-x.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Peter Baofu, Political Science, Eastern New Mexico
University. <[log in to unmask]>
Introduction:
This book would have been much strengthened if the author had a solid
scholarly background. The author, Jack Barkstrom, who is licensed as a CPA
(with a master's degree in accounting from the University of Colorado) and
an attorney (with a law degree from the University of Kansas), shows no
deep understanding of the literature in, say, economic theory, political
theory, and social theory -- an understanding that would be vital in
proving that, in his words, "the amount of resources which a country has
determines whether it will become a democracy or a dictatorship" (p. 1).
The book's scholarship is disappointing from both a historical-descriptive
and a theoretical perspective. In the end, the book is not a scholarly
piece of work and essentially degenerates into an ideological glorification
of "the market forces" to create "resource abundance" for "free society."
>From the Historical-Descriptive Perspective:
The book has its own strengths in providing a rather detailed account of
the descriptive history of dictatorships and democracies with seven case
studies -- Athens, Sparta, and Rome in ancient times; and Revolutionary
France, Nazi Germany, the USSR, and the United States in modern and
contemporary times. Whether or not the descriptive account in the book is
historically accurate is relatively less important than the more serious
problem of shallow scholarship, in a three-fold way.
First, each chapter of the book is so heavily dependent on only a few
sources (e.g., the works by William Doyle and Simon Schama in Chapter 7,
those by Richard Pipes in Chapter 10, or those by Roy Medvedev and W. Bruce
Lincoln in Chapter 12) that one cannot help but wonder if the book is
well-balanced in its viewpoints.
Second, another consequence of this excessive scholarly dependency on a few
sources is the lack of originality in its historical description. While
Barkstrom does a good job in summarizing what previous scholars have
written on the subject, it is not clear what exactly he himself has
contributed to the historical scholarship (other than repetitively making
the provocative claim as stated above).
Finally, the historical account tends to be detailed and descriptive (but
often very disorganized and unsystematic), and it is often not clear how
the myriad factual data are even relevant to the larger thesis. It is all
so easy to get lost in the messy world of one historical description after
another, with little scholarly explanatory analysis.
But this is not the end of the matter.
>From the Theoretical Perspective:
An even more serious problem lies at the theoretical level. After all, how
exactly can one prove the claim that resource scarcity (or conversely,
resource abundance) determines the origins of dictatorship (or conversely,
democracy)? The claim is of course as much interesting as provocative.
Unfortunately, Barkstrom provides no in-depth scholarly analysis of the
literature in, say, economic theory, political theory, or even social
theory. The entire book is almost exclusively devoted to its seemingly
endless historical description, and the only section which shows some sign
of theoretical analysis is in the first three short chapters (and there are
twenty-four short chapters in total); even here, Barkstrom shows no
in-depth understanding of the literature as mentioned, since both the
analysis and the sources cited often have little to do with the theoretical
debate in question. Perhaps a good way to show this lack of theoretical
understanding is to reveal its five major (illustrative but not exhaustive)
weaknesses at the theoretical level.
First, if resource availability (be it about scarcity or abundance) is the
determining factor of a political system, what then are the origins of its
scarcity (unto dictatorship) or abundance (unto democracy)? Or in a
different parlance, what are the origins of the poverty, and wealth, of
nations? The book provides no answer to this important question. For
instance, in the case of the alleged resource abundance in the U.S.,
Barkstrom has this to say: "Production figures provide the primary
evidence. Yet, the market itself may serve as additional evidence of
resource abundance. For markets to exist, there must be some minimal level
of resources available. For markets to thrive, there must be a
correspondingly greater pool of resource available"(p. 455). The answer is
simply disappointing, with each chapter often providing ad hoc explanations
like this to account for a country in question which possesses either
resource abundance or resource scarcity.
Second, what is the underlying linkage between resource scarcity (or
conversely, abundance) and repression in dictatorship (or conversely,
freedom in democracy)? Barkstrom's answer is to appeal to the resource
mechanism of scarcity leading to societal violence (or even the mere threat
of it) due to "the failure of delivery" at the group level (i.e., economic
collapse) and "the failure of participation" at the individual level (i.e.,
unemployment), with subsequent governmental repression (pp. 34-35). But
this is question-begging, since it only raises two even more complicated
questions of (a) what exactly the underlying linkage between the two
failures and societal violence is and (b) why some governments respond with
repression and others do not. Barkstrom's answer, again, is disappointing,
with no apparent understanding of the massive literature in, say, social
theory and political theory. For instance, social theorists have long
debated the very issue of whether or not, and to what extent, frustration
(deprivation) leads to social aggression (violence). And political
scientists have no clear consensus on why some governments are inherently
more violent than others and when they can be predicted to behave so. When
hard pressed, Barkstrom only offers this apologetic reply: "Drawing
conclusions about a direct link between repression and violence then is
difficult for several reasons.... What these...suggest is, not so much that
the theory is wrong, but rather that it is difficult to prove" (p. 31). Who
in his clear mind could accept this kind of answer as persuasive, let alone
convincing?
Third, Barkstrom narrowly defines the term "violence" in the physical
sense, to the effect that it favorably portrays liberal democracy as less
repressive ("free society"), without including non-physical forms of
repression pervasive in democratic regimes. The works by Foucault on
normalization of power and Chomsky on the manufacturing of consent in
democratic societies are two good cases in point.
Fourth, even worse, the author tries to downgrade the long history of
repression (both physical and non-physical) against minorities and the
lower class in a liberal democracy like the United States as "glaring
exceptions" (e.g., the enslavement of Africans, the encampment of
Japanese-Americans during WWII, the Civil War, the almost complete
extermination of Native Indians, the systemic discrimination against women,
and the inhumane laissez-faire treatment of the lower class) (p. 435). He
even goes so far as to unwarrantedly claim that "the United States has been
a country free of violence"(p. 434). His ideological bias is obvious
enough.
And finally, Barkstrom fails to exercise any good command of economic
theory, often at the superficial level. For instance, in his simplistic
explanation of "unemployment in terms of the impact of resource costs on
market demand" (which is crucial in a major way to understand his
superficial idea of resource scarcity and its impact), by contrast to his
questionable interpretation of the conventional "growth theory" which
suggests that "unemployment is a 'function' of the business cycle, i.e., is
caused by it" (p. 41), Barkstrom shows no understanding of the complexity
and sophistication of different growth theories, numerous exogenous and
endogenous business cycle theories, and, for that matter, various types of
unemployment in relation to different macroeconomic policies -- all of
which have been worked out over the years by many professional economists.
Conclusion:
All things considered, this book is _not_ a scholarly piece of work and,
worse, becomes explicitly ideological in glorifying the magic of "the
market forces" in creating "resource abundance" for "free society," as
Barkstrom even concludes in the end that "the future is likely to be
dominated by the market.... Market forces have an existence of their own,
... resistant to change" (p. 489).
The book is often so descriptive in historical account and so superficial
in theoretical understanding that it fails to prove in any persuasive (let
alone convincing) way the central thesis of the book, that is, whether or
not, and to what extent, "the amount of resources which a country has
determines whether it will become a democracy or a dictatorship." This book
should have been written by someone else who possesses solid scholarly
qualifications and, in the end, constitutes a good example of the tragedy
of shallow scholarship driven by an ideological bent.
Dr. Peter Baofu is the author of _The Future of Capitalism and Democracy_
(University Press of America, 2002) and the two-volume work of _The Future
of Human Civilization_ (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2000). He has served as an
associate professor in the Department of International Affairs at the
Eastern Mediterranean University (Northern Cyprus), as a visiting professor
of international relations at Bocconi University (Milan, Italy), and as an
instructor in economics and statistics at USDA Graduate School.
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Published by EH.Net (January 2003). All EH.Net reviews are archived at
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