On the Logic of Post-Factum Explanations: The Hypothesis of Lower-Class Frustration As the Cause of Leftist Radicalism

Abstract

The common theme underlying most theories on lower-class leftist extremism views this orientation as dependent on frustration with life situation. Employing data collected in lower-class slums of Santiago, Chile, five theories bearing on this notion are tested. None is supported. Leftist radicalism, however, is associated with imputation of responsibilty for frustrations to the social structure. Results support a definition of radicalism as a complex orientation requiring antecedent cognitive variables for its emergence. The popularity of the frustration-radicalism hypothesis is interpreted as a partial result of the post-factum self-legitimation of successful revolutionary movements. The study of working-class politics has been permeated by the idea, expressed in a thousand different forms, that radicalism of the left arises from these sectors as a result of unbearable frustration with their position in the socioeconomic structure. A brief survey of currently available theories for the prediction of leftist radicalism reveals frustration with life conditions as the dominant common theme underlying most hypotheses. Though other variables may be posited as contributory or intervening, the process of working-class radicalization is made ultimately dependent on increasing discontent by its members with their social and economic situation. In classic Marxist theory, revolutionary activism hinges, in an immediate sense, on the acquisition of consciousness by the proletariat. Yet, the crucial process underlying the increasing politicization and increasing intensity of proletarian struggles against the bourgeoisie is the inability of the capitalistic order to prevent pauperization of the masses and evermore exploitative arrangements of production, which inevitably generate frustration and discontent (Marx, 1939, 1963, 1967; Marx and Engels, 1955). Intra-bourgeois competition and the process of concentration of capital lead to an ever-widening gap between the economic overabundance of the diminishing few and the abysmal misery among the growing many. The frustration of the latter, the mounting rage among those who have nothing and less to lose constitutes the basic force of revolutionary change in a capitalist order. At the most general level, this view has been embodied in the hypothesis, unanimously accepted by political sociologists since Marx, of an inverse correlation between reception of socioeconomic rewards from the existing social order and tendencies toward revolutionary extremism. Such notion is certainly present in Max Weber's (1958; 1965) sociology of power, as well as in successive Marxian and neoMarxian formulations of a theory of classes (Dahrendorf, 1965; Mills, 1970; Moore, 1969). In contemporary sociology, the notion is usually rephrased as predicting a general negative association between socioeconomic status and leftist radicalism. Status is directly an indicator of differential socioeconomic rewards and indirectly, so the hypothesis assumes, of different levels of satisfaction and, hence, commitment to the existing social order. Lipset (1963:129) * Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Rural Sociology Society, Washington, D. C., 1970. The data on which this paper is based were collected under the auspices of the Midwestern Universities Consortium for International Activities (MUCIA). Partial support for statistical analysis was provided by the Graduate Research Board of the University of Illinois. The author is grateful to Professors Archibald 0. Haller, Donald J. Treiman, and William Sewell for most valuable criticisms and suggestions. Responsibility for the shortcomings of the paper rests with the author.

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