This is a book about why people so often put up with being the victims of their societies and why at other times they become very angry and try with passion and forcefulness to do something about their situation. I his most ambition book to date, Barrington Moore, Jr explores a large part of the world's experience with injustice and its understanding of it. In search of general elements behind the acceptance of injustice he discusses the Untouchables of India, Nazi concentration camps, and the Milgram experiments on obedience to authority.

Barrington Moore, Jr., one of the most distinguished thinkers in critical theory and historical sociology, has long been concerned with the prospects for freedom and decency in industrial society. The product of decades of reflection on issues of authority, inequality, and injustice, this volume analyzes fluctuating moral beliefs and behavior in political and economic affairs at different points in history, from the early Middle Ages in England to the prospects for liberalism under twentieth-century Soviet socialism. The social sources of antisocial behavior; principles of social inequality;...

Dieses Buch geht der Frage nach, warum Menschen sich so oft damit abfinden, Opfer ihrer gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse zu sein, und warum sie zu anderen Zeiten überaus zornig werden und mit Leidenschaft und Gewalt ihre Situation zu verändern suchen.