Poverty, Wealth, Dictatorship, Democracy

Poverty, Wealth, Dictatorship, Democracy: Resource Scarcity and the Origins of Dictatorship, Jack Barkstrom, Pericles Press, 1998

The author, a lawyer and CPA with a Bachelor's degree in history, presents a fascinating argument. He says that availability of natural resources will determine whether a country becomes a democracy or dictatorship. Countries with lots of resources will become democracies. Those with little access to resources are destined to become dictatorships. Those whose resource availability is somewhere in the middle will go fascist. He looks at seven different governments: Athens, Sparta, Rome, Revolutionary France, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the United States.

The author spends a lot of time looking at communism and the Soviet Union. Another major assumption is that a country's economic system, capitalism or socialism, is also based on resource availability. A free market system requires large amounts of resources and will only develop in countries where this is the case. Resource scarcity leads to planned economies.

Barkstrom also asserts that communism was the only possible explanation for Russia's economic problems. Put another way, did communism cause Russia's economic problems, or was it the result of already existing conditions of poverty and resource scarcity?

This is a big book, in size and in scope, that is not for everyone. But, for those with even a small interest in history, economics and/or politics, this book is extremely recommended.