Can you really imagine a 18th century France style revolution in the west today? Try! I can't. Why is that? People haven't changed in 200 years yet it's completely unimaginable.
On the other hand, it does mean that if there any sort of instability, people will have to rediscover from scratch how to deal with it, a process that sounds relatively painful to me. Here's hoping we never really have to find out.
You raise a really good point here, and I think this is one of the most important stabilizing factors in today's society.
It is not an outcome we want but it is up to the capital class to ensure this doesn't happen by regulating themselves well enough so everyone feels they are getting a fair piece of the pie.
My point is, there is a balance somewhere between chaotic growth at any cost with its wealth generation and ensuring people can participate fairly and share the results and have equity in the future.
But even in "the west", you don't need to go back very far to find revolutions driven (in part) by economic issues. Hitler couldn't have seized power without Germany's rough experiences in the great depression.
I think revolution is more imaginable than war and even though we've made a lot of progress on war, it's not unimaginable. I'm not a Marxists and I don't think these things are deterministic, but I do think certain societal conditions make revolutions more likely.
If you look around the world today, most "wars" are civil conflicts or centre around civil conflicts or something in that neighborhood. Ukraine, Syria, Israel, Korea, Taiwan… The line between civil conflict and revolution is pretty blurry.
The dominant revolutionary paradigms are religious, national and economic-ideological. The last one's big examples are the US-French revolutions and their communist descendants. It's not as much of a big paradigm now. I think the intellectual zeitgeist has moved passed it. New paradigms emerge though and old ones like religion and nationalism have a long half life.
To go back to the quasi-marxist point… I think economic inequality plays a role. If enough people have little enough of the income generating power, whether that's capital or labour (or land and privilege or whatever the system), they have no interest in maintaining the status quo. I think capitalism's "raises all boats" promise is a key promise. If it holds no power, I think revolution becomes a greater possibility.
Most of the eastern block revolutions 25 years agos were peaceful. None had dissident firepower playing a significant role. When East German security forces decided not to fire on the wall crossers, it was 50% over. When Moscow decided not to send in tanks it got to 100%.
Not many revolutions are armed insurrection like you see in Syria.
In the west we do have choices, our elections and they do much more to secure some sort of stability.
The difference is fundamental.
If there is enough public pressure, it almost doesn't matter who is in office. Nixon signed the EPA into existence, for example.
Basically, most people in rich Western countries today have a lot more to lose from violence than they do from policy disagreements. And most citizens essentially believe in the power of the political system, because they can remember popular political uprisings that had tangible impacts: the labor movement, the environmental movement, LGBT rights, etc.
If you look at the most desperate movement in the U.S. today, it has to be Black Lives Matter. Even those organizers reject violence as a means to their ends.
However, it's easy to imagine domino instability at the edges of the "west". For example, if an agreement hadn't been reached on Greece. Or Catalan secession turning violent. Or something triggered by the millions of Syrian refugees.