"The mother of revolution and crime is poverty"(Aristotle)

Revolution and crime have plagued societies and governments ever since the olden days of its existence. Revolution involves the uprising of the citizens against the state government, usually consisting of strikes which bring economies to standstills, restricting income to families, and riots which involve violent confrontations among groups of people and the police, henceforth virtually desecrating any form of order of law in society, embedding a sense of insecurity and fear deep into people's hearts. Crime may seem mediocre in comparison, as its effects are much less damaging to society or government. It is the frequency of their occurences and methods carried out to commit these crimes, in turn reflecting humanity's dark side, which is appaling and damaging to social security and citizen welfare and safety. Revolutions occur when many citizens reach breaking point to an extent that they want to rid themselves of a fatuous leading government, whereas crime occurs when a person reaches breaking point, be it in terms of finance, desire or anger, hence the former is less frequent. Poverty, rather, is the consequence of a lack of financial resources to such an extent that it involves the inability of one to fulfill basic survival or living needs, such as food and water. Therefore, to a larger extent do I agree with the above statement. Throughout history, the usual causes that fuel the implementation of crime or revolution against the governments or other organisations are directly or indirectly due to financial benefits being compromised, or that their own inability to earn these finances force people to resort to drastic and harmful, disruptive measures. However, causes of crime may also be due to other factors such as anger, over-consumption of alcohol or desire, and for revolutions, it may be due to inequality in terms of discrimination and suppressions applying to a certain race or religion for instance.


One reason for crime would be the poverty of the people. The latter deprives people from their ability to support themselves or other loved ones financally so as to provide for basic neccessities such as food essential for survival. For instance, longitudinal studies in Canada have shown that children who live in poverty, especially those deprived of basic neccessities, are more likely to commit crime in later stages of life. Research has also shown that the intervention of couselling or national social organisations such as the Canadian council on social development on youths at risk of immersing themselves in a life of crime have significantly reduced crime rate in the future. This proves that desperation drives the human soul into commiting harmful and despicable acts of crime which contradicts human nature and values immensely. They would then see crime as a quick method of obtaining financial resources for their own survival, which anyone would prioritise as top in life, when they cannot support themselves. Such crimes include robbery and theft, burglary and so forth.


One reason for revolutions against governments would also be poverty. The latter deprives people from their ability to support themselves or loved ones financially so as to provide for basic neccessities such as food essential for survival. The government utilises economic policies so as to improve the latter which in turn improves employment, ensuring that people earn their keep to support themselves. However, when the government fails to prevent a declining economy and spreading poverty, the blame is shifted onto the government. For instance, in the late 19th - early 20th century in China, whereby the Qing monarchy took charge of government, people were poor due to foreign intervention from various western countries who robbed China of its resources, causing an adverse economic downturn which left people jobless and penniless. Poverty became rampant throughout the country, leading to anti-Qing sentiments which eventually led to the overthrowing of the fatuous and weak monarchy who succumbed to Western unreasonable demands. This shows that when people's survival is threatened due to a lack of financial resources, they tend to resort to drastic measures to fulfill their basic essential needs which they prioritise as top. Since the government is unable to accomplish the job of ensuring the welfare of the people by securing economic stability and jobs, people are not obliged either to continue allowing the present government to rule and hence, revolution would occur so as to remove the inefficient and welcome other reforms of new governments which would probably do a better job.

On the other hand, there are other factors that give rise to crime and revolution, not only poverty. Such factors respectively include anger, desire or over-consumption of alcohol, as well as racial, religious or gender inequality in countries.

Many people tend to commit crimes when their minds reach an unstable state, which compels them to do things rashly and irrationally. These states can be attained by breaking points of anger, high levels of desire not associated with money, and additionally the loss of proper thinking and being sober via over-consumption of alcohol which is widely available globally. For instance, crime rate comprises a large proportion of murder, manslaughter, assault, rape, child abuse, drunk driving and so forth. Murder, manslaughter, assault and rape are associated with a loss of soberness which leads to irrational thinking, makes a human accomplish such inhumane acts. Murder and other physically harmful acts are associated with anger, whereby hatred of a person results from conflicts into anger which in turn compels humans to harm the other individual as anger controls the mind. Similarly, desire such as horny and perverted thoughts lead to rape and child rape, etc. As such, a huge proportion of crime resides from causes involving financial resources. Henceforth, poverty may not be entirely the mother of crime as stated, but only to a certain extent.

Revolution does not arise basically from poverty, as it is due to unhappiness and disatisfaction of the government, which covers many areas which do not comprise only poverty. One of which may be racial, religious, gender or any form of discrimination which leads to revolution. For instance, the racial conflicts between the protestants and catholics in northern ireland has been a source of conflict for many decades, and catholics have made many attempts to change the status quo by appealing to governments of both northern ireland and ireland mainland. When they do reach a boiling point, they would rebel against the government in fits of anger as they are being supressed by a protestant government, henceforth compromising their human privileges and rights, as well as welfare and social security from riots and conflicts. People would rebel in order to change this.