The author concludes with provocative statements about regime transition from communism. He rejects the idealistic notion that democratization can, by itself, remove the structural obstacles to economic transformation, and he sees high economic and political costs as unavoidable in transition from communism along either the Soviet or the Chinese path.

This is the first comprehensive effort to compare the recent political experiences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China by tracing their overlapping and diverging paths of regime change.

In the confrontation between the two main economic systems that has marked the twentieth century, capitalism has been declared the winner–by default– over its adversary, socialism. Today, establishing a market economy has become the primary goal of the formerly socialist countries. The history of economic reform helps explain this remarkable turning point. Attempts to improve the old centralized system by expanding enterprise autonomy (in Poland, the Soviet Union, and East Germany) and more radical reforms that limited the role of central planning (in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and China) encountered social and political obstacles or had unexpected and undesired effects. During the 1980s, the idea of a socialist market economy, which had been seen as a "third way" between capitalism and centralized socialism, was abandoned as economists gradually came to support a free market rather than the dogma of planning. Through a comparative and historical analysis of change in socialist and post-socialist systems, this timely and original book clarifies the policies and pitfalls in this extraordinary transition. Bernard Chavance provides a succinct introduction and analysis of the politics and economics of Eastern Europe from the creation of the Stalinist system in the Soviet Union through what he argues have been three major waves of reform since the 1950s to the dismantling of most socialist governments in the 1990s. Exploring the link between the one-party regime and the growing rigidity of socialist economic systems, the author analyzes the failure of both incremental and radical reforms to adapt to new economic challenges, thus leading to the ultimate collapse of communist regimes in Europe.

Reform and Revolution (otherwise known as Reform or Revolution) is a collection of chapters from Marxism: The Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie?, a book by Paul Mattick, Sr. arranged and published posthumously by Paul Mattick, Jr. In Reform and Revolution, Mattick, Sr. relates understanding of reformism, radicalism, and revolutionary action through the lens of historical materialism, as reformism being another maintaining of capitalist form. Through the book, Mattick details that capitalism and the historical process is to be analyzed through the accumulation of capital maintained through social forces of production, rationalizing labor exploitation towards its expansion. "As capital expands, so does the working class." Paul Mattick, Sr. (March 13, 1904 - February 7, 1981) was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions.

Comparison of politics and political power struggles in 5 Asian countries, primarily in the period from 1945 to 1970 - covers the evolution of political systems, political leadership, conflicts and political problems, etc., and considers the future political outlook for the 1970's. References.