This book addresses the fundamental paradox of India's political economy: how do we achieve the goals of increased economic growth and reduced economic and social disparities without causing social turmoil and dissent and carries forward the analyses to the second-generation reforms in the 21st century.

The Uprising at Tiananmen Square may have been crushed politically, but it has had extraordinary consequences in opening up China to new varieties of economic experimentation. Nowhere has this fusion of political repression and economic opportunity been better captured than in Hui Wang's masterful study. And given the world wide and historic importance of China, this volume deserves most careful consideration. Given his unique background as a former assistant director of the China National Economic Reform Institute (CNERI) hi Beijing, and before that, a board member of "The Economic Daily "in the capital city of China, he is able to provide the sort of first hand account that deeply enriches this fundamental treatise on the transformation of the Chinese economy from a centrally planned to a market system. This book should prove to be especially timely as American investors and businessmen are pouring into China for new commercial ventures; while scholars are likewise coming to China in order to obtain information and experience to benefit other struggling formerly socialist economies. Wang makes no claim that present-day China is necessarily a model for the rest of Asia or Eastern Europe, but he does make plain that variations on the theme of a free market and a controlled polity are as much part of "Leftist" as well as "Rightist" regimes. As a result, this book should have appeal quite beyond undergraduate and graduate courses in modern China, and should extend to those political scientists and sociologists who take seriously fundamental themes of development.

The Description for this book, India's Political Economy, 1947-1977: The Gradual Revolution, will be forthcoming.

Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism is a study of American politics, culture, and foreign relations in the mid-nineteenth century, illuminated through the reactions of Americans to the European revolutions of 1848. Flush from the recent American military victory over Mexico, many Americans celebrated news of democratic revolutions breaking out across Europe as a further sign of divine providence. Others thought that the 1848 revolutions served only to highlight how America’s own revolution had not done enough in the way of reform. Still other Americans renounced the 1848 revolutions and the thought of trans-atlantic unity because they interpreted European revolutionary radicalism and its portents of violence, socialism, and atheism as dangerous to the unique virtues of the United States. When the 1848 revolutions failed to create stable democratic governments in Europe, many Americans declared that their own revolutionary tradition was superior; American reform would be gradual and peaceful. Thus, when violence erupted over the question of territorial slavery in the 1850s, the effect was magnified among antislavery Americans, who reinterpreted the menace of slavery in light of the revolutions and counter-revolutions of Europe. For them a new revolution in America could indeed be necessary, to stop the onset of authoritarian conditions and to cure American exemplarism. The Civil War, then, when it came, was America’s answer to the 1848 revolutions, a testimony to America’s democratic shortcomings, and an American version of a violent, nation-building revolution.

The concept of revolution marks the ultimate horizon of modern politics. It is instantiated by sites of both hope and horror. Within progressive thought, “revolution” often perpetuates entrenched philosophical problems: a teleological philosophy of history, economic reductionism, and normative paternalism. At a time of resurgent uprisings, how can revolution be reconceptualized to grasp the dynamics of social transformation and disentangle revolutionary practice from authoritarian usurpation? Eva von Redecker reconsiders critical theory’s understanding of radical change in order to offer a bold new account of how revolution occurs. She argues that revolutions are not singular events but extended processes: beginning from the interstices of society, they succeed by gradually rearticulating social structures toward a new paradigm. Developing a theoretical account of social transformation, Praxis and Revolution incorporates a wide range of insights, from the Frankfurt School to queer theory and intersectionality. Its revised materialism furnishes prefigurative politics with their social conditions and performative critique with its collective force. Von Redecker revisits the French Revolution to show how change arises from struggle in everyday social practice. She illustrates the argument through rich literary examples—a ménage à trois inside a prison, a radical knitting circle, a queer affinity group, and petitioners pleading with the executioner—that forge a feminist, open-ended model of revolution. Praxis and Revolution urges readers not only to understand revolutions differently but also to situate them elsewhere: in collective contexts that aim to storm manifold Bastilles—but from within.

A refutation of revisionist interpretations of Marxist doctrine, the title essay (1899) explains why capitalism can never overcome its internal contradictions and defines the character of the proletarian revolution. 3 other essays.