Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn this welcome collection of essays, the authors examine many of the issues with which Meisner grappled, from Mao’s utopianism and the role of peasants in the Chinese revolution to China’s relation to American imperialism. This work is especially noteworthy not only because these topics remain relevant today but also because the essays cohere around an important theme: how to understand the legacy of the Chinese Revolution, both historically and with respect to the present. * The China Journal *
Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China. . . .bring[s] us insights and analyses of modern China’s history and contemporary political situation. Understanding China today is a profoundly challenging task. This volume…[is] very much worth the time and effort to read. . . .The work of scholars such as Maurice Meisner and his students can be of significant value in considering some aspects of China’s recent history. * Historical Materalism: Research In Critical Marxist Theory *
The impressive lineup of contributions to this book is timely and refreshing. Together they remind us of what-in a gilded age of dissipation in China-must not be forgotten: an essential critical theorization of China's lost world, in which revolutionary and socialist struggle moved millions upon millions of people who shone in their idealism, heroism, sacrifice and, indeed, common sense. -- Lin Chun, London School of Economics
This is a volume that does full honor to the historian to whom it is dedicated: Maurice Meisner. The essays, which span the history of revolution and radicalism in China from the 19th to the 21st centuries, raise fundamental questions, not only about the history of China, but about the nature of radical change itself. Each essay insists, as Meisner himself has done throughout his scholarly life, on the relevance of China's revolutionary past to its present and to the present situation of us all. -- Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990
The conference that produced this festschrift was held on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre-symbolically appropriate to honor Maurice Meisner, whose signal contribution was to test the realities of Chinese Communism against the ideals of Marxism. In contrast to some works of the genre, this festschrift is marked by thematic coherence and academic rigor-a fitting tribute to a distinguished scholar and beloved teacher. -- John Israel, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Virginia
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: Chinese Radicalism in Historical Context Chapter 2 Chapter 1. Individualism and Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century China: Chen Duxiu's Pre-Marxist Intellectual Commitments, 1904-1918 Chapter 3 Chapter 2. Radical Visions of Time in Modern China: The Utopianism of Mao Zedong and Liang Shuming Chapter 4 Chapter 3. Peasant and Woman in Maoist Revolutionary Theory, 1920s-1950s Chapter 5 Chapter 4. Mao and Tibet Chapter 6 Chapter 5. Chinese Communists and the Environment Chapter 7 Chapter 6. Post-Socialist Capitalism in Contemporary China Chapter 8 Chapter 7. Independent Chinese Film: Seeing the Not-Usually-Visible in Rural China Chapter 9 Chapter 8. The "Rise of China"?
