Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case presents a new conceptual framework of socialism and applies it to the study of socialist development in China, shedding new light on modern China and signposting novel directions in socialist thought.
Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case presents a new conceptual framework of socialism and applies it to the study of socialist development in China, shedding new light on modern China and signposting novel directions in socialist thought.
Based on a Marxian-Polanyian approach, the book develops a new conceptual framework of socialism by taking the liberal and the communist challenges seriously. In doing so, Brie develops a liberal and a communist formula of socialism based upon two owners of socialist property (the individuals and the society), different forms of possession (public, common, associative, and individual) meditating the interests of the two opposite owners, and democracy as an expression of the will of the many and of all together in common. This formula is then applied to socialist development in China, analysing its booming centrally directed economy and the political ways to safeguard democracy as the rule of, for, and by the people under the Chinese Communist Party.
With an analysis of the means by which China has pursued a unique form of socialist development, Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case will appeal to scholars of modern China, political theory, political sociology, and socialist thought.
Introduction: Why Have So Many Cathedrals of Socialism Collapsed? Part
One: Socialist Theory
1. Socialism in Conflict with Communism and Liberalism
2. If You Arent Willing to Talk about the Strengths of Capitalism, Youd
Better Keep Quiet about Socialism
3. Marxs Confidence, Neuraths Utopia, and
Mises Verdict on the Impossibility of Socialism as a Rational Economic Order
4. Karl Polanyis Search for Freedom in a Complex Society
5. Socialism: Using
Solidarity to Address the Contradiction between the Free Development of Each
and the Free Development of All Part Two: Chinas Socialism
6. Beyond the
Frogs-Eye Perspective
7. Deng Xiaopings Sleeplessness and the Chinese Dream
8. Socialism or State Capitalism?
9. The CCP as Communist Emperor: Chinas
Refoundation and Socialist Transformation
10. Chinas Transformation as
Hegemonization of Society through the Communist Party
11. The Effect of the
Two General Formulas of Socialism in China
12. Is Liberal Democracy the Only
Democracy?
13. Socialism as a Planned Economy
14. The Chinese Nation and
Policy in Xinjiang
15. The Strengths and Weaknesses of Chinas Social System
16. Chinas (Re-)Emergence as One of the Centres of the World
Michael Brie is a former senior research fellow at the Institute for Critical Social Analysis at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Germany. Now retired, his research explores the theory and history of socialism, the socio-ecological transformation of modern societies, and contemporary strategic questions facing the Left. He is the co-author of Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary Marxist at the Limits of Marxism (2021), author of Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution and Metaphysics of Domination (2019), and co-editor of Karl Polanyis Vision of a Socialist Transformation (2018).
