Paperback, 326 pages
English language
Published by University of California Press.
Arif Dirlik’s latest offering is a revisionist perspective on Chinese radicalism in the twentieth century. He argues that the history of anarchism is indispensable to understanding crucial themes in Chinese radicalism. And anarchism is particularly significant now as a source of democratic ideals within the history of the socialist movement in China.
Dirlik draws on the most recent scholarship and on materials available only in the last decade to compile the first comprehensive history of his subject available in a Western language. He emphasizes the anarchist contribution to revolutionary discourse and elucidates this theme through detailed analysis of both anarchist polemics and social practice. The changing circumstances of the Chinese revolution provide the immediate context, but throughout his writing the author views Chinese anarchism in relation to anarchism worldwide.
(Source: University of California Press)
Brilliant book on how anarchist ideas develop in a non-Western context and how they affect various modernization discourses, even while the anarchist movement itself disappeared. The analysis of various anarchist theories and of their similarities and differences with Marxist theories is particularly insightful.
