Arif Dirlik, Maurice Meisner Marxism and the Chinese Experience

Annotation

These essays consider the implications for Chinese socialism of the repudiation of the Cultural Revolution and the legacy of Mao Zedong as well as the meaning of the new definition and direction Mao's successors have given socialism. The themes have been selected for conceptual coherence within a socialist problematic of social change. Representing anthropology, art history, economics, history, literature and politics, various inquiries point in a twofold direction - the meaning of socialism for China and the meaning of Chinese Socialism for socialism as a global phenomenon - "meaning" not in some abstract sense but rather as it is constituted in the process of political ideological activity, which articulates and defines social relationships within China as well as China's relationship to the world.