Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case

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.

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 author of Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution and Metaphysics of Domination (2019), co-author of Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary Marxist at the Limits of Marxism (2021), and co-editor of Karl Polanyi’s Vision of a Socialist Transformation (2018).