Please excuse the self-promotion but I wanted to call your attention to a
new book just published by St. Martin's Press. Please ask your libraries
to order a copy! Thanks, Marty Hart-Landsberg
Development, Crisis, and Class Struggle: Learning from Japan and East Asia
by Paul Burkett and Martin Hart-Landsberg
St. Martin's Press, 2000
FROM THE COVER:
East Asia has long been the focus of development debates, first as a
success story and now as a region in crisis. Nonetheless, there has been
little if any serious discussion of what the region's experience tells us
about capitalism and the prospects for non-capitalist development
alternatives more centered on the needs of workers and communities.
Development, Crisis, and Class Struggle fills this gap by showing how a
Marxist approach to East Asia can improve our understanding of, and
political responses to, capitalist development and crisis.
"This is . . . a very powerful 'think-piece' which produces a compelling
interpretation and linking together of a wide range of developments and
specialist writings on Japan and the Asian region. The book is a must for
anyone who has been unconvinced by conventional--both Marxist and
non-Marxist--writing on such matters as the rise and fall of the Japanese
miracle, the recent Asian crisis, and the possibilities of a progressive
transformation of the region. It is refreshing to find a critical
analytical work which retains a vision of a better future and which can
shift the debate from whether or not the developmental state is the means
to make capitalism work, to whether or not capitalism can work for the
majority of the world's population. While the argument is at times very
dense and tightly written, it is also very clearly and succinctly put
together for both specialists and non-specialists to follow."
--Rob Steven, University of New South Wales
"For English-language political economists, a huge gap is now filled.
Burkett and Hart-Landsberg give us a lucid, uncompromisingly radical and
entirely convincing account of East Asia's rise and crash. The book not
only reviews and transcends the crucial lines of intellectual division,
its conclusion on political struggles will be required reading for anyone
seeking strategic clarity on the way forward."
--Patrick Bond, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
