Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. The Neur Class War: Reagan's Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982

• Published date: 01 December 1982
• Date: 01 December 1982
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/003232928201100417
• Subject Matter: Articles

512

and

technological

change,

North

begins

the

process

of

supplying

these

missing

elements.

Thus,

his

book

is

both

a

friendly

critique

of

microeconomics,

an

important

statement

in

itself,

and

a

theo-

retical

contribution

grounded

in

microeconomics.

In

the

second

half

of

the

book,

North

applies

his

analysis

to

secular

structural

change

in

Western

economies,

which

he

traces

from

the

Paleolithic

era

up

to

the

present.

Frances

Fox

Piven

and

Richard

A.

Cloward.

The

Neur

Class

War:

Reagan’s

Attack

on

the

Welfare

State

and

Its

Consequences.

New

York:

Pantheon

Books,

1982.

Piven

and

Cloward

attempt

to

explain

the

current

attack

on

the

welfare

state

in

the

U

S.

and

argue

that

the

battle

will

ultimately

be

won

by

its

defenders.

Their

summary

of

American

political

history

serves

to

demonstrate

how

the

rise

of

capitalism

required

the

rise

of

democracy.

With

greater

political

rights,

the

poor

and

the

working

class

were

able

to

win

greater

political

power

and

economic

entitlements

that,

over

time,

are

perceived

by

capitalists

as

undermining

their

profits.

Consequently,

Reagan,

who

represents

capital’s

interests,

is

now

trying

to

dismantle

this

structure

of

rights

and

entitlements.

Piven

and

Cloward

claim,

however,

that

the

power

that

now

resides

with

the

people

and

the

extent

of

their

organization

are

too

great

to

permit

this

dismantling,

despite

the

ferocity

of

the

attempt

and

the

occasional

successes.

This

is

a

controversial

thesis

set

in

an

eminently

readable

and

scholarly

polemic.

William

G.

Rosenberg

and

Marilyn

B.

Young.

Transforming

Russia

and

China.

New

York:

Oxford

University

Press,

1982.

This

book

is

an

original,

sophisticated,

and

elegantly

written

com-

parison

of

the

twentieth

century’s

two

most

important

revolutions.

Rosenberg

and

Young

reconstruct

the

revolutionary

processes

in

Russia

and

China

from

their

inception

in

the

early

twentieth

century

to

their

end

in

the

stabilization

period

of

the

1960s

in

Russia

and

the

1970s

in

China.

These

two

historians

are

keenly

aware

of

the

social

structures

and

economic

conditions

that

pro-

duced,

shaped,

and

constrained

revolution.

The

greatest

contribu-

tion

of

their

book,

however,

is

the

analysis

of

how

ideology,

cul-

ture,

and

consciousness

shaped

Communist

understanding

of

and

response

to

these

structures

and

conditions.

The

discussions

of

vanguard

parties

after

the

seizure

of

power,

of

nationalism

and

the

World

War

II

experience,

and

of

great

leaps

forward

in

the