Review essay: Western Marxists in flux over Chinese Marxism

Abstract

Where is Marxism going in China? Not far, according to Chinese Marxism in Flux (1978-84). A prominent claim throughout this collection of essays is that Marxism has been used as an ideological club rather than a liberating theory and that this misuse of Marxism can be traced to metatheoretical mistakes. The result, the authors seem to claim, is that revolutionary change has been restricted to economic reforms. There is “constant stress on the reality of Marxist [and sometimes Althusserian] categories” (p. 9), and “some [most?] contributors … are quite sympathetic to aspects of the ‘left’ thinking of previous years” (p. 2).     

Book reviews

In a Collapsing Empire: Underdevelopment, Ethnic Conflicts and Nationalisms in the Soviet Union. Marco Buttino (editor). Milano: Fondazione Giangiacomo Fentrinelli, 1993, 375 pp, Lire80,000.

The Turkic Peoples of the World. Margaret Bainbridge (editor). London: Kegan Paul International, 1993, 403 pp, £65.

Where Two Worlds Met. The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600–1771. Michael Khodarkovsky. Cornell University Press, 1992, 278 pp, illus, index.

Please Don't Call it Soviet Georgia. Mary Russell. London: Serpent's Tail, 1991, viii, 268 pp, £9.99.

Georgia: a Rebel in the Caucasus. Peter Nasmyth. London, Cassell, 1992, 222 pp, £16.99.

Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History. Ronald Grigor Suny. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, xiii, 289 pp, $17.95.

Muslim‐Christian Encounters. William Montgomery Watt. Routledge, 1991, 164 pp, index.

The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia. Peter Hopkirk. London: John Murray, 1990, xiv, 562 pp, illus, £19.95.

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia. Peter Hopkirk. New York: Kodansha, 1992, xxiv, 564 pp, illus, $30.00.

Francis Younghusband and the Great Game. Anthony Verrier. London: Jonathan Cape, 1991, xviii, 238 pp, illus, £18.00.     

The determination of lysergide (LSD) in urine by high-performance liquid chromatography-isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS)

The use of isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS) has been investigated for the forensic confirmation of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in urine by LC-MS. The advantages of using a deuterated analog of LSD as an internal standard over methysergide are discussed. This study includes a comparison of the electrospray mass spectra of LSD, LSD-d3 and methysergide, and discusses the choice of suitable ions for use in selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode. An IDMS method is presented for the LC-MS confirmation of LSD in urine, with a limit of quantification (LOQ) of 0.5 ng/mL, reflecting the forensic requirement at this laboratory. Under some circumstances the LOQ can be improved to 0.1 ng/mL. This method is linear in the range tested (up to 10 ng/mL LSD in urine) and has been validated in terms of accuracy and precision.     

"PUBLICITY" AS A PROBLEM IN THE INTERNAL VALIDITY OF TIME SERIES QUASI-EXPERIMENTS

Scholars who work with time series quasi-experiments have identified "publicity" as a problem in the interpretation of such research designs. The present study utilizes three examples of the role of publicity in three social interventions: the Romanian abortion restriction of 1966; the British breathalyzer crackdown; and, the 1978 Georgia Status Offender Act. The authors conclude that publicity is most likely to be a problem in internal validity when (1) the intervention is not truly abrupt and (2) a broad "policy" is evaluated as opposed to a "program."