Permanent transition or permanent revolution: Peasants,proletarians, and politics

David Goodman and Michael Redclift, From Peasant to Proletarian: Capitalist Development and Agrarian Transitions, Oxford: Blackwell, 1981. Pp. xii + 244, £15 (cloth).

This review article considers a book which attempts to present and evaluate Marxist debates on agrarian transition without at first clarifying its own position on Marxist theory and concepts. It is suggested here that this omission, combined with a compressed treatment of complex arguments, results in misinterpretations and misrepresentations of some of these debates, together with a devaluation of the significance of their political inception.