Trotskyism in China: Struggling towards the road of light

Communism's collapse in Eastern Europe, and the abandonment by China's Party/state of any radical impulse, has reinforced the long-term crisis of Marxist theory and practice. These trends have at least partially vindicated dissident Marxists like Trotsky, but vindication has not prevented the continuing marginalization of Marxist theory and social practice in China. Given this crisis and marginalization, it may seem like an inauspicious time for Gregor Benton to bring out three works on Trotskyism in China, but we are fortunate he did. Historians of Republican China and the People's Republic will appreciate these works, which recover (and translate into English) the words and deeds of important communist actors in the 1920s and 1930s.