[lbo-talk] Fanshen

[michael yates]

I want to second what Carrol said about Fanshen. It is a book like The Making of the English Working Class, one that surpasses all that preceded it. I remember being on a Monthly Review panel at the Socialist Scholars Conference. Paul Sweezy was on the panel, and there in the front row was Paul's friend, Bill Hinton, author of Fanshen, an old and frail man, but still one who was writing about the peasants of China and lamenting what had happened to them under China's turn toward capitalism. Later I read some things about the Hinton family. This is a truly remarkable group of people. Yankees at their finest.