Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case presents a new conceptual framework of socialism and applies it to the study of socialist development in China, shedding new light on modern China and signposting novel directions in socialist thought.

Michael Brie is a former senior research fellow at the Institute for Critical Social Analysis at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Germany. Now retired, his research explores the theory and history of socialism, the socio-ecological transformation of modern societies, and contemporary strategic questions facing the Left. He is the co-author of Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary Marxist at the Limits of Marxism (2021), author of Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution and Metaphysics of Domination (2019), and co-editor of Karl Polanyi's Vision of a Socialist Transformation (2018).

Introduction: Why Have So Many Cathedrals of Socialism Collapsed? Part One: Socialist Theory 1. Socialism in Conflict with Communism and Liberalism 2. If You Aren't Willing to Talk about the Strengths of Capitalism, You'd Better Keep Quiet about Socialism 3. Marx's Confidence, Neurath's Utopia, and Mises' Verdict on the Impossibility of Socialism as a Rational Economic Order 4. Karl Polanyi's Search for Freedom in a Complex Society 5. Socialism: Using Solidarity to Address the Contradiction between the Free Development of Each and the Free Development of All Part Two: China's Socialism 6. Beyond the Frog's-Eye Perspective 7. Deng Xiaoping's Sleeplessness and the Chinese Dream 8. Socialism or State Capitalism? 9. The CCP as Communist Emperor: China's Refoundation and Socialist Transformation 10. China's Transformation as Hegemonization of Society through the Communist Party 11. The Effect of the Two General Formulas of Socialism in China 12. Is Liberal Democracy the Only Democracy? 13. Socialism as a Planned Economy 14. The Chinese Nation and Policy in Xinjiang 15. The Strengths and Weaknesses of China's Social System 16. China's (Re-)Emergence as One of the Centres of the World