How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions (Abridged Edition) [Paperback]

Once of central importance to left historians and activists alike, recently the concept of the “bourgeois revolution” has come in for sustained criticism from both marxists and conservatives. In this abridged edition of his magisterialHow Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions?Neil Davidson expertly distills his theoretical and historical insights about the nature of revolutions, making them available for general readers. Through far reaching research and comprehensive analysis, Davidson demonstrates that what's at stake is far from a stale issue for the history books – understanding these struggles of the past offer far reaching lessons for today's radicals

The globalized economy of the present is the result of political and social revolutions directed against pre-capitalist economic structures.

Praise for the unabridged edition:

I was frankly pole-axed by this magnificent book. Davidson resets the entire debate on the character of revolutions: bourgeois, democratic and socialist. He's sending me, at least, back to the library. —Mike Davis, author ofPlanet of Slums

This is, quite simply, the finest book of its kind. —Tony McKenna,Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

Epic in scale, How Revolutionary? is by any standards a significant achievement. Its intellectual scope is commendably wide-ranging; no one else has put together such a broad field of references on this subject, or conjoined such widely dispersed historical and theoretical arguments. In addition, Davidson discusses virtually every key issue in Marxist political sociology, sweeping from the tributary mode to the nation-state, the differentiation of the peasantry to the revolution en permanence.
—New Left Review

“What should our conception of a bourgeois revolution be, if it is to enlighten rather than to mislead ? Neil Davidson’s instructivlsÊ