Meisner's book, which is almost twice as long as Weil's, has greater depth of scholarship, having a wider range of sources. Unlike Weil, Meisner, who is the author of many books on Chinese history and politics, is able to read Chinese. Meisner's chief weakness is that he does not perceive the Chinese revolution as part of an uneven process of world socialist revolution. Meisner has a rigidly deterministic view of socialist revolution, in which it can only come about after a country has experienced a prolonged period of capitalism. This baby is premature.
Premature babies face grave dangers.
Let us wait until it is more fully developed. Neither Lowy nor Trotsky are listed in his nine-page bibliography. This concept of necessary stages is a Stalinist one but is derived from the social democrat Kautsky, who regarded the Bolshevik revolution as premature. The whole logic of the situation imposed the conclusions of the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution. In reality, Lenin's Bolshevik party was characterized by an extremely vigorous internal democracy, and the idea of a one-party system was foreign to Lenin's thought despite its identification with Lenin as a result of Stalinist falsification eagerly seized upon by capitalist propaganda.