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This stimulating and challenging book explores the duplicitous nature of development in China. On the positive side, it brings longer and healthier lives; fewer children dead before they are five years old; more comfort and security from famine and disaster; more education; more communication; more travel; less war. But from another, darker perspective, development brings violence to some people - those who are in the way of the new things, those who cannot adapt to the new ways - and it threatens old knowledges, habits and societies as it disrupts old power structures. Michael Webber presents

The author examines the dynamics of primitive accumulation through market-based competition for factors of production. Although much existing analysis of primitive accumulation focuses on accumulation through dispossession, in fact, competition in factor markets is one of the two principal means of primitive accumulation in rural China. A model of market-based interaction between capitalist and noncapitalist production is estimated with data from China in the 1990s. In this model there is no tendency for capitalist production to eliminate other forms of production; nor for income differences between sectors to disappear. Rates of migration between noncapitalist and capitalist systems of production depend on the means and variances of incomes in the two sectors; however, at incomes prevailing in 1990s China, rates of migration were predicted to be (and in fact were) higher where capitalist incomes are higher, where noncapitalist incomes are higher, and where the ratio of capitalist:noncapitalist incomes are lower.

Part of a review forum on a book by Jim Stanford, Paper Boom (Toronto: Lorimer, 1999). Stanford offers a detailed examination of the role that Canada's financial industry played in creating the country's current economic situation. Because the book is extremely wide-ranging, this review focuses on just one of Stanford's central arguments: the causes of national crisis & economic slowdown & the relationship in this scenario between local & international, & political & structural. It contends that Stanford's argument raises several questions &, in parts, appears to be inaccurate. Nonetheless, while Paper Boom may have oversimplified Canada's economic situation, it makes a significant contribution to the analysis of Canadian economics during the last quarter century. K. A. Larsen

Using a simple two department model this paper concludes that even if capital does flow from less to more profitable firms or industries, profit rates may not be equalized. Thus theories that assume that profit rates are equal in equilibrium are called into question as well as those which argue that profit rates are unequal solely because of immobilities.

"Energy is humanity's single most important resource. In fact, as energy expert Michael E. Webber argues in Power Trip, the story of how societies rise can be told largely as the story of how they manage energy sources through time. In 2019, as we face down growing demand for and accumulating environmental impacts from energy, we are at a crossroads and the stakes are high. But history shows us that energy's great value is that it allows societies to reinvent themselves. Power Trip explores how energy has transformed societies of the past and offers wisdom for today's looming energy crisis. There no magic bullet; energy advances always come with costs. Scientific innovation needs public support. Energy initiatives need to be tailored to individual societies. We must look for long-term solutions. Our current energy crisis is real, but it is solvable. We have the power"--