SOURCE: Allen, Douglas. Review of Revolution from Above, by Tariq Ali. Southern Humanities Review 29 (fall 1992): 361-63.

In the following review, Allen examines the central issues discussed in Revolution from Above.

Since he came to Oxford University from Pakistan and became one of the radical leaders of the 1960s, Tariq Ali has been a prominent figure on the British Left. His books include Can Pakistan Survive?, An Indian Dynasty: The Story of the Nehru-Gandhi Family, and Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties. His orientation can best be described as that of an independent, democratic, anti-Stalinist Marxist/socialist: very familiar with the classical socialist writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, and others and strongly influenced by the writings of Deutscher, Trotsky, and Mandel (i.e., a strong, but not uncritical, Trotskyist influence).

The subtitle of the book [Revolution from Above] aptly describes its central question: Where is the...