The book’s novelty lies both in the fact that it is the first book in English to analyse Hungarian collectivisation from a sociological perspective, and also in the nature of that perspective. Rather than consider Eastern European societies in the light of social stratification and social mobility surveys, it takes as its point of departure the commitment of Eastern European societies to industrialisation within the constraints of a socialist economy and, by examining social change from the viewpoint of labour and those who control it, places the focus more strongly than has traditionally been the case on the production of social wealth, and the relations which circumscribe it, rather than on the ways in which wealth is distributed and consumed.