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发表于 2012-1-28 00:48:52
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Notes on The Transformation and Development of the Chinese Working Class During the Past 60 Years
Zhang Yaozu
http://chinaleftreview.org/?p=474
Zhang Yaozu, former editor of the People’s Publishing House and chief editor of Chinese Workers Research Website. He has long been concerned with the conditions and future of Chinese working class and engaged in cheering for their cause. He is a well-known activist for workers’ rights in China and has authored The Expansion of Urban and Rural Capital in the Past Thirty Years in China and the Growth of the Ranks of Workers etc.
Changes in the social status of the working class has been closely intertwined with the development of capitalism. During the first three decades of the People’s Republic (1949-1979), the social status of the working class gradually rose due to the weakening of capitalist power in the cities and the countryside; in the second three decades (1979-present), with the expansion of the capitalist power, the status of the working class has dramatically declined.
Overall, the Chinese working class has three characteristics differentiating it from the working classes of other countries. First, the appearance of the working class was earlier than the appearance of the capitalist class in China, and once it entered the political stage, the working class established its own political party and eventually gained control of the country. Second, the Chinese working class has achieved a relatively complete class consciousness and has become the most advanced revolutionary class. During the first thirty years of the People’s Republic, the Chinese working class achieved awareness of its power, gained confidence and developed its political potential. But this thirty years under Chairman Mao was not enough for the Chinese working class to complete its awareness. This thirty years gave them the experience of socialism and of being the leaders of the nation, but the second thirty years gave them knowledge of the power of capital and the experience of being tricked and cheated. This sixty years of positive and negative education has produced within the working class a relatively complete class consciousness–it has a clear understanding of the socialist system it fought for and the capitalism that it is its opposite. A number of researchers on workers from the United States, South Korea and Taiwan have argued that the Chinese working class is the most advanced working class in the world. We will gradually see whether the Chinese working class will be able to give play to its great energies. Sixty years ago, China had eight million workers, among whom four million were employed and four million unemployed. Conservative estimates now hold that China now has three hundred million workers, a forty-fold increase, now numbering more than the population of the United States. This is the largest and most concentrated working class in the world.
The Chinese working class has gone through the transition from class in itself to class for itself. Chinese workers did not have complete class awareness from the beginning, but gradually became mature through the practices of production.
The development of the working class since 1949 can be divided into three major periods. The first period was from 1949-1956, covering the transition from era of New Democracy to socialism. During this period the working class, under the leadership of the Communist Party, transformed from a class in itself to class for itself.
In the early period of the People’s Republic the Communist Party completely depended on the working class, but did not firmly establish the working class as the ruling class. This was because at that time the Chinese working class was still not a class for itself due to its insufficient size and class awareness. The number of workers increased from eight million in 1949 to forty-six million in 1956 and to fifty-six million in 1958. The working class absorbed new members from the countryside and educated them to be new workers who had class awareness, experience, and consciousness of themselves as the leaders of society. These changes opened the possibility for the working class to take on leadership. The 1954 Constitution enshrined the working class as the leading class. At the same time, some frictions developed between the working class and the Party. The struggle against “bureacratism” began in 1956, and in that year there were over one thousand strikes throughout the country.
The second period, from 1956 to 1976, covers the period of socialist construction, and during this time the working class was able to develop its political potential. There were several incidents worth discussing here. First, in 1957, the Communist Party initiated a rectification campaign [the Hundred Flowers movement] which invited intellectuals to correct the subjectivism, denominationalism, and bureaucracy within the Party. After 1949 the Party was extremely highly regarded, and average people very seldom came to think that the Party had any problems. Most workers were extremely grateful to the Party, and thought that they should work hard under its leadership. Most intellectuals in 1957 were intellectuals who had been brought up in the old society. Some of the old intellectuals argued that the business of managing the state was complicated, and that experts and intellectuals should take command. The new elites, that is, the Party bureaucrats, seized the chance to attack the old intellectual elites. At that time, most workers and non-intellectuals did not see intellectuals’ attacks on the Party as heroic gestures, but on the contrary saw them as self-interested and ungrateful. Many workers and peasants worried that intellectuals demand for democracy was a ruse aimed at winning power for themselves, and that once intellectuals gained power the common laborers would lose their newly-won stable salaries and land.
The second incident worth noting is the Great Leap Forward of 1958. Today many people mock the movement’s goal of “Surpass Britain and catch up with America”– how could it be possible for China to have realized this goal? In fact, fifteen years later when global capitalism encountered the crisis of the 1970s, production in Britain declined and China surpassed it. The Great Leap Forward mainly tried to solve two problems: steel and agricultural products such as cotton and staple grains. Steel was the foundation required for further industrialization, and agricultural products were necessary for improving the livelihood of the people. In order to reach the production goal for steel, the masses were mobilized to construct makeshift refineries. Intellectuals scoff at this approach and claim that it caused much negative impact on the environment and society. However, the production goals were eventually realized, and this significantly boosted the confidence of the Chinese people in their efforts to build a new society. Aside from this, women were for the first time able to participate in the production of steel alongside men, and according to interviews with participants this played a great role in liberating women from traditional roles and advancing gender equality. It was the mobilization and increased confidence of the working class during the Great Leap Forward movement of 1958 that laid the foundation for the Angang Charter, which until today is the enterprise management method most conducive to the workers leadership ever developed, and a shining accomplishment of the working class.
The third incident was the Cultural Revolution beginning in 1966. Students spread the news that some Party and government officials had called the workers to rise up, saying that the students had rebelled against the power-holders and that the workers should as well. The workers found this difficult to accept and they organized their own pickets to oppose the students. Today many workers are embarrassed at the mention of this movement, as at the time they joined the conservatives to oppose the rebels. Students said that the Party Center had become revisionist, and many workers thought this was impossible. The students countered that the Soviet Union had produced a Khruschev, why couldn’t China? Now many workers have come to accept this idea. Research on the Cultural Revolution should lead one to the conclusion that this was one of the largest and most thoroughgoing attempts by workers at self-organization. Many people tend to laugh at the mistakes of the working class, but everyone goes through the experience of making errors during a learning process. During the Cultural Revolution the workers broke into two factions. The conservative faction held that the Party should be revered and that it could not make mistakes. How could one bring down the Party Committees and call for revolution? The rebels answered Chairman Mao’s call to rebel. After the founding of the People’s Republic and the workers took on leadership, many workers did not completely understand the problem of bureaucratism, and thought that if they worked hard under the leadership of the Party organization everything would be fine. Mao Zedong raised the slogan of “Everything under the leadership of the working class,” and following this the position of the working class gradually achieved its apex. This was in accordance with the goal of creating a state under the leadership of the working class. Mao said that under socialism workers should not just enjoy the right to social welfare, but they also had the right to manage factories and enterprises. Many workers wondered how this was possible, as workers had to be busy with production. Many people question whether Mao’s statements on the working class were sincere or just a Mao’s political tactic. In truth, Mao’s goal was to build up a worker’s state and eventually realize a proletarian society. On the one hand, this goal reflected the effort toward China’s industrialization; and on the other hand, it was aimed at guaranteeing the socialist system. By turning peasants into rural workers through collectivization and involving intellectuals in production, Mao tried to transform other social groups into members of the working class with complete class awareness. At that time, some cadres and intellectuals did not accept Mao’s plans, but most lower-level cadres and intellectuals welcomed the changes. Thirty years later, the development of capitalism has pushed many intellectuals towards the side of the working class again.
Generally speaking, during the twenty years between 1956 and 1976 the Chinese working class made great contributions to China’s industrialization, the progress of China’s development, the restructuring of the factory management regime, and truly took ownership of the state. The working class progressed from a weak class to a mighty one, for the most part due to the leadership of the Communist Party. But even as we note this, we should emphasize that from the perspective of class consciousness the workers did not develop a complete understanding of or vigilance toward capital.
The third period was from 1976 until 1978. During these three years of transition, the status of the working class began to change from “exercising leadership over everything” to “deferring to the leadership of the Communist Party.” This proved indispensable for the future victory of capitalism. At the local level, following the Party turned into following the local Party Secretary. In fact, in this period, the Party became a tool for taming the people. In factories and work units, many worker leaders were demoted or even imprisoned, and workers’ channels of expression were blocked. Meanwhile, factory despotism was strengthened, and economic incentives were provided to workers to fragment them and shift their attention to material gains rather than class unity. The labor union became a tool for taming the working class.
The fourth period is the thirty years of the reform and opening up. Everyone is aware that this process has entailed the expansion of capitalist power in the countryside and cities and the declining of the social status of the working class. Marx said that capital comes into the world “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” But at the beginning of the reform era, capital did not seem to be as ugly as Marx had said, but on the contrary, it was welcomed by everyone. Capital was portrayed as that which would bring a beautiful life, and neither Party members, cadres, workers, peasants or intellectuals feared or opposed it. As capital slowly revealed its true nature, workers finally realized their function under capitalism. The decade of the 1980 was capitalism’s honeymoon. This is because people did not have a deep understanding of capitalism. The reforms began in the rural areas with the breaking down of the collective economy and the turning of surplus labor into a commodity.
Many measures were taken to undermine opposition to the reforms. In 1981 the armaments kept by factory militias were handed over to the local governments; the first order of business for the capitalist class after it takes power is to disarm the workers. In 1982, the revised Constitution repealed the right to strike and freedom of expression, and promoted educational efforts emphasizing law and discipline. I have asked old cadres why at that time workers’ right to strike was eliminated. Han Xiya said that at the time the propaganda was that “the working class is the leading class—why would the working class call a strike in opposition to itself?” Many people thought that striking against one’s self was absurd and should be eliminated from the constitution. In 1983, the “strike hard” campaign was launched to counter workers’ resistance, and this was the first large-scale suppression aimed at the working class in urban areas. In 1984, the factory regime was reformed into a system under which the factory director assumed full responsibility. This system emphasized the authority of the factory director and weakened the role of the Party branch secretary. In the late 1980s, many social security policies were eliminated such as the iron rice bowl, stable wages, and the like.
By the beginning of the 1990s, the capitalist regime was beginning to be consolidated. After Deng Xiaoping’s famous 1992 trip to the Special Economic Zones in the south and other areas promoting the reforms, the 1993 Corporate Law and the 1995 Labor Law established the new system of property rights and the wage labor system. From 1986 on workers were given contracts for employment, but there was ever only one copy of the contracts, and after the workers signed they were not allowed to keep them. This situation continues to this day, and it is very difficult for migrant workers to obtain copies of their labor contracts–when they ask for the contracts the managers repeatedly reply, “What do you want that for?” There is a continuity in the practices of the capitalists.
Influenced by neo-liberal economic policy, many State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and collective corporations went bankrupt. Meanwhile, migrant workers poured into the cities looking for jobs, and the job security of senior workers was seriously undermined. In 1997, large-scale SOE reform was launched, consisting of two principle measures: to give the property of the SOEs to over to privately-owned or joint-stock enterprises, and to turn workers into wage laborers and establish the market for labor as a commodity which could be bought and sold freely. Marx had said that two markers for the establishment of capitalism was the private ownership of the means of production and the establishment of the wage labor system. The Chinese reforms are fully consistent with these requirements. Factory managers began to sell off their properties to enter the real estate market. In the past when workers destroyed machinery and damaged factories, the officials and capitalists would rush to protect the property, but now it is the opposite—officials and capitalists destroy the factories and the workers try to protect them. The capitalist class moved production facilities to the countryside and began to take on tremendous number of migrant workers. Meanwhile, the original older workers were given meager cash payments or stocks as compensation for losing their factories. While many workers were originally pleased with the value of the stocks, when the value fell many were left with nothing.
Overall, in the 1990s the power of capitalists rapidly expanded and workers defended themselves only passively. Why couldn’t the working class effectively resist against the transformation of socialism into capitalism? Several factors account for this. First, the development of socialism was still immature and its power was still weak. Second, there were many enemies within the Communist Party—even many who argued for the building of socialism were in fact committed to the private ownership system. Third, the working class still lacked sufficient experience in managing and controlling the country, and most policies were promulgated via the Communist Party. However, if only a small group of people maintain control of the state apparatus, it has the possibility of transforming into capitalism or fascism.
Today the power of capitalists far exceeds that of workers. According to official statistics, the private economy makes up sixty-three percent of the whole national economy. Seventy percent of workers work in the private economy. The state of workers can be generalized as “rage and hopelessness.” Since 2003, the number of strikes organized by new workers has gradually increased. Meanwhile the awareness of SOE workers continues to increase. The working class has begun to find some effective approaches to shifting from passive defense to active defense. Many incidents, such as the Yimian incident, the Tonggang incident, and the Suzhou Industrial Park incident, reflect this change.
It will be interesting to observe how the Chinese working class, including both old and new workers, grows and develops in the future. Although a divergence exists between old workers and new workers, once large-scale class conflict occurs they will shore up their own teams and unite to resist the common enemy.
With the deepening of capitalism’s internal conflicts and the acceleration of the process of proletarianization, the poorer classes will gradually lose their illusions concerning private ownership and the market economy. During this process the class awareness of the proletariat will be gradually develop and more and more workers will realize that working hard as individuals will not lead to their liberation. In the conflicts ahead the new workers will develop a consciousness of solidarity, and this consciousness will lead them to unite with the older workers. The capitalist class will continuously promote the growth of the proletariat, and cause them to develop their own awareness sense of class identity. “The proletariat can only emancipate themselves by emancipating all humanity.” Likewise, the Chinese working class will blaze a path for the Chinese people, and for socialism, and only in this way will they be able to lay a path for themselves.
January, 2010
Translated by Wang Chen, a graduate student in Department of Public Policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Saul Thomas helped with proofreading the translation. Thomas is a PhD candidate in the Anthropology Department at the University of Chicago
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发表于 2010-9-14 19:54:12