Workers' Democracy and Class Politics in China's Long 1980s

October 26th 2024, 4pm-6pm CET  (9am Central ST / 10am East ST /  10pm China ST)

In this event, historical sociologist Yueran Zhang will be joined in conversation by Joel Andreas and Rebecca Karl to discuss his dissertation and ongoing book project *, tentatively titled "Whither Socialism? Workers' Democracy and the Class Politics of China's Post-Mao Transition to Capitalism". Zhang's manuscript provides a distinct class-based explanation of China's transition from socialism to capitalism. Its overarching argument is that the way in which urban industrial workers – ideologically and rhetorically celebrated as the "leading class" of Chinese socialism – interacted with the Party-state in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s was a crucial causal ingredient in the making of China's transition to capitalism. Tracing a series of political contestations centered on the issue of workplace democracy, Zhang argues that the patterns and modes of interaction between workers and the Party-state during China's "long 1980s" shaped and derailed the Party leaders' efforts to pursue incipient marketization within the parameters of socialism, thereby making a full-blown transition to capitalism appear appealing to the ruling elite as the 1980s came to an end.

Yueran Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and the College at the University of Chicago. His research interests include political economy, class analysis, theories of democracy and the state, and comparative studies of socialism(s), capitalism(s) and transitions in between. His previous research has been published in journals such as Theory and Society, Social Forces and New Labor Forum, as well as in the edited volume Proletarian China.

Discussants:

Joel Andreas (Johns Hopkins University)

Rebecca Karl (New York University)

Moderation:

Daniel Fuchs (Humboldt University of Berlin)

Ralf Ruckus

Please register here: https://hu-berlin.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5cqce-qpjoiGdWWhiK-S1GMoYok0ySojxqg#/registration

* Those who are interested in reading Zhang's work in its dissertation
form can access it here.