In socialist China today, neoliberal economics has actually come to wield institutionalized hegemonic power in academic evaluations of economic studies, while in neoliberal America, there is ...ironically considerably more pluralism in the practice of academic evaluations of economic studies. The origins of this state of affairs lie not in just a simple matter of ideology or policy choices, but rather in different tendencies in the operative practices of two different systems of governance. While China leans strongly toward centralized bureaucratism, along with scientism and numericism, the United States leans more toward multicentered pluralistic practices. Regardless, what scholarship needs is pluralistic contention for sustained long-term development.
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In this sweeping study, Julie Hessler traces the invention and
evolution of socialist trade, the progressive constriction of
private trade, and the development of consumer habits from the 1917
...revolution to Stalin's death in 1953. The book places trade and
consumption in the context of debilitating economic crises.
Although Soviet leaders, and above all, Stalin, identified
socialism with the modernization of retailing and the elimination
of most private transactions, these goals conflicted with the
economic dynamics that produced shortages and with the government's
bureaucratic, repressive, and socially discriminatory political
culture. A Social History of Soviet Trade explores the
relationship of trade--official and unofficial--to the cyclical
pattern of crisis and normalization that resulted from these
tensions. It also provides a singularly detailed look at private
shops during the years of the New Economic Policy, and at the
remnants of private trade, mostly concentrated at the outdoor
bazaars, in subsequent years. Drawing on newly opened archives in
Moscow and several provinces, this richly documented work offers a
new perspective on the social, economic, and political history of
the formative decades of the USSR.
In this sweeping study, Julie Hessler traces the invention and evolution of socialist trade, the progressive constriction of private trade, and the development of consumer habits from the 1917 ...revolution to Stalin's death in 1953. The book places trade and consumption in the context of debilitating economic crises. Although Soviet leaders, and above all, Stalin, identified socialism with the modernization of retailing and the elimination of most private transactions, these goals conflicted with the economic dynamics that produced shortages and with the government's bureaucratic, repressive, and socially discriminatory political culture. A Social History of Soviet Trade explores the relationship of trade--official and unofficial--to the cyclical pattern of crisis and normalization that resulted from these tensions. It also provides a singularly detailed look at private shops during the years of the New Economic Policy, and at the remnants of private trade, mostly concentrated at the outdoor bazaars, in subsequent years. Drawing on newly opened archives in Moscow and several provinces, this richly documented work offers a new perspective on the social, economic, and political history of the formative decades of the USSR.
This article argues for the construction of a new political economy based on Chinese practices. It begins with an explanation of the research approach of starting from practice, and from a ...distinctive mode of thinking that is akin to that of medicine, rather than Newtonian physics and mathematical logic. Then it discusses the present-day Chinese practices of combining socialism with market economy, state enterprises with private enterprises, the peasant economy with an industrial economy, and the party-state with the economy—all distinctive realities about the new Chinese political-economic system. The foil for the discussion is the long-standing hegemonic ideology and worldview of Anglo-American classical and neoclassical liberal economics and law. This article suggests that we employ China’s traditional dyadic integration worldview, evident in today’s practices, to arrive at a new integrative cosmological view that rises above both. To a considerable extent, this article is also a reinterpretation of classical Marxist political economy. What the article advocates may be termed a “participatory socialist market economy,” to be distinguished from a bureaucratized and controlling socialist planned economy. This is a system that is still very much in the process of formation, its particular content and characteristics yet to be clarified and specified through a sustained period of searching through practice.
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The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) ideology, rooted in its foundational struggles, explicitly denounces “bureaucratism” (guanliaozhuyi) as an intrinsic ailment of bureaucracy. Yet while the ...revolutionary Party has blasted bureaucratism, its revolutionary regime has had to find a way to coexist with bureaucracy, which is a requisite for effective governance. An anti-bureaucratic ghost thus dwells in the machinery of China's bureaucratic state. We analyse the CCP's anti-bureaucratism through two steps. First, we perform a historical analysis of the Party's anti-bureaucratic ideology, teasing out its substance and emphasizing its roots in and departures from European Marxism and Leninism. Second, we trace both the continuity and evolution in the Party's anti-bureaucratic rhetoric, taking an interactive approach that combines close reading with computational analysis of the entire corpus of the People's Daily (1947–2020). We find striking endurance as well as subtle shifts in the substance of the CCP's anti-bureaucratic ideology. We show that bureaucratism is an umbrella term that expresses the revolutionary Party's anxiety about losing its popular legitimacy. Yet the substance of the Party's concern evolved from commandism and revisionism under Mao, to corruption and formalism during reform. The Party's ongoing critiques of bureaucratism and formalism unfold in parallel fashion with its efforts to standardize, regularize and institutionalize the state.
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Why do people in socialist China read and write literary works?
Earlier studies in Western Sinology have approached Chinese texts
from the socialist era as portraits of society, as keys to the
...tug-of-war of dissent, or, more recently, as pursuit of "pure art."
The Uses of Literature looks broadly and empirically at
these and many other "uses" of literature from the points of view
of authors, editors, political authorities, and several kinds of
readers. Perry Link, author of Evening Chats in Beijing ,
considers texts ranging from elite "misty" poetry to underground
hand-copied volumes (shouchauben) and shows in concrete detail how
people who were involved with literature sought to teach, learn,
enjoy, explore, debate, lead, control, and resist. Using the late
1970s and early 1980s as an entree to the workings of China's
"socialist literary system," the author shows how that system held
sway from 1950 until around 1990, when an encroaching market
economy gradually but fundamentally changed it. In addition to
providing a definitive overview of how the socialist Chinese
literary system worked, Link offers comparisons to the similar
system in the Soviet Union. In the final chapter, the book seeks to
explain how the word "good" was used and understood when applied to
literary works in such systems. Combining aspects of cultural and
literary studies, The Uses of Literature will reward
anyone interested in the literature of modern China or how
creativity is affected by a "socialist literary system."
The policy decision to involve workers in the management of enterprises in Tanzania was made and announced in February 1970 in the form of Presidential Directive. Even now the entire programme is ...based on the implementation of this Directive. The circular directs, among other things, that ""every public corporation or firm employing more than ten workers is to establish a workers' council.""
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