In part one of this series, I outlined the consolidation of the party-state and Soviet-influenced administrative planning and the ways in which it shaped workers’ organizations in the formative years of the PRC. In this part, I will discuss the challenges posed to the Party-State by the mass movements unleashed in the Cultural Revolution and the ways in which two very different organizations responded when the Party reasserted authority. Workers’ movements temporarily empowered to organize outside the confines of the party attempted to institutionalize proletarian democracy on a higher level than the shop floor, and faced resistance by an entrenched state apparatus. The Shanghai People’s Commune opted to collaborate with the Party and was absorbed back into the state, although the state allowed for a greater degree of worker participation in governance than before. The Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee (Shengwulian), on the other hand, resisted the call to disband the mass movements and was shut down.

The Cultural Revolution and the Shanghai People’s Commune

Chris Bramall summarizes the late Maoist economic strategy, undertaken as part of an ambitious program to rapidly industrialize China while simultaneously revolutionizing the superstructure. Thus:

Relations of production were to be based on public ownership of agricultural and industrial assets. There was to be no going back on the transformation of property rights which had been accomplished during the 1950s. Production in the countryside would be carried out by collectives and in border regions by quasi-military state farms. By enabling the mobilization of surplus labor, these institutions would prepare farmland for mechanization and would greatly expand the irrigated area. The expansion of industrial production would be carried out by state and collectively owned firms operating at different levels within the Chinese administrative hierarchy. The largest and most modern industries would be under the control of China’s central ministries. Less significant industrial enterprises would be run by provincial, prefectural, municipal and county governments. And the communes and brigades would take responsibility for the creation and management of small-scale rural industry.^[1]

Democratic management in the last ten years of the Mao era has to be placed in context of the dynamic of rebel workers’ organizations, extra-party political formations temporarily allowed to attack the organs of the party-state, and worker and student groups that were allowed to exercise the “four big freedoms,” the freedom to air grievances, participate in debates, freedom of speech, and freedom to write big-character posters (along with an honorary fifth freedom, the freedom to link-up with like-minded groups.)^[2] As students were called upon to overthrow the Four Olds, workers were empowered to challenge the authority of factory cadre and management. The Cultural Revolution, which destabilized the party-state and subsequently consolidated it, institutionalized workers’ power via revolutionary committees. However, due to the institutional constraints in which Cultural Revolution institutions were formed, they were rapidly dismantled after the fall of the Gang of Four.

In 1966, the party-state appeared stable to all outside observers, regardless of the turmoil of the Great Leap Forward from which China had only recently recovered. In that year, however, Mao approved the formation of worker and student organizations to attack remnants of the old society as well as “capitalist roaders” in the upper echelons of the Communist Party. The objectives of the Cultural Revolution were formalized in the sixteen-point Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which authorized non-party masses to “Make the fullest use of big-character posters and great debates to argue matters out, so that the masses can clarify the correct views, criticize the wrong views and expose all the ghosts and monsters.”^[3] Although Cultural Revolution committees in factories were initially organized by party committees, workers were empowered to take up the sixteen points and challenge both factory cadre and party-organized work-teams.^[4]

The contradiction at the heart of the Cultural Revolution is that it legitimized- at least through the January Storm of 1967- the formation of revolutionary organizations outside the direct control of the party-state, while disrupting institutions of democratic management, trade unions, and SWCs. The Sixteen Point directive issued by the Communist Party Central Committee and published in the Beijing Review called for the masses to hold open debate and air grievances with big character posters and to form Cultural Revolutionary organizations in which leaders were chosen through Paris Commune-type elections, where leaders were to be recallable at all times.^[5] After one year of mass movements, the inviolability of the party-state prevailed, and with the wave of power seizures in 1967, autonomous workers’ organizations were forced to stand down or face repression.

The result of the Cultural Revolution on workers’ organizations remains ambiguous, however. Jiang Hongsheng of China’s Peking University maintains that the power seizures did, in fact, produce Paris-Commune-type governments, albeit with significant differences. For example, although the Shanghai Commune was not a replica of the Paris Commune, as it did not allow recallability at all times and, after reincorporation into the party-state admitted cadre, it nonetheless institutionalized workers’ control over the state apparatus. Yiching Wu, on the other hand, holds that the Cultural Revolution “lacked a clear class focus,” and was therefore unable to attack the roots of bureaucratic domination over the working class.^[6] In The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, he describes the Maoist concept of class as an amalgamation of old elites and a minority of party cadres, while remaining trapped in a discourse created to analyze classes in capitalist and semi-feudal social formations. Moreover, the PRC’s classification system, where pre-revolutionary class origins followed all citizens, stigmatized the remnants of the old bourgeoisie and landlords and tainted attempts to define class struggle in post-revolutionary China. This post-revolutionary classification system assured that disempowered pre-revolutionary landlords and capitalists would be repeatedly scapegoated in subsequent political campaigns.^[7] As a consequence, when the Cultural Revolution sought to overthrow the nebulously defined new bourgeoisie, it was often unclear whether its target was a new class generated by the dynamics of the bureaucratic party-state or a product of bribery by the old ruling classes. As a result,

Instead of giving rise to a conception of class adequate to Chinese socialism, the reification of class and compression of class analyses centering on old and new—or pre-revolutionary and postrevolutionary— social relationships ended up creating a hopelessly incoherent ideological space in which sharply different politics of class interpenetrated and fused, and in which new types of social conflict were depicted as a continuation of the titanic battles of the past between the revolutionary forces and the agents of the ancien régime.^[8]

Notwithstanding a confused definition of class or an inability to theorize class struggle under state socialism, rebel organizations used the GPCR as an opportunity to deepen workers’ participation in politics with varying degrees of success. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, the Paris Commune took on a new role in CPC discourse. Party politics were no longer restricted to party cadre, but were to be flung open to mass criticism. Factories were transformed from mere production facilities into sites of political struggle as the Red Guards dispersed into industry and inspired the formation of rebel workers organizations. The industrial working class itself was torn between conservative and rebel organizations. Older workers tended to stand by party cadre, and younger workers tended to support revolutionary organizations. Younger workers chafed at cadre privileges and the disparity between formally-employed and informal workers, but the politics of older workers were informed by memories of pre-revolutionary China. In the words of the former rebel worker Zhang Mingtang, “their [older workers’] reference point was 1949. Before liberation, conditions for them were bad... after liberation their conditions improved...”.^[9]

Most significant of these rebel workers’ organizations was Wang Hongwen’s Workers’ General Headquarters (WGH) in Shanghai, which received Mao’s stamp of approval, thus legitimating working-class rebellion against established authorities.^[10] Although the revolutionary committees were reincorporated into the party-state, the Shanghai Commune renamed the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, and rebel workers’ movements were shut down, the popularization of the Angang Constitution ensured an unprecedented degree of equality between workers, cadre, and management. It nonetheless fell short of its goals of breaking down the division between mental and manual labor, and, consequently, managerial authority would steadily erode workers’ power after 1978.

The Cultural Revolution suspended the normal functioning of the PRC’s political institutions, including the Staff-and-Workers’ congresses.^[11] In their place were revolutionary committees intended to function as Paris Commune-type organs of proletarian dictatorship. Most significant was the Shanghai Commune, which overthrew the municipal government in a wave of power seizures subsequently dubbed the January Storm. Despite its limitations, the actions of rebel workers and students offer a glimpse into a bottom-up revolt against the bureaucracy, as workers’ organizations extended their reach throughout the state apparatus in the process of solving practical economic problems. Wang Hongwen, a security guard at the no. 17 Textile Factory, earned the ire of the party committee by putting up a big character poster asking the factory director, “why do you avoid class struggle like the plague? Doesn’t your revisionist line of cadres intend to pave the way for capitalism? Where do you want to lead our whole factory with eight thousand workers?”^[12]

As a struggle between cadre and conservative workers on one side and Wang Hongwen’s rebel workers deepened, factory cadre and work teams held a gerrymandered election to legitimate their authority, in which the loyalists predictably won, having benefited from the demonization of the rebel workers and exclusion of rebels from the nominating process.^[13] Factory elections did not end the conflict. The struggle between cadre, conservative workers, and revolutionary workers would expand, as the Shanghai municipal government became a target of revolutionary workers’ groups. After traveling to Beijing to share experiences with Red Guards and other rebel workers, Wang Hongwen returned to Shanghai to found the Workers’ Revolutionary General Headquarters on November 8th, 1966, after which he would seek recognition from the Cultural Revolution Small Group in opposition to the Shanghai Municipal Government.^[14]

While the newly-founded WRGH dispatched a delegation to Beijing to seek recognition, the Railroad Ministry sent a telegram to the Shanghai Railroad Bureau instructing that Wang Hongwen’s train be grounded near Shanghai, and thus, he was halted at the Anting Station, on the city’s outskirts. After rail traffic was disrupted for 36 hours, Zhang Chunqiao of the Cultural Revolution Small Group was dispatched to resolve the situation.^[15] Zhang Chunqiao went behind the back of the Shanghai Party Committee and unilaterally signed the five demands of the WGH:

1. Recognition of the Shanghai Workers’ Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters as a revolutionary and legal organization;
2. recognition of the November 9 inauguration and “forced” trek to Beijing as a revolutionary action;
3. assignment of all responsibility for the outcome of the Anting Incident to the East China Bureau and the SPC;
4. public criticism of Mayor Cao Diqiu;
5. provision of various sorts of aid to the WGH to facilitate its future work.^[16]

When the Cultural Revolution Small Group legitimized Wang Hongwen’s Workers’ General Headquarters, it mushroomed from a substantial minority to a decisive majority of workers, comprising 60 percent of Shanghai’s textile and light industrial workers, 83 percent of Shanghai’s metallurgical workers, and 61 percent of chemical workers.^[17]

The Workers’ General Headquarters asserted control over administration in the process of solving immediate economic problems. Logistics, in particular, had been severely disrupted. WGH organizer Wang Minglong wrote, “the railway system was blocked and the North Station and surrounding streets were filled with people waiting for trains—even sleeping in the streets at night. The port had basically closed down... No one in the SPC or the railway or port bureaus was handling this problem.”^[18] In order to tackle this problem while asserting control over municipal affairs, the WGH founded the Shanghai Grasp Revolution, Promote Production Command Post. More than a tool to alleviate traffic problems, it was meant to bypass Shanghai’s municipal government’s authority and enable rebel workers to directly exercise political power.

The new regime could not entirely dispense with the old bureaucracy. After a wave of power seizures, old managers were reintegrated under the supervision of revolutionary committees, over which the army exercised considerable influence. Nonetheless, rebel workers had achieved an unprecedented degree of institutional representation in Shanghai’s three-in-one committees, often after a back-and-forth of push-back by the pre-CR bureaucracy and renewed counterattacks by the revolutionaries. Although workers’ representatives had been a fixture of Chinese politics since 1949, representation in the last decade of the Mao era entailed a more substantive exercise of political power. As Elizabeth Perry writes, “For nearly a decade after the January power seizure of 1967, the core leadership at all levels of Shanghai’s municipal government included a substantial number of worker rebels. During the previous seventeen years of Communist rule, worker representatives had been selected for their diligence at work or their obedience to party directives and had served as little more than tokens at people’s congresses. By contrast, the “new cadre” corps of worker rebels evidenced a keener understanding of political operations and a greater willingness to speak their minds.” Moreover, workers would use their newfound political power to exert influence over factory administration while seeking posts in government from the municipal to national level, as well as using the trade unions as organs of policymaking.^[19]

In January of 1967, amidst clashes with conservative Red Guards, the WGH overthrew the Shanghai Party Committee. Mao endorsed the WGH’s seizure of power, proclaiming “This is a great revolution in which one class has overthrown another.”^[20] Zhang Chunqiao and Wang Hongwen proclaimed the Shanghai People’s Commune on February 5th, bringing disparate Red Guard and rebel workers’ organizations together in what was to become a Paris Commune-type municipal government, in which he proclaimed the Commune’s intent to continue the “great linking up” of rebel movements.^[21] The proclamation of the Shanghai People’s Commune was expected to garner Mao’s support. However, when Zhang Chunqiao returned from Beijing on January 24, the tide had already shifted towards a return to normalcy, and the Shanghai People’s Commune was dissolved into the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, in which a “triple alliance” of workers’ representatives, party cadre, and soldiers would govern.^[22]

Outside of Shanghai, autonomous workers’ organizations encountered less favorable circumstances. In the latter half of 1967, the PLA led the bloody repression of recalcitrant Red Guard and rebel workers’ groups that refused the party’s call to restore order. The Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Workers’ Alliance is representative of the so-called ‘ultra-left’ rebel movements. Shengwulian’s analysis went further than the WGH’s in its critique of the party-state. Rather than a minority of party cadre taking the capitalist road, they held that the state bureaucracy as a whole constituted a “red capitalist class” which exploited the broad masses of people.^[23] Another Shengwulian activist, Zhang Yugang, articulated the perspective that the object of the Cultural Revolution was to “smash the old state apparatus that serves bourgeois privilege.”^[24] Predictably, this earned the ire of the party center, including the Left. Singled out for criticism by the Cultural Revolution Small Group and Kang Sheng, their class analysis was dubbed “thoroughly reactionary.”^[25] Shengwulian was subsequently dissolved. By the summer of 1968, the mass movement had largely died down as rebel organizations dissolved or were repressed.

The WGH, however, was able to resist pressure from above to dissolve, first changing its name to the “Shanghai Municipal Workers’ Representative Congress” and then to the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions.”^[26] The Shanghai Federatin of Trade Unions was more than an appendage of the Party, and put an end to the power of party committees to appoint union cadre and exercised its newfound power to “dispatch rebel workers to party and government agencies in which workers were scarce.”^[27]

The Shanghai People’s Commune, unlike Shengwulian, accepted the limitations of the Cultural Revolution imposed from above and could continue to exert a certain degree of influence over the state apparatus. Institutionalization of workers’ power was more successful at the grassroots than in the upper echelons of leadership. When the three-in-one combination was institutionalized in the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, rebel workers comprised over 50 percent of committee representatives, and therefore, in Jiang Hongsheng’s view, “the leftist elements from the masses began to exert overwhelming influence on the new popular power organ of Shanghai.”^[28] The situation at the top was less rosy. According to a survey conducted by the Shanghai Party Committee in 1970, only 9.9 percent of committee chairs or vice-chairs were rebel workers.^[29] The dictatorship of the proletariat was only partial, and despite the persistence of elements of workers’ democracy through the Revolutionary Committees, it proved insufficient to resist the party’s post-Mao right turn.

The Cultural Revolution and the Angang Constitution

The Anshan Iron and Steel Company (Angang) would see its prominence rise to new heights during the Cultural Revolution. Angang was a crucial factory in China’s industrial northeast. Founded by imperial Japan in occupied Manchuria, it would go on to serve as a crucial node by which technology and expertise were transferred to China from the former occupier, and later the Soviet Union, and diffused throughout the PRC. This strategic enterprise was rebuilt with the help of Japanese technicians who were retained by both the Guomindang and the PRC, and would go on to train their Chinese counterparts. Chinese technicians employed in Angang were subsequently dispatched to study in the USSR, and they, in turn, trained experts who would go on to work at factories throughout China.^[30]

Despite receiving Mao’s stamp of approval during the Great Leap Forward, the Angang Constitution had been neglected during the period of reconstruction. During the Cultural Revolution, however, it was revived and used as a model of socialist management to be emulated throughout the nation as a framework to institutionalize workers’ participation in management and management’s participation in labor. Summarized by the shorthand “two participates, one revise and three-in-one,” (两参议该三结合,) the Angang constitution called for worker participation in management, cadre participation in labor, revision of unreasonable regulations, and the formation of three-in-one committees of cadre, workers, and technicians.^[31]

Charles Bettelheim’s description of the General Knitwear Factory in Beijing in Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China provides a revealing glimpse into democratic management after the rebel workers’ organizations had been folded back into the party-state. Bettelheim’s case study can be partially corroborated by subsequent interviews, especially Li Huayin’s research, even if his claim that the Cultural Revolution “’discovered’ (in the sense in which Marx used the expression in connection with the Paris Commune) an essential form of the class struggle for the construction of socialism” was proven premature by the events of 1976-78.^[32]

The General Knitwear Factory was, in many respects, very typical of socialist-era enterprises. Compensation followed the pattern that Hao Qi has dubbed the Maoist Incentive System, which was characterized by limited material incentives and low wages but comparatively high benefits so that the bulk of remuneration took the form of housing and healthcare, long-term job security, and workers’ participation in management alongside cadre.^[33] In addition, work units also provided three daily meals and childcare, as did most Chinese State-Owned Enterprises prior to the 1990s.^[34]

The Angang Constitution featured prominently in Bettelheim’s interviews. The factory director maintained that they “put politics in command” by implementing the Angang Constitution:

Implementing the Anshan Constitution means always to put politics in command, strengthen party leadership, launch vigorous mass movements, systematically promote the participation of cadres in productive labor and of workers in management, reform any unreasonable rules, assure close cooperation among workers, cadres, and technicians, and energetically promote the technical revolution.^[35]

Bettelheim’s interviewee Li Chou-Hsia described the process of abolishing unreasonable rules in terms of struggle against the revisionist line and the bourgeoisie within the party:

During the Cultural Revolution, she explained, the masses not only rejected the revisionist line, but were also strengthened in struggle; steeped in the study and application of Mao Tse-tung Thought they demanded participation in management, in keeping with the Anshan Constitution. The first experiment in workers' participation in management was sponsored by the revolutionary committee before the formation of the new party committee. Initiated in a single shop, it was extended throughout the factory in February 1969. The experiment focused on the abolition of the "unreasonable rules" imposed by the old management -- regulations concerning work organization, discipline, etc., which reflected a lack of confidence in workers' initiative and thus tended to preserve capitalist relations. Each regulation was subjected to mass discussion. Although this process is still going on, a great number of rules have already been abolished, making it possible to effect a substantial reduction in factory administrative personnel.^[36]

Elections for Revolutionary Committee representatives were held every year:

The election is organized by the workers themselves, who draw up a list of candidates after extensive discussion. The team consist of veteran workers, who play the leading role, former cadres who have rejoined the rank and file, and young intellectuals. Team members are all production workers; they receive no extra pay and work at least one additional hour a day in connection with their functions (attending meetings, visiting workers' homes, etc.).^[37]

As manual workers were encouraged to work alongside technicians and management, activists attempted to decouple upgrading skills from salary increases. In the political climate of the long Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976, acquiring technical or political qualifications did not necessarily entail a change in wages. In this regard, the ethos of serving the people served to break down the division between mental and manual labor. Bettelheim noted that key factories often had attached technical schools which offered training in related fields. Their aim was not “professional advancement,” but ostensibly the benefit of the collective.^[38]

Bettelheim’s account of Cultural Revolution-era factory management is, in retrospect, overly optimistic, but it nonetheless contains important details of the day-to-day processes of worker management. In retrospect, the limitations were evident even in Bettelheim’s account, but Joel Andreas and Li Huaiyin’s research indicates that workers’ organizations could counterbalance the power of party cadre and management on the enterprise level while maintaining industrial growth. Mao-era industrial organization allowed for a steady improvement of labor productivity, both due to capital investment and “the functioning of the work unit equilibrium that effectively regulated the labor force.”^[39] More significantly, the power seizures of 1967 institutionalized workers’ power on a larger scale than had ever been seen within state socialism, at least in Shanghai, albeit without calling into question the power of the party-state. Nonetheless, the Cultural Revolution failed to institutionalize autonomous workers’ organizations throughout China. In the rest of the country, the military was more likely to ignore Mao’s command to support the Left and place conservatives on the Revolutionary Committees instead. In this regard, the demise of Shengwulian is more representative of the fate of autonomous workers’ organizations outside of Shanghai.

1. Bramall, Chinese Economic Development, 153.

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2. Andreas, Disenfranchised, 99.

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3. Communist Party of China, “Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” Peking Review, August 8, 1966 https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-33g.htm

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4. Andreas, Disenfranchised, 106.

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5. Communist Party of China, “Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-33g.htm

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6. Yiching Wu, “Rethinking ‘Capitalist Restoration’ in China,” Monthly Review, Vol. 57, No. 6, (Monthly Review Press, November 2005,) https://monthlyreview.org/articles/rethinking-capitalist-restoration-in-china/

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7. Yiching Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, (Harvard University Press, 2014), 47.

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8. Ibid, 49

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9. Andreas, Disenfranchised, 112

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10. Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, 97.

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11. Cai He and Li Wanlian, “Research Into the Implementation of the Staff and Workers Congress System in State-Owned Enterprises: A 60-Year Case Study of One Factory,” in Rethinking Socialism in China: Factory Politics in the People’s Republic of China, edited by Joel Andreas, (Brill, 2020,) 38.

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12. Jiang Hongsheng, The Paris Commune in Shanghai: The Masses, the State, and the Dynamics of Continuous Revolution, Dissertation (Duke University, 2010,) 242.

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13. Ibid, 249.

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14. Ibid, 252.

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15. Elizabeth J. Perry and Li Xun, Proletarian Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution, (Westview Press, 1997,) 35.

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16. Ibid,.

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17. Ibid, 61.

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18. Ibid, 146.

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19. Perry, Proletarian Power, 145-146.

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20. People’s Daily, January 5, http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64162/64164/4416084.html

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21. Zhang Chunqiao, “Zhang Chunqiao’s speech at the Founding Meeting of the Shanghai Commune,” https://www.marxists.org/chinese/reference-books/chineserevolution/zhangchunqiao/31-60/37.htm.

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22. Meisner, Mao’s China and After, 341.

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23. Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, 171.

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24. Ibid, 82.

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25. Ibid,.

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26. Perry, Proletarian Power, 163.

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27. Ibid, 166.

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28. Jiang, The Paris Commune in Shanghai, 526.

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29. Perry, Proletarian Power, 153.

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30. Koji Hirata, Making Mao’s Steelworks, 116.

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31. Li Zhencheng 李振城, ”Zhengzhi gua shuai shi angang xianfa de shouyao zhengzhi guize” 政治挂帅是鞍钢宪法的首要政治规则 [‘Politics in Command’ is the Primary Political Principle of the Angang Constitution], in Angang Xianfa: Wushi Nian Huigu 鞍钢宪法：五十年回顾 [The Angang Constitution: a 50-Year Retrospective], edited by Li Zhencheng 李振城 , (Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, 2011,) 59.

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32. Charles Bettelheim, Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China: Changes in Management and the Division of Labor, (Monthly Review Press, 1974,) 10.

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33. Hao Qi, Review of Radical Political Economics, “‘Distribution According to Work’: An Historical Analysis of the Incentive System in China’s State-Owned Sector”, 4.

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34. Bettelheim, Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China, 13.

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35. Ibid, 17.

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36. Ibid, 12.

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37. Ibid,.

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38. Ibid, 16.

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39. Li Huaiyin, The Master in Bondage, 166.

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