Proletarian Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution

by Elizabeth J. Perry, Li Xun

This pathbreaking book offers the first in-depth study of Chinese labor activism during the momentous upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. The authors explore three distinctive forms of working-class protest: rebellion, conservatism, and economism. Labor, they argue, was working at cross-purposes through these three modes of militancy promoted by different types of leaders with differing agendas and motivations. Drawing upon a wealth of heretofore inaccessible archival sources, the authors probe the divergent political, psychocultural, and socioeconomic strains within the Shanghai labor movement. As they convincingly illustrate, the multiplicity of worker responses to the Cultural Revolution cautions against a one-dimensional portrait of working-class politics in contemporary China.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction, Labor

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 1997

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well evidenced and argued. Very helpful in understanding the details of the role that organized labor played in Shanghai's local politics and economy during the broader Cultural Revolution decade.

[Javier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well researched and enlightening in some regards. I think some topics could have been detailed further (Shanghai Commune).

[Fidel Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good, sceptical sociological and political analysis of the cultural revolution and its institutional constructions in Shanghai.

[Chelsea Szendi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It always behooves us to remember the heterogeneity of any sociological category, whether it be the state, or - in this case - labor.