Revolution, Passive Revolution, and Counterrevolution: The Origin of China's Capitalist "Restoration" Reconsidered

Yueran Zhang, University of Chicago

Some of the most ambitious efforts in the existing literature to theorize China's transition from state socialism to capitalism conceptualize the process as a Gramscian passive revolution to demobilize the rebellious momentum unleased during the Cultural Revolution. I challenge this view. I argue that the transition from socialism to capitalism should be understood as an unambiguous counterrevolution, a thorough transformation of the property regime marked by immense state violence, repression, and social sufferings. However, this counterrevolution should not be understood as the result of a master strategic plan or elite conspiracy. China's ruling elite launched the counterrevolution only as a contingent response to the dramatic failure of the prior passive-revolutionary project, in which efforts to stabilize tensions internal to socialism through limited negotiation with subaltern actors paradoxically ended up gravely intensifying such tensions. 

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 206. Revolution and Counter-Revolution: Historical Analysis Between Short Term and Longue Durée