On his book Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China's Communist Revolution
Cover Interview of March 10, 2021
Lastly
I hope my book helps readers reexamine a familiar history of
China, and indeed the world since the Second World War. In my book, many famous
events such as the Mao badge fad take on different meanings. In doing so, I
invite readers to reconsider the history of capitalism through its relationship
to consumerism.
My analysis suggests an ongoing need to move past Cold War-era
binaries—a world we still imagine was divided between planned economy vs. free
markets, dictatorship vs. democracy, interests of the collective vs. freedom of
the individual, and public vs. private enterprise. Unending Capitalism suggests
that these dichotomies may have become so politicized and inaccurate that they
hide more than they reveal.
What emerges is a state capitalism that shifted back and
forth along various points on a state-to-private spectrum of industrial
capitalism, each permutation affecting consumerism in a different way. During
the late 1950s and late 1960s, the political economy moved in the direction of
state-controlled accumulation, whereas during the early 1950s, early 1960s, and
1970s the political economy shifted toward market-mediated accumulation and
consumerism. These shifts were justified as a necessary part of Communist Party
efforts to “build socialism” in order to reach communism. But the existence of
such shifts reveals that neither the state’s vision of socialism nor its
practice of state capitalism and consumerism were static.
Demonstrating that the terms state capitalism and state
consumerism refer not to a fixed but rather to a fluctuating point on the state-to-private
spectrum of industrial capitalism provides a reminder that all economies mix
elements of institutional arrangements associated with both ends of the
spectrum. All forms of industrial capitalism involve attempts to manage
consumer desires.
Viewed from this perspective, the “market reforms” since the
death of Mao in 1976 that promoted greater consumerism in China appear to be
less of a break with Maoist ideology and policy and more as yet another shift
in state-led capitalism. Such shifts also suggest that, aside from state
capitalism and private capitalism, there are other varieties of capitalism in
between these extremes.
I hope that expanding the study of the varieties of
capitalism to include “socialist” countries such as China presents an
opportunity to render the history of capitalism and consumerism as more truly
global, and to think of the Mao era as part of an integrated world history
rather than an isolated and exotic “socialist” interlude.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
I hope my book helps readers reexamine a familiar history of China, and indeed the world since the Second World War. In my book, many famous events such as the Mao badge fad take on different meanings. In doing so, I invite readers to reconsider the history of capitalism through its relationship to consumerism.
My analysis suggests an ongoing need to move past Cold War-era binaries—a world we still imagine was divided between planned economy vs. free markets, dictatorship vs. democracy, interests of the collective vs. freedom of the individual, and public vs. private enterprise. Unending Capitalism suggests that these dichotomies may have become so politicized and inaccurate that they hide more than they reveal.
What emerges is a state capitalism that shifted back and forth along various points on a state-to-private spectrum of industrial capitalism, each permutation affecting consumerism in a different way. During the late 1950s and late 1960s, the political economy moved in the direction of state-controlled accumulation, whereas during the early 1950s, early 1960s, and 1970s the political economy shifted toward market-mediated accumulation and consumerism. These shifts were justified as a necessary part of Communist Party efforts to “build socialism” in order to reach communism. But the existence of such shifts reveals that neither the state’s vision of socialism nor its practice of state capitalism and consumerism were static.
Demonstrating that the terms state capitalism and state consumerism refer not to a fixed but rather to a fluctuating point on the state-to-private spectrum of industrial capitalism provides a reminder that all economies mix elements of institutional arrangements associated with both ends of the spectrum. All forms of industrial capitalism involve attempts to manage consumer desires.
Viewed from this perspective, the “market reforms” since the death of Mao in 1976 that promoted greater consumerism in China appear to be less of a break with Maoist ideology and policy and more as yet another shift in state-led capitalism. Such shifts also suggest that, aside from state capitalism and private capitalism, there are other varieties of capitalism in between these extremes.
I hope that expanding the study of the varieties of capitalism to include “socialist” countries such as China presents an opportunity to render the history of capitalism and consumerism as more truly global, and to think of the Mao era as part of an integrated world history rather than an isolated and exotic “socialist” interlude.