Introduction
1. Revolution: The Making of China’s Working Class
2. Radicalism: The Apotheosis of China's Working Class
3. Structural Reform: The Fall of China's Working Class
Conclusion: The Making, Apotheosis and Fall of China's Working Class
Commentaries
4 Viewing The Making of China’s Working Class Through a Russian Lens
Stephen Crowley
5 Commentary on The Making of China’s Working Class
Elaine Sio-ieng Hui
6 The Challenge of Building Durable Political Power
Paul Pierson
7 Response: Entrenchment, Hegemony, Russia
Marc Blecher
Index
Biography
Marc Blecher is James Monroe Professor of Politics and East Asian Studies at Oberlin College. He has served as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies, a Visiting Professor of
Political Science at the University of Chicago, and a Visiting Fellow at The Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. His specialty is Chinese politics, on which he has published five books and dozens of articles
on political science, rural and urban politics, popular participation, political economy and political sociology.
In this bold, original treatise on the variegated fortunes of China's workers over more than a 100-year period, Marc Blecher considers their heterogenous fortunes and their disparate levels of agency by place, gender, skill, and political dauntlessness over time. He draws on a wealth of studies of these laborers and his own interviews, and grounds his analysis in the thinking of E.P. Thompson, Ira Katznelson, Gramsci, Karl Marx, and Michael Burawoy. There is much to chew over in his thoughtful, compassionate account.
Dorothy J. Solinger, Professor Emerita, University of California, Irvine
