In both existing scholarship and popular accounts, in both China and elsewhere, the term "market reform" has been overwhelmingly deployed as the master conceptual device through which to understand China’s post-Mao economic transition. From this perspective, which I call "neo-Smithian", China's transition from state socialism to capitalism resulted from continued expansion of market forces. This talk challenges this neo-Smithian analytical paradigm, both because it assumes a teleological view of historical change and because it fails the test of historical comparison. I argue that, depending on historical context, market reforms may or may not be compatible with the framework of socialist public property. In the case of China, the transition to capitalism was inaugurated only after efforts to conduct market reforms within the socialist property regime disastrously failed. This failure has to be explained by something other than the market reforms themselves. I argue that an analytical focus on class politics points to a potential explanation.

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About the Speaker

Yueran Zhang is a political and historical sociologist interested in the comparative studies of capitalism(s), socialism(s), and transitions in between. His research has been published in such outlets as Theory and Society, International Review of Social History, Social Forces and New Labor Forum, and has received multiple awards from the American Sociological Association. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled “Whither Socialism? The Politics of Class and China’s Post-Mao Transition to Capitalism”.