When scholars predicted that democracy would emerge with China's shift from Maoism to market capitalism, they failed to acknowledge the workplace democratic structures put into place under Mao. Instead of nurturing worker democracy, market capitalism squelched it. In Disenfranchised, Joel Andreas follows the arc of industrial democracy from the rise through the demise of the Mao-era (1949–76) system of work units—workplaces that granted permanent employment to most while providing for virtually all workers’ needs, including housing, medical clinics, and schools for workers and their children.

The study asks, to what extent did structures of industrial democracy lend workers access to economic entitlements, political rights, autonomy, and a sense of belonging? By focusing on citizenship and autonomy, Andreas brings China's experience into conversation with global histories of the workplace as a site of worker stake holding. A tide of industrial citizenship that spread throughout the world from the end of...

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