Huaiyin Li's new book The Master in Bondage sheds new light on the world of factory workers in Mao-era China. Against conventional understandings, he argues that factory workers under Mao's rule were far from passive, powerless, or submissive to party authority. On the contrary, they were strategic, rational actors who were calculative in maximizing, or at least protecting, their interests from the cadres’ continuous attempts to discipline the workforce. Paradoxically, what inspired and empowered the workers was Maoism itself—the very ideology of the party-state—which glorified the denial of self-interest and the prioritization of collective goals. Yet, at the same time, Maoism enshrined workers as the masters of the country and their factories. Workers skillfully articulated this element of Maoism in workplace politics to express their concerns and grievances.
How, then, did workers build and negotiate their masterhood in the workplace? To explore what he terms operational reality in the workplace,...
