From Livelihoods to Markets: A Political History of "Economism" in the People’s Republic of China

Yige Dong, University of Buffalo

One of the most important intellectual legacies of Xiaohong Xu is his developing of “the Great Separation,” a working thesis that identifies the early stages of the Cultural Revolution as a pivotal moment separating politics from the economy, and such separation paved the way to China’s neoliberal turn and the total deprivation of political agency of the masses in the 1990s. At the core of this thesis is the category of “economism,” which merits systemic assessment. First, “economism” is a historical category, a direct translation of jingjizhuyi that the Chinese Communist Party used to accuse anyone, from officials to ordinary citizens, of pursuing better quality of material life while not toeing the party line. Second, reconstructing the historical category into an analytical one, Xu coins the term “popular economism” referring to the specific mass movements in 1967 that, through political activism, demanded the state to improve workers’ livelihoods. Third, in the context of post-Mao reforms, Xu uses the term “ordoecononimsm” to highlights that the seeming pro-capitalist market activities and ideologies were manufactured deliberately by the illiberal state. Situating these distinct yet related notions of “economism” in their specific historical contexts, this paper offers a systemic overview of the transformations of the categories and reflects on the theoretical implications of this line of Xu’s work in the broader contexts of historical sociology and Chinese political economy.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 98. Commemorating Xiaohong Xu: The Long Chinese Revolution in Comparative Perspective