This article examines the social bases of agrarian transformation during and
after the communist-led collectivization of agriculture in China and Vietnam.
The social science literature generally portrays rural people as passive, depoliticized
and dependent. Nowhere is this more true than in studies of socialist
societies that have been heavily influenced by totalitarian and authoritarian
theories. The literature focuses on the initiative and power of supreme leaders,
as well as party and state mobilization, to explain social and institutional
change. This perspective, while not uncontested, holds generally for the subject
reviewed here.’
Our central thesis, in contrast, is that the cumulative weight of rural resistance
eventually made it too costly, both economically and politically, for the
respective states of China and Vietnam to continue collectivized agriculture.
While recognizing significant differences in the structure and performance of
collectivized agriculture in Vietnam and China, this study underlines strikingly
similar tactics used by farmers to circumvent, resist and eventually, under politically
fortuitous conditions, contribute to the elimination of the core institutions
of collective agriculture and expand the scope of the market and household economies.
We consider, in short, the interplay of resistance from below and the
roles of party and state in generating fundamental social change.
If everyday resistance succeeds in dividing ruling groups, it has the
capacity to contribute to and shape far-reaching social change. Yet if Vietnamese
and Chinese villagers have manifested surprising strength in generating
system change, this should not blind us to the fact that they have yet to institutionalize
their power in a manner that will guarantee their future participation in
decisive political processes.
Chad Raymond, Mark Selden, and Kate Zhou (2000) The Power of the Strong: Rural Resistance and Reform in China and Vietnam. China Information 14 (2): 1-30
Showing posts with label transition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transition. Show all posts
Ivan Szelenyi (2015) The Vietnamese transition
Vietnam, much like China some seven years
earlier, dismantled the agricultural cooperatives and gave agrarian production
back to the peasants (this is something Russia never did and the Central
European countries did not do either). So in one stroke Vietnam eliminated food
shortages and as far as we can tell dramatically reduced poverty during
transition (while as we saw poverty skyrocketed in the former USSR and its
European satellites). Vietnam also followed China by NOT combining perestroika
with glasnost, hence retaining the political monopoly of the Communist Party,
what arguably was the precondition – but for a price what many would judge to
be unaffordable – of a gradualist transformation (this again is something what
distinguished Vietnam and China from the European post-communist regimes – see
this point in Yamaoka 2007. 9.) Nevertheless, Vietnam’s reforms were not only
later than the Chinese, they also had more of a shock element. While Vietnam
did not rush to mass privatization, it moved more aggressively to market
liberalization, shut down early state enterprises, opened faster rooms for the
private sector and opened up its borders to FDI (Bunck 1996. 236.). Hence I may
argue Vietnamese “capitalism from below” came with a “neo-liberal” flavour.
Nevertheless, Vietnam never experienced the transitional recession/depression
mainly because in the first stages of reform the rapidly expanding household
sector absorbed most of the costs (and labour freed from SOEs – see McCarty
2000.) So far Vietnam is a “success story” – much like China is. They managed
the transition without the frightening costs other post-communist
transformation trajectories could not avoid.
But both for
China and Vietnam the BIG question is – much like for the neo-patrimonial/
rentier states, but for a different reason – sustainability. There are two
major reasons why the East Asian transformation from below is vulnerable: (i)
will they be able to retain their export led industrialization once the price
of their labour will catch up with the rest of the world? (ii) can the
political monopoly of the communist party maintained under market capitalist
conditions and if it cannot is a “gradualist” transformation of the political
system conceivable? If it is not and political systems either stay or fall,
what would be the social and economic consequences of such a political
disintegration?
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