The exclusion of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the
portrayal of the CCP bureaucracy as a neutral entity, and the lack of a theory
of the working class as a political agent make the book inadequate from a
Marxist perspective. To truly understand China’s political transformation and
the revolutionary capacity of its working class today, a more rigorous
framework such as Leon Trotsky’s concept of the degenerated workers’ state is
essential.
The problem of naming China’s transformation
Teemu Ruskola’s book explores a longstanding debate about
China’s transformation after 1978. His core claim that “communism built a
capitalist superpower” is deliberately provocative. It challenges both Western
liberal triumphalist stories and the CCP’s defensive narrative. The book also reinterprets
China’s change from a comparative standpoint, drawing on E.P. Thompson’s The
Making of the English Working Class and Karl Polanyi’s idea of land and labour
as “fictitious commodities.”
Ruskola’s work makes significant empirical contributions. He
thoroughly describes the hukou household-registration system, the legal
separation between state-owned urban land and collectively owned rural land,
and the hybrid nature of migrant labour. His original and persuasive argument
that China’s transformation reversed the English process—prioritising labour
commodification before land is both innovative and convincing.
However, the book’s theoretical approach is fundamentally
flawed. It accepts the CCP’s self-identification as a communist regime and
views the market reforms of the 1980s and 1990s as a paradoxical but ongoing
development of “communism.” It overlooks the CCP bureaucracy as a distinct
social layer with its own interests. Additionally, it fails to see the 1989
Tiananmen Square massacre as a pivotal political turning point and does not
consider the working class as an active political subject.
This essay argues that Ruskola’s interpretation is a liberal
mystification of a process that can only be understood as a bureaucratic
counter‑revolution culminating in capitalist restoration.
The book’s strengths: land, labour, and the urban–rural
divide
Ruskola’s analysis of China’s land system is one of the
book’s major contributions. He correctly emphasises that the PRC’s dual
structure of land ownership state-owned urban land and collectively owned rural
land has no precedent in Chinese imperial history or Soviet practice. He shows
how this duality underpinned both Maoist industrialisation and post‑1978
capitalist accumulation. “It is these workers’ ongoing reliance on the support
of their rural kin that makes it possible for urban employers to pay them
below-subsistence wages.”[1]
This insight is vital. Migrant workers' continued access to
rural land enables capital to pay wages that would otherwise be impossible in a
wholly proletarianised society. The rural hinterland subsidises both domestic
and international capital. Ruskola’s comparative approach, looking at England’s
Enclosure Movement, the Soviet Union’s collapse, and China’s post-1949
development, also proves useful. His point that China compressed and reversed
the English enclosure process is convincing. Additionally, his analysis of the
hukou system as a way to divide the population into two unequal legal groups is
crucial. These strengths, however, highlight the book’s main theoretical
shortcoming.
Ruskola views the CCP primarily as a political body that
manages land and labour, rather than as a bureaucratic caste, a social stratum
with its own material interests that opposes independent working-class
organisation and ultimately acts as an agent for capitalist restoration. This
represents a critical theoretical mistake. The regime established in 1949 was
not a Marxist workers’ state. Instead, it was a bureaucratic dictatorship based
on nationalised property, modelled after Stalin’s Soviet Union. The working
class did not hold political power; instead, a peasant-based army and a party
apparatus ruled from the beginning, suppressing independent workers’
organisations.
Trotsky’s analysis of the Soviet Union as a degenerated
workers’ state provides the necessary theoretical framework. A bureaucracy
resting on nationalised property relations is inherently unstable. It tends
toward capitalist restoration once it judges that this better secures its
privileges. The CCP bureaucracy followed this logic with remarkable
consistency.
Therefore, Ruskola's account of China’s transition from
equality to inequality and from socialist planning to capitalist accumulation is
not a paradox, a drift, or a “contradiction of socialism.' Instead, it reflects
the inherent logic of Stalinism.
Tiananmen Square
as the decisive turning point
The most noticeable omission in Ruskola’s book is the 1989
Tiananmen Square massacre. He references the subsequent fear of “social
instability' but mainly focuses on protests by workers and peasants over labour conditions and land seizures. However, he does not investigate the massacre
itself or its crucial impact on the path he outlines. This gap is more than
just regrettable; it is a critical flaw.
Tiananmen was more than just a “student protest”; it was a
large-scale movement involving workers and students protesting corruption,
demanding democratic control, and social equality. These demands directly
challenged the CCP bureaucracy’s authority. The massacre became a political
prerequisite for the market reforms of the 1990s, paving the way for the end of the iron rice bowl, the commodification of labour, the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, China's opening to global capital, and the emergence of a
billionaire class.
Tiananmen is central to China’s modern development. Without
it, there would be no capitalist revival, no Foxconn, and no major tech giants
like Alibaba, Tencent, or Huawei. The so-called “Chinese miracle” is
inseparable from Tiananmen’s influence. Ruskola’s silence on this matter
reflects a structural issue. Recognising Tiananmen’s importance would mean
accepting that the CCP bureaucracy acts as a counter-revolutionary force rather
than true stewards of “communism.”
Ruskola states that the Chinese working class exists “in an
objective sense” but has not yet developed a political self-awareness similar
to Thompson’s concept of the English proletariat. This observation is accurate
but incomplete. Over the past twenty years, Chinese workers have
participated in numerous strikes, protests, factory occupations, and wildcat
actions. They have built independent networks, circulated petitions, and faced
both employers and local authorities. Although their struggles are often
fragmented, suppressed, and localised, they undeniably exist.
Ruskola’s framework fails to incorporate these struggles
because it views workers as mere objects within legal and demographic
processes, rather than as a class capable of independent political action that
challenges power structures. This reflects a defining trait of liberal
scholarship: the working class is seen solely as a sociological category, never
as a political agent.
By framing China’s transformation as “communism building a
capitalist superpower,” Ruskola performs ideological work supporting both
Beijing and Western liberal narratives. For Beijing, this phrase validates
capitalist revival as a natural extension of “socialism.” For Western
liberalism, it depicts China’s change as a technocratic evolution rather than a
political upheaval. Consequently, the story suggests that the CCP bureaucracy
isn’t a ruling class, capitalist revival isn’t a betrayal, Tiananmen isn’t a
turning point, and the working class isn’t a political force. This isn’t
analysis; it's mystification.
China’s transformation mainly revolves around the actions of
the CCP bureaucracy, not the legal land tenure, migrant worker demographics, or
enclosure processes. Since 1949, this bureaucracy has seized political control
from the working class, establishing a Stalinist regime modelled after the
Soviet Union. It suppressed independent workers’ movements, including
spontaneous committees during the Cultural Revolution and the 1989 Tiananmen
protests. It also reintroduced capitalist property relations by dismantling
communes, commodifying labour, and turning SOEs into corporations. Over time,
it became integrated into global capital, forming a wealthy, corrupt ruling
class hostile to workers. This is not “communism building a capitalist
superpower" but Stalinism restoring capitalism.
Ruskola’s book offers a thorough overview of China’s land
system, clearly explains the hukou regime, provides valuable insights into
migrant labour, presents a useful comparative framework, and challenges
China-exceptionalist narratives. However, it does not analyse the CCP
bureaucracy as a social class, account for Tiananmen as a pivotal moment,
develop a theory of capitalist restoration concerning the working class as a
political agent, or offer a perspective on the future of Chinese socialism.
China and the Pseudo‑Lefts
Ruskola’s views align with numerous Pseudo-Left groups. The
current political scene around China is filled with voices claiming to
represent “the left.” However, most of these groups, both within China and
abroad, are better described as pseudo-lefts: they use socialist language but
actually support an authoritarian capitalist government and its bureaucratic
elite.
Within China, the pseudo-left emerged alongside the CCP’s
shift toward market reforms. It claims to defend “socialism with Chinese
characteristics.” Still, its politics are driven more by nationalism, reverence
for the state, and resistance to democratic oversight than by efforts to
emancipate the working class. Recent research indicates that the so-called
“Chinese New Left” is not a unified Marxist movement but rather a loose
collection of scholars and commentators whose views range from Maoist nostalgia
and cultural conservatism to authoritarian developmentalism. Their primary role
is ideological: to offer a left-leaning rationale for a regime responsible for
one of the fastest and most brutal capitalist transformations in modern
history.
The pseudo-left’s key political act was how it responded to
the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A true left would have seen the workers’
and students’ uprising as an early form of socialist democracy. Instead, the
pseudo-left justified the massacre as a measure to maintain “stability,” siding
with the bureaucracy against the working class. This stance has persisted. They
dismiss strikes, independent unions, and labour protests as threats to national
unity. They view surveillance, censorship, and repression as necessary to
guard against “Western influence.” The pseudo-left’s version of socialism lacks
real workers.
Globally, the pseudo-left reflects this decline. Parts of
the Western left have supported the CCP as an “anti-imperialist” force,
overlooking the fact that China’s ruling class is deeply embedded in global
capitalism. They justify the regime’s authoritarian practices, downplay labour violations, and dismiss criticism as Western bias. This approach mirrors the
main ideological stance of the Chinese pseudo-left: replacing internationalism
with nationalism and prioritising state authority over working-class action.
The result is a political formation that speaks the language
of socialism while rejecting its substance. The pseudo‑left is not a path
toward socialist renewal in China or anywhere else. It is an obstacle. Its role
is to obscure the class nature of the CCP bureaucracy, to delegitimise
independent working‑class struggle, and to present capitalist restoration as a
continuation of communism.
The large Chinese working class—whose development Ruskola
explores in detail—won't progress by depending on the CCP, nostalgia for
Maoism, or liberal constitutionalism. Instead, its future relies on
self-initiated political engagement, international worker solidarity, and
opposition to both the CCP bureaucracy and the global capitalist system it
currently upholds. This approach is essential for understanding China’s
transformation and identifying the revolutionary opportunities that lie ahead.
[1]
newleftreview-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/issues/ii151/articles/teemu-ruskola-the-making-of-the-chinese-working-class
