Capitalism, Socialism, and the

The 1949 Chinese Revolution was a transformative, epochal event, not only for the Chinese but for the rest of humanity, as well. If the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (that resulted in the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or Soviet Union) inaugurated an international competition for the hearts and minds of people all over the globe, the Chinese revolution raised the stakes of that struggle. This struggle was understood in the so-called West as …

…the other hand, what if workers were not free to choose where they would seek employment? If workers were assigned by the government to a particular work site (danwe) and did not have the freedom to quit, then what sort of economic system, in class terms, would have prevailed in China? This question is of no minor importance to our investigation of the ongoing transformation of the Chinese economy and the implications of that transformation