Abstract
The reforms in enterprise management discussed in the previous chapter profoundly modify social production relations at the factory level and the position of workers in the social and organisational hierarchy. The subordination of working people to the material requirements of production for maximum profit modifies the social and economic basis of wage determination. Hierarchy in the structure of wages and the classification of wage-earners into differentiated social compartments of manual and mental labour proceed alongside this reorganisation of state factories.The revolutionary committees are abolished and replaced by a factory management committee composed of the directors and top technical and supervisory personnel. Workers’ participation is constrained to formal workers’ councils without decision-making power.
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References
Christopher Howe, Wage Patterns and Wage Policy in Modern China, 1919–1972 ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973 ) p. 36.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 85.
Ibid., pp. 89–95.
Ibid., p. 29.
Chen Po-wèn, ‘Rising Prices and Wages in Mainland China’, Issues and Studies (February 1980) pp. 42–4.
Christopher Howe, Wage Patterns and Wage Policy in Modern China p. 94.
W. Parish, ‘Egalitarianism in Chinese Society’, Problems of Communism (January-February 1981), p. 39.
Ibid., p. 39.
Oppose Economism and Smash the Latest Counter-Attack by the Bourgeois Reactionary Line’, Honggi (Red Flag), 12 January 1967, reprinted in Joan Robinson, The Cultural Revolution in China ( Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969 ) pp. 112–13.
W. Burchett and R. Alley, China, The Quality of Life ( Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976 ) p. 175.
Ibid., p. 175.
Ibid., p. 175.
Christopher Howe, Wage Patterns and Wage Policy in Modern China pp. 146–7.
For further details see Christopher Howe’s analysis, ibid., p. 96.
Chen Po-wen, ‘Rising Prices and Wages in Mainland China’. In November 1979 the government removed price controls on more than 10 000 farm and manufactured products. Thé prices of meat, fish, eggs, milk vegetables and other non-stable foods (sold in the free market) increased by 33 per cent in a matter of months. To offset the higher cost of food, the government allocated a monthly allowance of 5 yuan to supplement urban industrial wages (Review, The Economist Intelligence Unit, London (Spring 1980 ).
Chen Po-wen, ibid., p. 40.
Ibid., p. 40. Chen does not, however, identify the basis upon which this calculation was made.
Ibid., p. 40.
Jing Qi, ‘New Bonus System Lifts Limits’, Beijing Review, XXVII: 26 (1984), p. 4.
Ibid., p. 4.
Zhao Ziyang, ‘Report on the Work of the Government’, Second Session of the Sixth National People’s Congress (NPC), 15 May 1984, Beijing Review XXVII:24 (1984), p. iv.
Jonathan Sharp, ‘Surplus Workers and Shirkers but No Sackings’, South China Morning Post, 2 February 1982.
Quoted in South China Morning Post 3 December 1981 (my italics).
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© 1986 Michel Chossudovsky
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Chossudovsky, M. (1986). Wages and the Labour Process. In: Towards Capitalist Restoration?. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18415-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18415-6_6
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