Infrastructural Power and Maoism

Bolun Zhang, Zhejiang University
Yimang Zhou, Renmin University of China

The emergence and decline of the piecework wage were explained either in terms of economic incentive or as a political or cultural consequence. In exploring the multiple trajectories of the piecework wage in Mao’s China, we associated it with the fiscal state that mediates which explanation matters in a specific case via distributing the infrasturcture. We suggest three different patterns. A center state-owned enterprise develops intensively by technological upgrading, where to incent using piecework wages is practically difficult and vulnerable to political dynamics. In contrast, a collective-owned enterprise is self-funding and uses piecework wage more as an accounting device than an incentive, which explains its economic orientation and ideological indifference. A local state-owned enterprise develops extensively by expanding scale and finds both mechanisms in its running. Via this case, we provide a case about what Donald Mackenize calls "the material political economy".

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 Presented in Session 136. Pay, Productivity and Discrimination