Enfranchised
Chapter 2 recounts how the Chinese Communist Party reorganized industrial enterprises after taking power in 1949. Small numbers of party cadres, typically peasant veterans of the rural insurgency, were dispatched to factories to mobilize workers to attack capitalists and incumbent managers. Through a series of aggressive mass campaigns, the party established its control, recruiting workers to serve as factory leaders and creating party-led institutions of participation. After nationalization was completed in 1956, Mao—concerned that Communist cadres were becoming autocratic and arrogant—initiated a Party Rectification campaign, in which he encouraged unusually freewheeling criticism of “bureaucratism” among party officials. This opening unleashed a torrent of criticism by intellectuals as well as strikes by workers and inspired union leaders to push for greater independence from the party. The campaign, however, was quickly aborted and during the subsequent Anti-Rightist movement those who had spoken out were harshly punished, squelching prospects for autonomous activity.