Unorganized Interests and Collective Action in Communist China

Abstract

I explore how the institutional structure of state socialism systematically transforms individual behavior into in China. State monopoly of the public sphere fosters and reproduces of individual behaviors with similar claims, patterns, and targets. The state bureaucratic apparatus at the workplace also generates similar discontents and links them with national politics. The large numbers phenomenon provides the basis for the formation of action. The institutional arrangements also induce frequent state policy shifts and alternative modes of mobilization, providing the opportunity for action. Finally, individual behaviors based on unorganized interests tend to in the same direction and assume a character - that is, they are often causally defined as collective action in this particular institutional structure. The phenomenon of collective inaction is discussed in the same vein. T he popular uprisings in China and Eastern Europe in 1989 are recent examples of the power of the powerless in state socialist societies. However, the current literature on action, which emphasizes organizing capacity, resource mobilization, and interest articulation, is ill-prepared to account for such events under state socialism. In typical socialist states, society consists of unorganized interests that contrast with the organizational apparatus of the state. China, for example, evidenced minimal autonomous organizing efforts prior to the outbreak of the 1989 pro-democracy movement. The lack of strategic maneuvering and the prevalence of conflicts among student leaders illustrate the unorganized nature of the movement. Nonetheless, within a short time, millions of people across the nation poured into the streets. The participants cut across the boundaries of work units, localities, and social groups. And the 1989 pro-democracy movement, although the most spectacular, was by no means an isolated event. Instances abound of mass mobilizations initiated by the Chinese state that eventually went beyond state control and became a challenge to the state. How can we explain based on the unorganized interests in the state socialist context? I examine the link between the institutional structure of state socialism and in China. My central theme is that the formation and outbreak of are rooted in the particular institutional structure of the state-society relationship. I argue that in China is less a process of purposive and rational organizing than an aggregation of of spontaneous individual behaviors produced by the particular state-society relationship. Although individuals are unorganized, their actions in pursuit of their own self-interests tend to convey similar claims, share similar patterns, and point to the state, i.e., they converge into action.