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Proletarian Power Misplaced: The Worker Propaganda Teams in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2022

Feng Chen
Feng Chen*
Affiliation:
Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In 1968, at the height of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (CR hereafter), Mao Zedong mobilized industrial workers to form Workers’ Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams (WPT hereafter) and to “occupy” the superstructure. This move empowered the working class in an unprecedented way. Did Mao's move bring about a new model of worker power under communism that was distinct from Lenin's vanguardist model and Rosa Luxemburg's model based on her perception of workers’ spontaneity and creativity? In contrast to the workers’ spontaneous rebel groups during the first two years of the CR, the WPTs were a quasi-institutionalized form of worker power created by the political elite to serve the CR agenda. It was also the Mao leadership's attempt to realize the leading role of the working class by absorbing workers into the structure of political authority, an attempt which reflected the Party's declared ideological principle. While the WPTs provided workers with opportunities to participate in politics, they were a misplacement of worker power in both social and organizational senses. The article examines the roots of this power misplacement and explores the dilemmas it brought for the Party as well as the working class itself, and why.

摘要

摘要

1968 年中国文化大革命的高潮时期，毛泽东动员了大批产业工人，以工人毛泽东思想宣传队的形式“占领”了上层建筑。这一举措前所未有地赋予了工人阶级巨大的权力。这一举措是否带来了共产主义制度下一种新的工人权力模式,与列宁的先锋党模式和罗莎⋅卢森堡基于工人自发性和创造性而构想的模式形成对照？与文革初期工人的自发造反组织不同，工宣队是一种由政治精英为服务于文革议程而创造的一种准制度化的工人权力形式。这也是当时的领导层通过将工人吸纳到政治权威结构中来实现工人阶级领导作用的尝试,体现了党宣称的意识形态原则。虽然工宣队为工人提供了政治参与的机会，但在社会意义和组织意义上，它都表现为工人权力的错位。本文探讨了这种权力错位的根源，并探讨了它给党和工人阶级本身带来的困境以及原因。

Keywords

worker powerpower misplacementWorkers’ Thought Propaganda Team (WPT)worker rebelsCultural RevolutionShanghai工人权力权力错位工宣队工人造反派文化大革命上海
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 252 , December 2022 , pp. 1183 - 1205
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

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