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ABSTRACT
This article clarifies the use of Polanyian theory to interrogate rural China’s historical trajectory. It critiques the use of Polanyi’s double movement concept to analyse state-socialist periods arguing that because the double movement concept was explicitly created to interrogate capitalist systems, in which land and labour were marketized, it cannot be transposed onto state-socialist periods. This article further argues that as the double movement necessarily entails the possibility of transcending a capitalist system to socialism, the double movement’s explanatory power is further undermined when used within a state-socialist context. This includes the context of Maoist China which this article explores. This article suggests using the vocabulary Polanyi employs when discussing Soviet Russia to interrogate the Maoist period. However, it supports the use of Polanyi’s double movement concept to interrogate post-1984 China as this period demonstrates increasing market penetration of society. The article further argues that when using the double movement to interrogate any system with significant market penetration scholars ought recognise the double movement’s dialectical process. This dialectical reading suggests the double movement is destructive to society and its internal contradiction creates progressive and regressive possibilities. This article explores the Chinese New Rural Reconstruction Movement as a potential progressive possibility.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Patricia Thornton and Gareth Dale for valuable comments and feedback on this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 For example Chuang and Yasuda (Citation2021); Hann (Citation2009); Wang (Citation2008, Citation2012); Zhang (Citation2013); Zhang and Qi (Citation2019); Zhou (Citation2013).
2 The similarities include reforms ‘designed to open up rural land markets’ which facilitates ‘the transfer of land out of peasant hands’ as well as large scale urbanisation and industrialisation. See; Andreas and Zhan (Citation2016, p. 598).
3 For more details, and criticism, of the use of the oscillation metaphor to understand Polanyi’s work see; Dale, Gareth (Citation2012), especially pp.14–6.
4 For analysis of the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ readings of Polanyi see; Dale, Gareth (Citation2010b) especially pp. 370–3.
5 As Brie and Thomasberger (Citation2018) argue; ‘The socialist intention behind The Great Transformation, and indeed of the totality of his work, is not widely understood’ (p.5).
6 For example, in Our Homeland's Duty Polanyi states ‘I have fully turned towards socialism’. (Reproduced in Polanyi (Citation1977, p. xix). See also, Dale (Citation2016a) for an in-depth analysis of Polanyi’s long history engaging with socialist theories and arguments.
7 For example Levien and Paret (Citation2012), Mostafanezhad (Citation2016), and Stuart et al. (Citation2019).
8 For a debate of the progressive, or otherwise, nature of the countermovement see the Stuart et al. (Citation2019), Carton (Citation2020) and Alcock (Citation2021) debate.
9 Similarly; Polanyi suggests that ‘inner contradictions’ meant if countermovements ‘were successful in achieving their aim … the effects … were all the more disastrous in other, unforeseen directions’ (p.93).
10 This article follows the interpretation of the double movement described in Alcock (Citation2021).
11 For Polanyi this was achieved in England in 1834 with the Poor Law Reform (Polanyi Citation1947). See also Polanyi (Citation2001 [1944], p. 84 & p. 87).
12 According to Polanyi (Citation2001 [1944]) ‘ … industrial capitalism as a social system cannot be said to have existed before that date [1834]. Yet almost simultaneously the self-protection of society set in’ p.87. See also Fred Block's foreword in Polanyi (Citation2001 [1944], p. xxviii).
13 Scholars who argue Polanyi ought to be seen in dialectical terms include Patomäki (Citation2014) who states ‘Polanyi’s method is dialectical’ (p.735). Cox (Citation1992) similarly suggests Polanyi uses a ‘dialectical framework’(p.32). See also Dale (Citation2012) on the ‘Hegelian dialectic’ of TGT (p.14).
14 See footnote 8 and related argument.
15 Although there is debate within some literature as to whether Polanyi was a socialist the weight of evidence for affirmation is overwhelming.
16 See also; ‘in a highly developed society of the machine age there is no alternative to Capitalism but Socialism’ (Polanyi Citation1933, pp. 381–2).
17 However, in a letter in 1958 he suggests ‘the Chinese change’ to be a ‘ray of hope of peace’ amongst a number of global events (Polanyi Citation1929–Citation1964). Polanyi also praises ‘Mao’s Eight Route Army of Chinese peasants’ as one of a number of demonstrations of peasant socialist revolutions in the context of the potential for rural socialism in Russia. Polanyi suggests the new Russian ‘upgrading of peasant prestige’ may have taken influence from the success of Mao and Castro’s peasant militia (Polanyi Citation1962, p. 3). See also, Dale (Citation2016a, p. 278).
18 For an in-depth analysis of Polanyi’s changing thought process regarding Soviet Russia see Dale (Citation2016b), Ch.4 Democratic Tyranny: The Soviet Union, p. 80–95.
19 In 1933, Polanyi argued communism was a ‘totalitarian’ solution to the ‘contradiction between capitalism and democracy’ (Dale Citation2016a, p.105). However, he also defended the Soviet Union on a number of occasions (Dale Citation2016a, p. 142). Yet in 1941 Polanyi described Soviet communism as ‘a Christian heresy’ (Dale Citation2016a, p. 136).
20 Ch.4 Democratic Tyranny: The Soviet Union.
21 In a letter from Polanyi to György Heltai in 1960 reproduced in Dale (Citation2016c).
22 As Rosner (Citation1990) argues, Polanyi confessed that accounting in a centrally planned economy was impossible and accepted critiques of a planned economy. However, he did not accept the ‘common assumption that socialism must be a centrally planned economy’ (p.57).
23 Unpublished notes from 1960 in Polanyi-Levitt (Citation1990).
24 This is not to suggest there was no violence involved in the process.
25 Lacher (Citation2007) for example argues a Polanyian system would mean; ‘Prices for products could remain subject to supply and demand … yet the sine qua non for this system, if it was to achieve the reembedding of the market, was that prices for labor, land, and money would have to be fixed outside of the market’ (p.61).
26 However, I question Hann’s comparison of ‘embedded socialism’ and ‘embedded liberalism’. Whereas ‘embedded socialism’ may be akin to the foundations of a Polanyian ‘humanist socialism’, ‘embedded liberalism’ is a far cry from Polanyi’s hope for society. Further, I also question the implicit suggestion that continuing on this market route for China would be something Polanyi would approve of (p.270). I argue that strengthening the protections of land and labour from the market as well as embedding broad democratic participation would constitute something Polanyi would approve of, this would be significantly different from the embedded liberalism of post-war Europe which never fully took land and labour out of the market system nor achieved a widespread bottom-up democratic transformation.
27 Wang, Shaoguang (Citation2012) also uses Polanyi to interrogate China’s recent historical trajectory, instead of a 1949–1978/9 framing, Wang places the 1949–1984 period as a time of Polanyian ‘moral economy’ (p.95).
28 This is not necessarily the opinion of this author. However, it is the opinion of this author that ‘counter-revolution’ terminology may demonstrate a more authentic Polanyian analysis given Polanyi’s previous statements on Russian socialism.
29 Although it could be argued that capital accumulation from the rural surplus during the Maoist era to industrialise the urban is in fact a capitalist method of industrialisation.
30 See footnote 130 in Chuang and Yasuda (Citation2021, p. 22).
31 NRRM scholars are critical of China’s embrace of capitalism; ‘The economic and social problems that China faces today were created, and in a sense recreated, first by the rush to participate in the system of global capital, and then by the use of procedures developed for capital and resource intensive agriculture’ (Wen et al. Citation2012). NRRM scholars also argue the NRRM ‘ … is an alternative public democracy experiment’ which differs from ‘ … living under an elite dictatorship’, describing an expansion of democratic participation, and a rejection of dictatorship that Polanyi would have no doubt approved of (He et al. Citation2014, p.117).
32 Brown (Citation1990) argues that ‘in effect’ the countermovement was ‘an unconscious effort to re-embed economy back into society’ (p.46), rather than a conscious ideological movement that may be represented by the NRRM.
33 See Homes (Citation2013) for a discussion of the importance of transcendence in Polanyi’s work.
34 It should be noted that Day and Schneider (Citation2017) argue that due to post 2008 rural reforms there has been a ‘foreclosing’ of the NRRM pro-peasant forms of rural organising and a shift to a less transformative focus on alternative food networks that ‘has the potential to further entrench existing class inequalities within and across rural and urban spheres’ (p.3). Arguing, in effect, that the formerly ‘conscious Polanyian movement’ has become an ‘unconscious countermovement’ with little chance of transcending the self-regulating market mechanism. However, NRRM scholars and activists may disagree with this analysis.
35 This ‘collective economy’ approach is described by Wang and He (Citation2017) as the ‘socialist small family agricultural road’. Criticising ‘capitalist peasant family agriculture’, they argue that ‘under the framework of a socialist economic system, China still has institutional space to adjust the road, rather than being completely or irreparably capitalist’ (p.450).
36 Strengthening the collective economy is something Wang and He (Citation2017) argue can create a ‘socialist road of small-scale peasant economy modernization’ (p.450).
37 According to Day and Hale (Citation2007), ‘Wen Tiejun's Center for Rural Reconstruction and He Xuefeng's Center for Rural Governance Studies may be called NRR's two main ‘theoretical’ bases’ (p.6).
38 Polanyi (Citation1962) mentions ‘agrarian industrial associations’ (p.10) positively with regards to his hopes for Russian rural reforms.
39 Polanyi (Citation2001 [1944]) argues that both fascism and socialism are ‘rooted in a market society that refused to function’ (p.247).
40 As Selwyn and Miyamura (Citation2014) argue Polanyi’s unit of analysis was society as an organic whole (p.641).
41 As Wen and other NRRM scholars suggest it is; ‘The urban economy that is comprised of concentrated profit-seeking capital is characterized by risk’ (Sit et al. Citation2021, p.132).
42 However, in a sense, this is in part the work of the NRRM which brings different political narratives, potentially already embedded in rural relations, to the urban setting. See Alcock (Citation2019) on political narratives in a NRRM community supported agriculture project and Si and Scott (Citation2016) on a more general discussion of NRRM penetration into the urban sphere through alternative food networks.
43 See Munck (Citation2006) on anti-neoliberal peasant movements from Latin America to India as well as Europe and the United States (pp. 98–102).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rowan Alcock
Rowan Alcock is a research fellow of the College of Humanities and Development Studies at China Agricultural University. He holds a DPhil in Politics and an MPhil in Contemporary Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford. His DPhil engaged Polanyian theory with contemporary Chinese environmental movements.