Andrew G. Walder
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520064706
- eISBN:
- 9780520909007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520064706.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter addresses the issue of class relations and the social structure of communist societies. It also considers theories regarding the stability and legitimacy of these regimes. Then, it ...
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This chapter addresses the issue of class relations and the social structure of communist societies. It also considers theories regarding the stability and legitimacy of these regimes. Then, it evaluates the type of industrial authority analyzed in this book: the ways that it is structurally distinct from that in other settings and whether this type of authority is part of a master process of bureaucratization that appears to be characteristic of modern industrialization. Evolution and changes in communist societies are expanded up. The Chinese management hierarchies are only partially bureaucratic. The Chinese industrial hierarchies are approximated by a different ideal type of authority. The ideal type of political community that is closest to Chinese industrial bureaucracy is not Max Weber's “bureaucracy,” but his “patrimonialism”; the type of authority is not his “rational-legal,” but his “traditional.” China's revolution has succeeded in creating a type of modern civilization that is profoundly anticapitalist.Less
This chapter addresses the issue of class relations and the social structure of communist societies. It also considers theories regarding the stability and legitimacy of these regimes. Then, it evaluates the type of industrial authority analyzed in this book: the ways that it is structurally distinct from that in other settings and whether this type of authority is part of a master process of bureaucratization that appears to be characteristic of modern industrialization. Evolution and changes in communist societies are expanded up. The Chinese management hierarchies are only partially bureaucratic. The Chinese industrial hierarchies are approximated by a different ideal type of authority. The ideal type of political community that is closest to Chinese industrial bureaucracy is not Max Weber's “bureaucracy,” but his “patrimonialism”; the type of authority is not his “rational-legal,” but his “traditional.” China's revolution has succeeded in creating a type of modern civilization that is profoundly anticapitalist.
