Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xi, 384 pp. (B&W photos, illustrations.) US$24.99, paper. ISBN 978-0-521-68846-8.
In Unending Capitalism, Karl Gerth offers a carefully researched and much needed history of consumerism in China during the Mao era. Scholars have largely ignored the topic because, as Gerth points out, few believed there was any consumerism during the Mao years to study. But there was, as the book convincingly shows, and delving into the subject leads to new and stimulating conclusions. One of the most provocative is Gerth’s contention that, despite its revolutionary rhetoric, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was never truly “building socialism” in China. The Mao-era political economy is better understood as a form of state capitalism, he argues, by which he means “a variety of industrial capitalism in which state power dominates the accumulation and allocation of capital, usually through the institutions of central planning and state ownership” (4). Look past the lofty language and examine actual CCP policies and their outcomes, the book contends, and what emerges is not an anti-capitalist, hyper-egalitarian, and anti-consumerist socialist alternative to capitalism, but rather a CCP mimicking the practices of industrial capitalism, over and over, in an effort to achieve rapid capital accumulation at the expense of socialist goals and principles.
Key to this argument is the concept of “state consumerism,” which Gerth defines as “the wide-ranging efforts within China’s form of state capitalism to manage demand in every respect, from promoting, defining, and even spreading consumption of some things to eliminating, discrediting, or at the very least marginalizing private preferences for the allocation of resources” (7). This concept allows Gerth to show that the state itself, alongside the individual desires of everyday Chinese consumers, was complicit in the negation of China’s communist revolution. The seven chapters that comprise the heart of the book show how the state used advertising, films, posters, fashion, and dictates to manipulate demand in China. In Gerth’s view, the language and aesthetics of this manipulation were superficially socialist and egalitarian. Beneath the façade, consumerism steadily expanded throughout the Mao years and “continually negated the central goals of the revolution itself” (4). This close attention to the persistence of consumerism leads Gerth to conclude that “[a]t all times, regardless of the specific institutional arrangements, the CCP was always developing one or another variation of industrial capitalism” (4).
One of the delights of the book is Gerth’s ability to probe seemingly trivial aspects of consumerism in Mao’s China to reveal how state consumerism collided with daily life in ways that affected people in real, meaningful ways. For instance, haggling was capitalistic, the CCP determined, so the party attempted to eliminate bargaining by mandating fixed prices. The confusion and resistance that followed, which the book details vividly, illuminates the tensions that often emerged as old consumer habits confronted new ones. Similar frictions emerged in other consumerist guises, from the question of how to arrange display cases in shops to the political implications of consumers waiting in line. Taken together, these quotidian aspects of consumerism in Mao’s China offer readers a visceral sense of how comprehensive China’s revolution was meant to be and how unsteady it actually was.
The boldness of Gerth’s arguments is another strength for readers who enjoy the kinds of big questions that novel perspectives provoke. His decision to “move beyond” CCP rhetoric, for example, and to examine policies and their outcomes instead, raises several questions worthy of debate. Even if one agrees that policies and outcomes matter more than rhetoric—and many scholars may not—it remains unclear how discourse, intentions, self-perceived identities, and other aspects should figure into our assessment of the kind of transformation China underwent during the Mao years. The book demonstrates that CCP policies consistently favoured capital accumulation over long-term goals associated with building socialism, but does it matter that CCP leaders and others in China at the time saw these policies as temporary expedients on the socialist path to communism? If not, and if only policies and their outcomes matter, then what kinds of policy compromises can a communist revolution bear—and how many and for how long—before the revolution itself is compromised?
Another question prompted by the book concerns the viability of the revolution itself. Gerth argues that military competition “forced” Mao and the party to support state capitalism and state consumerism throughout the Mao years (43). China’s firsthand experience with imperialism and warfare created a compulsion to industrialize fast and to catch up militarily and economically with foreign powers to defend China. The Sino-Soviet split created yet another security concern, “compelling the party to allocate even more capital to military preparedness and consequently to look for new ways to accumulate capital” (100).
This tantalizing connection between perceived external threats and the failures of socialism, which is only partially developed in the book, suggests authentic socialism in China may have been doomed from the outset. If a pervasive and abiding compulsion for security was already deeply ingrained in China by 1949, as the book seems to suggest, was the party’s impulse to privilege capital accumulation over socialist principles inevitable? Or, could shrewder policies have mitigated this anxiety in an effort to create breathing space to develop alternative institutional arrangements and policies designed to build authentic socialism? More insight into these questions would help to clarify the extent to which genuine socialism failed in China because of the choices made by CCP officials or the historical circumstances in which those choices were made.
Unending Capitalism pushes the reader to consider these and other high-stakes questions carefully, making for an engaging and enlightening read. In addition to being an important contribution to our understanding of consumerism, politics, and society in Mao’s China, the book is also a valuable teaching resource, particularly for graduate-level courses on the history of capitalism and twentieth-century China. Students and scholars in the latter field will especially appreciate Gerth’s citations and bibliography, which offer a trove of sources in English and Chinese, including insightful online sources—a useful resource for those of us trying to keep up with research amid a global pandemic.
Jason M. Kelly
Naval War College, Newport