Contradictions within Mass Society: Civil Conflict in Shanghai, 1956–58

Over the last twenty-five years, the dichotomy of “state vs. society” has assumed a dominant position in historical studies of China’s twentieth century. When applied to events after the Communist Party’s victory in 1949, this approach—which assumes a stark divide between an ideologically driven Communist state and the pragmatic, self-interested individuals said to inhabit civil society—has provided a necessary corrective to earlier accounts that took at face value the monolithic “people” of Party propaganda. It has been particularly valuable in highlighting the violence of the Party’s program of social transformation and in recovering the forms of resistance that routinely frustrated Party cadres.

However, this approach also tends to efface the broad concerns and sensibilities that united “state” and large parts of “society” in 1949 following two decades of extreme economic and political instability. Through an examination of the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1956–1957 and the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957–1958 in Shanghai’s factories, this paper will ask what gets lost when the “state vs. society” lens is applied to episodes of civil conflict. Developing an alternative approach, it will locate the sources of tension in the new structures of the Communist city and the dynamic but contradictory social relations they set in motion. It was precisely the successful integration of “the masses” into the Communist system that produced an unprecedented wave of protest in the pivotal year of 1957, and which structured the crackdown that followed.