北京市 攤販의 社會主義 改造를 통해 본 基層의 國家-社會 關係(1954-1965)

Abstract

This article aims to shed light on the relationship between state and grassroots society during the period of socialist transformation, when the Party-state imposed the most overwhelming power over society, by analyzing the Tanfan (street vendors) in Beijing. The focus of the analysis was on the oscillation of the transformation policy and the reaction of the Tanpan society. The state pushed for transformation with coercive force, but the effect and society's reaction produced unexpected results. The strengthening of “administrative capacity” to pressure the transformation of Tanpan made the relationship between the state and the Tanpan society estranged. The socialist transformation policy launched from 1954 dismantled the existing Tanfan management system and its business structure established since 1949, but did not fully incorporate the Tanfan society into the state socialist system. The reason originated from the limitations of the state capacity. If state capacity can be defined in terms of its discursive power, financial capacity, administrative capability, and the ability to secure the legitimacy of government, the state power exercised in the grassroots society during the socialist transformation could not corresponds to this criteria in various respects. The socialist collective management did not prove, unlike state propaganda, its superiority to the individual, dispersed and mobile “characteristics of traditional management” of Tanpan and had to compromise with the existing Tanfan market reality. During the socialist period, the state monopolized the economic resources, but the amount of those resources was not large enough to support the livelihood of Tanpan people, who made up a large proportion of the city population. All these limitations of state capacity have undermined the legitimacy of state governance in the grassroots. Looking at the relationship between the state and Tanpan before and after the socialist transformation from a long-term perspective, the governance system of state-society “cooperation” established at the beginning of the founding of the PRC began to dismantle with the implementation of socialist transformation policy from the mid-1950s. The state could not elicit cooperation from the grassroots society. Rather, the overwhelming state undermined its own foundations – societal support and positive response to government policy - by causing a centrifugal tendency in the society.