Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T14:34:23.896Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making Capitalism with Gangsters: Unfree Labor in Shanghai's Cotton Mills, 1927–1937

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2018

Wai Kit Choi
Wai Kit Choi*
Affiliation:
California State University, Los Angeles
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is thought that workers under capitalism enjoy the freedom of changing employment at will, but studies show that unfree labor has historically existed alongside capitalist development. One explanation for the use of unfree labor under capitalism highlights the functional needs of production. However, the baoshengong, a form of bonded labor that was used in cotton mills in Shanghai from 1927 to 1937, problematizes this approach. Though the baoshengong system was not an efficient mode of labor control, it was put in place. Rejecting the functionalist account, I show that capitalist unfree labor is not necessarily spurred by production requirements. As the Shanghai case will demonstrate, unfree labor was used when the power dynamics in the larger socio-political context outside the immediate abode of production—namely, the conflict and collaboration between different forms of domination such as gang, patriarchal, capitalist, and state powers—superseded the functional considerations of the capitalists.

Type
Articles
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 94 , Fall 2018 , pp. 107 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their comments.

References

NOTES

1. Marx, Karl, Capital. Vol. 1, trans. Fowkes, Ben (London, [1867] 1990)Google Scholar.

2. Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System, Vol. 1: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974)Google Scholar.

4. Fogel, Robert William and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, 1974)Google Scholar; McMichael, Philip, “Slavery in Capitalism: The Rise and Decline of the U.S. Ante-Bellum Cotton Culture,” Theory and Society 20 (1991): 321–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Tomich, Dale, Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy (Lanham, MD, 2004)Google Scholar; Baud, Michiel, “Sugar and Unfree Labour: Reflections on Labour Control in the Dominican Republic, 1870–1935,” Journal of Peasant Studies 19 (1992): 301–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martinez, Samuel, “From Hidden Hand to Heavy Hand: Sugar, State, and Migrant Labor in Haiti and Dominican Republic,” Latin American Research Review 34 (1999): 57–84Google Scholar.

6. Hu-Dehart, Evelyn, “Chinese Coolie Labour in Cuba in the Nineteenth Century: Free Labour or Neo-Slavery?” Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-slave 14 (1993): 67–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huynh, Tu T., “From Demand for Asiastic Labor to Importation of Chinese Indentured Labor: Race Identity in the Recruitment of Unskilled Labor for South Africa's Gold Mining Industry, 1903–1910,” Journal of Chinese Overseas 41 (2008): 5–68Google Scholar; Kynoch, Gary, “Controlling the Coolies: Chinese Mineworkers and the Struggle for Labor in South Africa, 1904–1910,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 36 (2003): 309–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Miles, Robert, Capitalism and Unfree Labour: Anomaly or Necessity (London, 1987)Google Scholar; Domar, Evsey D., “The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis,” The Journal of Economic History 30 (1970): 18–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simon, Daphne, “Master and Servant,” in Democracy and the Labour Movement: Essays in Honour of Dona Torr, ed. Saville, John (London, 1954), 160–200Google Scholar; Post, Charles, “Review of Robert J. Steinfeld's Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour in the Nineteenth Century,” Historical Materialism 14 (2006): 275–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, Vol. 1: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century; Sewell, Willaim H. Jr., Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sewell, William H. Jr., “The Temporalities of Capitalism,” Socio-Economic Review 6 (2008): 517–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steinberg, Marc, “Capitalist Development, the Labor Process, and the Law,” American Journal of Sociology 109 (2003): 445–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Honig, Emily, “The Contract Labor System and Women Workers: Pre-Liberation Cotton Mills of Shanghai,” Modern China 9 (1983): 421–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949 (Stanford, CA, 1986)Google Scholar.

10. Dobb, Maurice, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York, 1947)Google Scholar; Brenner, Robert, “The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism,” New Left Review 104 (1977): 25–92Google Scholar; “The Social Basis of Economic Development,” in Analytical Marxism, ed. Roemer, John (Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1986), 23–53Google Scholar.

11. Steinfeld, Robert J., Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Choi, Wai Kit, “Capitalism, Unfree Labor and Colonial Doxa: The Master and Servant Act from Britain to Hong Kong, 1823–1932,” Journal of Historical Sociology 23 (2010): 284–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Post, “Review of Robert J. Steinfeld's Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour in the Nineteenth Century,” 279–80.

13. Ibid., 280.

14. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, Vol. 1: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century.

15. Sewell, Logics of History, 150; “The Temporalities of Capitalism,” 525.

16. Ibid.

17. Steinberg, “Capitalist Development, the Labor Process, and the Law,” 445–95.

18. Burawoy, Michael, The Politics of Production (London: Verso, 1985)Google Scholar.

19. See Honig, “The Contract Labor System and Women Workers: Pre-Liberation Cotton Mills of Shanghai,” 444–46 and Sisters and Strangers.

20. Xia, Yan, “Baoshengong,” in Zhongguo Xin Wenxue Daxi, 1927–1937, ed. Shanghai Wenyi Chuban She (Shanghai, [1936] 1985)Google Scholar and interview transcript, Yan Xia, January 26, 1959.

21. Smith, S. A., “Workers and Supervisors: St. Petersurg 1905–1917,” Past and Present 139 (1993), 157Google Scholar; Honig, Sisters and Strangers, 117; Cochran, Sherman, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880–1937 (Berkeley, CA, 2000), 131Google Scholar.

22. Barnett, Robert W., Economic Shanghai: Hostage to Politics, 1937–1941 (Shanghai, 1941), 46Google Scholar.

23. Honig, Sisters and Strangers; Smith, S. A., Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895–1927 (Durham, NC/London, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Smith, Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895–1927, 20.

25. The interview conducted with this labor contractor was part of a research project undertaken by the East German economic historian Jürgen Kuczynski and his collaborators to study the labor condition in Shanghai's British-owned cotton mills during the 1930s. The interview and the report were published in German. Kuczynski, Jürgen, Yen, Chung-Ping, Jonas, Wolfgang, Die Lage Der Arbeiter in Der Baumwollindustrie Shanghais Insbesondere in Den Englishen Fabriken ed. Kuczynski, Jürgen, vol. 28, Die Geschichte Der Lage Der Arbeiter Unter Dem Kapitalismus (Berlin, 1964), 222Google Scholar.

26. Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880–1937, 75.

27. Shanghai Shehui Kexue Yuan, Jingji Yanjiu Suo eds., Maoxin, Fuxin, Shenxin Xitong: Rong Jia Qiye Shiliao 1896–1937 [茂新、福新、申新系統 : 榮家企業料, 1896–1937], (Shanghai, 1962), 576.

28. Zhendan, Lou, “Shenxin Fangzhi Disanchang Yijiuerwu Nian Pochu Fengjian Gongtou Guanli Zhidu Douzheng de Huiyi,” in Rong Desheng yu Qiye Jingying Guanli vol 2, ed. “Shanghai Daxue, Jiangnan Daxue ‘Yuenong Shiliao’ Zhengli Yanjiu Xiaozu Xuanbian” (Shanghai, 2004), 680–90.

29. Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880–1937, 112–15.

30. Chung-Ping Yen, Die Lage Der Arbeiter in Der Baumwollindustrie Shanghais Insbesondere in Den Englishen Fabriken, 28, 151.

31. Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880–1937, 135–37.

32. Prior to 1935, the primary currency in Shanghai was the yinyan, or silver dollar. After 1935, it was the fabi, or “legal currency.”

33. Shanghai Municipal Council Report for the Year 1938, 41.

34. Hinder, Eleanor M., Social and Industrial Problems of Shanghai (New York, 1942), 30Google Scholar.

35. Shanghai Municipal Archive, Q-193-1-1140.

36. Chung-Ping Yen, Die Lage Der Arbeiter in Der Baumwollindustrie Shanghais Insbesondere in Den Englishen Fabriken, 28, 150.

37. Ibid., 116.

38. Interview transcript, Juzhen Li, February 16, 1960.

39. Yan Xia, “Baoshengong,” 171.

40. Interview transcript, Lanyang Fan, April 18, 1958.

41. Ibid.

42. Shanghai Muncipal Council Report for the Year 1940, 30; Honig, Sisters and Strangers, 108–13.

43. “Tan Jiacheng Fangwen Lu (Interview with Jiachen Tan)” in Rong Desheng yu Qiye Jingying Guanli vol 2, 701.

44. Smith, Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895–1927, 24–26.

45. Smith, “Workers and Supervisors,” 162.

46. Rong, Desheng, Yuenong Ziding Xingnian Jishi 樂農自訂行年紀事 (Shanghai, 2001), 93Google Scholar.

47. Shanghai Shehui Kexue Yuan, Jingji Yanjiu Suo, eds., Maoxin, Fuxin, Shenxin Xitong: Rong Jia Qiye Shiliao [茂新、福新、申新系統 : 榮家企業料], (Shanghai, 1962–1980), 157–66.

48. Zhendan, Lou, “Shenxin Fangzhi Disanchang Yijiuerwu Nian Pochu Fengjian Gongtou Guanli Zhidu Douzheng de Huiyi,” in Rong Desheng yu Qiye Jingying Guanli vol 2, 686.

49. “Zheng Xiangde Fangwen Lu (Interview with Xiangde Zheng)” in Rong Desheng yu Qiye Jingying Guanli vol 2, 711.

50. Ibid., 165.

51. Hanruo Lu,“Shenxin Sanchang Kaoshi Nugong Yangcheng Suo Xinsheng Zhi.” [1932] in Rong Desheng yu Qiye Jingying Guanli vol 2, 812–19.

52. Shensan Zong Guanli Chu. (1934) 2004. “Shenxin Disan Laogonh Zizhi Qu Jiekuang” [1934] in Rong Desheng yu Qiye Jingying Guanli vol. 2, 757.

53. Desheng Rong, Yuenong Ziding Xingnian Jishi, 109.

54. Shanghai Muncipal Archive, Q 193-1-1160.

55. Hinder, Social and Industrial Problems of Shanghai, 31.

56. Shanghai Municipal Archive, Q-193-1-1040.

57. Ibid., Q-193-1-1040.

58. Ngai, Pun. “Gender and Class: Women's Working Lives in a Dormitory Labor Regime in China,” International Labor and Working-Class History 81 (2012): 178–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. Ibid., Q-193-3-181.

60. Ibid., Q193-4-372.

61. Ibid., Q193-4-144.

62. Honig, Sisters and Strangers, 114; Shanghai Shehui Kexue Yuan, Jingji Yanjiu Suo, eds., Maoxin, Fuxin, Shenxin Xitong: Rong Jia Qiye Shiliao, 576.

63. Wright, Tim, “‘A Method of Evading Management’: Contract Labor in China's Coal Mines before 1937,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981), 677CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64. Hanchao, Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley, CA, 1999), 58Google Scholar.

65. Coble, Parks M., Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927–1937, (Cambridge, MA, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bergère, Marie-Claire, The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911–1937, trans. Lloyd, Janet (Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1989)Google Scholar.

66. Bergère, The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911–1937.

67. Ibid. 283.

68. Ibid. 284.

69. Honig, Sisters and Strangers, 121.

70. Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880–1937.

71. Martin, Brian, The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919–1938 (Berkeley, CA1996), 9–18Google Scholar.

72. Perry, Elizabeth, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Shanghai Labor (Stanford, CA, 1993), 50Google Scholar.

73. Ibid., 56.

74. Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang, 98–99.

75. Perry, Shanghai on Strike, 90.

76. Honig, “The Contract Labor System and Women Workers: Pre-Liberation Cotton Mills of Shanghai,”, 444.

77. Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang, 168–70.

78. Ibid., 136.

79. Hershatter, Gail, “Prostitution and the Market in Women in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai,” in Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, ed. Watson, Rubie S. and Ebrey, Patricia Buckley (Berkeley, CA, 1991), 257–58Google Scholar.

80. Henriot, Christian, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History 1849–1949 (Cambridge, United Kingdom 2001), 165–200Google Scholar.

81. Gates, Hill, “The Commoditization of Chinese Women,” Signs 14 (1989), 799CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82. Hamilton, Gary G., “Patriarchy, Patrimonialism, and Filial Piety: A Comparison of China and Western Europe,” British Journal of Sociology 41 (1990), 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83. Chesneaux, Jean, The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927, trans. Wright, H. M. (Stanford, CA, 1968)Google Scholar.

84. Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Shanghai Labor; Roux, Alain, Le Shanghai Ouvrier Des Années Trente: Coolies, Gangsters Et Syndicalistes (Paris, 1993)Google Scholar; Grèves Et Politique À Shanghai: Les Désillusions, 1927–1932 (Paris, 1995); Smith, Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895–1927.

85. Roux, Grèves Et Politique À Shanghai: Les Désillusions, 1927–1932, 342.

86. Roux, Le Shanghai Ouvrier Des Années Trente: Coolies, Gangsters Et Syndicalistes, 306.

87. Ibid., 301.

88. Ibid., 303.

89. Roux, Grèves Et Politique À Shanghai: Les Désillusions, 1927–1932, 16.

90. Roux, Le Shanghai Ouvrier Des Années Trente: Coolies, Gangsters Et Syndicalistes, 308.

91. Ibid., 146–48.

92. Chesneaux, The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927, 363.

93. Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880–1937, 95–116.

94. Chung-Ping Yen, Die Lage Der Arbeiter in Der Baumwollindustrie Shanghais Insbesondere in Den Englishen Fabriken 28, 117.

95. Ibid., 117.

96. “Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking,” International Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm (accessed February 4, 2016).