The Class Formation: Control of Capital and Collective Resistance of Chinese Construction Workers*

Chapter 5 The Class Formation: Control of Capital and Collective Resistance of Chinese Construction Workers* Pun Ngai, Lu Huilin, and Zhang Huipeng** A Song for Wages Unpaid Working for a boss, we can take sweltering heat and bitter cold, But we can’t take no wages. Workers, don’t stay silent, reticent, We just need to make our voice heard. How many years have you given, Changing the city’s complexion. We have to fight for our labor rights, Unite. Get back our wages. Written by Da Jun (大军), Construction Worker ∵ In June 2008, at a construction site at Taoyuan (桃源) Village1 in the suburbs of Beijing (北京), a construction worker named Old Zhang (老张) was anxiously * (This article was first published in Chinese in Open Times, 2010, No. 5.) ** The authors of this article would like to extend their deepest gratitude to the following people for all of the contributions they have made towards this study: Lian Jiajia, Liu Jing, Li Dajun, Liu Xiaohong, Zhou Lijuan, Li Qingsu, Xiao Qiang, Li Ding, Zhang Jieying, Wang Dunmeng, and Zhu Qian. This study received the following support: the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (HKRGC) research project “Yi ge xin gongren jieji de xingcheng: dui huanan diqu sushi laodong tizhi xia jiti xingdong de yanjiu” (The formation of a new working class: research on collective action within the context of the dormitory regime in the south of China); the National Social Sciences Fund project “Nongmingong qunti de jieceng xingcheng he shenfen renting” (Migrant workers: class formation and sense of identity), (project number 06CSH009); Peking University-Hong Kong Polytechnic University China Social Work Research Centre project “Xinyidai nongmingong de shenghuo kongjian: jieji yu © Pun Ngai, Lu Huilin, and Zhang Huipeng, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004326385_007 Pun Ngai, Lu Huilin, and Zhang Huipeng - 9789004326385 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-NDDownloaded 4.0 from license. Brill.com09/26/2021 04:27:22AM via free access 104 Pun, LU and zhang waiting for his boss to issue his wages. Back at home, the wheat had already fully ripened and was waiting for him to go back and harvest it. Old Zhang had been doing construction for over 30 years, and on this occasion, he had brought with him around a dozen plasterers from back home to work for his head contractor. From the beginning of the Lunar New Year in spring up until now, aside from 100–200 yuan in living allowances, they had not yet received a penny of their wages. A week ago, Old Zhang went to the head contractor, representing over ten workers in requesting that their unpaid wages should be cleared up. At the time, the head contractor had been full of promises. The day they had agreed on was almost upon them, but the head contractor said that for the time being, he didn’t have that much money and asked them to wait a bit longer. The workers were angry, but there was nothing they could do, and all they could do was agree to wait a few more days. The final deadline arrived, but there was no sign of the head contractor. The laborers made their way to the project department of the construction com- pany to demand their money. The manager of the project department called the head contractor, telling him to get his skates on and come and deal with the issue. Finally, the woman boss (the head contractor’s wife) turned up and was surrounded by the workers, who told her to clear up their wages. She said that the work on the construction project hadn’t been finished yet, so she couldn’t give them their money. She told them to go back home to harvest their wheat and come back to the site later to finish off their work there, and only then she would give them their wages. The workers were furious at this; one of them flung the bowl he had been eating out aggressively to the ground. If it wasn’t for the fact that the boss was a woman, it was likely that the workers would have already come to blows with her by that point. Several of the workers went off to buy hammers and threatened to smash up the work they had already done. Some of the workers threatened that they would go to the Bureau of Labor (劳动局) and sue the boss. Old Zhang told the woman boss that she had to sort out the problem of their wages, for otherwise he didn’t dare to imagine what the workers would do in anger. At 11 o’clock that evening, the head contractor sent someone over with 30,000 yuan, saying that in a few days they would be given more, and that the rest wages would be cleared up only after the workers returned to Beijing. In gongmin yishi de tansuo” (The living space of the new generation of migrant workers: an exploration of class consciousness and civic awareness). Pun Ngai: Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Department of Applied Social Sciences, Lu Huilin: Peking University, Department of Sociology, Zhang Huipeng: Peking University, Department of Sociology. 1 “Taoyuan Village” is a pseudonym. Pun Ngai, Lu Huilin, and Zhang Huipeng - 9789004326385 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:27:22AM via free access The Class Formation 105 a helpless position, all Old Zhang could do was split this money amongst the workers and tell them to go back home and harvest their wheat, whilst he him- self would stay behind and wait for the remaining money. In the early hours of the next morning, a little past two o’clock, these workers boarded the bus home. This scene at Taoyuan Village, both saddening and infuriating, is being played out time and time again at construction sites all over the country. It is common that the head contractor will conjure up all kinds of ways to send the workers back home, promising that their wages would be cleared up at the end of the year and even giving them an IOU. However, when the workers turn up to demand their wages at the end of the year, they would be beset with setback after setback. The head contractor will either claim that there is no money and just keep putting them off, or he will simply flat-out refuse to acknowledge the debt. Almost every construction worker has had some experience of chasing up wages. It would be fair to say that unpaid wages has become a deep-seated problem within the construction industry. An analysis of the conflicts and clashes connected to the failure to pay wages demands that we broaden our horizon to squarely face up to the capitalist relations of production and adopt a class perspective, which, though often dismissed as old-hat, can actually be something fresh and illuminating. 1 The Significance of Class Analysis to Chinese Social Science It is widely known that the centrality of class analysis is a fundamental principle of the Marxist doctrine. However, from the middle of the twentieth century onwards, almost half a century of development in Western Marxist theory has basically created a process of skepticism and refutation of this principle. Western left-wing intellectuals have been deeply perplexed by a phenom- enon within Western society: why is it that the working class, who have been accorded hope by Marx, have been so slow to rise up and take up the mission that they are apparently meant to shoulder? In other words, why is it that the revolutionary subjectivity of the working class has been so slow to appear? In their attempted explanations, they have approached the question “why hasn’t it happened” from different angles, yet together they have built an enormous space where deviation may exist between class structure, class consciousness, and class action. For Marx, although “class in-itself” is differentiated from “class for-itself” (Klasse an sich—Klasse für sich), the inherent uniformity of class structure, class-consciousness and class action is predetermined. The transformation from “in-itself” to “for-itself” is a Pun Ngai, Lu Huilin, and Zhang Huipeng - 9789004326385 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:27:22AM via free access 106 Pun, LU and zhang naturally occurring historical process. Marx believed that the mode of capitalist production would inevitably lead to simplification of the class structure and sharp class antagonism: “Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other—Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”2 The revolution foreshadowed by Marx never actually came, but instead quite the opposite, following the Second World War, the West ambled towards a path of relative prosperity and stability. In order to bridge the chasm between the reality of Western social progress and Marxism, Western post-Marxist scholars have developed a whole series of elaborate explanations, three of which are particularly influential. The first is the theory of “a crisis of ideology,” arguing that the capitalist state machine has created a stream of veiled ideology, which together with consumerist culture, has successfully obstructed the development of the workers’ awareness of class.3 The second is the theory of “plurality of positions,” which criticizes the “economism” and “class reductionism” of traditional Marxism, arguing that economic interest is only one of the dimensions by which workers delineate their self identity, and that multifarious social factors such as gender, ethnicity, religion and culture, all participate in the construction of a worker’s identity.

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