Marxism, Socialist Transition, and the Productivity of China’s Academic Faculty

Abstract

The much-repeated claim that China has abandoned its long march to communism has become increasingly problematic with commentators from both the left and the right questioning the validity of the claim. Joining this discussion, we center on the issue of workplace inequality and the two-track performance and remuneration arrangements when accounting for public university academic performance. Given the Chinese government has institutional this arrangement as part of its strategy for building a socialist market economy, we posit that this performance evaluation is consistent with the worker evaluation model that Marx and Engels advised should be engaged as part of the traditional path to communism. In brief, we suggest the duality of performance metrics is consistent with Marx's understanding of how workers should be rewarded during the initial stage of the transition from capitalism to communism. The multiplicity of discipline versus control societal values that emerge through this study is particularly relevant given the long-held attention to inequality in China.