Thesis (B.A.Hons.) - Dept. of Politics, University of Adelaide, 1978.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Universität Frankfurt am Main. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Ljubljana. / Bibliography: p. 165-170.

Thesis--Gothenburg. / Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-296).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-63).

The study is an examination of struggles over socialist construction in China between the Tenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1973 and the arrests of the so-called "gang of four" in 1976. It analyzes the content of debates, the context in which they occurred and policies implemented during the period. The study is based upon materials collected while living in China, observations during participation in various political movements of the period, and on materials from the Chinese print and broadcast media. The dissertation analyzes struggles over industrial development and organization, science and technology policy, rural development, and the role of the education system in socialist society. Issues debated included worker participation in management, cadre participation in labor, labor remuneration policies, the role of scientists and technicians in the production process, the importation of advanced technology, the relationship between scientific theory and Marxism-Leninism, structural and ideological changes in the modernization of agriculture, access to higher education and the role of intellectuals in socialist society. These debates are analyzed from the perspective of Marxian theory. From this analysis the study concludes that in spite of the formal appearance of a debate, genuine and open discussion of policy alternatives and concrete results did not in fact occur. There were a number of conceptions, widely held in China during the mid-seventies, which it is argued were a central factor in thwarting the emergence of real debate. These include the concept of the role of the Communist Party as the "core of leadership" in all spheres of social life, the notion of the "continuation of class struggle" in socialist society, misinterpretation of the relationship between the forces and relations of production in the process of development, misunderstanding of the means by which the division of labor can be transcended and misunderstanding of the nature of Chinese society. The study challenges these conceptions from the point of view of Marxian theory and traces the role they played in the distortion of the debates and the suppression of alternative viewpoints. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation studies Chilean communists’ public and private lives. It examines the experience of being a communist and the Communist Party of Chile’s efforts to shape that experience, both in the street and at home. To what extent did communists follow party principles regarding public and private life? To what extent did communism succeed in challenging the public-private divide so dear to liberalism? These are the questions I seek to answer in this dissertation. I argue that communism was lived quite intensely, but that it would be an exaggeration to claim that most party members lived and breathed communism. Communists lived a bifurcated life: one life lived to the fullest in the public sphere and another life lived less intensely at home. This dissertation provides a detailed portrait of communist men and their relations, both at home and in the street, in order to understand how they came to inhabit and expand the Chilean political sphere. Communist ideology and activism helped men reaffirm their masculine sense of self and claim a space in the public arena, but self-sovereignty came at the cost of family life. Communism strengthened the gendered public-private divide by pulling men from their homes and imbuing them with a strong sense of mission. Communist men’s intense involvement in public affairs was to the detriment of their wives, who ended up confined to the domestic realm. Notwithstanding communist discourse, the practices fostered by the party led communist men to think of public and private as separate spheres.

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