@article{TEXTUAL,
      recid = {6344},
      author = {Eyferth, Jacob},
      title = {State Socialism and the Rural Household: How Women's  Handloom Weaving (and Pig-Raising, Firewood-Gathering,  Food-Scavenging) Subsidized Chinese Accumulation},
      journal = {International Review of Social History},
      address = {2023-02-04},
      number = {TEXTUAL},
      abstract = {Massive, rapid capital accumulation is usually associated  with capitalist development, but historically, socialist  states were among the most aggressive accumulators.  Accumulation in Maoist China was faster than even in  Stalin's Soviet Union, despite the fact that China was a  much poorer country with fewer natural resources. China's  accumulation rate, defined as the ratio of gross capital  formation to gross national income, reached twenty-five to  thirty per cent in 1957–1962, peaking at forty-four per  cent in 1958. This level proved to be unsustainable, but  after a slowdown in the early 1960s, the rate rose back to  thirty-six percent.1 As is well known, the cost of China's  rapid industrialization was borne mostly by its rural  population.2 My aim in this chapter is to show that it was  disproportionally borne by rural women, who contributed to  socialist accumulation in direct and indirect ways:  directly, as collective farmers, growers of the grain,  cotton, soy, tea, sugarcane, etc. that fueled  industrialization; and indirectly, by biologically,  socially, and materially reproducing the country's labor  force and by submitting to a regime of extreme austerity  that allowed the government to extract scarce resources and  direct them to the cities and the export trade. My argument  proceeds in three steps. I will begin with an overview of  socialist primitive accumulation under Mao, its  preconditions and mechanisms, and the ways it replicated  earlier Soviet policies or diverged from them. Next, I will  discuss the various ways in which rural women's work  underpinned capital accumulation and laid the foundation  for China's rapid industrialization in the years since  Mao's death. Finally, I will look in some detail at rural  women's work at home, to show how their self-exploitation,  overwork, and underconsumption in the domestic realm  created the conditions for accumulation. My focus is on  cotton work – both cotton cultivation and domestic cloth  production – but I will also look at other ways in which  domestic work supported accumulation.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/6344},
}