The structure and contradictions of productive relations in socialist agrarian 'reform' : a framework for analysis and the Chinese case

The article attempts to develop a complex analytical frame for analysing socialist agrarian reform, and to apply it to the case of post-Mao China. The purpose of doing so is to disaggregate the complex changes which have been wrought under the responsibility systems' in order to get a more nuanced sense of what has and has not changed, how the various parts fit together, and where the axes of contradiction posed by the 'reform' may lie. It is argued that the 'responsibility systems' of the recent Chinese 'reforms' are neither socialist nor capitalist. (DÜI-Sen)