The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class: How Communism Built a Capitalist Superpower

The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class examines China’s transformation from a poor agrarian society into a global economic powerhouse through the history of land, labour and class. Teemu Ruskola traces how the Chinese working class was formed after 1949 and then unmade by the reforms that began in the late 1970s. The book challenges the idea that China’s rise resulted simply from the adoption of capitalism: its communist foundations enabled the transformation, while the reforms abandoned the promise of equality and remade workers into a global proletariat. Comparing China’s rural land reform with Britain’s Enclosure Movement, Ruskola analyses primitive socialist and primitive capitalist accumulation, land finance, new urbanisation and the growth of landless peasants. The book also asks whether capitalist development is approaching ecological and social limits, and whether a path beyond capitalism is possible. Verso Books, 2026; paperback, 208 pages.