The general point of departure for my analysis of capitalist developments comprises the three key actors that played a decisive role in shaping the historical development of modern societies: companies, governments, and the working classes. “The comparative capitalism literature causes us to focus on three main actors in society: the government, firms, and workers. It may not tell us what that relationship will be, but it does argue that all economic development projects have produced stable institutions built around those relationships” (Fligstein and Zhang 2011, 50).7 Consequently, beyond market- or company-centric theories of economic development, it is important for us to examine the social relationships between these groups of actors (which are inherently inhomogeneous and characterized by changing normative orientations), their structure, and relationships with other social groups as well as their historical evolution. With this contribution, I attempt to identify the institutional design or the competitive and cooperative relationships resulting from the interconnection between the three groups of actors. The complex interplay between companies, government actors, and the “subordinated” classes result in different forms of market activity, political regulation, and other types of coordination by social actors—in the world of work, for instance. Linked to this are also conflicts over guiding social principles and norms.
At the same time, these interactions always occur in social arenas that are, to a certain extent, already shaped and established. In other words, they arise under social conditions that have become independent from actors’ conscious actions and desires and that affect both their perceptions and their actions. This social structure, though created by historical actors, had become an independent entity fostering an institutionalized compulsion to act and, at the same time, unevenly distributed scope for action. My hypothesis is that, particularly since the 1980s, this structure/agency nexus has largely been shaped (not determined) by the drivers of global capitalist development. A link between the insights outlined in the previous section is the idea that the drivers and fundamental components of capitalism must be viewed as an overarching dimension of societal modernization. These components include a boundless and infinite imperative to maximize accumulation and profit, competition, a structural propensity for social tension and crisis, and a reliance on noneconomic institutions such as the state.
In contrast to far-reaching historical contingency assumptions, I propose first, that capitalism as an all-encompassing social order has sustainably structured the various paths to modernity in different continents over the last century, including China’s, even under Maoism. There are fundamental components of capitalism, without which it would be impossible to differentiate between different types of capitalism in the first place. In the context of global capitalist development, these various types should be viewed as different manifestations of common basic patterns, and in terms of the historical interrelations between the three groups of actors mentioned. At the same time, the overarching drivers and patterns of capitalism take on a specific form in different historical phases of capitalist development. These include the period of strong government interventionism that prevailed around the world from the 1930s or the period of liberalization that began in the 1970s, for instance.
Second, because the global drivers of capitalist development simultaneously encounter various historical development trajectories, I felt it was important to take into account the role of noneconomic institutions and historical traditions in order to understand the development of different types of capitalism. In this context, China research, for instance, emphasizes Sino-Marxism as well as the older Confucianist traditions, traditions of a strong state, and the reciprocal system of social networks and influential relationships (guanxi) that facilitate business and other dealings.8 Although it is true that historical and sociocultural traditions are reshaped by capitalist-driven processes of modernization (which calls into question the “China is China” argument mentioned above), global economic processes still develop unevenly because different local, national, and transregional areas provide different conditions for establishing capitalist social orders. These properties give rise to different forms of coordination of economic, political, and social processes and lend a political economy the distinctive character that develops over the course of history.
In light of all this, I therefore initially present a position that resembles convergence theory. According to this position, national capitalist development processes cannot reasonably be explored using comparative static analysis. Instead they must be approached as facets of a process of global capitalist socialization, that is, with reference to diverse driving forces or fundamental components that are universally inherent in capitalist development.
In a second step, however, this position is relativized because the overarching drivers of capitalism do not result in identical outcomes. The conflict between the main groups of social actors leads to different forms of coordination, for instance. These forms of coordination are based on completely different socioeconomic premises, each occupying a specific position in the global system, and so on. To enable me to describe the similarities and differences as well as the overall drivers and divergent outcomes of capitalist development, I draw on the concept of an international variegated capitalist world system (Jessop 2009; Streeck 2010a). I then incorporate a historical concept of institutions in my research framework that takes into account targeted human action beyond structuralism and intentionalism. To address the issues that are the crux of this study, I refrain from focusing exclusively on China’s national economy but also examine how it is integrated in other East Asian and global economic spaces.
In a third step, in light of deficits and desiderata of both comparative capitalism analysis and China research, there is scope for a more detailed analysis of capitalist social relations in China. This analysis includes the aforementioned inter- and/or transnational analytical focus and the idea that the research perspectives presented here are incompatible with culturalism. This school of thought sees historical continuity prevailing in China where “unity between past, present, and future has become second nature” (Weggel 1997, 122, my translation). I also draw on other recent CPE tools and concepts for instance. This allows me to examine different production regimes and the complementary cross effects between institutions, that is, the functional effects that occur between individual institutional spheres.
Furthermore, it is important to take account of the relationships between economic and noneconomic institutions on two additional levels:
(1) One problem with China and comparative capitalism research is the lack of proper analysis of the interplay between the economy and the state or companies and state institutions on different geographical and administrative levels and in informal networks. On the one hand, as I will demonstrate, market-centric approaches result in biased analysis of China’s reform. Thus, predictions of an abrupt transition from the “plan” to the “market” proved to be flawed in light of the adaptability of state developmental regulation. Despite the transfer of functions from government agencies to companies and the dismantling of binding plan targets in favor of more indicative planning and market-led allocation, China can hardly be described as a liberal market economy. On the other hand, state-centric approaches attribute China’s leadership with a degree of foresight and capacity to control that can in no way be reconciled with the anarchic reality of the Chinese reform process. This, albeit perhaps inadvertently, also correlates with the political leadership’s self-perception. It is possible that the legacy of elite-centric totalitarianism research has thereby contributed to a stark contrast between the state and the economy and, in a wider sense, also society where the government is understood as an external regime rather than a social actor (see Fewsmith 2008).
The present work maintains that in order to analyze economic dynamics, we need to refer back to the interdependencies and overlaps between the economy and the state, which, during the course of reform, created close alliances between private actors and (local) government elites. For this reason, capitalist development in China (and elsewhere) cannot be seen as synonymous with markets and private enterprises. In certain phases of capitalist development and with some forms of capitalism, strong political steering plays a particularly important role, which may largely be determined by the drivers of capitalism. Further, political actors can, in certain situations, resemble market actors—particularly when they only have to devote themselves to managing redistributive