ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the factors which contributed to the initial success of the movement were not solely or primarily those theoretically revolutionary conditions created by a mature industrial environment. The preceding account of the formation of four unions in the Hunan Labor Secretariat demonstrates the fallacy of assuming that because the pre-1927 revolution was urban and principally concerned with labor unions it was therefore orthodox. Mao Zedong, for example, led former guild members out on strike under a slogan of free enterprise, and Liu Shaoqi devoted himself to increasing production in the mines. According to orthodox theory, or the revolutionary scenario that Marx predicted for Europe's future, there were no ideological grounds for predicting a Communist-led labor movement in a largely preindustrial China. The contract labor system at the mines was a traditional institution that had functioned much like the agricultural bang.
