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Lance L.P. Gore, The Chinese Communist Party and China's Capitalist Revolution: The Political Impact of the Market, London and New York: Routledge, 2011, 180pp. +xx.
Richard McGregor's Tie Party: ??? Secret World of China's Communist Rulers portrays the picture of an omnipresent and (sort of) omnipotent Chinese Communist Party. One of the most memorable quotes in that book comes from a Chinese professor: "The party is like God. He is everywhere. You just can't see him."1 However, had McGregor read Lance Gore's The Chinese Communist Party and China s Capitalist Revolution, he may have to modify his conclusions. True, the party is powerful, but its party organizations are not as secure as its ruling positions. Gore's book gives another picture of the party - a party in which its grassroots organizations are either in atrophy, become irrelevant, or have been assimilated by the market.
The key thesis that Gore attempts to argue is that the Leninist party organization and the market are fundamentally incompatible, and increasingly the latter has decisively prevailed over the former. In making the case why capitalism supports democracy, a leading liberal economist, Robert Heilbroner, argues that "It is certainly not that the pursuit of capital breeds a liberty-loving frame of mind, it is rather that the presence of an economy within a polity gives an inestimable aid to freedom by permitting political dissidents to make their livings without interdiction by an all-powerful regime."2 Gore here is making a similar assertion about the impact of the market in China: it provides an alternative source of resources and rewards outside of...