100
EUGENE COOPER
The Woodwork Carvers' Union has always encouraged the growth of a modern, unified, class conscious labor force. Its ability to weather the struggles of the 1960's and its current vitality in actively promoting its members' interests in welfare, recreation, and livelihood are expressions of the fact that 1.) its Maoist message now finds a more receptive audience in a labor force more thoroughly proletarianized and less hostile to Peking and 2.) its efforts to consciously adapt, transform, and politicize various aspects of traditional craft social structure into modern institutions in a manner consistent with its ideology have been relatively successful.
The result has been that the purposes which the Woodwork Carvers' Union has made its own now command a greater importance in the lives of most workers than ever before. Politics, and proletarian politics at that, is in command in the art carved furniture industry, and the traditional array of discrete unions for carvers and carpenters of differing native place in differing woods is in retreat.
References Cited
Burgess, J. S.
1928 The Guilds of Peking New York: Columbia University Press.
Gamble, S. D.
1921 Peking A Social Survey New York: George A. Doran Co.
Marx, K.
1967 Capital New York: International Publishers.
Morse, H. B.
1909 The Guilds of China London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Sowerby, A. de C.
1926 A New Art Craft in Shanghai The China Journal of Science and Arts 8(3): 1.
100
EUGENE COOPER
The Woodwork Carvers' Union has always encouraged the growth of a modern, unified, class conscious labor force. Its ability to weather the struggles of the 1960's and its current vitality in actively promoting its members interests in welfare, recreation and livelihood are expressions of the fact that 1.) its Maoist message now finds a more receptive audience in a labor force more tho- roughly proletarianized and less hostile to Peking and 2.) its efforts to consciously adapt, transform, and politicize various aspects of traditional craft social structure into modern institutions in a manner consistent with its ideology have been relatively successful.
The result has been that the purposes which the Woodwork Carvers' Union has made its own now command a greater impor- tance in the lives of most workers than ever before. Politics, and proletarian politics at that, is in command in the art carved furniture industry, and the traditional array of discrete unions for carvers and carpenters of differing native place in differing woods is in retreat.
References Cited
Burgess, J. S.
1928 The Guilds of Peking New York: Columbia University Press.
Gamble, S. D.
1921 Peking A Social Survey New York: George A. Doron Co. Marx, K.
1967 Capital New York: International Publishers.
Morse, H. B.
1909 The Guilds of China London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Sowerby, A. dec.
1926 A New Art Craft in Shanghai The China Journal of Science
and Arts 8 (3): 1.
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