Finding a place for the Lumpenproletariat : vacillators and rural revolution -- The people versus their enemies : urban reeducation and the old society -- The curriculum of consciousness raising : low consciousness and mass reeducation -- The laboring masses : voluntarism and the people -- The people stand up : resistance and reform
Summary
This book offers the first detailed study of the essential relationship between thought reform and the "dangerous classes"--The prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, and other "lumpenproletarians" the Communists saw as a threat to society and the revolution. Aminda Smith takes readers inside early-PRC reformatories, where the new state endeavored to transform "vagrants" into members of the laboring masses. As places where "the people" were literally created, these centers became testing grounds for rapidly changing ideas and experiments about thought reform and the subjects they produced. Smit
