In December 1978 the Third Plenary Session of China's Central Committee, under Deng Xiaoping's ascendancy, launches reform and opening: markets, foreign investment, and household farming under unbroken party rule, in the doctrine Deng names socialism with Chinese characteristics. The turn makes Marxism's largest surviving state a market economy and the tradition's central modern problem.
Tagged: Marxism
The Event
- Date
- 1978 (exact)
- Era
- Crisis and After; Standard periodization of Marxist history
- Location
- Beijing; today Beijing, China
- Traditions
- Marxism
- Streams
- Marxism
- Key figures
- Deng Xiaoping
How the Tradition Tells It
Whether reform-era China confirms or abandons the doctrine is the tradition's live internal dispute; the record states the policy and its official name.
Primary Sources
- The communiqué of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, Beijing, December 1978.
Secondary Sources
- Anderson, Perry. Considerations on Western Marxism. London: New Left Books, 1976.
- Kolakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
- McLellan, David. Karl Marx: A Biography. London: Palgrave Macmillan, fourth edition, 2006.
Provenance: HIST-1466; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
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World View
Marxism
Marxism explains history as the struggle of classes over material production, and aims at a classless society in which exploitation and alienation are ended.