A Study Of State-owned Coal Miners During The Period Of Economic Adjustment (1960-1965

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China,the life of the vast number of workers have undergone earth-shaking changes.Coal miners are typical representatives of the group of workers in this period,and they played an important role in the process of China’s industrialization.This paper takes the coal miners of the T Mine as the research object,and discusses the coal miners in the 1960s under the background of national economic adjustment.By examining the composition of the coal miners,their economic situation,political situation and cultural status from the perspective of the national system,and their daily life.,to explore the relationship between workers and peasants and the process of miner’s identity construction.Peasants are the main source of worker groups,especially for coal mines.As a newly built mine in the early 1960s,most of the new workers recruited by T Mine are peasants from rural areas.In the early 1960s,the aftermath of the "Great Leap Forward" was still lingering,and a large number of peasants who entered the mines legally or even illegally poured into the mines and quickly became the main labor force in the coal mines.However,with the emergence of the sequelae of the "Great leap forward" in the coal mines,the decline of the overall national treatment,and the deviation of the information between the workers and peasants during this period,a special phenomenon of a large number of workers in the coal mines "returning" to the countryside appeared.On the one hand,it seriously affected the coal production,it endangers the overall situation of national economic adjustment.On the other hand,for those who have been transferred from peasants to workers,it also means the failure of their personal identity transformation and the failure of the state to construct some coal miners.However,the realistic coal production task requires the state and coal mining enterprises to think about how to shape the coal miners from farmers into real proletarian workers who meet the needs of the socialist country,mobilize the workers’ enthusiasm for production,and complete the national task targets.In order to prevent the workers from "reversing" and at the same time transform the peasants who entered the mines into workers needed for socialist construction,the state began to take a series of measures.Mainly use the system to regulate the daily behavior of workers;provide workers with a direct economic source of labor force regeneration with wages to meet the needs of workers themselves and their families;use welfare benefits to solve the living difficulties that workers cannot solve by themselves,so that workers can participate in production with more peace of mind Work;to ensure the safety of workers in the production and work process with labor protection,reduce the probability of industrial accidents for workers,and relieve their worries at work to a certain extent.In short,in the various economic guarantees centered on wages,miners enjoy the treatment that farmers have never enjoyed,their identity construction is gradually formed,and the identity of workers is not deeply deepened.The construction of workers’ identity in socialist countries not only relies on institutional constraints and material guarantees,but is also reflected in the shaping of workers’ "proletarian" ideas by the party and the state.In the face of various"non-proletarian" factors in the workforce,the mining side subtly constructs the collective identity and national identity of the workers through political education,cultural education,and cultural and sports activities,which indirectly affects production.Beyond the institutional level,the daily life of coal miners best reflects their own cognition.In times of economic difficulties,the enterprise-run social model enabled coal miners to relatively adequately guarantee their basic dietary and living needs,and made "eating enough" their happiest memory of that era.Although the institutional management,material security and ideological education of coal mines have laid the foundation for the construction of workers’identity,the situation of their identity construction varies from person to person,and the degree and outcome of the construction of different workers’ identities are different.In the T Mine,most of them have successfully constructed their identities.They work hard and have advanced ideas.They have been given more material and spiritual rewards by the coal mine.The workers themselves also gain self-confidence from it,and they are more identified with the identity of workers.The degree of its worker identity construction also plays an exemplary role in leading the identity construction of other workers,and drives the identity construction of the entire group of workers.But at the same time,there are also a small number of workers whose identity construction fails or is incomplete.It should be noted that the construction of the identity of coal miners is significantly different from that of other industrial workers,and this difference is mainly reflected in marriage.Although coal miners have turned over in political and economic positions and have an advantage in the rural marriage market,they are still discriminated against in the urban and mining marriage markets.This has become a shadow under the bright image of the coal miners,but it is this shadow that invisibly strengthens the connection between the coal miners and the countryside.In a word,under the background of the adjustment of the national economy in the 1960s,the state adopted various policies to shape the body and spirit of the coal miners who are closely related to the countryside,and cultivated a group of laborers who actively served the socialist construction.It has strengthened the coal mine production team,guaranteed the coal supply,and provided an important energy basis for the adjustment and development of the national economy.This process fully reflects the state’s construction of socialist workers,and also reflects some aspects of coal miners in the relationship between workers and peasants.