At first glance, the notion of “market socialism” appears as a synthesis—a model that promises to combine the dynamism of market economies with the ethical commitments of socialist governance. Yet this apparent harmony conceals deeper tensions. Rather than resolving the relationship between growth and equality, the system may in fact intensify the contradictions between them. It is precisely this problem that The Contradictions of Market Socialism: Labour, Capital, and Welfare in Privatizing China and Vietnam, edited by Minh T.N. Nguyen and Jingyu Mao and published by Bristol University Press and Policy Press in April 2026, sets out to examine with clarity and rigor.

The volume belongs to the Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy series, a body of work that seeks to understand how different societies respond to shared global challenges through evolving welfare and policy frameworks. Within this context, Nguyen and Mao position China and Vietnam not as isolated cases, but as part of a broader landscape of transformation in labour, welfare, and governance. At the same time, their editorial approach remains grounded in detailed empirical research, focusing on the lived realities of workers navigating rapidly changing economies that are simultaneously socialist in name and capitalist in practice.

The historical backdrop is familiar. Beginning in the late 1970s in China and the mid-1980s in Vietnam, both countries undertook sweeping reforms that dismantled central planning and introduced market mechanisms. These changes generated remarkable economic growth, reduced poverty on a massive scale, and transformed social life. Yet, as Nguyen and Mao emphasize in their introduction, these same reforms also reshaped the role of the state and destabilized earlier systems of labour protection and welfare. The state now operates within a dual imperative: it must promote capital accumulation to sustain growth while simultaneously maintaining its legitimacy through claims of socialist care and social protection. The coexistence of these imperatives produces not balance but contradiction, most visibly in the tension between the commodification of labour and the promise of its protection.

At the center of the volume is the concept of “hyperflexible accumulation,” a term developed by Nguyen and Mao to capture a distinctive regime of labour transformation in market socialist contexts. Under this regime, labour is made increasingly adaptable, mobile, and disposable, while the conditions that sustain workers’ lives are themselves absorbed into market processes. Platform economies redefine workers as independent partners, shifting risk away from companies and onto individuals, even as algorithmic systems exert intense control over their time and movement. In manufacturing, forms of employment that once appeared stable now resemble gig work, characterized by short-term contracts, outsourced labour, and fluctuating demand. Across sectors, workers are encouraged to understand themselves as self-managing enterprises, responsible for navigating uncertainty without collective guarantees.

A defining strength of the volume lies in Nguyen and Mao’s insistence that labour cannot be understood in isolation from the broader structures that sustain it. Their framework repeatedly returns to the question of social reproduction—the processes through which workers maintain their lives, families, and futures. Historically, rural land and collective systems provided a degree of security that buffered workers from market volatility. With the commodification of land and the restructuring of rural–urban relations, these forms of support have eroded. Workers are increasingly dependent on wage income and must contend with rising costs of housing, healthcare, and education. What emerges, in Nguyen and Mao’s analysis, is a profound transformation in everyday life, in which participation in the market becomes not simply a choice but a necessity.

The book further demonstrates that contemporary welfare systems, while formally expanded, often fail to provide meaningful protection. Although China and Vietnam now maintain social insurance schemes and other welfare institutions, Nguyen and Mao show that these systems tend to offer limited coverage and frequently place responsibility on individuals rather than institutions. In this sense, welfare operates less as a mechanism for shielding people from market risks than as a framework that integrates them more deeply into market participation . This shift marks a significant departure from earlier socialist arrangements, in which labour and welfare were embedded in collective structures that provided not only material support but also a sense of social belonging.

The erosion of this earlier “socialist social contract” is one of the book’s most compelling themes. As Nguyen and Mao suggest, workers were once tied to institutions that structured their lives, offering employment, housing, and welfare within a unified system. Today, these connections have largely been dismantled. Responsibility for survival has been individualized, and the collective dimensions of labour have weakened. Yet the language of socialism persists, continuing to shape expectations and political discourse even as the material conditions it once described have changed.

Against this backdrop, the volume traces how workers respond to these transformations. Nguyen and Mao highlight both visible forms of contestation, such as protests and labour disputes, and more subtle patterns of withdrawal from formal systems. Workers often turn toward flexible, short-term, or informal arrangements, not because they are unaware of the risks, but because such arrangements better accommodate the immediate pressures of survival. The widespread practice of withdrawing pension contributions early, for instance, reflects not only economic necessity but also a deep mistrust in long-term institutional guarantees. This tendency toward disengagement signals a growing disconnection between the reproduction of workers’ lives and the reproduction of the system itself.

By bringing together diverse empirical studies and a strong conceptual framework, Nguyen and Mao offer a powerful rethinking of contemporary political economy. Their volume demonstrates that the transformations unfolding in China and Vietnam are not merely local phenomena but part of broader global processes in which labour, welfare, and social life are being reorganized under conditions of intensified market integration. At the same time, they highlight the specificities of market socialist contexts, where the enduring presence of the state and the language of socialism produce distinctive configurations of power and responsibility.

What ultimately emerges is not a stable model of development but a system defined by unresolved tensions. Economic growth coexists with deepening insecurity, welfare expansion with limited protection, and state authority with increasing individualization of risk. In this sense, the contradictions of market socialism, as Nguyen and Mao make clear, are not anomalies but structural features. They shape not only policy and institutions but also the everyday experiences of millions of workers whose lives unfold within these shifting conditions.

The question the book leaves us with is both simple and profound. What does it mean for a system to depend on labour while simultaneously undermining the conditions that make that labour possible? The answer, as this volume demonstrates, lies not in abstract theory alone but in the lived realities of those navigating these contradictions in their daily lives.

Open access to the book is available here.