The analyze suggests that the feudal influence is still strong in China, although the relationship between feudal and socialist forms is both complex and contradictory. It focuses on the nature and consequences of the way that Marxism transformed the family, the subject of feudalism, into the collective working class, the subject central to Marxism. The analysis focuses on the centrality of the family in Confucian views of the state and the traditional modes of policing the household based on systems of household registration. Additional sections examine the emergence of the prison, with emphasis on the way in which both law and punishment reinforced patriarchal ideology, and the failure of the modern Western penal systems in China to successfully establish systems of individuation. Further sections examine the deployment of household registration systems in the post-liberation period, the program of reform through labor, and the spread of systems of incarceration. Illustrations, chapter notes, glossary, index, and reference lists