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p L. A. Volkova (USSR)

p The further development of China, an overwhelmingly agrarian country, largely depends on the evolution of the socio-economic structure of its countryside. All that is now happening in China’s politics, economy and ideology is closely linked with the Chinese peasantry, and has its roots deep in the rural way of life. Lenin repeatedly emphasised that the future of the revolution in a small-peasant country depends on the moods and interests of the peasant masses, on the social make-up of the countryside, on whom the bulk of the peasants follow and go along with, and on how the social and economic relations in the countryside are being altered. This is also true of present-day China, where more than 80 per cent of the population is employed in farming. The socio-economic structure of the Chinese countryside and the changes that have taken place in it over the past few years call for an all-round analysis without which it is impossible to understand many aspects of the events now taking place in China and the prospects for its development.

p The first stage of socio-economic change in the countryside started with a land reform, which was first launched in the areas liberated before 1949 and was in the main completed throughout the country by the end of the rehabilitation period in 1953. Land reform did away with the system of feudal landowning and feudal exploitation, something that meant a revolutionary recasting of the old Chinese society on basically new lines, a qualitative change in the whole system of the relations of production.

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p The reform gave land and other means of production to more than 300 million farmers, so changing the peasantry’s social and political role in society. Agriculture was now based on small-commodity production and individual peasant farms. The land reform also led to a change in the rural class structure: the landowners as a class were eliminated and there was an increase in the share of middle peasants and a drop in the share of poor peasants and farm hands in the overall number of peasant households.

p By the end of the reform, the rural socio-economic structure had comprised these major types of households: smallcommodity individual peasant households—the prevailing form of farming; kulak farms, where land belonged to the kulak or was held on lease and was worked by hired labour; co-operative farms, and state farms. A characteristic feature of the relations of production then emerging in the countryside was the development of collective work in its simplest forms. The movement to set up mutual assistance groups and co-operatives began in the very first liberated areas, and the land reform made it possible for the movement to spread throughout the country, and laid the prerequisites for further socio-economic change in the countryside.

p The Theses for the Study and Propaganda of the Party’s General Line for the Transition Period, adopted by the CPC Central Committee in 1953, put forward the task of transforming China’s agriculture on socialist lines. Since the productive forces in agriculture were at an extremely low level, the socialist transformations were to include both a change in the socio-economic structure and the build-up of an appropriate material and technical basis.

p At that time, the economic conditions for socialist change in agriculture had yet fully to mature, so that the whole process had to be a long one with a gradual change in the ownership of the means of production. At first, the Chinese leadership devoted serious attention to moving gradually and stage by stage, and to the need to start with the lower forms: co-operation in the sphere of circulation and the simplest forms of producer association. Co-operation in the sphere of circulation, and also temporary and permanent mutual assistance groups were to make it easier for the peasants to take 224 the road of producer co-operation, creating objective and subjective prerequisites for a change-over to socialised farming. In 1954, mutual assistance groups united more than half of all peasant households, and farming producer cooperatives of the lower type—only 2 per cent, with half the commodity turnover in farming being carried on within the supply-and-marketing co-operative network. There was a gradual increase in the collective forms of farming, which created objective prerequisites for agriculture’s development along the socialist road.

p Under the first five-year plan for the development of the national economy (1953-57), by the end of 1957 lower-type co-operatives were to unite about one-third of all peasant households. Over the second five-year period (1958-62), cooperation was to be completed and, with the exception of some areas, higher-type producer co-operatives were to become the prevalent form in agriculture.^^1^^

p But as a result of the drastic step-up in co-operation started in the second half of 1955 these targets were in effect abandoned and this marked the beginning of a revision of the CPC’s general line for the transition period and violated the principle of gradual socialist change, in agriculture in particular.

p The state of the productive forces in the Chinese countryside on the eve of the massive co-operation campaign showed that there was no objective need to rush into co-operation. Some of the subjective prerequisites were also lacking, for the bulk of the peasantry was not ready for a rapid switch to collective farming.

p The international situation and the state of affairs inside the country created favourable conditions for successful economic development and the Mao Tse-tung group used these to achieve its own petty-bourgeois, nationalist goals. The 1955 crash co-operation line was the first but, as subsequent events showed, not the only attempt radically to revise the CPC’s general line for the transition period. By mid-1956, 92 per cent of all peasant households was already brought together in producer co-operatives, with more than half of these becoming members of higher-type co-operatives.

p The stepped-up co-operation in the countryside led to the establishment of the collective form of property in the basic 225 means of production, with socialist forms of farming being introduced on top of the old backward material and technical basis. But the rapid socialisation of the means of production alone did not solve the major problem—that of raising labour productivity or, consequently, increasing agricultural production and the earnings of most members of the co-operatives. Nor was the state able to obtain from agriculture the additional resources it needed, although that had been another goal of the crash co-operation campaign.

p To stabilise the situation, shaping as a result of the stepped-up co-operation, and firmly to establish collective forms of farming in the Chinese countryside, the state had to provide considerable material assistance and carry out a great deal of organisational and economic work. The Maoist leadership, however, chose a different road. The substance, form and method of the “communisation” of the countryside, which the Maoist leadership launched in the second half of ] 958, were a departure from the Leninist principles of economic administration. The “people’s communes" were chiefly meant to establish an effective system for the rapid mobilisation and centralised use of all of agriculture’s resources. They were meant to effect a marked increase in agriculture’s material resources, which were to go into the “great leap forward" both in industry and in agriculture.

p Preparations for the campaign to set up “people’s communes" started in April 1958, when the CPC Central Committee issued a directive to reorganise small farming co-operatives into large ones. In August 1958, following the decision of an enlarged meeting of the CC Politburo, “On the Establishment of People’s Communes in the Countryside”, the movement spread across the country. In only one month, by late September 1958, most of the co-operatives were united in 26,600 communes, whose membership totalled 98 per cent of all peasant households, with an average of 4,637 households per commune.^^2^^

p The establishment of the “people’s communes" greatly widened the gap between the level of the productive forces and the nature of the relations of ownership of the means of production that were being forced on the countryside. The high degree of nominal socialisation of production and consumption in the communes was very much in contradiction 226 with the country’s objective conditions. This led to a crisis in farming and eventually to a need for some changes in the commune system. These changes, carried out for some years from 1959 onwards, were mainly aimed to bring organisation methods and production scales closer to the level of the material conditions of production that existed in the Chinese countryside. Smaller, economically independent units (first in the form of large producer brigades and then producer brigades)-’ were restored within the communes’ framework; steps were taken to restore the farmers’ material incentives in the development of production, both collective and individual; and some attention was again being paid to the problems of agriculture’s material and technical basis. The changes in the “people’s commune" system were indisputable proof that their establishment was premature.

p During the “cultural revolution" the Maoist leadership made an attempt to go back to the ways of farming it had tried to introduce in 1958, but the measures in that direction met with resistance among the farmers and could not be applied throughout the country.

p Over the past few years, according to the Chinese press, producer brigades or, in some areas, large producer brigades have been the basic production units in the countryside and have had considerable economic autonomy within the communes. Farming is now being run on military-administrative lines, chiefly based on the farmers’ extra-economic enforcement, although in 1969 and 1970 some attention was again devoted to economic methods of administration in agriculture.

p The socio-economic changes in the Chinese countryside were connected with the state of agriculture’s material and technical basis. By the time of the PRC’s establishment it was marked by an extremely low level of the productive forces, a prevalence of primitive farming implements and an almost total lack of modern technology, chemical fertilisers and electric power.

p In launching co-operation in agriculture, the CPC elaborated plans for its technical reconstruction which, for various objective reasons, could only be carried out over a long period. The much too rapid completion of co-operation in 1956 meant that social reforms were almost completely out 227 of touch with the technical reorganisations. Communisation served to exacerbate that state of affairs.

p An analysis of the state of agriculture’s material and technical basis over the past 20 years shows that despite some improvements in its development, the countryside still has to be provided with enough primitive, to say nothing of modern, farming implements. The state should tackle agriculture’s technical reconstruction under a broad economic programme for the steady modernisation of agricultural production, a programme suited to the country’s actual conditions and providing for considerable material outlays on the part of the state.

p In the first and the second five-year periods, the state covered some of the costs of agriculture’s technical re-equipment, but ever since the “great leap forward" most of these costs had to be met by the local authorities and the collective farming outfits. From 1953 to 1957, attention was mainly devoted to building up a basis for the production of tractors and farming machines at large modern engineering enterprises, whereas since the failure of the “great leap forward" the focus of attention in agriculture’s technical reconstruction was shifted to the simplest and semi-mechanical farming implements and to the repair of the existing machinery. Having proclaimed their “self-reliance” line, the Maoist leaders have virtually stopped providing any centralised material assistance to agriculture and have sought to carry out its technical reconstruction chiefly by means of the collective outfits and at minimal material cost for the state.

p An analysis of the nature and level of the productive forces in China’s agriculture before and after the establishment of the communes warrants the conclusion that the socialisation of property their establishment involved was by no means due to the demands of objective social-economic laws. The goals, methods and results of the 1958 communisation show that far from giving all-embracing scope to the elements of socialist relations of production that were just emerging at the co-operation stage (despite the broader scale and degree of socialisation), pressure from the political superstructure could well force these elements to disappear altogether.

p The establishment and evolution of the rural “people’s communes" above all affected the relations of ownership of 228 the means of production, first by way of expanding and then narrowing down the scale and objects of socialisation (this applies not only to the basic means of production, like land, draught animals, means of transport, farming implements and machinery, or irrigation mechanisms and devices, but also to the personal property of peasant households, like poultry, livestock and small farming implements). At the same time, changes were also taking place in the nature of the socialisation. In 1958 and partly in 1959, in the early period of the “people’s communes”, when all the property in the means of production and part of the farmers’ household utensils belonged to the commune, which was a lower organ of state power as well as a collective economic unit, property was in effect being turned into state property.

p In the course of the so-called ordering of the “people’s communes" in 1959-62, when producer and large producer brigades were being consistently established as the owners of the basic means of production, socialisation—at any rate nominally—went back to the system of collective, group property, although in some instances (as in the people’s communes’ property) socialisation is still in effect state ownership of a part of the means of production.

p In 1959 and 1960, “three stages of property" were introduced in the “people’s communes" as the three major forms of collective property in the means of production. These were the “people’s communes”, large producer brigades and producer brigades, with the bulk of the means of production in 1959-61 being in the hands of the large producer brigade, which also usually owned the land that was being worked.

p In 1962, producer brigades, roughly equal in size to the old lower-type producer co-operatives, became the main economic unit and chief holder of the means of production in the Chinese countryside. Decentralisation in the ownership of the means of production, coupled with a scalingdown of the economic units in size, went as far as the producer brigades, but decentralisation in the use of the means of production, land in particular, was often pushed still further, down to the level of small farming groups and in some areas even individual peasant households. At present, the Chinese countryside is a patchwork of various forms of ownership of 229 the means of production: there is the state property of state farms, the property of producer and large producer brigades, and “people’s communes”, “partial property" of the “people’s communes" and the farmers’ individual property on the individual plots. During the “cultural revolution" there was a tendency to increase property centralisation in the “people’s communes" which manifested itself in the fact that large producer brigades were being increasingly made the basic owners of the means of production. An analysis of the legal aspect of property in the Chinese countryside shows that state farm property is the only form of ownership of the means of production to have any legal guarantees from the state or to be written into law.

p As for the nature of ownership of the means of production in the Chinese countryside, it is now largely collective, group property (except for the state farms). The nature of the collective property is determined by that of the state power, by the fact which class is in power, and by the state’s purposes and functions. China’s state power, which has developed into a military-bureaucratic dictatorship under Mao Tse-tung, has had its effect on state and co-operative property.

p The establishment of collective property in the course of co-operation was a step towards the emergence of socialist relations of production, although the methods of socialising the farmers’ means of production were more coercive than voluntary. Then came the “communisation”, which removed the producer proper—the peasant—from taking part in the management of the collective farming outfits and collective property. As part of the “people’s communes" property became state property, and as the communes were now combining the functions of collective economic units and lower echelons of state power in the countryside, it was now possible to solve many economic questions, notably those of managing collective property, without the farmers’ participation. The involvement of the army in the solution of economic problems in the “people’s communes" and producer brigades, a practice that was widespread in 1967-69, removed the farmers still further away from the management of collective property.

p One of the main propositions of Mao Tse-tung’s economic policy—that of maintaining the farmers’ living standards at 230 a minimal level—plainly shows that collective farming in the countryside is being aimed less and less to raise the farmers’ living standards, which, after all, is the major goal of “any” socialisation and an important feature of its socialist nature. All this suggests that ownership of the means of production in the Chinese countryside cannot be described as consistently socialist.

p The establishment of collective property, which is now the prevailing form of property in the Chinese countryside, has changed the latter’s class make-up. Co-operation did away with the kulaks, whose economic positions had already been markedly weakened at the time of the land reform.

p With co-operation completed, the economic causes for the class stratification of the Chinese peasantry were eliminated, because with the establishment of collective property in the basic means of production, including land, the objective conditions for exploitation were done away with. The peasantry became a class connected with the collective form of ownership of the means of production.

p The lagging material-technical basis in agriculture has been having an effect on the social structure of the peasantry. First, the low level of the development of the productive forces in agriculture determines the low labour productivity in this sector of the national economy and ultimately the low living standards of the peasantry. Second, the lack of the means of production that could make the collective form of peasant labour truly social helps to maintain the privateproperty mentality among the peasants.

p There are different social groups in the Chinese countryside today not because of the form of property in the basic means of production but because of the unequal property status of the peasants, the existence of personal property in small farming implements and the individual subsidiary farming which has a considerable part to play in the life of the peasants. The social groups are confined to one class—the toiling peasantry—although the former landowners and rich peasants, an alien element, have merged with it.

p While there has been some improvement in peasant living conditions since 1949, the poorest peasants still constitute about 60-70 per cent of the rural population. Peasants in this group live at subsistence level. Some of them receive 231 assistance from the co-operatives under the “five securities" scheme. It is on behalf of this group of peasants, whom the Chinese press calls the poor and the “non-rich”, or the lower middle peasants, that Mao Tse-tung has been acting in putting through various political and economic measures in the countryside.

p The better-off section of the peasantry, or the middle peasantry, constitutes roughly 20-30 per cent of the rural population. This group not only has the possibility of meeting its minimum living requirements, but also obtains some surplus income from the co-operatives and their personal farms. In this section we find a category of well-to-do middle peasants constituting roughly one-third of the group. In the countryside there is a gradual formation of groups of peasants differing from each other according to their status in production; groups connected with the performance of works relating to the mechanisation of agriculture, groups specialising in various branches of subsidiary farming.

p Among the rural intellectuals we find schoolteachers, doctors, officials of the commercial and financial agencies of the communes, and also urban intellectuals, schoolchildren and students sent down to the countryside during the “cultural revolution”. In the past few years, this group has tended to become amorphous because the burdens of education and the public health services in the countryside have to be carried by the co-operatives, where the peasants without any special training are being involved in teaching in the schools and in medical treatment. Allied with the group of intellectuals are members of the management of the “people’s communes" and the production brigades.

p In 1958, the “people’s communes" were set up as complex units combining different sectors of agriculture, industry and trade. However, the “people’s communes" proved to be incapable of effectively organising production on these lines. Excessive centralisation of management, together with various other factors, led to a disruption of production in late 1958 and 1959.

p When the “people’s communes" were being reorganised from 1959 to 1962, economic management was decentralised. The commune ceased to exist as an integrated economic unit. The organisation of agricultural production was concentrated 232 mainly in the production and big production brigades. The corresponding commercial and credit departments were transferred from the communes to the corresponding sectoral bodies. A part of the relatively big industrial enterprises was transferred into the system of state industry of local subordination.

p From 1964 to 1965, the communes and brigades began to devote more attention to the secondary branches of the economy. Diversified economic operations in effect appeared to be a condition for simple and often enough even of extended reproduction. The development of secondary branches of the economy in the production brigades posed the problem of the relationship between the collective and the peasants’ personal ancillary industries, which were mainly connected with production on the house-and-garden plots. The present Chinese leadership has tried to solve this problem chiefly by administrative measures designed to influence the peasants, while economic incentives have played a minor part.

p In China, the organisation of labour in the communes and brigades is especially important. Because of the embryonic state of the material and technical basis of agriculture and the shortage of mechanical implements agricultural production relies mainly on living labour resources. When the “people’s communes" were set up, the organisation of labour methods practised in the agricultural production co-operatives were discarded, and labour armies were set up to function as military units. There was no accounting of the quantity and quality of labour put in by each person, and there was virtually no specialisation within the work units, something that did not accord with the objective conditions of production in the Chinese countryside. The restructuring of the communes led to a change in the organisation of labour. For one thing, the size of the basic units was markedly reduced, so that by the end of 1958 it was recommended to confine them to production brigades, which were later broken down into smaller units.

p Virtually no change was made in the practical organisation of labour in the higher-type farming producer co-operatives by the organisation of labour which had taken shape in the production brigades by the early 1960s and which in the main continues to exist at the present time. Most production 233 brigades and communes have brigades or teams, which may either be specialised or complex, permanent or temporary.

p Immediately upon the establishment of the “people’s communes" the most general and simple forms of labour accounting (the establishment of a mandatory minimum of workdays), and later more concrete and complex forms (according to labour units on the basis of preliminary assessment of labour power and work-rates) were introduced. Surveys carried out in Szechwan, Honan, Hunnan, Hopei and Heilungkiang carried out in 1965 showed that most production brigades used the latter form of labour accounting. From 1967 to 1969, this form was criticised in the Chinese press because its spread allegedly helped to increase “spontaneous capitalist tendencies" and the development of “egoism” among the peasants. Up until 1969, the present Chinese leadership sought to introduce the method of labour accounting used in the Tachai production brigade, under which the main criterion of work evaluation was loyalty to Mao Tse-tung and his “ideas”. This inevitably led to egalitarian distribution and made it possible to reduce to a minimum the evaluation of work done by members of the brigade in the co-operative and, consequently, their share of the income.

p The organisation of the distribution of products turned out by the commune or production brigade includes the establishment of distribution proportions under various heads together with the forms and methods of distribution of a part of the income between members of the brigade. An analysis of distribution in the “people’s communes" since their establishment shows, on the one hand, a striving by the Maoist leadership to secure the maximum resources from agriculture and to concentrate it in the hands of the state, and on the other, resistance to this striving on the part of the peasantry and the lower echelon of the functionaries in the countryside.

p In 1958, the structure of distribution in the “people’s communes" and the agricultural co-operatives differed in terms of quantitative characteristics. In the “people’s communes" the balance between the consumption fund and the accumulation fund was sharply tilted in favour of the latter. Subsequently, deductions of the accumulation fund were gradually reduced. An analysis of the methods used in allocating the 234 consumption fund from 1958 to 1965 shows that these were also modified, evolving from egalitarian distribution through distribution mainly by labour to a combination of egalitarian distribution with distribution by labour, in which the former prevailed. The principle of material incentives, partially re-established from 1960 to 1964 in distributing the consumption fund, was subjected to ceaseless official criticism from the end of 1964. The scarcity of food resources in the country had some part to play in the switch mainly to egalitarian distribution of income between members of the communes. The switch was facilitated by a number of factors, the chief of which was the ready acceptance of the egalitarian slogan by the poor section of the peasantry which constitutes a sizable part of the rural population. However, since 1970, the official recommendation was that the distribution-according-to-labour principle should be adopted in distributing income among members of the commune.

p An analysis of the data concerning the distribution of the gross product in the production brigades and communes in value and in kind shows that the structure and proportions of distribution have been relatively stable over the past few years. The gross output of the commune or the production brigade is distributed under these heads:

p 1. Agricultural tax paid to the state. Its rates fluctuate from 7 per cent to 12 per cent of the established volume of gross output.

p 2. Production expenditures, including expenditures in cash and in kind. Depending on the specialisation of the farm and its technical level, they amount to roughly 20-30 per cent in various communes and brigades.

p 3. The production brigade funds: the accumulation fund and the welfare fund. In the various brigades and communes the deductions to the accumulation fund vary from 5 per cent to 10 per cent, and to the welfare fund from 1 to 2 per cent of gross output. From 1968 to 1970, there was a tendency, approved by the higher administrative bodies, to increase the deductions to the accumulation fund in the communes and the production brigades.

p 4. The fund for distribution between the members of the production brigade or the commune. According to official statements and reports in the Chinese press, the share of the 235 gross product set aside for distribution between the members of the brigades should amount to 60-65 per cent of the total. However, an analysis of the official data for the individual brigades and calculations show that in 1965 and 1966 not more than 40-50 per cent of gross output went into distribution between members of the brigades. The distribution of a part of the produce in kind (cereals as the staple crop in all the grain growing areas) confirms roughly the same proportions in distribution, with the exception of the share distributed between members of the brigade which did not exceed 30-40 per cent of the gross cereal output in the brigades.

p In the last few years, the economic policy of the Maoist leadership has quite clearly revealed a tendency to limit peasant consumption not only in consequence of non-equivalent exchange, which is tantamount to gratuitous alienation of a part of the farm produce, but also in consequence of the fact that the collective peasant farms were burdened with tasks whose fulfilment had earlier involved participation by the state (technical reconstruction of agriculture, education, public health). The build-up of grain and other foodstocks in the co-operatives and personal peasant households which was carried on with especial vigour in 1969 and 1970 under the slogan of “prepare for war and natural calamities" also detracted from the formation of the consumption fund.

In the past few years, peasant incomes resulting from a distribution of the gross product in the communes and brigades have remained extremely low. The Maoist leadership has totally ignored the task of raising peasant living standards, and any reminders about it have been labelled as expressions of the bourgeois influence, revisionism, etc. The Ninth Congress of the CPC did not even consider the question of improving the material conditions of the peasantry. On the contrary, it outlined the prospect of further curbs onthe living standards of the whole people under the “prepare for war and natural calamities" slogan.

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p ^^1^^ See The Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Moscow, 1956, p. 144.

p ^^2^^ Ten Glorious Years, Peking, 1959, p. 36.

^^3^^ On average, the production brigade included 30-50 peasant households, while the big production brigade included roughly 150-200 households (see Jenmin jihpao, August 28, 1963; Peking Review, 1963, No. 44, p. 9).