How Does the Extension of the Division-of-Labor Radius Affect the Transformation of the Smallholder Economy
The household contract responsibility system effectively stimulated farmers' enthusiasm for production, and thus quickly solved the problem of feeding the farmers. With the deepening of marketization, farmers' production and consumption were drawn into the entire market system, and monetary expenditure became their main pressure. The reason farmers in the modern market system "have enough to eat but lack money to spend" is mainly that they cannot, or are unable, to participate in the division of labor in high-profit industries outside agriculture. In addition, there is no deep division of labor and cooperation within agricultural production itself, so moderate-scale and specialized production cannot be achieved. When each agricultural household produces for self-sufficiency, the mutual demand among farming households will be very weak, and farmers' willingness to cooperate will not be very high; and to achieve self-sufficiency, production is bound to become fragmented and sideline-based, and such a mode of production will certainly not have very high productivity. Adam · Smith said long ago that "the division of labor is the source of the increase of the national wealth." Deepening the internal division of labor in agriculture and expanding farmers' participation in the division of labor and cooperation in high-profit agriculture-related industries and even non-agricultural fields is an important path to achieving rural development.
The division-of-labor model of the smallholder economy: "Each person sweeps the snow in front of his own door"
Regarding the division of labor, the Concise Dictionary of Social Sciences explains it as follows: the division of labor is the division of social labor into various different yet mutually connected kinds of work or sectors. There is the natural division of labor formed according to sex and age, the social division of labor formed according to social production, and the individual division of labor among different types of work formed within an enterprise during the labor process. The division of labor is both the result of the development of social productive forces and the condition that promotes the development of social productive forces. From this definition it can be seen that the division of labor has at least the characteristics of the specialization of labor and the mutual dependence among different kinds of labor. As Marx pointed out: "So far, the basic form of all production has been the division of labor." From the perspective of the overall social system, agriculture is the division of labor of farmers within the social industrial system; within agriculture, it is further divided into different industrial categories, including those engaged in forestry, fisheries, animal husbandry, and so on; and within specific industrial categories, it is further subdivided into different types of work, with people cooperating with one another to jointly complete agricultural production.
At the beginning of the founding of New China, in order to demonstrate the superiority of large-scale socialist production, the government implemented collectivized agricultural production through planned means. The collectivized mode of production and the allocation of agricultural products throughout society brought farmers into the entire social division-of-labor system. However, the collectivized mode of production could not solve the labor incentive problem of the Chinese, for whom "day-rate work makes them shameless, piece-rate work makes them work themselves to death." The masses "dragged out the work" in labor, their enthusiasm was not high, and agricultural production faced a series of difficulties.
In order to raise farmers' labor enthusiasm, the household contract responsibility system was implemented in rural areas. The institutional content of the household contract responsibility system is: the collective economic organization owns the ownership of the land and is responsible for the adjustment and allocation of land and the construction and management of public facilities; farming households have the independent operating rights to the contracted land. In this way, a "two-tier operating system combining unified and separate management" was formed in rural areas. Under the arrangements of this institutional system, farmers "hand over enough to the state, retain enough for the collective, and keep the rest for themselves," which greatly stimulated farmers' enthusiasm for production. Very soon, farmers developed the household economy and solved the problem of feeding themselves. Because farmers' enthusiasm was entirely concentrated on their own "one mu and three fen of land," they paid little attention to collective construction. While the "household economy" developed very well, the collective economy continuously declined. This plunged the rural economy back into what was in essence a smallholder economy model.
Regarding the smallholder economy, Marx had long ago offered a profound discussion. He pointed out: "Their mode of production isolates them from one another, instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse." Among "mutually isolated" smallholders, cooperation naturally rarely occurred outside the family. With labor and production arranged on a household basis, their division of labor and cooperation mainly occurred within the household. The division of labor within the household belongs to the typical natural division of labor. When Engels spoke of conditions in the lower stage of savagery, he said that at that time, "the division of labor is purely natural; it exists only between the two sexes." Judging from the current production situation in China's rural areas, there is basically a lack of socialized large-scale division of labor beyond the household; the space of farmers' production is a natural division of labor carried out within the household according to the differences between the sexes around their own few mu of contracted land. Arrangements are made according to age and sex: adults farm the land, children herd the sheep; men carry the load on a shoulder pole, women wield the hoe. Each household relies on its own labor force to complete all the farm work from planting to harvesting and to produce all kinds of consumer goods needed by the whole family. This high degree of unity of production and consumption and the high degree of self-employment of the labor force sustain the self-sufficiency of household production. Because they can be self-sufficient, smallholders lack the incentive to participate in the division of labor outside the household. They use as many people as their household has and carry out the division of labor within the household according to specific production conditions; in order to achieve self-sufficiency, each household must produce every means of subsistence needed for life, so the planting structure of smallholder production becomes isomorphic, which in turn leads to a lack of differentiation in agricultural products, and the complementarity and dependence among smallholders becomes very weak, making exchange very difficult to occur among them. Lacking mutual dependence and the need for exchange, cooperation also becomes unnecessary, and a division of labor beyond the household is very difficult to bring about. In summary, the division-of-labor model of the smallholder economy is the "each person sweeps the snow in front of his own door" type; smallholders are enclosed within their respective households, dividing labor and cooperating with one another to achieve self-sufficiency.
Although the division-of-labor model of smallholder production is internalized within the household, in the process of marketization, smallholders in the pure sense clearly no longer exist. Some scholars have proposed the concept of the "socialized smallholder," arguing that "they have entered or been drawn ever more deeply into an open, fluid, divided socialized system, drifting further and further away from the traditional closed smallholder economic form and entering the stage of the socialized smallholder." The reason smallholders have been so "socialized" is that marketization and commodification have forced them to be, and this provides an important opportunity for realizing the transformation of the smallholder economy. As for farmers' commodification behavior, Huang Zongzhi divides it into three types: first, commodification driven by exploitation; second, commodification driven by survival; and third, commodification driven by profit-seeking. Although the commodification rate of farmers' production and life is now relatively high, it is more the commodification driven by exploitation and survival. Such commodification still fundamentally serves the smallholder economy, and it limits the essential change that the marketization process could bring to the smallholder economy. In other words, farmers' commodification is not for the purpose of making a profit, but out of the need for survival, and such commodification still has not escaped the fence of the smallholder economy. Thus, the direct consequence of commodification is to increase the exploitation of farmers. An increase in commodification does not necessarily achieve the modernization and transformation of the smallholder economy; the key to transforming traditional smallholders lies in promoting the transformation of the mode of production within smallholders.
The division-of-labor radius: an exploration of one explanatory path
⟦NL> To realize the transformation of the mode of production within smallholders is to get farmers out of the household and have them participate in division of labor and cooperation on a larger scale; or to achieve scale, specialization, and vertical integration in agricultural production and deepen farmers' division of labor and cooperation within agriculture. And this, in turn, must be based on improving farmers' capacity for cooperation.
Scholars are always arguing endlessly over whether it is difficult or easy for farmers to cooperate. Through a rural survey of "China by the Yellow River," Professor Cao Jinqing held that Chinese farmers have always been "good at dividing but not good at combining," and that even when the urgent need arises for larger or newer cooperation beyond the traditional scope, their cooperation is mostly carried out according to the "family principle" or "clan organizational form." Although Professor Cao Jinqing also believed that Chinese farmers are "good at dividing but not good at combining," his observations revealed that Chinese farmers are not entirely without cooperation. "When the urgent need arises for larger or newer cooperation beyond the traditional scope," they can always come together to help one another, regardless of what cooperative model they adopt.
In fact, people always tend toward cooperation. "Give me that which I require, and you shall have that which you require." In other words, cooperation can bring both sides what they want. This suggests to us that people determine the scope of their cooperation with others according to their own needs; the more things they want to obtain, the larger the scope of interaction and cooperation. When a person can achieve self-sufficiency within the household, he does not have many demands to cooperate with others; it is enough for them to complete the division of labor within the household. But when production relying solely on family members can no longer satisfy all their needs, and when the other institutional conditions required for cooperation are all met, division of labor and cooperation beyond the household come into being. Smallholders will then divide labor within this new organization, or flow into cities to participate in the division of labor in urban industries. The scope of smallholders' division of labor expands in this situation.
From this it can be seen that division of labor and cooperation do exist among smallholders in production, but their division of labor is mainly confined to the household scope, with little division of labor and cooperation beyond the household. In other words, farmers' division of labor begins within the household, and as production develops or life requires, farmers extend the scope of their division of labor and cooperation according to ties of blood, geography, and occupation. Division of labor within a certain scope we call the division-of-labor radius. Under the smallholder economy model, the division-of-labor radius takes the household as its core, and its length is determined by the difficulty of the matters farmers need to resolve and by the composition and number of people determined to resolve those matters. Therefore, the division-of-labor radius of smallholders has the following characteristics: