Where on earth is China's rural collective economy?
In the 1980s, after the household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households was widely implemented in rural China, some of our politicians and theorists still insisted that our country's countryside was adhering to the path of socialist collectivization, that the household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households was a form of organization of the collective economy, and that through this system, the collective economy should be further developed.
So, after all these years, does our countryside still have a collective economy? If so, where is it? This is indeed a question that should be clarified with a realistic eye and the courage to speak the truth.
On May 31, 1980, at the critical moment when some senior officials at the central level, who insisted on the “Two Whatevers” and the ultra-left line, were stirring up a wave of opposition to Wan Li's household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households reform in Anhui, Deng Xiaoping delivered an important speech that turned the tide and settled the matter once and for all. He said: “After rural policies were relaxed, in places suitable for household contracting with output quotas tied to households, the system was adopted, and the results were very good, with rapid changes. In Feixi County, Anhui Province, the vast majority of production teams adopted household contracting with output quotas tied to households, and the increase in output was very large. In Fengyang County, the very county sung about in the ‘Fengyang Flower Drum’, the vast majority of production teams adopted the all-round contract, and they too turned around in a single year and changed their appearance.”
Deng Xiaoping must have conducted some investigation and research and given it deep thought before saying these words. He spoke in what seemed a relaxed and plain manner, yet it stirred up a towering wave in Chinese political circles, knocking the banner of the “Two Whatevers” off its horse, and propelled the great ship of reform and opening up and the household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households in Anhui and the whole country to continue breaking through the ice.
⟦NL> In order to dispel some people's doubts about the collective economy and clear up some people's questions about whether it was surnamed “socialist” or “capitalist”, Deng Xiaoping also said: “Some comrades worry whether doing it this way will affect the collective economy. I think such worry is unnecessary. Our general direction is to develop the collective economy. In places where household contracting with output quotas tied to households is practiced, the main body of the economy is still the production team. What will happen in these places in the future? It can be affirmed that as long as production develops, and the rural social division of labor and commodity economy develop, low-level collectivization will develop into high-level collectivization, and what is not consolidated in the collective economy will also be consolidated. The key is to develop the productive forces, and in this respect create conditions for the further development of collectivization……”
These speeches by Deng Xiaoping were still aimed at the doubts of those ultra-left theorists about the household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households. During that period, many people believed that household contracting with output quotas tied to households meant dividing up the land and working it individually, meant practicing capitalism, meant disintegrating the socialist collective economy! They said: “Looking at output, it is pleasing; looking at the line, it is worrying,” “Can it be that the collective is inferior to individual farming? Are collectivization and cooperativization no longer effective?” “Can it be that the decades of revolution led by Chairman Mao were all for nothing?” So Deng Xiaoping firmly grasped “collectivization” and “collective economy” and incorporated the household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households into the category of the “collective economy” in order to dispel certain people's doubts.
According to Deng Xiaoping's instructions, the Party Central Committee issued five consecutive “No. 1 Documents”, which caused the household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households, long criticized, doubted, and controversial for many years, to be universally promoted throughout the land of China, take root, and become a legal matter. In order to make it even more “legal”, these most authoritative “red-headed documents” all repeatedly emphasized this:
“The various responsibility systems currently implemented are all production responsibility systems of the socialist collective economy.”
“This form of household contracting with output quotas tied to households is built on the foundation of public ownership of land, and peasant households and the collective maintain a contracting relationship…… it is different from the small private individual economy before cooperativization, and is a component part of the socialist collective economy.” “To think that household contracting with output quotas tied to households means ‘returning the land to the family’, equally dividing collective property, and dividing up the land for individual farming is completely a misunderstanding.”
“Household contracting with output quotas tied to households is the production responsibility system of the socialist collective economy, a new development of the Marxist theory of agricultural cooperativization in our country's practice, and a great creation of our country's peasants under the leadership of the Party.”
These central documents were mostly theories created by those theorists racking their brains and citing classics only after land contracting was basically completed throughout the country, mostly masterpieces of the “belated advice” type. As for these ingenious theories, the peasants basically did not read them, and could not understand them either. They did not care whether you called it “collectivization” or “cooperativization”; as long as you divided the land among us and let us each household farm it separately, that was fine. Our land, we decide; we plant whatever we want, and manage it however we want. As for the grain we harvest, we sell enough to the state, reserve enough for the collective, and the rest is our own! Whatever “-ization” you talk about, as long as it does not interfere with our farming, that is fine!
It was with this mindset that the peasants worked for several decades. The peasants all knew that the reason Comrade Deng Xiaoping and the central documents kept holding up the banner of “collectivization” just when the household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households was first being promoted was to block the surging doubts from all sides and protect the smooth progress of the household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households reform; it was entirely out of good intentions.
But if you walk around the vast countryside and take a look, and then go to the homes of the vast number of peasant households and ask and listen, you will understand what is going on. Is that socialist collectivization still there? Where is that socialist collective economy?
It cannot be denied that before the household contract responsibility system with output quotas tied to households, that is, under the people's commune system of “three levels of ownership, with the team as the basis”, the collective economy with the production team as the main body existed universally. Some were rich teams, so collective property was somewhat greater; some were poor teams, so collective property was somewhat less; some production team leaders and accountants liked to undertake “big undertakings” (the so-called great effort to build socialism), and borrowed a lot from the bank, so that production team's collective economy might have liabilities exceeding assets. At the time of household contracting with output quotas tied to households, the masses not only could not receive any property from the collective, but also had to share some debts. Only a very few production teams, when dividing up the land for individual farming, could still receive a few yuan or even several tens of yuan from the collective economy.