A Comparative Analysis of Two Models of China's Agricultural Collective Economy

In the 1950s, based on the Marxist theory of using cooperative systems to transform the small-peasant economy and in light of China's actual conditions, our country successfully transformed the vast ocean-like individual peasant economy into a socialist collective economy, eliminated the system of exploitation, and established the socialist system. This tremendous achievement cannot be erased. However, because deviations in understanding occurred at that time regarding the primary theoretical question of what socialism is and the most fundamental basis of China's national conditions, and because the Soviet collective farm model was imitated in a dogmatic manner, China's agricultural collective economy, under the constraints of the planned economic system, became increasingly trapped in the rigid model of the people's commune characterized by “large in scale and high in public ownership” and “three-level management with the production team as the foundation.” Although in the 20 years before the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee we repeatedly explored the issue of the agricultural production responsibility system, and this exploration played a considerable role at the time, it never departed from the debate over whether something was surnamed “capitalist” or “socialist,” so that on the whole this exploration could not break through the old model's confines, and some explorations even started from the goal of perfecting this model.

⟦NL> After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping, based on a profound understanding of national conditions and a timely grasp of the opportunities for China's socialist modernization, first carried out in the rural areas, which accounted for 80% of the national population, a reform “of revolutionary significance” centered on the household contract responsibility system. This reform upheld the socialist orientation, abolished the old management model of the people's commune, and established a new model of rural collective economy with Chinese characteristics under the socialist market economic system, namely a new mechanism based mainly on the household contract responsibility system. This was the “first leap”① in China's socialist agricultural reform and development. This leap was not intended to negate the achievements of the socialist transformation of agriculture on the whole, but rather to inherit and critically supersede them. For the old people's commune model that fettered the development of the productive forces, it was both a setting things right and, even more, an innovation and development. Comparing the similarities and differences between the two models, there are at least the following points:

(1) In the form of ownership, is it purely public, or is public ownership dominant with public and private coexisting?

Marx once envisioned that after the victory of revolution in the developed capitalist countries of Western Europe, a single socialist public ownership would be established. Due to the limitations of historical conditions, the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong regarded this vision as the realistic goal and primary task of building socialism in China. At the end of 1953, in the study and propaganda outline on the general line for the transition period that Mao Zedong examined and approved, it was proposed to “make socialist ownership of the means of production the sole economic basis of our country and society.”② In October 1956, Mao Zedong further proposed that Marxism meant making “capitalism extinct and small production extinct as well.”③ The above ideas were undoubtedly a manifestation of dogmatizing Marxism. It should be said that Mao Zedong had a certain understanding of the basic national condition that China's social productive forces were low and its economy and culture backward, but due to the above limitations, he exaggerated the opposition and struggle between the capitalist economy and the socialist economy, and exaggerated the negative role of the capitalist economy and the backwardness of the individual economy, with the result that public ownership was made pure and undiluted. Only the collective ownership and ownership by the whole people spoken of in Marxist books were surnamed “socialist” and allowed to exist; all non-public forms were surnamed “capitalist” and were to be eliminated and restricted.

The new model inherited the public ownership of basic means of production such as land and water conservancy facilities that had already been established and the retained collective property, discarded the past ultra-realistic pure public ownership and uniform organizational forms, and implemented diversity in modes of production. “Whichever form can restore and develop agricultural production relatively easily and quickly in a given place should be adopted; whichever form the masses are willing to adopt should be adopted”④, and gradually a pattern in which multiple economic sectors coexist took shape. That is, on the premise of ensuring the dominant position of public ownership, part of the means of production may be privately owned, with public and private coexisting. Given that China's current level of productive forces is still relatively low, appropriately developing some individual economy, private economy, and joint-venture economy can not only give the public-owned economy an “opposite” and preserve a certain competitive mechanism, but also serve as a beneficial supplement to the main body of the socialist economy. This is a major breakthrough by the Chinese Communists in breaking dogmatism and exploring a path of socialist construction suited to China's conditions.

(2) Is the degree of public ownership better the higher it is, or should it be appropriate and fitting?

Marx once held that public ownership of the means of production embodied the essential requirements of socialist production relations. Owing to the above historical reasons, after the completion of the socialist transformation, Mao Zedong believed that the higher the degree of public ownership and the larger the scale of organization, the more fully the superiority of socialism could be brought into play, and in practice he constantly changed the relations of production. The people's commune, “large in scale” (large organizational scale) and “high in public ownership” (high degree of public ownership), was the product of a hasty push for transition and was then called “the best organizational form for building socialism and gradually transitioning to communism.”⑤ After several adjustments, by 1962 a management system had formed with three levels of ownership - the people's commune, the production brigade, and the production team - with the production team as the basic accounting unit, and this played an important role in restoring and developing agricultural production. But this model did not thoroughly correct the “Left” deviation; its crux was still “transition,” that is, first taking the production team as the basic accounting unit, gradually transitioning to the brigade and then to the commune as the basic accounting unit, and finally transitioning to ownership by the whole people and entering developed socialism. For many years, this model was regarded as the superiority of the people's commune system, and the repeated pursuit of “transition in poverty” in various places afterward was also a product of perfecting this model.

The new model restored the two-level administrative organizations of the township and the village, appropriately lowered the degree of public ownership of the collective economy, and slowed the steps of gradual transition. Although the village-level cooperative economic organization at this time still owned land, water conservancy facilities, collective enterprises, and so on, it was no longer an institution directly organizing agricultural production, nor an independently accounting economic entity. The gradually perfected household economy, by contrast, had the decision-making power to carry out production within the scope stipulated by contract, did its own accounting, and was responsible for its own profits and losses, becoming the basic unit of rural operation. The lowering of the degree of public ownership did not indicate a weakening of the status and role of the public-owned economy; “only by retreating can one advance.”⑥ This was the objective requirement of China's existing level of agricultural productive forces and a concentrated expression of the agricultural collective economy with Chinese characteristics. Of course, the household contract responsibility system would also in the future “develop appropriately scaled operations” and realize the “second leap.”⑦ But this change was not top-down, not by administrative order, but a requirement inevitably raised by production development itself. It was necessary to “fully take into account the different conditions and special circumstances of different regions,” “not easily impose nationwide uniformity,” and not launch campaigns.⑧