Chapter 4 Speech at the Zhengzhou Conference (excerpt)

(February 27, 1959) Now let me talk a little bit about the people's communes.I think that there is a contradiction in the People's Commune, a rather serious contradiction, which has not yet been recognized by many comrades, and its nature has not yet been revealed, so it has not yet been resolved.And I think this contradiction must be resolved quickly, so as to mobilize the enthusiasm of the broad masses of the people and improve our relationship with grassroots cadres. This is mainly the relationship between county party committees, commune party committees, and grassroots cadres.

What kind of contradiction is it? As you can see, the relationship between us and the peasants is currently quite tense on some matters. The procurement of agricultural products such as cotton and oilseeds has not yet been completed.Moreover, in the whole country, except for a few disaster-stricken areas, concealment of production and private distribution of production and the "sufficiency" of grain, oil, pork, and vegetables have occurred almost universally. The scale is larger than that of 1953 and 1955 The two grain booms in 2010 were even worse.Comrades, please think about it, what is this all about? I think we should see the essence of the problem, that is, where the main contradiction lies, through this phenomenon.There are several reasons for this, but I think we should look for the answer mainly from our understanding of the rural people's commune ownership and the policies we adopt.

Does the rural people's commune ownership have a development process? Does it mean that once the commune is established, it will immediately have complete commune ownership, and the ownership of the production team will be eliminated immediately? I mean the production team. In general, the management area is equivalent to the original agricultural production cooperatives.Many people still don't realize that commune ownership must go through a process of development. In the commune, from the small collective ownership of the brigade to the large collective ownership of the commune, a process is required, and it will take several years to complete this process.They mistakenly believe that as soon as the people's commune is established, the means of production, manpower, and products of each production team can be directly controlled by the leading organ of the commune.They mistake socialism for communism, distribution according to work for distribution according to needs, and collective ownership for ownership by the whole people.In many places they deny the law of value and the exchange of equivalents.Therefore, within the scope of the commune, they equalized the rich and the poor and distributed them equally, and raised certain properties of the production teams without cost, and the banks also recovered all loans in many rural areas.The first leveling, the second adjustment, and the third collection have caused great panic among the farmers.This is one of the most fundamental problems in our present relations with the peasants.

two The Resolution[1] of the Sixth Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China specified the stages of development that must be passed through the transition from collective ownership to ownership by the whole people and from socialism to communism.However, the collective ownership that does not specify the commune also needs a development process, which is a shortcoming.Because we didn't know the problem then.In this way, the comrades below have also blurred the distinction between the three-level ownership of the commune, production brigade, and production team, and in fact denied that the production team (or production brigade, generally speaking) still exists in the commune and is of great importance. equivalent to the ownership of the original high-level society), and this will inevitably arouse resolute resistance from the majority of peasants.The nationwide "sufficiency" of grain, oilseeds, pork, and vegetables after the autumn harvest in 1958 is a concentrated expression of this resistance.On the one hand, the party committees at the five levels of central, provincial, prefectural, county, and communal (if you add the management area, the sixth level) criticize the production teams and production teams for their egotisticalism and conceal their production; on the other hand, the production teams and production teams But almost universally hide their property and share privately, even hide in secret cellars and stand guard to defend their products.In my opinion, there is indeed such egotism that there is a surplus of products and should be sold to the state but not sold. Party members and cadres who violate egotism should be criticized, but there are many situations that cannot be called egotism.Even if egotisticalism is true and should be criticized, before carrying out this kind of criticism, we must first check and correct our own two tendencies, that is, the tendency of egalitarianism and the tendency of over-centralization.The so-called egalitarian tendency means denying that the income of each production team and each individual should be different.To deny this difference is to deny the socialist principle of distribution according to work and more pay for more work.The so-called excessive centralization tendency means denying the ownership of the production team, denying the rights that the production team should have, and arbitrarily transferring the property of the production team to the communes.At the same time, many communes and counties took too much money from the production teams, and the management fees of the communes included a lot of waste. art troupe.Both of the above two tendencies include the idea of ​​denying the law of value and denying equivalent exchange, which is of course wrong.All of these cannot but arouse the dissatisfaction of the various production teams and the majority of commune members.

Our task at present is to clarify the truth to the majority of cadres, and after full deliberation and discussion, let them get a real understanding, and then we will work with them to properly and resolutely correct these tendencies, overcome egalitarianism, change power, Financial and human resources are excessively concentrated at the commune level.When the commune makes a unified decision on distribution, it must admit that there are reasonable differences in income between teams and between members. The food and wages of poor teams and rich teams should be different.Wages should be assessed at a dead level.The commune should implement decentralization, three-level management, and three-level accounting, and it should be based on brigade accounting.Equivalent exchanges should be implemented between societies and teams, and between teams.The accumulation of communes should be appropriate to the situation and should not be too high.Waste in commune management must be resolutely overcome.Only in this way can we effectively overcome the egotism that does exist among some people and consolidate the communal system.After doing this, the power at the commune level is not very small, but still quite large; the leading organs at the commune level are not idle, and still have a lot of work to do, and it takes a lot of effort to get things done. .

After the commune was established in the autumn of 1958, a "communist wind" blew up.There are three main contents: one is the equalization of the rich and the poor.The second is too much accumulation and too much voluntary labor.The third is to "share" various "products".The so-called "community" of various "products" has various situations.Some should belong to the commune, such as most private plots.Some have to be borrowed, such as part of the houses needed by the commune for public utilities, tables, chairs and benches, and knives, pans and chopsticks needed for the canteen.Some belonged to the commune when they should not have gone to the commune, such as chickens, ducks, and some pigs, but were not priced.In this way, the "communist wind" will blow up.That is to say, to a certain extent, it has actually created a situation where some people possess the fruits of other people's labor without compensation.Of course, this does not include public accumulation, collective welfare, certain unified distribution methods agreed by all members and approved by the higher-level party organization, such as the food supply system, etc., which do not belong to the nature of free possession.We do not allow the situation of appropriating other people's labor without compensation.Check out our history.We just deprived the Japanese, German and Italian imperialists, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalist means of production, as well as some of the landlords’ means of subsistence, such as houses and grain, without compensation.All of these are not encroaching on the fruits of other people's labor, because these deprived people get something for nothing.With regard to the means of production of the national bourgeoisie, we have not adopted the method of expropriation without compensation, but have implemented a policy of redemption.Because although they are exploiters, they were once allies of the democratic revolution, and now they do not oppose socialist transformation.If we adopt the redemption policy, we will gain political initiative and benefit economically.Comrades, if our policy towards the exploiting classes is like this, how can we appropriate the fruits of labor of the working people without compensation?

Published according to the documents of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ note [1] Refers to the "Resolution on Several Issues Concerning People's Commune" passed at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in Wuchang from November 28 to December 10, 1958.