End of the Communes:
DANY, L. LA
By L. La Dany END OF THE COMMUNES Hong Kong In the autumn of 1958, Peking launched its People's Commune program with the boast that the mobilization of the Chinese peasantry would lead China...
...An editorial in the People's Daily called for a complete overhaul of the commune structure...
...The peasants were given agricultural quotas aimed at increasing previous crop yields by unprecedented amounts...
...However, they were to remain under the general direction of the individual communes which could draw their funds from the income of the brigades and organize and shift manpower...
...But the "freedom" given to the peasants remains highly restricted...
...In Hupei province, one official charged that a completely erroneous policy had been followed in the communes along the Yangtze river: Too little had been sown for the summer harvest, too much for the autumn...
...Tens of millions of peasants were conscripted into huge labor formations and put to work digging canals which were to transform the geography of China...
...As for the communes, for the time being they have withered away, serving as administrative bureaus of little significance...
...it will decrease...
...Official Government statements placed the major blame for the drop in production on natural disasters, particularly on widespread drought in the northern provinces...
...At about this time the People's Daily, organ of the Party leadership, openly sounded the alarm...
...Even more revealingly, the People's Daily wrote at the end of 1960: "It is extremely dangerous not to consider the peasants" traditional methods of cultivating the land...
...The communes, the personal invention of Mao Tse-tung, were designed to give Peking tight control over the countryside...
...These brigades should determine their production methods...
...From the start, the commune experiment did not proceed as smoothly as had been hoped...
...They were accused of misunderstanding Mao's directives for deep ploughing, close sowing and early planting...
...In the Spring of 1959, Peking claimed that agricultural production had doubled in the preceding year...
...Reports trickled back to Peking that the village Party workers were restive and that the peasants were widely sabotaging orders...
...Under Party direction each commune was to build its own workshops and small-scale industries, run its own schools and universities, form its own militia...
...Millions of Party workers were sent into the countryside to spur the peasants...
...All crops, except those which exceed quota targets, also must be handed over to the great brigades...
...Some months later these claims were deflated, but the corrected figures still represented an impressive jump in production...
...The turn-about was an open admission that the communes had failed, and it was undoubtedly designed to forestall peasant unrest...
...The Party official added: "These words uttered by comrade Mao in 1942 still sound familiar today and are applicable to the present situation...
...The cadres, it was further charged, failed to "see the difference between different kinds of soil and insisted on a uniform treatment over wide areas of land...
...It might have been expected, therefore, that the regime would proceed vigorously with the canalization that had been carried out on a large scale in the previous two years...
...Within a few months, 740,000 recently formed collective farms were converted into 26,000 communes...
...Then the Minister of Agriculture admitted that it was difficult to control nature...
...In FebruaryMarch 1959, Party leaders held an unpublicized meeting at the provincial town of Chengchow and decided upon a strategic retreat: Initially, the "great" labor brigades within the communes were to play a more prominent role in performing agrarian tasks...
...Instead, the Party called a halt to this work, admitting that it had been badly done and had helped little...
...We have many comrades who are not able to make a realistic estimate of the situation and to determine the conditions required for an increase in production...
...Only three years earlier, one hundred million peasant households had been herded into the collectives and deprived of the private holdings they had received in an earlier landreform...
...If these traditions are ignored, production will not increase...
...But under the collective system the peasants still were able to defend their group interests...
...Farm implements, animals, land and the direction of manpower, it said, should be given back to the "small labor brigade," or village unit...
...The results were disastrous...
...But it is apparent even Peking has learned that the patience of the Chinese peasants has its limits...
...By the end of 1960 the situation was too grave for concealment...
...The retreat was viewed as a temporary, tactical move, but soon some Party leaders began openly to criticize the wisdom of the commune system...
...Production quotas are still determined by the Party bureau of the great brigade...
...By the end of 1960, Peking apparently decided that it had had enough of the commune experiment...
...Party leaders, of course, claim that the communes are merely suffering a temporary eclipse...
...In some of China's major provinces, Party leaders admitted that the communes had caused serious damage to agriculture...
...after the propaganda of recent years, it could not be dropped without calamitous loss of face...
...L. La Dany, who here makes his first appearance in The New Leader, is the editor of China News Analysis...
...In fact, it appears that the gigantic digging operation of 70 million peasants organized into huge communal labor troops did damage to the terrain and was one of the major causes of the widespread drought...
...Naturally, it placed the blame for the commune fiasco on the minor officials...
...Until the summer of 1960, the regime maintained its artifically inflated optimism...
...The name still remains...
...In Fukien province, another Party leader covered his criticism of the communes by quoting from an early writing of Mao: "Much work was done to no purpose...
...By L. La Dany END OF THE COMMUNES Hong Kong In the autumn of 1958, Peking launched its People's Commune program with the boast that the mobilization of the Chinese peasantry would lead China into "pure" Communism...
...In August 1959, therefore, a Party meeting reaffirmed the policy and condemned the critics...
Vol. 44 • February 1961 • No. 9
