Revisions to the Central Committee’s Outline for Propaganda on the State Purchase of Grain [1] (October 31, 1953)  I. If we are to lead a better life, we must certainly carry out socialist industrialization and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts, and capitalist industry and commerce. As far as agriculture is concerned, only by gradually establishing a socialist system in the countryside can agricultural production and the peasants’ living standards be steadily and universally improved.

II. All sensible people in the rural areas should actively join mutual-aid teams with incipient socialist features, as well as semi-socialist production cooperatives and supply-and-marketing cooperatives. In due course, they can further advance to fully socialist production cooperatives—namely, collective farms—and supply-and-marketing cooperatives based on collective ownership, thereby achieving collective production and a prosperous life. Workers build in the cities, while peasants build in the countryside. Peasants should both cooperate with and compete alongside workers, transforming the countryside until it resembles the city. Only then can there be a genuine worker-peasant alliance. Otherwise, such an alliance cannot be developed or consolidated; indeed, there is a danger that any existing worker-peasant alliance may fall apart.

III. We must achieve the country’s socialist industrialization. Socialist industrialization means turning China from an underdeveloped industrial country into a highly developed one, and transforming its industries from non-socialist to socialist forms. To this end, we must on the one hand energetically build new socialist industries—new factories and mines—and on the other hand subject handicrafts and capitalist enterprises to socialist transformation. The most pressing tasks are to increase steelmaking, coal production, kerosene and electricity generation, and machinery manufacture. Only with a developed industry can the state produce more modern farm implements and agricultural machinery to assist the peasants in developing large-scale socialist production cooperatives (i.e., collective farms); lay more railways and roads to connect urban and rural areas; construct more irrigation works to promote agriculture; and supply the peasantry with abundant, inexpensive chemical fertilizers, pesticides, medicines, sugar, cloth, bicycles, radios, films, and various other everyday necessities.

IV. How is agriculture to be transformed? By following the principle of voluntary participation—relying not solely on administrative orders, and especially avoiding coercive methods—we should progressively develop the movement of mutual aid and cooperation, starting with mutual-aid teams having incipient socialist characteristics, then moving on to semi-socialist production cooperatives, and finally establishing fully socialist production cooperatives (collective farms). Because collective labor pools greater strength, what individual farmers cannot accomplish can be achieved by mutual-aid teams, and what mutual-aid teams cannot do can be done by cooperatives. Thus, mutual-aid teams are superior to individual farming, and cooperatives are superior to mutual-aid teams. Each step forward will boost production and improve living standards. At the same time, it will enable us to provide larger quantities of grain, cotton, and other agricultural products to the state and to the entire nation, while gradually cultivating habits of collective labor—though without resorting to “communal pot-lunch” arrangements—accumulating funds, acquiring skills in managing this common undertaking, and steadily advancing toward socialism.

Printed according to Mao Zedong’s revised text. Notes [1] These are four passages revised by Mao Zedong when he reviewed the Central Committee’s Outline for Propaganda on the State Purchase of Grain, dated October 19, 1953. The sections printed in Song typeface represent additions and revisions made by Mao Zedong. The Central Committee’s outline states: The Central People’s Government has decided to implement the state purchase of grain starting this year. Its purpose is to ensure that everyone, in both urban and rural areas, has sufficient food; to guarantee that the nation carries out economic construction in accordance with the General Line; and to enable our country to advance step by step along the socialist road. The Outline primarily addresses three questions: (1) Why must we follow the socialist path? (2) What is the General Line for the transition to socialism? (3) In implementing the General Line and building socialism, why is it necessary to institute the state purchase of grain?