Abolish the historical patriarchal system and design housing in such a way that people of all ages and both sexes can easily come together, yet separate when tensions arise. To overhaul residential architecture by eliminating its outdated forms is a necessary measure. While we should indeed discard the old patriarchal order, the modern family still needs a leader—one who is capable, not necessarily the eldest member.

Commodities and commerce—these issues have long been sidestepped, as if avoiding them somehow precludes true communism. In fact, people’s communes must produce socialist commodities suitable for exchange, so as to gradually raise individual wages. With respect to consumer goods, socialist commerce should be developed, and the law of value employed, at least during the transitional period, as an instrument of economic accounting to facilitate the gradual transition to communism. Today’s economists seem to shun economics altogether. Even near the end of his life, Stalin regarded any mention of the law of value as dishonorable, as evidenced in his letter to Yaroshenko. Some in the Soviet Union opposed commodity production, believing they had already achieved communism—yet they were far from it. We, having pursued this path for only a few years, remain even further away.

Lenin strongly advocated for the development of commerce because there was a severance between urban and rural areas; we experienced something similar in 1950. Now, with inadequate transportation, we face a semi-disrupted flow. I believe we need to move forward on two fronts: expanding state allocation and intensifying commodity production. Without doing so, we cannot pay wages or improve living standards.

Certain aspects of bourgeois legal rights must be dismantled—for example, rigid hierarchies, condescending attitudes, detachment from the masses, failure to treat others as equals, and reliance on seniority or power rather than actual work capacity. These elements must be challenged daily; they will reemerge only to be broken again. After the liberation, instead of building on the strengths of the rationing system, we adopted a wage system. By 1953, this change was unavoidable: personnel from the liberated areas constituted the majority, the working class operated under a wage system, and a large influx of new members, influenced by bourgeois norms, made it difficult to revert to rationing. A temporary compromise was necessary, but it carried drawbacks, namely the entrenchment of a highly stratified hierarchy—with over thirty distinct ranks—that led to disputes over status and benefits. Such concessions were ultimately misguided. Following the Rectification Campaign, this tendency subsided. This unequal master-servant or father-son dynamic between cadres and the masses must be abolished; it is entirely unnecessary. Over the past year or so, significant blows have been dealt to these bourgeois legal privileges. Past initiatives like experimental fields, sending cadres down to the countryside, and properly resolving internal contradictions among the people through persuasion rather than coercion have greatly transformed the social atmosphere. Without such changes, the Great Leap Forward would have been impossible. Otherwise, why would the masses work twenty hours a day without sleep or rest? Because the Party stood with them. Cadres in Hong’an County once behaved in a domineering, patronizing manner and were frequently rebuked by the populace. After a reform in the latter half of 1956, substantial progress was made, and the people warmly welcomed it.

However, other aspects should be retained: a reasonable wage system, certain necessary differentials, and the principle of “more work, more pay.” Some measures are akin to buyouts—for instance, high salaries should continue to be granted to the bourgeoisie, bourgeois intellectuals, and democratic figures. Members of the bourgeoisie may join the commune, but they retain their bourgeois status (the “hat” remains on). Commune members fall into two categories: worker-peasant members and capitalist members.

To ensure unity, a unified program is needed at the central, provincial, and prefectural levels. If higher-level party committees fail to clarify goals and interrelationships, how can anything be accomplished? Currently, many issues are muddled and easily spread by word of mouth. Decisions about which level receives specific directives require careful political consideration. Grain is less alarming; it is primarily steel, machinery, coal, and electricity that inspire fear. One might set a timeline of “fifteen years or slightly longer,” while targets could be expressed vaguely as “××,” communicated solely through oral instructions. Forestry will become one of the fundamental issues; livestock raising, fisheries, sericulture, and soybean cultivation should also be included. Forestry serves as the foundation for the chemical and construction industries. When addressing water and drought disasters, the phrase “to the greatest extent possible” should be added. Most challenges lie within human control, though some are beyond our grasp—even over ten thousand years. Fertilization should prioritize organic matter. The campaign to eliminate the Four Pests and other major pests should likewise emphasize “to the greatest extent possible.” Labor should be balanced with at least twelve hours of sleep and rest each day, supplemented by two hours of study; maximum working hours should not exceed ten. This is a nationwide concern. Providing services in communal canteens and childcare facilities should be recognized as noble contributions to the people. Every worker is, in essence, a public servant.

Article 36: Commodity Production—Regarding allocation, I fully support it. If contracts can be established between communes, why not between the state and the communes? Doing so might offend the “leftists.” Our current commodity production is guided not by the law of value, but by planning. Are our steel, grain, and cotton really determined by market forces? Copper and aluminum have not yet been subject to market mechanisms; going forward, efforts should shift toward integrating them into a market-oriented framework.

Historically, the order was: first the nation, then the commune, finally oneself. Yet producers often reverse this priority: self-interest comes first, followed by the commune, and lastly the nation—despite slogans such as “Protect Family Honor, Protect the Nation,” “Develop the Family Economy by Growing Cotton,” and “Patriotism Means Protecting One’s Home and Cultivating More Cotton.”

Article 38 should include the following: “In preparation for utterly defeating any aggressor should aggression occur, implement a system of全民皆兵 [people’s all-out defense].”

Article 39: Employ both inducement and deterrence—offer incentives to workers while maintaining strict oversight of high-ranking officials. It is crucial to make clear to workers that preferential treatment of capitalists aims to isolate them, setting them apart and highlighting their uniqueness. Early adoption of this policy yielded mixed results; mid-level enterprises did not necessarily benefit.

Article 40: A collection of views, largely unsatisfactory. Seven specific points went unheeded. The central issue lies in adopting a mass-line approach to work methods—avoiding practices such as binding, beating, scolding, public debates, and punitive labor. Even battalion commanders treated company commanders this way: “I’ll settle accounts with you!” In Xushui, such incidents were not isolated; company commanders were bound, beaten, and publicly humiliated, turning debate into a form of punishment. There are two types of contradiction and two distinct approaches to debate: one directed at rightists, the other aimed at resolving internal conflicts among the people through persuasion.

We should uphold a pragmatic, truth-seeking attitude—no falsification of reports, no claiming another’s pigs as one’s own, and no inflating a wheat yield from 300 jin to 400. This year’s total grain output of 900 billion jin likely peaked at around 740 billion; treating the remaining 160 billion as fabricated figures seems more accurate. The people cannot be deceived. Historical war reports might fool the populace, but they hold little sway over the enemy. For example, on the Fujian front, our aircraft losses compared to the enemy’s were 6 to 14—a ratio of approximately 1 to 2.33. However, the Kuomintang’s boasts invariably contained exaggeration, making it hard to distinguish truth from falsehood. In Yanshi County, some attempted to conceal output by reporting lower figures, while others overstated theirs. The People’s Daily would do well to adopt a more measured tone. When discussing sensitive topics, it is important to speak appropriately to the current context. Resolving problems in our working methods must remain a top priority: upholding Party leadership, the mass line, and seeking truth from facts.

Stalin’s book, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, deserves another thorough reading. Leading cadres at the provincial and prefectural committee levels should undertake a dedicated study. Previous readings left most indifferent and made little impression; now, however, it is essential to examine the text in light of practical realities.

Chapters One, Two, and Three contain numerous noteworthy insights—some correct, others problematic, and a few that even Stalin himself may not have fully clarified.

Chapter One addresses objective laws, contrasting planned economies with anarchic conditions. He rightly distinguishes between planning principles and policy decisions. His emphasis on aligning subjective plans with objective laws raises important questions, though he does not develop this idea fully, perhaps because he himself was not entirely clear on the matter. In his view, the Soviet plan fundamentally reflected objective laws, but the degree of alignment warrants closer examination. For instance, the relationship between heavy and light industry, as well as agricultural issues, did not adequately capture these laws, and he suffered as a result. As a consequence, the people failed to perceive a harmonious balance between long-term and short-term interests. To this day, their industrial output lags behind ours—analogous to Li Tieguai walking with a crutch: one leg long, one short, leaning heavily on the staff—a distinctly uneven gait. Our current stance is to pursue both industrialization and agricultural development simultaneously, prioritizing heavy industry while advancing along two parallel tracks. Compared with their plan, which one better conforms to the proportional application of objective laws? Furthermore, Stalin stressed technical expertise and cadre selection, favoring competence over political considerations and distancing himself from the masses—another dualistic approach. In industry, he focused exclusively on heavy industry, neglecting light industry. Within heavy industry, he failed to identify the key contradictions, emphasizing steel as the foundation and machinery as the core, whereas we advocate placing agriculture under the banner of food production and industry under that of steel. We have only recently begun to grapple with this dialectical logic. By anchoring our strategy in steel, we integrate raw materials, machinery, coal, electricity, petroleum, and transportation—linking land, sea, and air. Thus, Chapter One raises critical questions about objective laws, yet offers no satisfactory answers regarding how to effectively harness them.

Chapter Two discusses commodities, and Chapter Three explores the law of value. I largely agree with many of the points raised in these chapters. Clarifying these issues is indeed necessary. However, certain assertions—such as limiting commodities to consumer goods and declaring “means of production are not commodities”—merit further scrutiny. In our country, means of production do, in part, constitute commodities; for example, we sell agricultural machinery to cooperatives.

I believe the final appendix to Stalin’s book is almost entirely erroneous. It pits the state against the masses and reflects a fundamental distrust of farmers. On the one hand, it insists that means of production belong to the state and should not be sold to peasants; on the other, it claims that peasants cannot afford them and would suffer irreparable losses if they did, while the state could absorb such losses. This reasoning is untenable—it amounts to self-deception. By tightly controlling the peasantry, one ends up being controlled in turn. Crucially, Stalin fails to identify two viable pathways for transitioning from collective ownership to full public ownership. Although he eloquently speaks of abolishing the antagonism between workers and peasants and eradicating inherent differences, after thirty years of experience, he still finds no solution. This despair is evident in the letter itself.

Stalin argues that socialist commodities are not mere remnants of the old society but new creations, where the law of value plays no mediating role in production; planning does. This assessment is correct. Over the past few years, it has become increasingly clear that our Great Leap Forward was, in essence, a politically driven leap forward.

Stalin confines his analysis to productive forces, ignoring the superstructure. (××: He focuses solely on the contradiction between agriculture and industry.) His critique of Yaroshenko was justified. However, he does not address the relationship between the superstructure and the economic base, nor does he discuss how the superstructure should adapt to that base. These are critical matters. Our Rectification Campaign—including lowering ourselves, participating in three activities, having cadres engage in manual labor, allowing workers to participate in management, and abolishing inappropriate regulations—all fall under the umbrella of the superstructure, or ideology.

In Stalin’s economic thinking, only economic relations are considered, not politics. Despite newspaper articles extolling “selfless labor,” in practice, no one truly achieves such selflessness even when working an extra hour. Stalin sees things but not people; when he does see people, it is usually cadres rather than ordinary citizens. The role of individuals and workers is never addressed. Without a communist movement, transitioning to communism would be exceedingly difficult.

The slogan “Each for All, All for Each” is ill-conceived; ultimately, it always reduces to “each for me.” Some claim Marx coined it, but even if he did, we need not propagate it. “Each for All” essentially means “everyone works for me alone,” while “All for Each” implies that only a handful of people actually serve everyone else. Stalin’s economic thought, by contrast, is cold, bleak, and foreboding.

Issues concerning bourgeois legal rights—legal concepts, legal institutions—are equally pertinent. Lenin once proposed the slogan “all-out offensive,” when the New Economic Policy had been in place for only a year and tensions were running high. At that time, figures like Rong Yiren were summarily dismissed and cast into the sea, while educational institutions remained firmly rooted in bourgeois traditions. We must dismantle certain manifestations of bourgeois legal consciousness—such as aristocratic airs and pretentious behavior—but commodity circulation, commodity forms, and the law of value cannot be abolished overnight, despite also falling within the realm of bourgeois legal rights. Efforts to completely eradicate all vestiges of bourgeois legal thought deserve attention, though such a sweeping claim is itself problematic.

In a socialist society, a small minority—landlords, rich peasants, and rightists—seek to restore capitalism and promote capitalist ideals, whereas the vast majority aspire to advance toward communism. Transitioning to communism requires a step-by-step process; it cannot be achieved overnight. For instance, people’s communes should expand in two directions: developing self-sufficient production on one hand, and fostering commodity production on the other. We should now leverage commodity production, commodity exchange, and the law of value as useful tools to stimulate production and facilitate the transition. Stalin offered numerous reasons; were there any negative aspects? Our country’s commodity production remains severely underdeveloped. Last year, grain output totaled 370 billion jin, of which only 30 billion jin was allocated as state grain and 50 billion jin was sold as commodities to the state—meaning less than one-third was marketed as commercial grain. Other cash crops, such as tea, silkworms, cotton, hemp, and tobacco, have yet to recover to their historical peak yields. A phase of active commodity production is urgently needed. Many counties currently provide free meals but lack the capacity to pay wages.

For example, Hebei Province is divided into three types of counties: some can only offer free meals, others require relief assistance, and a few are able to pay wages. Even among those receiving wages, the amounts are often meager—sometimes just a few cents. Therefore, each commune must develop income-generating activities beyond grain production. Steelmaking, meanwhile, operates at a loss. Education and supporting national industrialization represent additional financial burdens.

We must develop socialist commodity production and trade. Differentiated wage structures should be maintained for a time. It is imperative to recognize the positive role of socialist commodity production and exchange. Allocation constitutes only a portion of resource distribution; the majority still relies on buying and selling. Commerce has grown excessively profitable. There is a prevailing bias today, as if the more communism advances, the better. In reality, communism demands a deliberate, measured approach. The case of Fan County, which purportedly achieved communism within two years, warrants careful investigation; proceeding more cautiously would have been preferable.

In summary, given the underdeveloped state of our commodity sector, the transition to socialism requires first dismantling aristocratic attitudes and elitist behaviors, while retaining certain wage differentials. Regrettably, some continue to advocate for achieving communism within just three to five years.
Economists tend to be overly “leftist,” fearing exposure for minor inconsistencies. They attempt to evade scrutiny by citing the draft of the Forty Articles.