Comments on the Abstract of the Soviet Article “On the Prospects for the Development of Collective Farm Ownership” [1] (September 6, 1959)

To be read by Comrade Chen Boda [2], then returned to Mao.  This person does not at all study the ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and even rejects Stalin’s view that the commune is necessarily a higher form of the collective farm. In short, the author holds that the commune is always harmful and never beneficial.

Mao Zedong  September 6  Printed from the manuscript.

Notes  [1] Refers to an abstract of the article “On the Prospects for the Development of Collective Farm Ownership” by B. Glotov, a Soviet master’s degree holder in economics, which was submitted on September 3, 1959, by the Chinese Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Department of the CPC Central Committee. The article originally appeared in the newspaper Soviet Russia on September 2, 1959. At the end of the article, reference is made to the commune, stating: “Consolidating collective farm ownership and raising its level of collectivization through the socialist state does not mean transforming agricultural cooperatives into communes,” and “Moreover, under communism, the commune as a collective entity possessing a certain form of ownership is also impossible, because at that time all social wealth will be the common property of the entire people.”  [2] Chen Boda, who at that time was an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the Central Political Research Office. ５£