Issued
[Commentary on "Several Issues Concerning Rural People's Communes and Agricultural Production in the Northeast Region" [1]]
(March 19, 1961)

This document is very well written. Distribute it to all comrades [2] for study and adoption.

Mao Zedong
March 19

--- Notes

[1] Refers to the material "Several Issues Concerning Rural People's Communes and Agricultural Production in the Northeast Region" submitted by Song Renqiong, First Secretary of the Northeast Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This material states that during the small group meetings on March 15 and 16, comrades from the Northeast, based on the deliberations and discussions of the Northeast small group during the North Three Regions Conference, raised a number of issues regarding how to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the broad masses of peasants, further improve the people's communes, and develop agricultural production. Everyone unanimously believes that at present, some rural people's communes are somewhat too large in scale, and there are certain problems in the system, which prevent the enthusiasm of the broad masses from being more fully mobilized. Therefore, active and effective measures must be taken to properly adjust the scale and system of the people's communes. The issues currently needing gradual resolution in the countryside are as follows: 1. The issue of the organizational scale of the people's communes. The principle of adjustment is to be conducive to strengthening leadership, developing production, organizing the people's economic life, enhancing unity, and taking into account historical and natural conditions. Based on this principle, communes should generally correspond to one township per commune, brigades should generally correspond to the former higher-level cooperatives, and production teams should generally correspond to the former lower-level cooperatives. 2. The issue of the people's commune system. Agree to take the production brigade as the basic accounting unit, and appropriately expand the partial ownership system of the production teams. 3. The issue of distribution. The main task is to overcome egalitarianism, implement the principle of more work, more food and more work, more gain, appropriately reduce the supply portion, increase the wage portion, and for the communes in recent years, reduce or eliminate the extraction of accumulation funds from the basic accounting units. 4. The issue of mess halls. Actively run them well, voluntary participation, appropriately reduce their size. 5. The issue of commune finances. Strengthen financial management at all levels of the communes, establish and perfect financial and accounting systems, and put an end to embezzlement and waste. 6. The issue of treatment for brigade and production team cadres. Implement "fixed work production, fixed quota subsidies," and strictly control the scope of work-loss compensation. 7. The issue of rural commerce. Restore the supply and marketing cooperative organizations, and use the method of "walking on two legs" to run commerce. 8. The issue of rural handicrafts. Restore handicraft cooperative organizations to serve agricultural production. 9. The issue of labor power. Continue to reduce the urban population and strengthen the labor force on the front line of agricultural production. 10. The issue of animal power. Reserve sufficient fodder, establish fodder bases, and transfer a number of urban draft animals back to the countryside. In addition, there are issues of rural transport capacity, agricultural mechanization, fixed grain purchase quotas, adjusting the price differentials between industrial and agricultural products, rational distribution of means of livelihood between urban and rural people's communes, rewarding the planting of economic crops and increasing grain production, adjusting agricultural taxes, and the issue of Party organizations in rural people's communes, totaling 18 issues.


[2] Refers to the comrades then attending the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Working Conference in Guangzhou.