Comments on the Briefing Report Concerning a Symposium on the Commune System Held in Shandong Province (March 29, 1961)

Comrades Tao Zhu and Chen Boda [1]: As soon as you arrive, please read this document [2]. Around one o’clock in the afternoon, during our conversation, let us discuss this issue. Mao Zedong, read at four o’clock in the morning on March 29, then returned to Mao. Printed according to the manuscript.

Notes [1] Tao Zhu was at that time First Secretary of the Central South Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and First Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee. Chen Boda was then an Alternate Member of the CPC Central Political Bureau, Director of the Central Political Research Office, and Mao Zedong’s secretary. [ ] refers to the materials concerning the symposium on the commune system held in Shandong Province, reprinted in the 113th issue of the “Briefing Report” compiled and printed by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee on March 24, 1961 (originally published in No. 5 of the “Rural Work Reports,” compiled and printed by the General Office of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee on March 17). According to these materials, recently the Rural Work Department of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee convened four symposiums on the commune system. At these meetings, cadres from both county and commune levels unanimously called for reducing the size of the existing large counties and communes. Team-level cadres demanded that, apart from fulfilling the state’s requisition and procurement quotas for agricultural and sideline products and turning over a certain amount of reserve grain to the production team, all other proceeds should be distributed entirely by the teams themselves.

Judging from what emerged at the meetings, the widespread occurrences over the past few years of underreporting yields for private distribution, unauthorized taking, neglect of field crops by the teams, lack of enthusiasm among commune members, and failure to properly care for draft animals, farm tools, and public property were due not only to shortcomings in management but, more fundamentally, to the economic disparities between teams within a single accounting unit: significant differences in production performance and income, yet all earnings were uniformly allocated by the production team, giving rise to egalitarianism.

In their present form, production teams appear to wield considerable power—their hands hold ownership of the means of production, as well as authority over planning, output targets, and distribution. However, in practice, labor, draft animals, and farm tools are managed and utilized by the production teams, which also bear responsibility for all production tasks; it is the teams, rather than the production teams, that determine actual output and income levels. Thus, the production teams are the true power brokers. Yet they lack the same degree of authority as the production teams, particularly the power of distribution. This constitutes a pervasive and acute contradiction within the current commune structure.

Following deliberation at the symposiums, participants concluded that it was necessary to achieve unity of the four powers: unifying ownership with use of the means of production, and unifying production authority with distribution authority. On the basis of this principle of unified powers, the accounting unit should serve directly as the production unit. Below the accounting unit, there should be permanently established work teams that undertake labor assignments without being responsible for output targets; units tasked with specific output quotas should be abolished. Accordingly, the scale of the accounting unit ought not to be too large—generally it should approximate the former small senior communes and large junior communes, that is, today’s small accounting units and large output-targeted units. The number of households per production team should typically be fifty to sixty, while each production team should consist of about ten households. The production team should assign fixed plots and labor to each production team and likewise allocate draft animals and farm tools for the teams’ exclusive use.