Forwarding Li Jingquan's[1] Letter on the Trial Work of Restoring Supply and Marketing Cooperatives for Review
(May 15, 1961)

1
This document[2] is to be distributed to all central bureaus and the party committees of all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions for reference.

Mao Zedong
[Date]

Also printed and distributed to all comrades attending the meeting[3].

Based on the manuscript.

2
To be distributed after Comrade Xiaoping[4] has read it. Use secure telephone.

Based on Mao Zedong's manuscript.

Notes
[1] Li Jingquan, then First Secretary of the Southwest Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and First Secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee.
[2] Refers to Li Jingquan's letter to Mao Zedong dated May 13, 1961, on the trial work of restoring supply and marketing cooperatives. The letter states: Regarding the issue of restoring supply and marketing cooperatives, we conducted trial work in Xinmin District, Nanchong County, in conjunction with the rectification campaign. The supply and marketing cooperative in this district merged with the state-owned commerce in the spring of 1958. Shortly thereafter, the cooperative enterprises originally organized by small peddlers were also disrupted and merged, conducting unified accounting with the state-owned commerce, effectively transitioning to the nature of state-owned commerce. These changes played a positive role in strengthening unified management, increasing part of the state's revenue, and supporting the Great Leap Forward in industry. However, they also brought about negative factors detrimental to production development to varying degrees, such as alienation from the masses, unclear class boundaries, impeded urban-rural exchange of some goods, and a decline in management levels. First, before the merger of state and cooperative commerce, the supply and marketing cooperatives' set of effective economic activity methods for guiding the collective economy, such as contracts, rewards, retained quantities, rebates, democratic rating, and negotiated pricing, were reduced. Work methods of state-owned commerce, such as planned allocation, unified purchasing, and assigned purchasing, were increasingly applied mechanically. This made it easier for certain cadres to foster the undesirable work styles and behaviors of coercion, commandism, and unequal exchange; in the procurement of agricultural products, there were instances of estimated buying and selling, grade and price suppression, and plundering of the peasants. Second, before the merger of state and cooperative commerce, the supply and marketing cooperatives held regular meetings of member representatives and meetings of the boards of directors and supervisors to report on work and examine shortcomings. Now, this set of democratic management systems has also been virtually abolished, weakening the masses' support for and supervision over the purchasing and marketing operations of the supply and marketing cooperatives. Third, after the change in the nature of the small peddlers' cooperative enterprises, an egalitarian fixed wage system was generally implemented in the wage structure. This fostered passive business thinking among a large portion of small peddlers, leading to a decline in service quality, a reduction in the handling of small commodities, affecting urban-rural material exchange, and even causing business losses. Particularly, some bourgeois elements, counter-revolutionaries, and bad elements mixed among the small peddlers also transferred into the state-owned enterprises, making the ranks of the state-owned commercial personnel even more impure. We believe that under the current circumstances where several types of economies of different natures coexist in our country, it is not yet possible to immediately adopt a single method of ownership by the whole people to directly and entirely resolve the distribution relationship between the economy of the whole people and the collective economy. Facts have proven that such an approach cannot be fully adapted either. To better promote the state-owned economy and the people's commune economy, and to give play to the linking and bridging role of collective commerce, restoring the collectively-owned supply and marketing cooperatives is entirely necessary. At the same time, to adapt to the current situation of rural sideline production and market trade, the utilization and transformation of small peddlers should be strengthened, and corresponding adjustments should be made to the organization of small peddlers.
[3] Refers to the CPC Central Committee Work Conference held in Beijing from May 21 to June 12, 1961.
[4] Xiaoping, i.e., Deng Xiaoping, then General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee.