Comment on a Letter Recommending the Responsibility-Field Method
(August 2, 1962)

Distribute to all comrades. [1]

[1] Refers to the letter from Qian Rangneng to Mao Zedong recommending the responsibility-field method. The letter says: Based on results over more than a year of implementing responsibility fields in Taihu County, I believe the “responsibility-field” method is a creative initiative of the peasants, an inevitable trend adapting to the current development of rural productive forces, and an important supplement to the Sixty Articles and the practice of making the production team the basic accounting unit. However, it contradicts the resolution of the provincial standing committee on February 20, 1962, concerning the correction of the “responsibility-field” method. I want to recommend it because with it, agricultural production is like a fish in water. Taihu is a third-category county. From 1958 to 1960, the productive forces suffered tremendous damage, and the people were barely alive. In March 1961, over 90% of the area here adopted the responsibility field, and the situation took a fundamental turn. The previous desolation, flight, hunger, disease, and death were basically transformed in an instant into: cultivation (wasteland turned into cultivated land), return (those who had fled came back), satiety (people basically eat their fill, some places eat fairly well and even have surplus), health (people have become healthier and sickness has decreased), and birth (women are pregnant). Agricultural production in Qiaoxi Production Brigade, once the worst brigade in Taihu, saw a comparison of 1961 to 1960: grain increased by 81%, oil-bearing crops by 6.5 times; cotton increased tenfold, and pigs and poultry also increased several times. The peasants’ enthusiasm for production is something I have seen for the first time in over ten years (except during land reform). The specific method of the responsibility field is: fixing output quotas to fields and assigning responsibility to individuals. It is a management method of socialist collective economy, not individual farming, and not developing capitalism. It has not changed the ownership of the means of production; distribution is still according to work, and the form of collective labor has not changed. It can enhance the peasants’ labor enthusiasm and is welcomed by the majority of peasants. According to our surveys, the peasants who support the responsibility field account for at least 80%, even over 90%.

[2] Mao Zedong’s comment together with Qian Rangneng’s letter was distributed as a document of the central working conference to the comrades attending the conference.

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Mao Zedong Complete Works, Volume 45

Comrade Qian Rangneng of the Propaganda Department of the Taihu County Party Committee, Anhui Province, has sent me a letter. Please all study it.

1962, Mao Zedong with relatives in his hometown.

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Mao Zedong
August 2