Revisions to the Central Committee’s Draft Regulations on Correctly Handling the Issue of Individual Farming [I]
(August 1962)

The Party has adopted a series of correct measures in the countryside, enabling the collective economy of over ninety percent of rural people’s communes nationwide to embark on or already be advancing along the path of healthy development. However, nationwide, in less than ten percent of areas, an “individual farming trend” has emerged, with a small number of production teams already changing direction and engaging in household-based individual farming.

Regarding ideological issues within the Party, it is essential to adopt the method of democratic discussion to distinguish right from wrong, so as to achieve the goal of unified understanding and unified action. However, it is necessary to allow comrades holding differing opinions the full right to express their views and to reserve their opinions.

This is Mao Zedong’s revision of the Central Committee’s August 1, 1962, draft regulations on correctly handling the issue of individual farming. The text printed in Song typeface represents Mao Zedong’s additions and rewritten passages.

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Volume 45 of the Complete Works of Mao Zedong

A small number of production teams have fallen into a state of disintegration. This is a twist in the agricultural collectivization movement, and such twists are unavoidable. They have occurred not only in the past and present but will also occur in the decades and centuries to come. As long as, nationwide, they account for only a small portion of areas, communes, teams, and population, they are not to be feared, because the socialist economy holds overwhelming superiority. The struggle between the capitalist and socialist roads in the countryside will continue for a very long period, possibly lasting for decades to centuries.

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