ABSTRACT
From 1971 to 1976 a Chinese conception of the political economy of socialism was formulated, based upon a repudiation of the Soviet theories of socialism and upon the practical experiences of the Cultural Revolution in China. Socialism was supposed to mean the abolition of classes and class struggles, and, furthermore, that commodity production with its autonomous laws would be replaced by planned production. The starting point of the Shanghai school was the acceptance and incorporation of Mao's critique of the Soviet tradition into a comprehensive under-standing of socialism. According to the Shanghai school, the collectively owned economy is an incompletely transformed structure within the public ownership system. The means of production as well as the results of production are private property owned by individual collective units. In the Political Economy of Socialism the Shanghai school stated that the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was the concentrated expression of the fundamental contra-diction under socialism.
