ABSTRACT
Then came 1958, and with it the ‘great leap forward’ and the split with the Soviet Union. The ‘great leap’ may have been Mao’s attempt to find a Chinese road forward, utilising the vast size of its rural population. However, there is a parallel with the strategy adopted in the USSR in 1929-32, which also involved the adoption of extremely ambitious growth targets and the mobilisation of the masses. In both cases the warning voices of sanity were denounced as ‘right-wing deviations’, and there was immense waste of effort. There were differences too. Thus there was no Soviet equivalent of the backyard foundries and other excesses of rural small-scale industrial plants. These proved impracticable and, along with excessive mobilisation of peasants for public works, diverted attention from agriculture and led to a serious food shortage. There was also the creation of the ‘people’s communes’, with attempts to introduce extreme forms of communal living and to restrict or even abolish the peasants’ rights to private plots and livestock. By 1959 there was such chaos and confusion that economic statistics ceased to be published (limited publication was not resumed until 1979), and the ‘leap’ was abandoned. Apparently Mao’s personal position was adversely affected, with power passing to Liu Shao-chi and Chou En-lai, whose more moderate policies made it possible to repair the damage and to resume progress. However, the system remained highly centralised. Thus state enterprises retained virtually none of their profits and most materials were centrally allocated. Urban co-operatives were brought under such tight control that they came to be in a position similar to that of state enterprises. Though there was talk of decentralisation to provinces, in practice Peking controlled the
The Economics of Feasible Socialism
bulk of industrial production. In the villages, the communes’ productive functions were reduced, with agricultural production organised by ‘brigades’ (corresponding in size and importance to Soviet collective farms), or even in ‘teams’, subdivisions of brigades, though controversy continued over their respective roles, and to this day this is a subject of some confusion: incomes are supposed to be based upon each team’s net revenues, but these revenues are partly the result of what the team has been ordered to cultivate by the brigade or the commune, so that wide disparities in income are due to circumstances extraneous to the work or efficacy of the team. Private plots were again tolerated. But private enterprise in towns was rendered virtually impossible.
