ABSTRACT
Power thus tightly centralized, society totalized, and all possible countervailing forces destroyed or emasculated, Mao Tse-tung could put his favorite program of collectivization into effect. Mutual aid teams that had already been established among the peasants were first gradually amalgamated into "lower stage" Agricultural Producer's Cooperatives. Land, implements, and labor were pooled, the peasant received dividends according to his contributions, and he could theoretically withdraw from the cooperative. Next, the "higher stage" Agricultural Producer's Cooperative-the true collective-was formed in which all was owned and shared collectively and withdrawal was forbidden. At each stage, membership was supposedly voluntary, but in fact was encouraged by different forms of persuasion and was ultimately coerced.
