ABSTRACT
The first reform signifying the movement away from revolution and laying the foundation for subsequent reforms was the redistribution of responsibility for production from the collective to the peasant household in what virtually amounted to a reversal of the original process of collectivisation. In defining and evolving new institutions and balances in the distribution of collective and domestic responsibilities appropriate to a socialist contract promoting economic development and equity, China first attracted attention because of the scale and scope of the collective process, the means by which it reduced the responsibilities of the individual peasant household for production and reproduction and the redefinition of the household in relation to other economic and socio-political institutions. It was the continuing search for appropriate collective and domestic institutions beneficial to production, consumption and welfare which lay at the basis of its cycles of distribution and redistribution of responsibility, first in the name of revolution and then of reform.
