The Fate of the Commune: Decollectivization in China 

I believe that the reform and opening up era is best understood in a global context. With the unfortunate Sino-Soviet split (culpability for which can be found on both sides) and Mao's repproachment with the USA, China was increasingly alienated from the rest of the Socialist bloc. In the 1980s the European socialist States were disintegrating and China was faced with a new global market where the Capitalist bloc was accendent. The CPC had two main routes open, become a socialist fortress with limited access to the global economy or adopt a controlled marketisation to use the global market to develop. The reform era took the second and it has so far worked as intended to develop China, but there were clearly excesses and contradictions in this. The top-down decollectivisation was a symptom of the drive to marketise the economy, even in sectors where it wasn't necisarry. This contradiction swinging towards markets was particually strong around the turn of the century but there are signs that it is begining to swing back with 'Common Prosperity' being the new government aim after the poverty aliviation campaign and companies are being increasingly reigned in.

Thanks for making content that goes a bit deeper than just beginner-level theory. We desperately need more of this level of content because the popular discussion within the western left still reflects that basic understanding (or lack of) on these topics. Same arguments made over and over.

People should take note of what Deng Xiaoping did: he created a crisis of confidence in the system through various methods. For anyone who doesn't recognize the significance of that, think about how capitalists do the same thing all over the world by defunding social welfare and other programs, hamstringing state-run programs through various means (like regulating them to make it impossible for them to function effectively, or adding the requirement that they fund the retirement of *future* employees), and then turn around and point to what they did as "proof" that the state is incompetent, must deregulate, and must maximize privatization. It's an effective strategy that's not easy to counter without the masses being educated on the history of such things, what to look out for, how to curtail politicians, etc...in other words, the society has to have class awareness and historical awareness, which capitalists fight VERY hard to prevent.

Increases in disposable income are not beneficial when tied to loss of social services, loss of class power, alienation, decrease in real income due to inflation of good and services and additional of financial burden. The privatisation MADE PEOPLE POOR.

Wow, it's so refreshing to see some nuanced discussion over China and it's economic history. Amazing video

pulling surplus labour out of the country side and into the urban industrial sector is really important for the reduction in socially necessary labour time applied to the production of primary resources to pull them away from the laws of value and remove them from the commodity circuit

Mobo gao has the thesis -which I suscribe to- that the “boom” surplus produced in the countryside after the reform has less to do with the household model than the seed development during the mao period taking full form

are you still planning to make a video on the great leap forward? great video by the way

At the present time, the USA and China are not on friendly terms. We are pissed off at China and China is pissed off at us! But, here is what I like about China. What I love about China is that young people there are better educated in science and math and actually know more about our American history than students here in the USA. Also, many Americans have become anti-science. I'm 70 years old. I remember men walking on the moon. Now, I'm ashamed to say, that there are idiots in my generation who deny that we been to the moon, that it was all a fake. But then, I had seen a picture on the Internet sent back showing the decent stages of one of our Apollo moon landings, and footprints on the moon, thus, proving that we put men on the moon. Even though China is our enemy, I want to thank China for those images, and rubbing our noses in the moon dirt! Thank you China. Thank you. Oh! Our Republican party wants to put history teachers in jail for teaching about slavery during the Civil War, against teaching about Harriot Tubman, Rosa Parks, and Susan B Anthony. Also, science teacher not being allowed to teach about Galileo, because Catholics will be offended! I kid you not! I remember back in 1980 when COSMOS by Carl Sagan came out on PBS. then our Reagan administration cut funding for educational programming. When I was a kid in grade school back in the 1960s I was a science geek. During the summer months, I would hang out in the public library checking out books I was not allowed to read in school. If I had been a kid living in the Soviet Union, I would have had more freedom to study Astronomy than I had in the USA. I have been a registered Democrat since I was old enough to vote. About ten years ago, I became an atheist and I'm now a Socialist. Oh! Socialism and Cosmology have something in common. Society is not built from the top down, but from the bottom up. The COSMOS is the same. Starting at about 10 to the -43 seconds, the Planck length for time, the shortest possible length for the passage of time, and at 10 to the -43 meters, the shortest possible distance, the COSMOS was just a hot dense soup of quarks. Than as the universe began to expand and cooled down, quarks formed subatomic particles which eventually became mostly hydrogen, some helium, and a tiny pinch of lithium. Then gaseous nebulas formed which collected to form the first stars. These were hyper-giant stars that exploded, went hyper-nova forming atoms of heavier elements which eventually collected to form planets. Also in biological evolution, life evolved from the simple to the more complex. Long story short! This took billions of years. So, the COSMOS was built from the bottom up, and life evolved from the bottom up. I call this, Natural Socialism! All is build from the bottom up. Destruction comes from the top down, from the corrupt ruling class.

Very good analysis! Always keep in mind the context when judging something. A system can be a total failure in a certain country under a certain historical background, but may be a brilliant idea in another place or time, and vice versa.

I wish this video explained what collectivism/the starting point of the chinese agriculture system was

Excellent commentary as usual. :-)

When it comes to anything Deng-related I just have to bring this up. According to Deng's own standards the reform has failed: If the reform recreated rich-poor wealth gap, it has failed; if the reform heightened urban-rural disparity, it has failed; if the reform brought back a new bourgeois class, it has failed. And I'm not making this up when I say stuff like this, it came straight out of his book.

Thanks for another great video

I wish this video covered, at least briefly, China's move towards agricultural co-operatives that started under Hu Jintao. About half of all rural families are part of one, and it's sometimes posited as a way to help bring the isolated farmers together to scale up, as you suggested the prior system would be able to do in this video. I've not seen much of an analysis on how useful or effective these things are.

Two things that I would have liked to have seen better addressed. 1. Grain production soared after the household responsibility system was introduced. What is your explanation for this? 2. China never got rid of state owned enterprises and never let markets set all prices, so the pressure of neoliberalism I think you overstated. Great new book 'How China avoided shock therapy' on this period.

brilliant video!

You should do more videos on Socialist policies past,present and for the possible future.Although I enjoy videos better explaining capitalism,videos on what we can make from it are more hopeful and what we need at these times.

Thank you for this really informative video. I've been wondering about the potential of agrarian communism of being a basis for a socialist society in largely agrarian states in the 20th century. It seems like the decisions to adopt market reforms (in China's case) or implement a command economy (in that of the USSR) came with tremendous costs and was not inevitable.

These essays are fantastic! Keep it up!!

I may sound stupid but if one farm makes 10 tons of rice or grain or whatever and another farm also makes 10 tons of rice why collectivize them why not keep them separate to not have to deal with logistical problems. Sorry if this sounds stupid i couldnt find an answer and everytime i looked up "china collective farming" its either people saying its awful or people saying it was the best thing every.

Deng supported collectivisation after industrialisation of agriculture. The strengthening of property rights in agriculture, also has allow partial re-collectivization and leasing to occur. This is because only by recognising the interests of the small holding peasants was adequate compensation able to be determined when leased, or de-contraction, re-collectivisation on the village level. I would also want to point out that not all places adopted the HRS, these places are actually on the whole a lot more wealthy due to investment into light industry.

Why does communes have to be small?

Make video on Cultural revolution

thanks

It strikes me as just a bit curious that the greatest fans of collectivized farming are intellectuals and other sorts who don't actually do much farming. Commonly overlooked in this sort of commentary is the relatively large extent to which people like the Amish, as well as smaller farm producers in the Midwest, share a great deal in cooperative efforts. The way Amish come together to raise a barn, or the way harvesting machines in the midwest travel South to North for the harvests come to mind. Then too, in the past, there was a significant cooperative effort in the US among farmers to provide electricity to all the farms. Beyond that though, these efforts can't really hold profitable sway against large agricultural firms. It would seem to me to indicate that there exists a certain space and time for collectivization in the development of more modern farming, but that it ultimately must fall to truly large scale farming, though the argument remains that such large scale farming generally relies on exploiting labor for it's profits. It seems to me that the best answer would be government regulation of labor rules, but in the so-called democracies, this is easily destroyed by corruption of the government using the profits of very large scale farming.

Really informative!

Keep it 🆙 man

great video, thanks, salute comrade

Your style of explanation, and topics covered have been a huge inspiration for me to develop a deeper understanding of Marxist thought! Thank you so much for taking the time to make these videos!

It always seemed like there was room for a mixed system in practical use, like maybe collectivization for staple crops and livestock, with specialty items from smaller individual producers. That way the domestic market could enjoy high quality non-staple items, and maybe have some for export as well. It could all still be centrally planned and regulated to prevent cartels of niche producers from gaining power over collectivized labor. Does that make sense? I guess it matters more or less on how the Party views China's place in global markets and how that view shapes their priorities.

I think in 2023 Chinese government mention rebuild Commune in government official document

Wow incredible

Cooperatives are still a huge part of China's private sector, even in agriculture and more than three quarters of Chinese people are public employees. I think it is quite reasonable to say that Deng's reforms achieved a very strong net overall benefit for Chinese people without compromising the country's overall Socialist goals. By the vast majority of statistical indicators, China is a very humanistic country, much more so than Capitalist ones. The standards of health, education, cost of living, wage growth etc are all very good.

This Was genuine criticism of the chinese system , we need more oh this honestly

Wait but Maoism didn't exist until the 80s?

Is this Hakim narrating?

I would call it Angry Current CPC Fan VS Average Socialism Enjoyer moment. Communes were not without problems, however, dissolving them altogether simply by decree is just irresponsible and horrendous. The resulting disastrous aftermath paved the road for the emergence of low wage sweatshops and the misery of the migrant workers.

Just one point - Deng Xiaoping wasn't from the rightist faction but centrist faction. It was Jiang Zemin who implemented so many capitalist policies in China and included billionaires within CPC.

Tho far from maoist era communal ownership opperating in non market enviroment, the gravitation away from will be judged by history eventualy for sure, if im not mistaken a very large part (big majority) of the agricultural organization and production in rural China still functions in various cooperative forms (1 million+ and being 90% of global agricultural coops) with a trend in the last decade years towards promoting (state subsiding and de-bureocratizing the formation of) that approach, also because it yielded great results in poverty reduction. Far more cooperative and communal ownership (in a more socdem sense admitingly) in rural china now than there was in the early 00s or late 90s. Thats a relative comparison to keep in mind beyond the admittingly dissapointing comparison on the level of communal ownership pre reform and oppening up and after

2:05 China never choose capitalist development. As she never privatized the commanding heights of her economy. And they are the only state in the planet serious on establishing communism. But through a productivist path not the welfare-subsidies-khrushchev path. She did not abandon economic planning since most of China’s logistics and supply chains are managed by the largest state owned logistics companies.

China is definitely interesting and it's actions today can be seen as an outcome of being a feudal society with much less industry than even the Russian empire being given a gods kiss by Maoism. This dude has a good take on the Reform period and overall incredible video!! Long live the revolution!!

Hello author, I think the flaw in your video is clearly in the author's perception of the prc. The new group tends to present a distorted or hidden view of the previous decades of Prc's history. To sing the praises of mao on the surface, but in fact to belittle the achievements of mao. If you read the history of the Great Leap Forward, for example, you will find that mao had already taken a back seat by this time. The actual leaders at this time were the rightists. Including the early days of the 66 CR, the actual decision-making power was on the right. This is crucial. Most of the information you have come across so far has been revealed by those in power. In both rural and urban areas, Mao's portraits still hang high in many homes. Also, your view of post-capitalism is essentially capitalist. The reason why Mao is called one of the six teachers (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Gonzalo) is not because of his contribution during the New Democratic Revolution (1919-1956), but because of his contribution in the fight against internal and external revisionism. This is based on the Marxist view that things do not develop smoothly, but with twists and turns. Capitalism can be restored from socialism after feudalism, and Ussr is an example of this.

\o/

Firstly, the mixture of state ownership of public land and communal ownership of the land for agricultural production have not changed. What changed was that granting the right to operation to individual families, guaranteed by legal documents, and so families could take on a contract from the government, or the community, to operate the part of the land they were responsible for. The Chinese agricultural commune came into being as an agriculture cooperative. Initially farmers voluntarily joined the cooperative because it benefitted them. After some years of development, Mao had envisioned further transition of socialism to communism. One of the experiments was introducing some communism to the cooperative, to each according to their needs, and rewards equally everyone in the commune. This was quite disastrous, and so the central government under Mao backtracked the decision and reverted to cooperatives, with each according to their labour. The understanding is that the scarcity of social wealth meant that people could not comprehend communism, and needed economic incentives under socialism and be rewarded with an equivalent exchange for their labour output. Another experiment was to expand the scale of the communes, and combine existing communes into larger ones, which is also part of introducing some communism. Some party cadres have took this as an opportunity to expand their political power and fame, creating ridiculous figures of agricultural outputs. This forced the central government to also backtrack this decision. So the commune experiment did not quite fail, nor did it succeed, like with other attempts at transition of socialism to communism, it was simply decided that China was in the primary stages of socialist development, and that the core focus was economic development to accumulate social wealth. So after some years of experimentation, it was decided that China would just revert to what that had initially, agriculture cooperatives along side state farms. China made daring decisions to experiment with how their socialist institutions would stand under foreign capital influx, with special economic zones, and made use of the world market and foreign capital to speed up their own development, while having state monopoly over naturally monopolizing sectors like energy and resources. Idiots would call that capitalist restoration. For one, oil and gas, as well as many other resources China had demand for, were all located overseas, under capitalist control, China cannot conquer the world so it must trade in a capitalist framework. It must find its position within the global supply chain. It is true, that working under the sweatshops of foreign capital, most the labour intensive sectors, is horrible. Chinese people had a saying about that time period, that 100 million shirts were exchanged for an airplane, talking about the unequal exchange of labour hours, but the foreign currency reserves, mostly US dollars, did help propel the economy forward. And we are not talking economic development that seeks to benefit capitalists abroad and at home, there's plenty of those all across the developing world. We are talking about the people sharing in the economic development. The Chinese government could not provide enough jobs. It did try to provide jobs through massive construction operations at home and the current BRI infrastructure project. Part of the reason why Mao made the city youth go up the mountains and into rural villages, was that China's cities faced an economic crisis under socialism. There was no jobs for the youth and that unemployment could create political turmoil. Another very controversial decision was to allow for greater percentage of private capital in the economy. No, it was not privatization of state industries and being sold off to Western capital for cheap in an economic crisis, state industries had some reforms but remained public property. It is part of the Chinese dream to not have to work in the labour intensive sectors of the world economy, and be more liberal with their lives like their western counterparts. The Chinese government's biggest mobilizing factor is the guarantee of further economic development until they can reach first world levels of prosperity.

M, can you please research & advocate for full intellectual property (IP) abolition? This is the most important activist aim for working class people! A just economy (& most leftist projects) has very little chance without first abolishing IP. IP is the most severe & oppressive tool of the rich & powerful. Please see the work of Stephan Kinsella, Michele Boldrin, & David K. Levine. These are the best experts on intellectual property in the world. Everyone who cares about seriously improving things for humanity needs to know what IP abolition is about.

Kewl. Hope this channel starts to move toward political economy and economics rather than revolutionary theory.

It is necessary to make compromises within the capitalist system in order to survive. This is not called revisionism, since this occurs within the margins of a revolutionary process that is still under way. In China, they are fully aware of the negative and positive consequences of these reforms. These changes may or may not have been necessary and the rhetoric to justify it may or may not have been correct, but the communist party remains in power. In the West, most communist parties have abandoned revolutionary activities and even pride themselves on being more "democratic" as a way to hide their failure. To deny the revolutionary character of Marxism is to deny its nature. Marx and Engels, as scientific socialists, did not express the specific steps that a project toward communism must take. Obviously, when you are experimenting and trying to prevent the imperialists from destroying your country, you are going to have failures and successes or both results at the same time, but you have already achieved the first step, which is to hold power. Probably, it is not a total dictatorship of the proletariat yet because a class democracy has not been fully achieved, but it is still in tune with the revolutionary spirit of Marxism and there are undoubtedly socialist elements in these models (Vietnam, China, etc.). It would be necessary to make a video criticizing that kind of extreme revisionism that dates from before the Russian revolution (especially in Austria) and that generally only Marxist-Leninists criticize. These people defend, without evidence or even support in Marx's texts, that with an infinite expansion of "democracy" (liberal republicanism) you will reach socialism at some point. And what is worse, now they criticize "real socialism" for being "totalitarian" (a racist concept created by the supremacist Hannah Arendt and that lacks historical or scientific rigor). In my opinion, this is the most damaging type of revisionism of our time.

Why wasn’t Sun Yat-sen’s Social Georgist philosophy of funding a welfare state via a Land Value Tax implemented in the PRC? Only in Taiwan was it partially.

Revisionism is concession to bourgeois ideology masquerading as proletarian ideology. "Economic efficiency" is not socialist. "Economic efficiency merely means profit maximization and is double-speak of bourgeois political-economy. That is against the interests of the working classes. Dengism is concession to bourgeois ideology. It is revisionism. It is Anti-Communism. Reverting the mode of production and relations of production to a previous inferior level doesn't advance the productive forces, but it does reintroduce profit as the regulator of production (generalized commodity production) and private property which reintroduces the misery that accompanies it. Privatization wasn't favored by the masses. It was introduced by the revisionist party bureaucracy acting in compliance with imperialism, against the will of the masses. And when they voiced concerns the were repressed. The "issues of the commune system" is reducible primarily to issues of underdevelopment, something socialist organization addresses far better than capitalist organization. Theft of the people's property and power was unjustified.

Is this a trotskyite channel?

In addition to a remarkable economic resurgence since Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms is the equally impressive and underappreciated agricultural growth to the point where China is today one of the largest producer of food stuffs.

I think deng is given too much credit for his ability to “eliminate” Maoism. This is an anti-collectivist argument supporting collectivism. The automation of agriculture also freed farmhands for industrial labor. Is it wrong to let them go work?

Another pseudo-Marxist channel.

How can anyone look at this with anything but horror? Communism allowed Mao and his state to demolish people's houses and force them to live in communes just so they could provide max output. No personal property allowed. When the famine came, those who didn't produce their ascribed work qouta, were left to starve. Appreciate and be grateful for the luxury of private ownership in the west and all the goods we can buy and all the jobs we can choose to have.

lol imagine being an unironic apologist for the greatest famine in history