Political Economy of Class Struggle and Economic Growth in China, 1950–1982

Abstract

The Chinese economic cycle is both a cycle of accumulation and construction activity and a political cycle exercising its influence by trial-and-error methods and changes from voluntarist to pragmatic planning approaches. As a result of some excessive accumulation in the form of net investment in non-productive sectors, there was a lag in infrastructures like energy and transport and trade-off against consumption more severe than expected. Structural imbalances in the economy would have had to have been tackled after 1976, even if the voluntarists had been in office. The eclipse of central planning supporters was of 1979–1980 duration only. Thereafter the line on ‘planning and the market’ became less enthusiastic as the concept of ‘market socialism’ faded. ‘Stabilization’ of the relative growth rates of heayy industry and light industry was compatible with both the programme of the Chen Yun reformers and those reluctant to give ground from ‘realistic plans’ to the ‘law of value’. In agriculture, the masses of small peasant proprietors rather than Party factions decided the shift to the new system of material incentives based on households. In this, weaknesses of Maoist practice in solving rural poverty played a role. Nevertheless, the left can defend collectivist ownership to some extent by adopting a more reasonable programme than in 1966–1976.