Prelude—The Three Great Transformations in Three Years

Abstract

In spite of the subjective and objective conditions and the realities in the rural areas, contrary to the law that the transformation of the relations of production must tally with the development of the productive forces, out of dissatisfaction with Deng Zihui's (virtually Liu Shaoqi's) correct principle of steady advance, Mao Zedong eventually launched in the second half of 1955 the struggle against walking like a "woman with bound feet" in agricultural cooperation, namely, Right opportunism. It made such an impact and created such pressure that very soon an "upsurge" appeared in the movement of agricultural cooperation. Meanwhile, he called for trying to accomplish the socialist transformation of China's handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce ahead of schedule; and proposed that in scale and tempo China's industrialization and the development of its science, culture, education, health, and so on, must be appropriately expanded and accelerated. In September and December 1955 he wrote more than a hundred editorial notes for the book entitled Socialist Upsurge in the Chinese Countryside, and stated in accordance with the Soviet experience and Stalin's doctrine: "Since elementary cooperatives maintain a system of semiprivate ownership, with the passage of time this will hamper the development of the productive forces and people will demand a change in the system of ownership, so that the cooperative will become a collectively managed economic unit in which the means of production are owned wholly in common." It is said that Mao was extremely excited when writing these editorial notes and compiling the book Upsurge. He believed that the "upsurge" of the peasants demanding cooperation in rural areas was as significant as the victory of the revolution in 1949. Indeed he overestimated the peasants' socialist enthusiasm and believed too much in written materials sent in from various parts of the country. It seemed to Mao that the motivating force compelling the change in the relations of production and promoting the evolution of ownership from the preliminary to the advanced level was not the progress of the productive forces of society, but political work and mass movements. And the main content of political work was "serious ideological and political struggle." He elaborated the point with an example: "A case in point is the Sanlousi Cooperative in Xieyu County, Shanxi Province, which nearly collapsed owing to a lack of sustained effort after it had been set up. Not until the Party branch of the cooperative had criticized its own errors, resumed education about socialism and against capitalism among the cooperative members, and revived its political work was the crisis overcome and the cooperative able to grow again." This shows that the general line for the transition period made an error in analyzing contradictions, with the firm belief that the contradictions between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and the contradictions between the two roads—socialism versus capitalism, had become China's principal internal contradictions. This judgment was intentional, as it both failed to reflect objective reality and departed from the Marxist prerequisite for building socialism.