Speech of March 1, 1959

Abstract

If [we] are to increase the peasants' enthusiasm for production and improve the relations between the government and the peasants, [we] must start by improving the system of ownership. Right now [the practice is] equalization, transfer, and the appropriation of funds, while ignoring [the principle] to each according to his labor, ignoring [the principle of] exchange at equal value, and ignoring the law of value. Even between Chao Erh-lu and Wang Ho-shou there is an exchange relationship. Not only do the law of value, and exchange at equal value, apply within the commune, [they] also apply to [operations under] the system of collective ownership and [under] the system of ownership by the whole people. Actually, the law of value also plays a role [in the relationship] among all types of capital goods. If people didn't eat, how could they defecate or urinate, and if they didn't defecate or urinate, how could there be any rice to eat? The bones eventually return to the earth. When one part of nature exchanges with nother part, it is generally an exchange at equal value. The big fish eats the small fish, and if the small fish doesn't eat others, [the system] won't work. Right now it's equalization, transfer, and the appropriation of funds. [The cadres] just take [things] away with a slip of paper. Whatever [they] want [they] just transfer. Not paying for things has a destructive effect. Right now the banks don't invest in agriculture. I propose that every year [there be an] increase of one billion [rmb], so that in ten years they will have made ten billion [rmb] worth of no-interest, long-term loans, primarily in support of poor [production] teams. Part of it [will be used to] purchase large-scale agricultural equipment. In ten years [it] will have been nationalized, and it will then become a national investment. The sudden gust of wind, equalization, transfer, and the appropriation of funds, has destroyed order in the economy: a great many goods have been given over to the commune and not to the [production] team. The set of programs in the Sixth Plenum's resolution on communes has basically not been implemented in the two and a half months since. [Only some measures concerning] collective welfare, communal dining halls, labor, and recreation have been implemented. If the question isn't raised this way, the communist wind will continue to develop. Why haven't the Sixth Plenum resolutions stopped the development of this wind? Is it only [in] the three provinces of Hopei, Shantung, and Honan? Are all the southern provinces especially virtuous, and more Marxist? I don't believe it.