POLI 338 Chapter : Fate of the Commune.doc

• School: McGill University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLI 338
• Professor: Juan Wang

Document Summary

Zhengshe fenkai: decommunization, or separation of economic and political activity and authority. By end of 1983, 16 per cent of communes in the country had completed decommunization reform. Prc discourse argues that communes provided past advantages via large- scale labour mobilization for capital construction projects. Yet, by 1983 its disadvantages began to outweigh its advantages. Great leap forward currently understood as a subjectivist misinterpretation of the historical dialectic. In "the theory of socialist transition in china," rural production teams/brigades should not be subject to direct political control, but rather, be indirectly brought to general compliance with state plans through mechanisms such as taxation, state-set pricing, contracts, etc. Peasant production units had no alternative institutional nor financial base from which they could oppose central demands. Thus the fundamental principle of production team autonomy could not be protected. Furthermore, cadres overseeing communes had little personal or material interest in peasant attitudes or concerns ("selecting from afar. ")