From Commune to Capitalism. Zhun Xu

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СКАЧАТЬ the populist camp in the Mao era was only arguing for a relatively gradual transition to socialist collectives, their contemporary counterparts were looking to something different. Given the changes in the overall political economy, the populist solution was now more aligned with capitalism. In essence, this type of neo-populism or promarket populism portrays a homogenous peasantry with a strong preference for family business and the market.

      The ambiguous dividing line between the two factions found its best example in Du Runsheng, the architect of the new agrarian relations and then-head of the National Agricultural Committee.⁴² Du argued that given the uniqueness of Chinese agriculture—which was “sensitive,” “vulnerable,” and “undermechanized,” in his words—small producers would take better care of the crops than collectives could. In a report published in the People’s Daily, Du claimed that “the contemporary world” has proved that family farming is perfectly compatible with modernization.⁴³ Clearly, this “world” only referred to the United States and Western European countries. In his later years, Du admitted that his ideas came partly from his positive impression of the United States, Japan, France, and other developed countries that he visited after 1979, in particular the widespread presence of family farming and modern technology.⁴⁴

      Despite the seeming superiority of small family farms over all other forms of agricultural production, in Du’s argument, the populist solution did not preclude a gradual transition to large-scale capitalist agriculture. As Du himself emphasized in the same report, “we do not want to maintain petty production forever; we will move on to big modern production.”

      Only a few years later, Du revisited the question of agrarian change, adopting an even more pro-capitalist stance. In his speech at the CCP’s Central Party School, Du openly criticized family farms for their inefficiency and claimed that Chinese agriculture should develop economies of scale.⁴⁵ However, Du denied the advantage of developing collectives, claiming that “the peasants would not support collectives.” Du’s argument implies only one choice: capitalist farms. In line with his idea, Du later made several policy suggestions, including transferring rural labor to urban industries and encouraging gradual land concentration to the advantage of fledgling capitalist farmers.

      Soon after the decollectivization campaign, the honeymoon between the populist and capitalist factions came to an end. The scholars and policy makers in the capitalist faction mainly focused on the development of capitalist relations of production in the rural areas (that is, “efficient scale farming”), and they often tended to overlook the suffering and dispossession of the small peasant families during the process. The national policy became more urban and industry-oriented after the mid-1980s; the rural-urban income gap increased dramatically; and public investment in rural areas dropped significantly from the level of the Maoist period.⁴⁶ In1999, a local cadre, Li Changping, wrote a famous letter to Premier Zhu Rongji, stating that “the life of the peasants is extremely hard, the rural areas extremely poverty-stricken, and the prospect of agriculture extremely precarious.”

      Those on the populist side do not oppose capitalism in principle, but they are more cautious about its disastrous impacts and, to some extent, represent its humane side: equal rights for urban and rural residents, tax cuts for peasants, price protection for agricultural products, and other welfare policies for the countryside. In the view of Wen Tiejun, a leading scholar in the populist camp, the Chinese intellectual should “deconstruct” the concept of modernization in order to protect the “unavoidable” petty peasant rural economy.⁴⁷

      The split redefined the mainstream political spectrum from the 1980s onward. On rural issues, the supporters of the capitalist solution became the right wing, while the populist opposition—however mild—formed the left wing. Sometimes, the populists and socialists have even found common ground in opposing policies of the capitalists. For example, on the issue of land privatization, those supporting socialism strongly defend the last remaining legacy of collectivization; the capitalist faction favors complete rural land privatization to facilitate land concentration; and the populist faction favors a more gradual approach and also supports maintaining a de jure collective ownership of land to protect the de facto small ownership.⁴⁸

      The contemporary historical process of agrarian change could be understood as a dynamic compromise between the populist and capitalist factions but with heavier weight on the latter. Since the beginning of this century, the populists, claiming that they represent the voices from below, have succeeded in persuading the central government to provide certain welfare supports and tax reductions for rural residents.⁴⁹ Yet the capitalist faction, representing “efficiency” and “advanced forces of production,” has also won the upper hand on crucial issues. For example, the Third Plenary of the CCP’s 17th Central Committee in 2008 passed a resolution on rural development that explicitly encouraged peasants to trade land use rights to concentrate land for more large-scale efficient agricultural production.

      Despite any possible differences, the two factions share in common the denial of any socialist rural project. After all, the populist faction does not really oppose the market and capitalism, and the capitalist faction is not arguing for the immediate abolition of small producers.

      Again, the political subtlety in China in the second phase has found its counterparts and connections in other countries, although often in a twisted way. According to Brass, the rhetoric of the latter half of the twentieth century held that the new rural movements in Latin America and other developing countries abandoned the means of mass mobilization and the goal of socialism.⁵⁰ As for the actual ongoing highly political and anti-neoliberal peasant movements in Mexico, Brazil, and other countries, Petras and Veltmeyer note that the mainstream either perceives the movements in recent decades as premodern, arguing that the homogenous peasantry was fighting a losing battle; or treat the struggles as postmodern, seeking cultural and ethnic identities.⁵¹ In fact, Chinese intellectuals like Wen Tiejun also explicitly refer to these movements as evidence of support for the populist notion of a homogenous above-class peasantry. As in China, the political and academic mainstream in other third world countries has managed to take socialism off the agenda, leaving the neoliberal capitalist program (the right) and a populist program (the left) to occupy the political center stage. Keep in mind that the two visions are not mutually exclusive. To paraphrase Brass, neoliberalism accepts small peasants as long as agricultural goods are produced efficiently for the market.

      If we consider the overall effect of agrarian change, we can find its entanglement within the larger global context of neoliberalism. Decollectivization and the changes that followed led to the largest migration in human history, creating a new working class for the urban industries (the number of migrant workers was more than 280 million in 2016).⁵² This huge reserve army further disempowered the old urban working class and facilitated the massive privatization of the last two decades. Globally, the world labor force saw a significant expansion in the last few decades, owing to the radical reversal in agrarian relations: depeasantization in the peripheral countries by means of agribusiness as well as integration of the labor force in former socialist states into the world economy.⁵³ Obviously, the increase in the global reserve army greatly contributes to the power of the world capitalist class and plays a crucial role in the neoliberal order. And Chinese agrarian change has been an integral part of the entire process.

       CONCLUDING REMARKS

      China’s changing agrarian relations have always been an important part of the world-historical process. In the Maoist era, the struggle was primarily between the pro-collective (socialist-oriented) faction and the anti-collective (both capitalist and populist-oriented) faction. In the post-Mao era, the tensions within the anti-collective camp have taken center stage, with their resolution largely in favor of capital. The pattern in China shares similarities with other countries, but it has its particularities, mainly owing to Maoist radical policies.

      As we can see, since the end of the Maoist era, China has been gradually integrating СКАЧАТЬ