Chinese Communes

[ComradeGrant]

What were they? How did they work? How long were they around? Do any still exist?

[ComradeGrant]

bump

[Cyberwave]

The communes of China were essentially left deviations, which dissolved quickly. In 1958, Mao initiated them, without approval from the Party and it would not be until months later that the Party embraced it as policy. In theory the communes were supposed to symbolize socialist transition, and they were progressive in that they led to greater land distribution, collective farming, and a reduction of private property, but they were all in all a failure. Due to the poor conditions of agriculture of the time and the specific lifestyle demands of the communes, the peasantry became dissatisfied with them, ultimately allowing for greater revisionists such as Xiaoping to assert control over the situation in the future, eventually marking a more rightist approach. But before then, Mao began the cultural revolution, which was a failure as well. The revolution made it so that peasants from the communes who didn't or could not farm may be sent to construction, industry, or mining jobs. In other words, the demands they initially complained about were intensified at this time, which inherently contradicted Mao's theory of the mass line, although there still was an emphasis on the peasantry's role in revolutionary society at this time, more so than ever, ironically enough. The bottom line is that they were a failure, and lacked legitimate scientific, Marxist basis. Mao himself did acknowledge this as well:


"I made a mistake at the Peitaiho Conference.The Peitaiho Conference resolution must now be revised. I was enthusiastic at the time, and failed to combine revolutionary fervour and the practical spirit."

Communes are not a bad thing, but the point is that they can not create the final socialist society, and they especially can not lead to a communist society either. Most of the times, communes roles in society are exaggerated or fetishized by anarchists and other assorted leftist-communists from my perspective as well.

[Susurrus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_commune
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjie

[ComradeGrant]

I looked at those articles and found them lacking in information.

[Paulappaul]

Most of the times, communes roles in society are exaggerated or fetishized by anarchists and other assorted leftist-communists from my perspective as well.

I don't see alot of Modern Anarchists or "leftist" Communists calling for the creation of Communes. Don't know where you got this. I would suspect in the tradition of modern workers' movements that Anarchists and Communists would support some system of Workers' Councils or Industrial Unions to regulate and facilitate the workings of society.


Communes are not a bad thing, but the point is that they can not create the final socialist society, and they especially can not lead to a communist society either

What do you imagine other then Communes "leading" a Communist Society.

[caramelpence]

The Commune system came into being as part of the Great Leap Forward. They were part of the ongoing system of agricultural collectivization that had begun over the period 1945-50, and involved the combination of large numbers of households to form theoretically self-sufficient agrarian communities (each consisting of around 5000 households in total) that would be able to provide grain for the cities and provide a basis for the transition to communism in the countryside. They embodied collective dining halls and open supply systems for food, amongst other innovations, and also involved attempts to combine agriculture with localized industrial production. The overwhelming historical consensus is that the Commune system and the Great Leap Forward as a whole were major failures, and resulted in trust between the CPC and peasantry being broken down. The Communes were dismantled with the introduction of the household responsibility system under Deng, but at the end of the Great Leap Forward itself the organization of the Chinese countryside was changed in such a way that the term Commune was retained whilst being applied to a smaller number of households than at the height of the Leap, with greater decision-making responsibility also being returned to the brigade and team level, so that, in its full form, the Commune system lasted only over a short period of time and was rejected once its failures became apparent.

It's worth pointing out that the term "Commune" is also applied in a number of other contexts in modern Chinese history, in particular to the 1927 Shanghai Commune, and the 1967 Shanghai People's Commune, which were both short-term experiments in urban organization, but it is most commonly associated with the Great Leap Forward.