Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

Mao Tse-tung

  SPLASHED on a Long Bow wall in whitewashed ideographs larger than a man was the slogan, “The Battle for Production Is As Vital As The Battle at the Front.”

  In a courtyard behind these words four women wound the warp on a loom. From a nearby doorway came the peristent hum of spinning wheels in motion. The sound was created by a mother, two daughters and a small son sitting cross-legged on grass mats and spinning as if their very lives depended on it. An older woman in the same room threw a shuttle back and forth over a clacking wooden loom. She caught the tapered block as it emerged and tossed it back again almost faster than the eye could register.

  Out on the street numerous small children wound thread on shuttles as they ran about. In their wandering they had to duck between clusters of donkeys and mules that almost blocked all traffic through the village center. These animals, equipped with pack saddles, were about to be led off to the mines at Yellow Mill. There they would pick up coal and haul it to Changchih. In charge were two peasants of a mutual-aid production group whose members made the animals available for transport work while they themselves were preoccupied with other tasks.

  Keeping a watchful eye on the pack animals were several boys with small iron forks and wide wicker baskets shaped like clam shells. Into these baskets they deftly gathered any manure dropped by the animals and carried it off to their father’s cistern where it supplemented the family store of night soil and promised an increase in next year’s crop.

  Peddlers pushed with difficulty down the crowded street. Here a man with a heavy load of pottery balanced on a high-wheeled barrow sold the produce of a mutual-aid group in Licheng, a county town more than 40 miles to the east. There a lean hawker shouldered a carrying pole laden with slabs of ink individually wrapped in coarse yellow paper. He too represented a mutual-aid group made up of ten poor peasants in Wuan County who made writing materials in the slack season.

  In the village square, carts from the mountain counties laden with coal, ore, hemp, dried persimmons, walnuts, live pigs, wool, and other highland products on their way to southern markets locked hubs with similar carts from the Yellow River Valley laden with reed mats, bamboo chairs, raw bamboo poles, and other lowland produce bound for the mountains. Every table in the village inn was jammed with carters. They consumed great bowls of broth in which floated strips of mutton and fat cracklings obtained from the fat-tailed sheep that were the property of still another mutual-aid group. By marketing their meat locally the group members earned far more than they would have by taking it to the county town. The men eating the broth carried with them tales of production achievements from widely scattered villages and unconsciously stimulated further mutual-aid efforts in the communities through which they passed.

  Such variety and intensity of productive effort had never before been experienced, certainly not within living memory. The boom could be attributed to two main sources.

  On the one hand, it was the natural result of the fact that every peasant had, at last, some land to till, some equipment with which to work, and the prospect of a good crop. The fact that the crop would go into his own jars and bins and not into the storerooms of some landlord or usurer greatly enhanced the incentive to produce. The increased yields that resulted expanded per capita income and with it purchasing power. This in turn stimulated the rebirth of hundreds of slack-season handicraft products which again in their turn increased both income and purchasing power.

  On the other hand, the boom was stimulated by the planned policies and determined organizing effort of Communist Party committees, government administrators, financial institutions, and the leaders of mass organizations at all levels.

  Mutual-aid groups for labor exchange on the land and the pooling of resources for subsidiary occupations did not simply appear. They were organized and promoted on a vast scale. The whole purpose of the land distribution, as envisioned by the Communist Party, was to remove the fetters that bound production, to release the energy and enthusiasm of the peasants, and to lay the basis for a transition from “individual labor based on an individual economy to collective labor based on a collective economy.” Once the question of land ownership was settled the mutual-aid movement—the embryonic form of co-operation in production—was considered to be the key to progress in the rural areas.

  Mao spoke many times of the two great “organizings”—organize to overthrow feudalism and organize to increase production. One without the other was futile. Mutual aid, labor exchange, and coperation in production were impossible on any large scale as long as landlord-tenant relations predominated. Where one man owned all the means of production—the land, the implements and the draft animals—and the other man owned only his own two hands, there were no grounds for getting together. There was no basis for exchange. The rich man simply hired the poor man. Once the sharp attack on the landlords and rich peasants had created a community in which all families held approximately equal amounts of land, implements, and livestock—mutual aid, labor exchange, and co-operation began to sprout up on every side.

  In the Taihang Mountains in 1946 and 1947, mutual aid was not only relatively easy to initiate, it was absolutely necessary if the peasants were to produce at all. There simply were not enough carts, donkeys, oxen, seeders, or even iron hoes to go around. In order to produce, people had to share. Mutual aid was necessary for still another reason. Primitive as the means of production were, no family could afford to have a complete set of the implements and draft animals necessary for production. One good mule could farm 20 acres. But no family owned as much as 20 acres, or even half that much. The largest holding in all of Long Bow was a little more than eight acres for a family of nine people. Even this large family could not use all the productive capacity of one mule. If they had tried to keep a mule and a cart and a plow and a harrow and a seeder, the capital investment would have been grossly out of proportion to the production possible on eight acres of land. Therefore a family that owned a mule was not likely to own the other essential implements, not even a cart, even though the latter was used as much for transport on the roads as it was for agriculture.

  Since there were not enough draft animals and implements to go around and since the landholdings were too small to engage efficiently any complete set of equipment, it was essential that people get together, swap and share what they had, and help each other out. Labor exchange, which had existed in China for thousands of years on a spontaneous but limited basis, suddenly became a great agricultural movement.

  Yang Chung-sheng, a landowning Long Bow peasant with a large family to feed, led the best-organized local mutual-aid group. Starting with five families who joined together of their own accord in 1946, it soon grew to include 22 families who owned a total of over 80 acres of land. Among the earlier members were four soldiers’ dependants and two families without able-bodied members who had been left out by other groups. But even this dead weight did not dampen enthusiasm. The group produced so well that new families constantly applied for membership. As finally constituted the 22-family constellation mustered 12 able-bodied men, two “half-labor-power” children, and two “half-labor-power” old people for field work. In spite of the fact that they had a very large area to till per man, they were always the first to finish any work, whether planting, plowing, hoeing, or harvesting. This was because they got along well and helped each other out, not only in the fields but also in solving all problems of livelihood. For example, Li P’an-ming, the peasant who was director of public affairs for the whole village, fell sick just at planting time. He was not able to get up off his k’ang. The group met to discuss what to do and decided that they would tend his land without asking anything in return as long as he was sick. They agreed that they would not even accept meals in his home. At the same time, because Li P’an-ming was short of grain, the group loaned him enough to tide him over until the summer harvest. Before Li got well the first hoeing had been completed. The group told him that he could pay them back another year if he wanted
to, but in fact they never recorded the work done and never demanded payment. Thus all of Li P’an-ming’s problems were solved. This greatly encouraged the other members of the group, for they realized that if they were ever in trouble they too could get help. Their morale rose. They all worked harder than before and at the end of the year were chosen as the model team in the village.

  Aside from the fact that the members of Yang Chung-sheng’s team were good friends to begin with, they attributed their success to the fact that they organized well, met often, discussed every problem thoroughly and worked out a good system of keeping records so that the exchange of labor time balanced out in the long run. Yang never tried to tell the group what to do. When they met they talked things over and only when they agreed did they act. They always tilled the land of soldiers’ dependents first, asking only their meals in return. Families without manpower paid wages for all work done, but the group did not demand that these wages be paid at once. Those who had no grain could wait until after the harvest to settle up. A committee of four was elected to report on all hours put in and on all exchanges of implements and draft power. One member who could write and figure on the abacus was appointed to tally up the accounts. At the end of every period—that is, planting, hoeing, harvesting, etc.—a balance sheet was drawn up and a settlement made. Everyone paid up what he owed except those who were in difficult circumstances and needed more time. This satisfied all participants and helped to maintain morale at a high level.

  The group met briefly every evening to plan the next day’s work. When the cocks began to crow before dawn, no time was wasted in consultation. Everyone went straight to the field without having to be called. When the six animals possessed by the group members were not needed in the fields, they were taken by their owners on transport work that was individually planned and executed. In other words, the group did not try to pool all the activities of its members. They worked together where the advantage was greatest and went their separate ways where that was more suitable. To add to their winter production they pooled their resources to set up a beancurd plant. They hired an old peasant, Ch’un-ching, who had just come from the old people’s home in the Catholic compound at Kao Settlement, to work there full time.

  In the fall of 1947, elections were held throughout the Taihang for model peasants and workers. Among the six chosen to go from Long Bow to the district elimination meeting was Yang Chung-sheng. None of the Long Bow contingent was chosen to represent the district at the county or Border Region level. Nevertheless, the meeting did inspire them to organize further production groups.

  When Yang returned he and the Long Bow blacksmith, Huan-ch’ao, helped to set up a co-operative carpentry shop. The village still held a sizable quantity of wood that had been confiscated from the gentry but had not been distributed. It also had available more than a hundred pounds of iron. This wood and iron, plus some tens of thousands of Border Region dollars (1,000=$1, U. S. currency) were loaned by the village office to Chung-sheng and Huan-ch’ao as operating capital. All the carpenters in the village were invited to join them. Eleven of the 14 agreed to come in. Together with Huan-ch’ao the blacksmith, and Li Lao-szu the stone mason, this constituted a membership of 13.

  Whenever work was slack on the land these 13 gathered in one of the big empty rooms of the “foreign house,” as the big brick compound formerly owned by absentee general Hsu was known, and fashioned things of wood—shovels for use in winnowing grain, hubs for cart wheels, cart bodies, chairs, tables. At first they were not able to make whole wheels because Huan-ch’ao did not know how to fashion or shrink on the iron hoops that held the wheel together. But a request for help was sent to the county Workers’ Union and two experts were immediately assigned to Long Bow to teach Huan-ch’ao all that he needed to know. They stayed for a month, made sure that the blacksmith learned the whole process from beginning to end, and then returned to Lucheng.

  The co-owners of the carpentry shop were paid on a point system according to their skill. The blacksmith got the most points—98. The seasoned carpenters got 80 points. Li Lao-szu who was really a stone mason got 79 points (they were lenient with him because he was poor), and one young apprentice got 48. From the total gross income of the shop, expenses were first subtracted. These included the wood, the iron, and the other materials used to make implements and carts, plus the food and fuel used to make the meals which the men shared while at work. Twenty percent of the net income was then turned over to the village in payment for the capital put in from public funds. The remaining money was divided according to the points allotted each man. When the accounts were settled, the members found that they made only about three sheng of millet a day as against the seven that could usually be earned by a good carpenter working on his own.* This did not make them very happy but they reasoned that anyway they had steady work. Many a carpenter, though he got seven sheng a day, could not find work each day, and so in the long run came out no better. Granting credit also lowered their earnings. Since the purpose of the carpentry shop and of the whole production movement was to help poor peasants fanshen, these poor carpenters undertook to build carts and implements for many families that could not afford to pay cash. As a result they had many accounts outstanding in both Long Bow and other nearby villages. If they could collect all these funds, their earnings would almost double. There were even a number of prosperous peasants who had bought things that they could afford to pay cash for but hadn’t because, they said, “Others don’t pay; why should we?”

  In spite of all these problems, the carpentry shop flourished, technique improved, orders grew, and more and more products were turned out each month. Wood supplies soon ran low. Then the co-operators had to make a journey to Fu Village in the distant Western Mountains, where they bought standing trees, cut them down with hand tools, and hauled them home by cart. Later, the logs were cut into boards and billets with bucksaws, one man standing high in the air on top of the braced log while another man stood on the ground below him. Each day spent on such work earned the worker three sheng of millet.

  Mutual-aid type organization was not confined to work on the land or to the labor of male craftsmen. Women also organized mutual-aid groups, most of which concentrated on textile production. Because of the inroads of machine-made textiles in the previous decades, many wives and mothers no longer knew how or had never learned to make cloth from raw cotton in the home. The Women’s Association therefore had to start from the beginning with a spinning and weaving class whose students, coming from dozens of families, lived together in the “Foreign House” of General Hsu, and learned by doing. Once the students became proficient they transformed their class into a spinning and weaving group rather than return to their homes for individual production. This was because the women, young and old, found it much more congenial to work together in a large group than to sit isolated in their homes endlessly spinning or pushing a shuttle. Also, when one worked alone at home, it was easy to fall asleep early in the evening and thus shorten the hours of work. By meeting together, exchanging gossip, studying, and singing, the long evenings passed quickly and productively. Some husbands and fathers soon complained over the absence of their women from home for such extended periods. When complaints could no longer be ignored, the women compromised by working at home during the day and with the group in the “Foreign House” in the evening.

  I have no record of the amount or value of the cotton cloth which this one large Long Bow group created, but a similar group of 70 women in another Taihang village won region-wide recognition by producing enough textiles in one season to buy 55 sheep, 35 pigs, two draft animals, and farm implements worth $335 in U. S. currency.

  Almost as important as mutual aid in stimulating production was the new tax system introduced on the heels of land reform by the Border Region Government. The new regulations as they finally crystallized out of a very confused situation constituted what was known as “The Proportionate Single-Tax System with Exemptions.”* The old
tax system, when it did not simply take everything that police and troops could find, penalized the conscientious producer by demanding a fixed proportion of the actual crop harvested. The bigger the crop, the bigger the tax. The new tax system reversed this and rewarded the conscientious producer by basing its demands not on the actual crop harvested in the current year, but on the average amount harvested in previous seasons. What was taxed was not the land as such or the crop as such but standard mou. A standard mou was defined as any amount of land that yielded 10 tou (one tou =0.285 bushels) of millet. To determine how many standard mou a man possessed one only had to calculate his annual average yield in tou and divide by ten. The tax that he paid was set as a proportion of this standard. Anyone who worked hard, applied new methods and increased his yields, paid no tax on that part of the crop exceeding the fixed standard no matter how large it was, and this was true for a definite number of years. If, for instance, a peasant dug a well, irrigated his fields, and thereby doubled his crops, this made no difference at all to his tax base until three years had passed. Similiar provisions rewarded other forms of effort such as reclamation.

  All crops grown on virgin land (land uncropped for more than six years) were tax free for three years. Crops grown on reclaimed land (land uncropped for any period up to six years) were tax free for two years.

  To guarantee that all families retained enough grain after taxes to survive (a matter with which the old regime had never concerned itself), the yield from one standard mou, or 2.85 bushels of millet per capita was entirely exempted from all taxation. These exemption provisions were similar to the $600 exemptions of the United States federal income tax law. However, the Border Region tax regulations went the United States one better in this respect. Oxen and donkeys were granted an exemption equal to 40 percent of a standard mou, or 1.14 bushels of millet, while horses and mules were granted 70 percent, or 1.9 bushels, thus guaranteeing a minimum of food for livestock as well as for their masters.