Since the net income rule was, at best, an approximation, it was a more common practice to judge directly from gross income. In the example given, the gross income from all sources equalled 40 hundredweight. The most that this family could receive in exploitative income and still be classed as middle peasants was ten hundredweight. Ten divided by 40 equals one quarter of the gross. By such figuring, a third rule of thumb was arrived at. This could be called the one-quarter-of-gross-income rule. Any family whose exploitative income did not exceed one quarter of its gross income was a middle peasant family. If exploitative income exceeded one quarter of gross income, the family must be classed as rich peasants.
Careful study of this last rule of thumb showed that when it was applied to the exploitative income from hired labor it did not work very well. It has already been stated that two thirds of gross income represented capital expenses and one third represented surplus value, profit or net income. Imagine now the hypothetical case of a peasant who hires labor equal to his own and together the two producers create 30 hundredweight of grain. Together they produce a net income equal to one third of the gross. Each of them is responsible for half of this or five hundredweight. The net income from exploitation thus turns out to be one sixth, rather than one fourth of the gross income. Yet on the basis of labor hired and on the basis of one-half-of-net income, this peasant has already reached the top limit allowed for any middle peasant.
To resolve this problem it was the practice, when figuring net income from hired labor, to leave out of the equation the fixed capital expenses and figure only the wages. According to figures from the numerous studies mentioned above, constant capital or fixed expenses in agricultural production in China amounted to one quarter of the annual outlay, and variable capital, or wage expenses, amounted to three quarters. The variable capital was therefore the main item in the cost of production. By leaving out the constant or fixed capital costs entirely, total expenses could be reduced from two thirds to only one half of gross income.
By this method of figuring, the net income resulting from each of two equal laborers on the land amounted to one quarter of the gross. Returning to our original example, the net income produced by the two men can now be estimated as equal to 15 hundredweight. Each of them is responsible for half of this or 7½ hundredweight. This is equal to one quarter of the gross. Thus we arrive at a figure comparable to the one arrived at when all exploitative income is received in the form of rents or interest payments. By this method, net income, whether derived from hired labor, rent, or interest, could be equated across the board and the one-quarter-of-gross-income rule could be used in every case as the criterion for determining whether any given family was to be classed with the people or with their oppressors.
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The shift in the line dividing the middle from the rich peasants was made even more emphatic in the new regulations by other supplementary measures that also tended to enlarge the united front. One of these was a modification of the base period rule. The three years prior to the Liberation of the village (1942-1945 for Long Bow) were taken as the base years, as before, but any family had to have status as an exploiter for the full three years in order to be classed as a rich peasant or a landlord. Those who lived the life of a poor peasant or a middle peasant for as little as 12 months prior to Liberation were classed as poor peasants or middle peasants even if they had previously been landlords.
A third innovation had to do with labor power. The new regulations stipulated that families possessing land and property equal to that of rich peasants but who were lacking in labor power and therefore unable to maintain living standards superior to those of middle peasants, should not be classed as rich peasants if they lived under such conditions for three years or more, but as middle peasants, or even as poor peasants, depending on the actual conditions of their life. This rule took the pressure off those rich peasant widows who, because they lacked able-bodied men in the family, were not able to make use of the capital they owned.
A fourth innovation had just the opposite effect. It narrowed down the united front by penalizing families with above-average holdings, regardless of whether they rented them out, tilled them with hired labor, or tilled them with family labor. The decision to penalize families with above-average holdings was based on the Marxist theory of rent. As stated in Paragraph Eight, Chapter Six of a publication entitled Decisions Concerning the Differentiation of Class Status in the Countryside, 1948:
The rent received by the landlord is neither a return for his own labor nor a return on his own investment. It is an entirely feudal exploitation based on land ownership alone. It is created by the whole of the peasant’s surplus labor (labor expended beyond that necessary for a minimum standard of living) and a part of the peasant’s necessary labor (labor necessary to maintain a minimum standard of living). The landlord is thus a parasite on society who takes no part in production. By his feudal possession, at least in part, of the peasant’s own person (this special power of the landlord is reflected in politics by the Kuomintang reactionary clique’s denial of civil liberties to the people of the whole nation), he has been the fundamental obstruction to the growth of China’s agricultural and industrial productive forces for a long time.
That part of the rent referred to as having been created by “the whole of the peasants’ surplus labor” is that part generally known as “differential rent”—rent which represents the difference between the crop harvested on any given piece of land and the crop harvested on the poorest land currently under cultivation. That part of the rent referred to as having been created by “a part of the peasant’s necessary labor” is that part known as “absolute rent”—rent extracted from those who labor by virtue of the fact that land is limited. Those who claimed ownership of the land were in fact monopolists able to levy tribute for the use of it simply because the landless had no alternative.
It followed from this that the mere fact of land ownership enabled any owner to extract a certain amount of unearned income from his land—the absolute rent. This income, whether extracted by a poor peasant, a middle peasant, or a rich peasant was no different in nature from the income of a landlord who did no work at all, and was therefore classed as feudal in character.
The regulations issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party considered only surplus land (land held in excess of the per capita average in the community) significant as a source of absolute rent. Thus in Chapter Seven of the above-quoted Decisions, we find the following: “Some peasants occupy more land than the average of the village; hence their gross income derives in part from land ownership which is feudal in character and can be said to be the same as the rent taken by a landlord. The more land they occupy the more rent income they get.”
In order to take into account this special form of exploitation, families with above-average holdings were subject to supplementary regulations as follows:. “(1) Any family which holds more than twice the average land held by the middle peasants of the area shall have its rate of exploitation doubled. (2) Any family which holds more than three times the amount of land held by the middle peasants shall have its rate of exploitation quadrupled.”
To double the exploitation rate meant to multiply by two the net income received from exploitative sources before calculating whether or not such income exceeded one quarter of gross income. For example: a family in Long Bow with two acres per capita, or twice the average land holding, even if it received only four out of 30 hundredweight from rent, interest, or the hiring of labor, must be classed as a rich peasant family because that four hundredweight had now to be doubled when figuring the rate of exploitation and the resulting figure (eight) amounted to more than one quarter of the gross income (30).
To make matters even more complex, other regulations regarding above-average holdings had an effect just the reverse of those quoted above. Single people living alone and old couples without labor power were allowed up to twice as much land as others with
out incurring any penalty in the determination of their class status.
For old couples this provided a form of social security. The produce from extra land enabled them to hire whatever work was necessary for crop production and still have enough left over to live themselves. For single people, the extra land filled a similar need. It enabled a man to hire the kind of services—like cooking, sewing, and housekeeping—ordinarily supplied by a wife; it enabled a woman to hire the labor in the fields ordinarily supplied by a husband.
The distinction between middle peasants and rich peasants was by no means the only social division defined with precision in the class standards issued in 1948. There were many paragraphs on landlords, on the difference between landlords and rich peasants, on the difference between managing landlords and ordinary landlords, and on the difference between new-type managing landlords and old-type managing landlords, on the question of tenants who were also exploiters of labor, on the distinction between new rich peasants and old rich peasants, and many others. But since the most important thing in the spring of that year was to gather into the popular alliance all forces that could legitimately be gathered in and to leave out as objects of attack those forces that could not possibly be drawn in, most of the time at the County Land Reform Conference was spent in studying the regulations on the dividing line between middle and rich peasants, and the proper way in which to determine it.
This question has been gone into in some detail both because of its intrinsic importance and because such an exposition may give some idea of the extraordinary thoroughness with which the work team cadres at the County Conference studied these questions. They not only examined the theoretical propositions, but they also practiced with hypothetical cases and tested each other until they understood all facets of this aspect of the classification standards and their application.
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The appearance of new class standards meant that every family in the 11 basic villages had to be classified all over again and, in order to insure that no mistakes were made, must be classified not only once more, but three times, each time at a different level.
The County Secretary outlined the work to be done as follows:
(1) Establish a solid Poor Peasants’ League.
(2) Have the League membership classify the village.
(3) Establish a strong Provisional Peasants’ Association.
(4) Have the Provisional Peasants’ Association membership classify the village again.
(5) Elect a Village Congress.
(6) Have the Congress classify the village for the third and final time.
To the tzu pao kung i (self report, public appraisal) slogan of the earlier stage a new phrase was added: san pang ting an (three times and then decide).
After each separate classification all those families who did not agree to the class in which they were placed had the right of appeal. From the decision of the League they could appeal to the Association (once that had been established), and from the decision of the Association they could appeal to the Village Congress (once that had been elected). If the decision of the Congress was still not acceptable, the family had the right of appeal to the County Government. There all problems of class status were finally to be decided. The decision of the County Government was declared to be irreversible.
“This means,” said Secretary Ch’en, “that we must explain, discuss, report, evaluate, classify, post results; explain, discuss, and report—again and again. This is very troublesome, very difficult, very time consuming. But the people do not find it troublesome because it fixes their fate. This is the most important work of the whole movement. He who leads the classification holds the knife in his hand. If you class a middle peasant as a rich peasant, it is as serious as killing him. You push the family into the enemy camp. You violate the policy of uniting with the middle peasants to isolate the enemy. If, on the other hand, you classify a landlord as a middle peasant, you protect a landlord. You clasp a viper to your bosom. You violate the policy of destroying feudalism.”
The line drawn according to the new standards and delineated with so much care was bound to have disturbing results. It was a foregone conclusion that many families once called rich peasants, perhaps even landlords, would turn out to be nothing more than middle peasants after all. Many tou cheng tui hsiang (objects of struggle) who had been expropriated must inevitably be transformed into ts’o tou te chung nung (wrongly-struggled middle peasants).
Secretary Ch’en pointed this out as clearly and emphatically as he could and stated that when such families were found they must not only be reclassed and returned to the big family of the people in the records; they must also be repaid, re-established on the land and converted to their former middle peasant status in fact. The excesses of the past must be corrected. If the original property taken from them could not be gathered together and returned, then property of equivalent value must be given them. This was a must. It was an obligation that could neither be avoided nor evaded.
“If anyone in our group thinks that this is too much trouble,” Secretary Ch’en warned, “if he doesn’t work correctly and patiently, he is working for Chiang Kai-shek. He is isolating himself. He is helping American imperialism.”
As the necessity to repay the “wrongly-struggled middle peasants” pushed its way into the consciousness of the land reform cadres their morale was shaken more deeply than ever before. In the first place, it was clear that they themselves and their colleagues were responsible for all such excesses. Had they not been village leaders during the period when the land was divided? In the second place, they did not see where all the land and property was going to come from. Were there not hundreds of families of poor peasants in the basic villages who still had not fanshened? To this number must now be added a dozen, perhaps two dozen families per village that required repayment. Where was all the “patching material” to come from?
This question, which was in fact a key one, did not emerge as clearly from the ten-day-old conference as its importance warranted. In spite of the emphasis placed by Secretary Ch’en on the middle peasant question, restitution tended, in the context of the whole conference, to be equated with many other tasks: plowing, planting, and hoeing must not be neglected; a permanent Poor Peasants’ League must be organized; the village Communists must be helped to assume a leading role once again; those who had not yet passed the gate must be given another chance to do so; apologies must be offered to cadres who had been arrested; poor peasants who had not yet fanshened must take the lead; women must be encouraged. Alongside all these tasks that of reclassifying and repaying “wrongly-struggled middle peasants” emerged as one single facet of a many-faceted job. To an individual unable to distinguish which tasks were more and which less important, the whole complex of what had to be done appeared confused, even contradictory.
If the earlier emphasis had been on the first of Mao’s principles (“satisfy the demands of the poor and hired peasants”), now the second of them (“there must be firm unity with the middle peasants, and their interests must not be damaged”) had been brought into focus. Since, as has already been pointed out, the two principles embodied a contradiction, the job before the cadres appeared much more difficult than ever before. Few felt confident that they could carry their work to a successful conclusion.
In his final speech Secretary Ch’en made one last effort to overcome the uncertainty and hesitancy of the cadres.
On the crucial question of their own day-to-day livelihood and the livelihood of their families he first assured them that concrete steps would be taken to guarantee all necessary aid at home to full-time political workers. He blamed the “Leftist” attitude of the cadres leading production work for the hardships thus far encountered. “They have absorbed the sectarian spirit of the poor peasant line and despise old cadres, even hate them. This is quite wrong. The county administration has decided to help you, so don’t worry. As for those who are sick, don’t worry either. Just find the d
octor, buy the medicine, and the county office will pay the bills.”
Secretary Ch’en then launched into a head-on attack against the lack of Communist spirit among the conference participants. “Some cadres say, ‘We are treated worse than the landlord struggle objects.’ But how can landlords and revolutionary cadres be compared? This outlook is entirely wrong. If you yourself are a landlord and oppose the revolution, then of course you will become an object of struggle. If not, then to compare yourself with such a person means you only look down upon yourself.
“Of course we have shortcomings in our working methods. Leftism has had a bad influence, but this is only temporary, a shortcoming of our method. This is not our policy. Why should we be discouraged by temporary phenomena?”
He swept the room with a long glance and looked straight into the eyes of one man after another. “I want to ask you a question,” he said, warming up for battle. “Why do we live in this world? Is it just to eat and sleep and lead a worthless life? That is the landlord and rich peasant point of view. They want to enjoy life, waste food and clothes, and beget children. But a Communist works not only for his own life. He has offered everything to the service of his class. If he finds one poor brother still suffering from hunger and cold, he has not done his duty. Anyone who is concerned only with himself lacks the fundamental standards necessary for a Party member. Right now several comrades are thinking, ‘Life is easier at home. Why not leave this work and go home?’ But think it over. Who led your fanshen? From where did the ‘fruits’ come? Such thinking is typical of those who have forgotten their class. A good Communist, whenever he meets personal difficulties, thinks of others’ difficulties. If you haven’t understood that during the purification meetings, you should understand it now. If you want to go home, you can go home. But give some thought to your future. Where is the man so benighted he no longer has any political needs? Anyone who has no political demands cannot be said to be fully alive. Even the most abject villager is upset when he cannot join the Poor Peasants’ League. But you Communist Party members, have you no political demands? If you give up your duty now and return home, will the people want you back in the League or Association? Wouldn’t it be reasonable for them to say that you have no desire to serve the masses, hence no reason to join their League?
Fanshen Page 54
