The Great Leap Backward

Mao Tse-tung's proudest contribution to Communist theory was the commune. Undreamed of by Marx or Engels, the commune was designed to mobilize China's peasant masses into huge work units, was a sharp point of dispute between Moscow and Mao. "Impracticably Utopian," said the Russian orthodoxy. Retorted Mao: "The best form of organization for the attainment of socialism and the gradual transition to Communism." But after nearly three years of all-out effort, it is apparent that Mao's communes have failed. They are now being abandoned, in fact if not in name.

The first commune was formed in April 1958 by the merciless amalgamation of 10,000 families from 27 smaller collective farms in Honan province. Tough young cadres divided men and women into "production brigades." Members turned all their private property over to the state.

They ate in mess halls and sent their children to communal nurseries, thus "liberating"' most of the women from household chores and enabling them to join the antlike columns of workers marching out to the fields from the ceaseless daily morning formation.

Undermine the Family. The cadres, eager to please Mao. set improbably high targets, kept workers in the fields from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m., and during the planting season even longer. By the end of 1958, in the historic "Great Leap Forward," some 550 million peasants in 740.000 cooperatives were swallowed up in 26.500 communes. "We must undermine the capitalist type of social living," said the official Communist organ. Red Flag, "We must undermine the family."

But neither the capitalist type of social living nor the family was so easily undermined. As early as December 1958, party brass noted the growing discontent and cut the workday to twelve hours. They also returned a small portion of the expropriated land to its former peasant owners, together with a small red card that bore the inscription: "This private plot of land belongs to your family permanently, and crops grown on it shall be disposed of by you only."

In April of 1959, a secret meeting of the Communist Central Committee decided to shift the focus away from the commune and concentrate on small, village-size "operation squads," each squad with its own mess hall, nurseries and private plots of land. Further retreat came in August of 1959, when the village "production brigade" became, in theory, the basic unit, and commune members were allowed to keep such possessions as houses, clothing, bicycles, blankets and radios. Parents could even decide for themselves whether they wanted their children to be sent off to boarding schools and communal nurseries.

Basic Brigades. Last month. Minister of Agriculture Liao Lu-yen, in the doublethink mirror language beloved by Chinese Communists, signaled a new leap backward. Most notable of Liao's "perfections and consolidations" of the commune system:P: "Commune members are encouraged to take up family side occupations and to keep domestic animals and fowl."P: "If labor power is to be rationally used and labor productivity is to be raised, commune members must be assured of proper rest." P: The Communist cornerstone, "To each according to his need," has given way to a new Peking dictum: "From each according to his ability, and to each according to his work." The party cadres will lose nearly all their former power over the peasants.

They can "make suggestions to the production brigades, but may not arbitrarily set output targets, mechanically arrange the crop acreage, and rigidly introduce technical measures." Conceded China Youth: "What is now in practice is not the commune ownership system . . . ownership by the production brigade is basic." Moreover, cadres are being urged to throw away the book and seek guidance from China's long-forgotten elders, the "wise old peasants." Such pronouncements are for internal consumption only. To Moscow and the free world alike, Peking fiercely maintains that the communes are booming successes. A 160-page book, People's Communes in Pictures, issued last week in 17 languages, boasted that the commune is "the social organization of the socialist present and the Communist future."

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