Why Maoism Works

Examples of working socialism

Under Mao their were favorable growth rates in the Chinese economy, and even the CIA acknowledged this. In less than four years, Maoist policies had turned small, private farms into cooperatives. This increased agricultural production. Then the People’s Communes were formed, and they more than doubled the food grain output. Poor and lower-middle peasants were big fans of these communes.

Industry became less lopsided and grew to meet the needs of Chinese national and military construction. Agriculture was mechanized rapidly also. By 1973, 90% of the counties in China had repair shops for agricultural machinery. Electricity consumption and tractor use increased. Land plowed by machines increased by 70 percent.

Chinese technology excelled and precision tools were built in China without outside help. China became the first country in the world to successfully synthesize insulin and build a working double internal water-cooling turbogenerator. China’s communications, transportation, commerce, banking, finance, cultural, and educational endeavors rapidly advanced. The cultural and educational level of the Chinese people increased too.

The Taching (Daqing) oil field, once an empty field of nothing, was set up in about three years. They didn’t have much equipment when doing it, but they established a first-class oil field. Construction on the oil field began in 1959. Under Mao, China was pretty much self-sufficient in oil products since 1963.

The Chinese currency was stabilized and more and more countries began to use it as a means of calculating prices in international accounting.

New values and ways of thinking and attitudes were forged. The Cultural Revolution changed the masses world outlook to a more united and socialist one. This crushes the old bourgeois lie of how people are naturally greedy.

Here is an unorthodox example (that has nothing to do with China). Canutillo was destroyed by the fighting going on in Mexico, then Pancho Villa took over Canutillo. He applied a collective system of work, and the town was repaired in less than three years. Three years was quick for back then. Canutillo became economically productive and self-sufficient in every respect. It had also acquired many conveniences that were modern at the time.

How Maoism Works and Leads to Communism

Workers and peasants democratically elect managers, and managers can be recalled by the workers. Managers also take part in labor. Government cadres take part in labor as well. This helps restrict bureaucracy, dogmatism, and bourgeois right. It also helps resolve worker-manager contradictions and helps eradicate the difference between mental and manual labor. Maoism also encourages criticism of bureaucrats and capitalist roaders in the Communist Party. An example is Mao Zedong’s “Bombard the Headquarters” comment and the big-character posters.

Strong, centralized leadership in economic planning must be combined with local initiatives. The central leadership must consult the local ones, and it must take into account local conditions. That is how it will come up with plans. The individual enterprises will have decentralized management, and will use state funds, based on what they need to do, to produce according to the state’s plan. Expectancies must not be set too high. Reasonable plans can often, but not always, be over-fulfilled. This will arouse the enthusiasm of the masses. The masses must discuss the lines of the plan, and mass movements must be launched.

“…trusts and factories have been founded on a self-supporting basis precisely in order that they themselves should be responsible…for their enterprises working without a deficit.” - Lenin

Private, small scale means of production (especially farms) are turned into cooperatives, then into communes. This will increase production. Due to the elimination of competition, enterprises better cooperate with each other. This better concentrates resources and manpower. It increases production, finishes projects and developments quicker, and can overcome weaknesses in the national economy. Through Marxist emulation in production, the ever increasing needs of the people are met and the level of technology is raised. Of course, the people could also request new technology be developed for whatever purposes.

Workers for agriculture are very important. The right number of agricultural workers must be secured before anything else. This is because agriculture produces a lot of food and raw materials for heavy and light industry. Maoism aims to mechanize agriculture in order to produce more and free up workers for other work, mainly expanding the other means of production. The mechanization of agriculture helps to eliminate the difference between urban and rural.

Industry must be distributed rationally in every area and the poorer areas better funded. To develop heavy industry, emphasis is put on expanding agriculture and light industry. Light industry and agriculture provide funds and markets for heavy industry and help make the development of heavy industry more stable. Light industry and agriculture also improve the livelihood of the people.

The state will regulate prices in money relations between agriculture and industry in order to restrict bourgeois right. The positive side of the law of value is used to set prices rationally and make plans based on actual conditions. The state must also improve production methods, lower production costs, and implement economic accounting. Democratic methods will be used to solve financial matters.

The production of value will be subordinate to the production of use value. This further restricts bourgeois right.

Unlike in capitalism, overproduction isn’t a problem because the consumption of the masses doesn’t go down. It steadily increases as national construction expands. This is because the socialist system creates jobs, to put it plainly. Production in the socialist state enterprise is not subject to fluctuations according to the level of prices and magnitude of profit. This is because the national plan decides how much to produce, and production plans are based on the growing needs of the people and state. Any losses are made up by planned subsidies. Only the amount of paper money needed for circulation will be printed.

Sources:

Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism: The Shanghai Textbook edited by Raymond Lotta

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