collectivization in the countryside 1950-1953: land reform, “honeymoon” period removes...

Collectivization in the Countryside

• 1950-1953: Land Reform, “Honeymoon” Period

Removes traditional rural elitesRestoration of marketsDistributes land to all individualsDoes not: Increase agricultural production

Mutual Aid Teams

• Mutual Aid Teams (MAT)A voluntary policyFarmers encouraged to pool resources—tools,

labor, farm animals—to increase productionLand still privately ownedTypically involve 5-15 families

Small Agricultural Producer Cooperatives (APC)

• Land Still Privately Owned, but pooled and collectively farmed.

• Distribution of harvest (profit) based on combination of your land contribution and labor contribution

• 20-40 families• Hope was that by 1957, 1/3 of agricultural

households would be in small APC

Large Agricultural Producer Cooperatives

• NOT voluntary• abolished land ownership• rewards for labor input, not land input• Highly unpopular

Towards Disaster: Carrying out the “Great Leap Forward”

• Return to the core qualities of revolution loved by Mao—speed, rural focus, mass action

• China= “poor and blank”—this is powerful, not negative

• People power, not industrial/bureaucratic expertise will propel China to a utopian future

People’s Communes

• Highest stage of collectivization in the countryside=communes

• Comprise many villages, tens of thousands of people• Elimination of ALL private property, destruction of

ALL rural markets, elimination of money.• “to each according to their needs”—the state

provides for all—no matter what you do!

Famine

• No food= 30 MILLION DEATHS between 1959 and 1961

• A state-created, nation-wide catastrophe• People forced to eat bark, grass, finally dirt,

and even other people