How to treat the land reform movement correctly

In recent years, there have been voices questioning the necessity and legitimacy of land reform from time to time. For example, the landlord is not a character like Zhou Pipi in the novel Midnight Cockcrow. In fact, some of them are thrifty and kind, and some are enthusiastic about educating and helping the poor. Landlords renting out their own land is a legal business activity, and there is no problem of exploitation and exploitation. Judging from the development of productive forces, land is concentrated in the hands of landlords. How to treat the land reform movement in those days, this paper tries to talk about some superficial views.

1. What are the landlords and rich peasants like?

Land reform and land reform movement. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the main content of the land reform movement in Chinese mainland was to confiscate the land of the landlord class and distribute it to farmers with little or no land. In fact, land reform and land reform movement are two different concepts. Simply put, land reform is to change the old land system. In this sense, the agrarian revolution during the ten years' civil war, the reduction of rent and interest during War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression's period and the "land to the tiller" during the war of liberation are all contents of the land reform. The land reform movement refers to1May 4th, 946, when the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the instruction on the land issue (that is, the May 4th instruction), which abolished the original feudal land ownership and replaced it with a mass movement of peasant land ownership in the liberated areas led by the * * * production party in China. The land reform movement can be divided into two stages. The first stage is the land reform movement established in New China after the May 4th Movement, mainly in the old liberated areas and semi-old liberated areas (the old liberated areas refer to the liberated areas before the Japanese declared unconditional surrender in 1945 and the semi-old liberated areas refer to the areas liberated before the People's Liberation Army launched a strategic counterattack in July/947); The second stage was the land reform movement in the vast new liberated areas after the Central People's Government passed the Land Reform Law of the People's Republic of China on June 28th, 1950, and it basically ended by the end of 1952.

The division of rural stratum composition. Since the purpose of the land reform movement is to abolish the old feudal land ownership, there is no doubt that its premise is the division of rural class components. There are mainly two opposing classes in rural areas, namely landlords and peasants, and peasants are divided into rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants and farm labourers. What is the standard for dividing landlords and rich peasants? 1933 10, Mao Zedong wrote "How to Analyze the Rural Class", which is defined as: the landlord-who occupies the land and does not work by himself, or only has incidental labor, but makes a living by exploiting farmers. The main way of exploitation is to collect land rent. Loan sharks who rely on usury exploitation as their main source of livelihood and whose living conditions exceed those of ordinary middle peasants should be treated like landlords. Rich peasants-generally occupy land, or own part of the land and lease part, or don't own the land and rent it all. Rich peasants have abundant production tools and activity capital, and take part in labor by themselves, but exploitation of wage labor is part or most of their source of life. According to this definition, the same feature of landlords and rich peasants is exploitation, but the difference is that the main way of landlords' exploitation is to collect land rent, while the main way of rich peasants' exploitation is to hire employees. Although the rich peasants belong to the category of peasant class, this class is exploitative, so people are used to juxtaposing it with landlords and calling it landlords and rich peasants. In fact, rich peasants and landlords are not of the same class. Because landlords and rich peasants exploited in different ways, they had different policies in the land reform movement. Both the May 4th Directive and the Land Reform Law of the People's Republic of China stipulate that the land of landlords shall be confiscated and the land and other property of all rich peasants, yeomen and employees shall be protected. In other words, the policy of preserving the rich peasant economy was adopted in the land reform movement.

After the reform and opening up, the policy of the party and the state towards landlords is not to "rehabilitate" but to "remove the hat". On June1979 65438+1October1day, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China * * * made the decision on the composition of the landlords' rich peasants' roofs and the children of land-rich households. The decision points out that, except for a few who have persisted in their reactionary stance and have not changed so far, all landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries and bad elements who have been law-abiding and honest for many years and have not done bad things have taken off their hats and been treated as members of people's communes after mass appraisal and approval by the county revolutionary committee (later the county people's government-author's note). The landlord's original land was not nationalized as some people accused, but was distributed to farmers who had no land or little land in the land reform movement (mainly poor peasants and farm labourers, and also to the landlord as a way out). In the agricultural cooperative movement carried out in the mid-1950s, the land owned by all classes in rural areas changed from individual ownership to collective ownership of agricultural cooperatives, and did not belong to the state. This is actually a recent fact. Today, the rural land system in China is still collectively owned by farmers.

Second, the concepts of bully and landlord are different, and farmers may become landlords by "making great efforts to get rich".

Speaking of landlords, people naturally think of four people, namely, Zhou Pipi in the novel "Cockcrow at Midnight", Liu in the clay sculpture "Rent Collection House" and Nan Batian in the ballet "Red women soldiers". These are four typical images of landlords created by literary and artistic works in those years, and they are also the deepest memories of many China people for landlords. Accurately speaking, these four artistic images should be called bully landlords, and they are the epitome of bully landlords.

It should be pointed out that a bully and a landlord are two different concepts. 1950 The Decision on Dividing Rural Class Composition issued by the State Council, the Central People's Government, stipulates that a bully refers to "a person who relies on or forms reactionary forces to dominate one side, often oppresses and plunders people by violence and power, and seeks personal gain, resulting in heavy losses to people's lives and property." (Central Literature Research Office: Selected Important Documents Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China, Volume I, Central Literature Publishing House, 1992, p. 406) Bullies, especially bully landlords, are what farmers hate most, but not all bullies are landlords, nor are all landlords bullies. Those who are both landlords and bullies are usually called bullies. After all, among the total number of landlords in China, there are only a few landlords who can be called bullies. According to the survey of that year, they generally only occupy one tenth of the land.

Judging from the class attribute, the landlord is the exploiting class. These people were classified as landlords in the land reform movement, mainly because they used the land they occupied to exploit farmers. But as individual landlords and individuals, their conduct is evil or good, and their character is good or bad, which is different. On the one hand, some landlords may exploit farmers by leasing their land. On the other hand, they will use part of their exploitation income for social welfare and rural charity, and do some good things such as paving the way and running schools. Some landlords do evil, bully men and women, fish their neighbors and become bully landlords. Farmers are not uniform, and there are a few "loafers" who are lazy. On the whole, however, because landlords occupy land, they can live a life of nothing with it; The poor peasants and farm labourers had to rent the land of the landlord and accept the exploitation of the landlord because they had no land or no land at all, so the relationship between the landlord and the poor peasants and farm labourers formed a fundamental class opposition, and the fundamental purpose of the land reform movement was to solve this class contradiction.

It should also be pointed out that some landlords may be ordinary farmers. Due to some accidental opportunities and personal efforts, they gradually accumulated some wealth and bought some land. With the increase of land, they can't farm by themselves, so they rent the land to other farmers and collect land rent. When the local land rent exploitation reaches a certain amount, such farmers will also evolve into landlords. This phenomenon has been analyzed in the investigation of looking for Wu in 1930. At that time, the identity of farmers and landlords had not been fixed. If a landlord goes bankrupt, he may become a poor farmer or even a hired farmer. Ordinary farmers may also be promoted to landlords because of "getting rich" or "getting rich in small businesses". However, once a farmer becomes a landlord, he may still take part in labor or live a frugal life, but he must rent the land to farmers to collect land rent, which is exploitation. His class identity has evolved from ordinary workers to a member of the exploiting class, and his class attributes have undergone fundamental changes.

Three, the landlord concentrated land is not for intensive management and large-scale production.

At present, some people think that from the perspective of productivity development, land concentration in the hands of landlords is conducive to intensive management and large-scale production. Therefore, the landlord class should not be overthrown, and there is no need to change the old land system. For this question, as early as in the "investigation of finding Wu", it was answered with practical and detailed examples. The conclusion of Mao Zedong's investigation is: landlords, with the purpose of "sitting on the sidelines and collecting rent", do not use their land for intensive management and large-scale production, but for renting out profits. Landlords don't care about land improvement and production tools improvement, because they don't work personally and organize production. The purpose of the landlord's possession of land is not to cultivate it himself, but to rent it to farmers and then collect a certain amount of land rent. Since the land has been leased to others for farming, landlords naturally don't have to care too much about land management, nor do they have to care too much about land improvement and improvement of production tools. He is more concerned about the collection of land rent. From this point of view, the landlord concentrated part of the land in his own hands not for intensive management, nor for large-scale production, nor for the improvement of agricultural productivity. Because of this, the May 4th Directive and the Land Reform Law of the People's Republic of China adopted different policies for landlords and rich peasants. From the perspective of whether it is conducive to the development of productive forces, it is not difficult to get the answer whether the landlord class should be overthrown in the revolutionary process.

Related to this, whether rural land is concentrated in the hands of landlords when the land reform movement is carried out is another topic that people talk about more at present. If farmers (or middle peasants) are the main body in rural areas and the land is not concentrated in the hands of landlords, there is no need to adjust the land relationship in rural areas on a large scale through land reform. China is a vast country, so the possession of rural land is naturally different between North China and South China and between Northwest China and South China. In some places, the land concentration is high, and in some places, the land is scattered. Even in the same area, some villages may not have landlords, and some villages have several landlords. As far as the whole country is concerned, the land system at that time was extremely unreasonable, and it was an undeniable fact that there were a large number of farmers with no land to cultivate or insufficient cultivated land.

According to the rural survey made by the famous economist Chen Hansheng in 1930s, among the 146 17 households surveyed in Dingxian County, Hebei Province, 70% of the farmers occupied less than 30% of the total cultivated land. Among the 1565 households in 10 villages surveyed in Baoding, 65% of the farmers have no cultivated land or have insufficient cultivated land. The land concentration in Jiangnan is also very serious. Landlords in Wuxi account for less than 6% of farmers, but 47% of cultivated land. Poor peasants and farm labourers, who account for 69% of the peasant population, only own 14.2% of the land. In Lin 'an County, Zhejiang Province, poor farmers account for 48% of the population, and all cultivated land accounts for only 13%. In Nanyang County, Henan Province in the Central Plains, 65% of the population are poor farmers, and all their cultivated land accounts for only one-fifth of all agricultural land. The poor peasants in Guangdong, who account for 74% of the population, own less than one-fifth of the cultivated land, while the landlords, who account for 2% of the population, own more than half of the cultivated land. However, "the poor peasants in modern China have little hope of increasing their land. Because under the influence of modern economy, the development of private property has lasted for a century. State-owned and public land was plundered by big landlords, who illegally monopolized the land rent. " On the basis of in-depth investigation, chen hansheng wrote the famous investigation report "Land Problems in Modern China". At the beginning of the article, it said, "Farmers need land" and "It is a well-known fact that China's economic structure is based on farmers. However, no less than 65% farmers in rural areas are in urgent need of land for farming, while economists in China believe that farmers can be self-sufficient. In fact, this is far from the truth. Between the Yellow River and the Baihe River Basin, farmers dominate, but most of them, like poor farmers in other places, own all the land. As chen hansheng pointed out: "The contradiction between land ownership and land use mode is the core of modern land problems in China." (Collected Works of Chen Hansheng, China Social Sciences Press, 2002, p. 59, p. 44, p. 37) In this case, it is self-evident that the legitimacy and necessity of solving farmers' land problems through land reform movement.

Fourth, the land reform movement is an effective way to mobilize farmers to participate in the revolution.

Since the failure of the 1927 Great Revolution, China's * * * production party has embarked on the road of encircling cities from rural areas and seizing political power by armed forces, and the establishment of rural base areas has become the main content of this road. There is no doubt that the Chinese production party must mobilize and organize the broad masses of peasants if it wants to carry out revolution in rural areas. Farmers are the most practical. Whether he will take part in the revolution or not can not be solved by a few touching slogans and telling the truth of the revolution. The most fundamental thing is to safeguard his vital interests. The root of farmers' economic exploitation, political oppression, poverty and low social status lies in the unresolved land problem. Therefore, since the establishment of the rural base areas, the China * * * Production Party began to "fight local tyrants and divide the land" to solve the land problem of farmers. As the key to the success of the new-democratic revolution, the land policy of China Production Party is in line with the wishes of farmers. It is precisely because the China * * * production party has solved the land problem that has plagued farmers in China for thousands of years that it has won the sincere support of hundreds of millions of farmers.

After entering War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the Production Party of China made many major policy adjustments to establish and consolidate the anti-Japanese national united front, among which the policy of confiscating landlords' land during the Agrarian Revolution was changed to reducing rent and interest. This is a policy acceptable to both the landlord class and the peasant class. For the broad masses of peasants, resistance to Japan is of course their strong demand, but only by solving their practical difficulties and giving them certain material benefits can their enthusiasm for resistance to Japan be stimulated; For landlords and rich peasants, as members of the Chinese nation and China people, most of them don't want to be conquered people, and they are proud to be traitors, and they also have certain anti-Japanese aspirations. The policy of rent reduction and interest reduction implemented by the China Production Party in the anti-Japanese base areas not only lightened the burden on farmers, but also did not harm the fundamental interests of landlords and rich peasants. The implementation of this policy has enabled the people in the anti-Japanese base areas to earn money and work hard, which has played an extremely important role in the establishment and consolidation of the anti-Japanese base areas.

1945 After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, China's * * * production party made great efforts for peace and democracy, but Chiang Kai-shek was determined to solve the problem of * * * production party by war. Both countries know that war is inevitable under such circumstances. China * * * production party had to prepare for the war of liberation, and one of the important contents was to make up its mind to completely solve the land problem of farmers and realize "land to the tiller". After eight years in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, farmers in the liberated areas have made great sacrifices. In order to carry out the liberation war against the Kuomintang army and mobilize more farmers to join the army, the policy of reducing rent and interest alone is not enough to mobilize the enthusiasm of farmers to support the revolutionary war. In this case,1May 4th, 946, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the May 4th instruction, clearly put forward the slogan "Land to the tiller", and thus launched a large-scale land reform movement in the liberated areas.

The land reform movement greatly inspired the enthusiasm of hundreds of millions of peasants to join the army and participate in the war. At the same time of carrying out the land reform movement, the production party organizations at all levels in China carried out effective war mobilization, organically combining defending the victory of land reform with overthrowing Chiang Kai-shek, thus making joining the army and supporting the front line become the conscious actions of farmers in the liberated areas. In August, September and October of 1946 alone, 300,000 peasants in Jiefangquan District joined the People's Liberation Army. In order to support the front line, the peasants who turned over enthusiastically paid public grain, participated in the war and devoted themselves to the people's liberation war in various ways. They use very primitive means of transportation-ox carts, donkeys, shoulder poles and back frames, and even their hands and shoulders to ensure a huge supply of war. Only in the first eight months of the war, migrant workers10.2 million were sent from the liberated areas in Hebei, Shandong and Henan, and 33.208 million workers were used to support the front. During the whole war of liberation, Shandong liberated areas mobilized 580,000 people to join the army. During the Huaihai Campaign, more than 5 million migrant workers were mobilized around the liberated areas. The reason why farmers in the liberated areas can actively join the army to participate in the war and support the front line is precisely because they got the land through the land reform movement, which realized the expectation of China farmers that "land to the tiller" has been realized for thousands of years. They realized that the outcome of this war is closely related to whether they can keep their land.

American scholar Yi wrote in the book Seeds of Destruction: Kuomintang China in War and Revolution: "The failure of the Kuomintang in rural areas is due to the failure of the authorities to guarantee farmers' land, security and food, which greatly weakened farmers' respect for the government. This means that the government is losing its legitimacy. Heavy and frequent exorbitant taxes, corruption, and most officials' partiality to the landlord class and discrimination against tenant farmers have weakened the authority of the government and the social value of its legitimate actions. Therefore, farmers either accuse or evade taxation and recruit officials. " "In contrast, in the * * * production party areas, most farmers may still be completely indifferent to politics, but they tend to cooperate with this regime. Some people, especially young people, actively support producers. " This is only a side answer to the significance of the land reform movement.