How to treat the current debate about China's agricultural road

In 2015, the fifth issue of Open Times magazine made a special topic on "the Road of Agricultural Development in China". Seven articles under this topic (including Yan Hairong's "introduction to the Road to China's Agricultural Development"), two of them are the re-expression of his long-formed views by he Xuefeng and Huang Zongzhi of the so-called "small-scale peasant economic school" (the small-scale peasant economic school is a term for his own point of view. Huang Zongzhi did not define himself in this way. Here, Huang Zongzhi is also classified as the "small-scale peasant economy school", only for the convenience of narration), while the other five articles discuss the views of the "small-scale peasant economy school". The core of the debate between the two factions is the rationality of the function and value of small-scale peasant economy and the current degree of agricultural capitalization in China. Similar arguments actually emerged in Europe as early as the end of the 19th century and lasted until the second half of the 20th century.

I. the history of the debate about the merits of family farms and capitalist employment farms

At the end of the 19th century, the German Social Democratic Party put forward the view that Marx's theory is not applicable to the field of agriculture, that the small-scale peasant economy has a unique economic law, and there is no phenomenon that large-scale production excludes small-scale production. Kautsky refuted this view and finally formed the book "Land problem". At the same time, in Russia, there was an argument between Lenin and Cayanov, who denied the trend that family farms must be replaced by capitalist employed rural areas, while Lenin made a Marxist response. Lenin's views are embodied in the book the Development of Russian Capitalism. However, the debate did not end here, and Chayanov's views were widely spread and even accepted by many Marxists. In the camp that affirms the family farm, there is also a so-called materialism school (mainly inheriting the views of Chianov, which represents the divergence of views among them, such as Karl Polanyi, the author of the Great Transformation), the rational Peasant School (Schultz) and so on. In the 1970s, the so-called "Brenner debate" emerged around the rise of modern capitalism, and the core of the debate is still family farm (the two concepts of family farm and small-scale peasant economy are not the same. See below for details) and capitalist employment farms.

The protracted debate itself is enough to illustrate the complexity of the problem. Only from the statistical data, in the history of many countries, there have been periods of capitalist employment farms excluding small-scale peasant economy, as well as periods of revival of small-scale land management. At present, in the world, family management is the mainstream. In fact, in the original debate, Kautsky and Lenin admitted to a large extent that the trend of large-scale production excluding small-scale production in agriculture was not as rapid and violent as in industry.

Second, the clarification of several concepts

In order to understand the history of the debate on this issue, it is necessary to clarify some concepts, mainly the relationship among small-scale peasant economy, family farms and capitalist employment farms. First of all, small-scale peasant economy must be family management, while family management is not necessarily small-scale peasant economy. The scale of family operation is highly related to production technology and human-land relationship. In 1970, the average area cultivated by each male labor force was 165 hectares in the United States, 34 hectares in England and 16 hectares in Denmark, compared with 2 hectares in Japan and India and 0.7 hectares in China at the same time. The agricultural household management in the United States is a highly capital-intensive and industrialized household management, which is by no means a small-scale peasant economy, but closer to the capitalist management with the goal of pursuing profits. In Europe and the United States and other countries, family farms (or cooperatives) actually have fierce competition with each other, and the result of competition is the decreasing number of farms and the continuous expansion of business scale. Secondly, the fact that American family farms are closer to capitalist management itself also shows that capitalist agricultural economy does not necessarily take the form of large-scale wage labor, and capitalist agriculture is not equal to capitalist employment farms. One of Yan Hairong's criticisms of the "small-scale peasant economy" is profound, saying that the capitalist agricultural economy should be regarded as a system, and even the small-scale peasant economy, such as China's 10 mu per household, in fact belongs to commercial capital to a large extent. Exploited by middlemen.

Third, how to understand China's "small-scale peasant economy school"

What Huang Zongzhi advocated is the road of the historical experience of East Asian modernization, which he called "small and refined", and the typical historical experience of East Asian modernization is the cooperative road of "state leadership + peasant autonomy" adopted by Japan after World War II. Huang Zongzhi basically inherited Chiyanov's theory and believed that the small-scale peasant economy could make full use of the auxiliary labor force in the family, so it is better than large-scale farms that use wage labor in terms of production efficiency (mainly refers to land unit output and remuneration). Based on this theory and a series of empirical analysis, he advocated that China's small-scale peasant economy should realize the vertical integration of production, supply and marketing through cooperatives to realize the docking with the market, while opposing the horizontal expansion of land management scale. capitalist operation.

He Xuefeng advocated the model of "half-work and half-agriculture based on intergenerational division of labor". He did not emphasize much on the operational advantages of the small-scale peasant economy, and more defended the rationality of the small-scale peasant economy from the perspective of social stability. He Xuefeng fully admitted that under the background of urbanization, the decline of rural areas is inevitable. He does not regard the maintenance of small-scale peasant economy as a means to increase farmers' income or even promote rural prosperity, he only wants to maintain a bottom line to ensure that China has a relatively stable social structure in the process of urbanization and industrial upgrading.

However, we should know that neither he Xuefeng nor Huang Zongzhi's views are the mainstream at present, nor can they dominate China's agricultural policy. They are not unaware of the fact that capitalist agriculture has greatly developed in China. In their articles, there is a large part of the criticism of past and even current agricultural policies, pointing out that these policies are in fact beneficial to capital and large rural households, but not to small farmers. For example, in solving the problem of scattered rural land, he Xuefeng advocated readjusting the rural land contract relationship based on the property right form of land collective ownership, but the current policy is to promote the confirmation of land rights and solidify the land contract relationship. to realize the centralization of land to the so-called new business main body in the form of land transfer. In Huang Zongzhi's article, there is also a great deal of analysis of the so-called "pseudo" cooperatives.

He Xuefeng once pointed out that there are mainly three schools of views on the issue of agricultural modernization. One is the free market school, which advocates capital going to the countryside and the privatization of land under various names; the second is the mainstream policy school, which advocates restricting capital to the countryside and advocating moderate scale operation based on family farms and large households; and the third school is the "small-scale peasant economy school." The "small-scale peasant economic school" does not dominate the current agricultural policy. As he Xuefeng himself said, at present, the "small-scale peasant economic school" only exists as a balancing force of the free market faction, hoping to weaken the impact of the free market party on the mainstream policy faction to a certain extent.

In dealing with the small-scale peasant economy in China, we must avoid two extreme tendencies. We can not blindly support the small-scale peasant economy and return to the position of conservatism, nor can we understand the classical theory dogmatically and do not make a specific analysis of the specific situation.

When there was a dispute on the land issue within the Social Democratic Party at that time, Kautsky correctly pointed out the opportunistic position of the Formals, and did important theoretical work in the "land issue". On the other hand, he denied that it was necessary to put forward a specific program for farmers and land at that time, so that the German Social Democratic Party did almost nothing on the issue. Soon after, Kautsky went to the position of revisionism. This period of history is worth pondering!