Collectivisation -Successes and Failures

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  • Created by: JasmineR
  • Created on: 22-11-15 13:33

Ideologically

  • Tremendous success for Mao.
  • This was because the state now owned the means of production of food and the land on which 90% of the population worked.
  • This was Chinese Marxism in action.
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Politically

  • It was a mixed blessing for Mao.
  • Success:
    • Collectivisation had been carried out far more quickly than imagined, which was a tribute to his authority within the Party.
    • Also, Mao was able to outmanoeuvre powerful conservative opponents, such as the premier, Zhou Enlai.
    • Furhtermore, the actual process of carrying out the changes greatly increased the control the party exerted over the local people.
  • Failures:
    • Collectivisation marked a distinct change in relationship between the CCP and the peasantry, who now became servants of the Party, rather than loyal allies.
    • In addition, the speed with which the big surge towards higher-level APCs was achieved made Mao dangerously overconfident. He no longer worried about practical obstacles that stood in the way of change, and this was soon to lead to catastrophic mistakes in the Great Leap Forward of 1958.
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Economically

  • Impact of collectivisation of the economy was disappinting - failure.
  • Food production had increased by 3.8% per annum over the period of the First Five-Year Plan.
  • However, this was still insufficient to sustain the growing industrial workforce, which was growing even faster.
  • The basic problem was that the amount of cultivated land per head of the population was so low. Yields per hectare were quite high, but labour productivity was low, and it would have been hard for the peasants to produce a surplus, whether collectivised or not.
  • The situation was worsened by the lack of state investment and the demotivating effect created by the fact that people no longer owned their own land, so they did not directly benefit from the work they put in.
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