peasants, and were demarcated as rich peasants by
straining the point. They said that their not serving in
the army was disadvantageous to us. They said
moreover that demarcating “producing rich peasants”
engaging in slight exploitation as middle peasants
would cause the middle peasants to produce without
fear and is beneficial to production. It may be seen
from this that the peasants are not satisfied with having
a large number of people demarcated incorrectly as
landlords or rich peasants. They consider that this is
making too many enemies and their own strength is
thus weakened, and it endangers the development
of production. This is a very correct way of looking at
things.
It must be pointed out here that I am raising the
question of the incorrect determination of class
standing at Hsinghsion’s Tsai-chiaai only as an
example. It can be affirmatively stated that in other
villages of the Shansi-Suiyuan Area in Northwest, there
is sure to be quite a number of cases of the sort as
incorrect determination of class standing that took
place in Tsai-chiaai, to cases more or less similar to
this. All leading comrades engaging in agrarian reform
work must seriously examine this question of
determining class standing, and publicly and definitely
rectify mistakes they have committed. Even if only a
single person is determined incorrectly, this must
nevertheless be rectified.
Such criterions of determining class standing as
were employed at Tsai-chiaai are incorrect. But what,
after all, is the correct criterion for determination of
class standing? This is the first thing we must clarify.
There is only one criterion for demarcating class
standing: that is, determine the various classes
according to the various relationships of people to
the means of production. The only criterion for
demarcating classes is the various relationship of
exploiter and exploited produced by the possession
or lack of the means of production, how much and
what are possessed and how they are employed.
Who are Rich, Middle and Poor?
What are the means of production? The means
of production in industry are factories, machinery, raw
materials and other capital. The means of production
in agriculture are land, ploughing animals, agricultural
implements, houses, etc. The only criterion for
demarcation of rural classes is the various relation-
ships of exploiter and exploited produced from the
possession or lack of land, ploughing animals,
agricultural implements, houses and other means of
production, how much and what is possessed, and
how they are employed (tilling himself, hiring labour
or renting out).
Based on the above criterion, it is very easy to
differentiate between the various class standings in
October - 2018
the rural areas. The principal class standings in the
rural areas can in general be demarcated follows:
(1) Those who possess much land, do not labour
themselves, specially relying on exploiting the
peasants’ land rent, or concurrently engage in usury,
profiting without working, are landlords
(2) Those who possess much land, ploughing
animals and farm implements, participate themselves
in the principal labour, and at the same time exploit
the hired labour of peasants, are rich peasants.
China’s old-type rich peasants are strongly feudal in
nature. Most of them concurrently engage in usury or
rent out a portion of the land. On the one hand, they
labour themselves, thus being similar to peasants and
on the other hand they engage in feudal or semi-
feudal exploitation, thus being similar to landlords.
(3) Those with land, ploughing animals and
agricultural implements, labouring themselves and not
exploiting or only slightly exploiting other peasants are
middle peasants. (5) Those not possessing land,
ploughing animals or agricultural implements, selling
their own labour power, are farm labourers.
The principal class standings in rural areas should
in general be demarcated thus. But should all those
who rent out land or hire full-time labourers be dealt
both as landlords or rich peasants without exception?
There are exceptions, too. For example, those who
have lost labour power like widows, orphans, cripples
and invalids may be permitted to rent out their small
plots of land. Others like doctors, primary school
teachers and workers, whose families have a little land
and cannot concurrently till it because of their
employment and who can just maintain themselves,
also cannot be considered as landlords and rich
peasants although they rent out their land or hire
others to till it. Aside from these, there are some other
complex circumstances which must be stipulated in
detail. The things spoken of here are some of the
most typical conditions.
How to differentiate between rich peasants and
middle peasants is a question which must be dealt
with very carefully. Speaking in general, middle
peasants do not exploit others, but [even] those [who
do] both only slight or incidental exploitation, should
still be considered middle peasants. On this question,
the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist
party recently decided to adopt a policy more liberal
than in 1933. This is those engaging in slight
exploitation (such as hiring others to herd cattle or
sheep hiring part-time labourers, or labourers on a
monthly basis, or even one full-time labourer or so;
perhaps renting out a little land or lending out small
loans), the income from which does not exceed 25
per cent of their gross income are still considered
middle peasants. This is more lenient than the
5