• intro:
• communal living indeed not inherently bad - beneficial at first in small amounts, as 14% increase in production per annum up until 52 (55?) with the Mutual aid teams - communal living of 10 households were work and land shared. completely optional. furthermore, self sufficient in both steel and food to ‘stand up on own 2 feet’, with social welfare such as womens association 52 midwifery campaign leading to midwifery stations focusing on hygine being built in communes, lowering fertility death rate, crechyes with kindergarteners and “happiness homes” w/old ppl being cared for. plus, women allowed to work (90% women peasant farmers) on equal plane to men, given food based off production and given title iron women when meeting male quotas = promoting gender equality that didnt exist before 1949/communes (women couldnt work, subservient to the 3 obediences - father, son, husband)
• however, mats slippery slope as mao always intendinbg to make collectivisation a thing, and the success of the mats - 40% voluntary in the first year - gave him the confidence to rush reform (“they want freedom, we want socialism”) to the point where even the percieved benefit of communal living is mirred by threat of smthn worse. plus, not only did the benefirts to the regime end with the introduction of the APCs and their forced collectivisation into households of 50 +550, as the people lost both their land and their incentive to work (leading to only 2% increse vs mat 14% and a predicted 23%), but the percieved benefit to the peasantry was never really implemented - women had it worse, forced to work till miscarriage, given less food due to sexism of points system, had to work harsh physical labour that was previously for men such as ploughing fields, would receive less “work points” than men regardless of how hard they worked, so would get less income, and taken advantage by cadres (with 2 cadres raping 34 women in 1 and 1 raping 27 in nother), who also used their position to fudge the number so thatn mao doesnt knwo whats actually going on (1958, mao claimed that production had increased by 400% when it was actually 200%) directly contributing to the great famine as mao later refused to believe his policies were failing, and to get grain sold to party officials at artificially low pricces. the hygine of the communes and all their swocial services were utter shit - dysentary, measles and diarhhoea spread very easily amongst creches, and kids were taken from their mothers for weeks at a time only to eat and slop on nasty unhygenic floors. the commune completely destroyed the family unit as grandmas and grandpas taken from children, mothers seperated from fathers, children seperated from both, everyone surrounded by strangers etc.
• great famine - Anhui - 8 million people died despite it being self-sufficient due to a lot of grain being taken away- Henan - 7.8 million died, the greatest amount by proportion of population- Sichuan - 9 million died, 1 million (1/4 population) died in Tibet, Lack of food meant people had to resort to eating frogs and other insects - estimated 30-50million people died
• conclusion - completely disagree - peasants suffered consistently as grain requestioned to the point of subsistence, not beneficial financially for regime as production went down by 30% for grain and 75% for meat once glf started, not beneficial socially as commune social services were shit, not beneficial for living as great famine occured due to policy of collectivsation