On the Issue of Socialist Commodity Production

Part of Mao Zedong's speech in Zhengzhou Conference is an important document of Mao Zedong's thought of socialist economic construction. It was included in the Collected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 7.

From November 2 to 10, 1958, Mao Zedong convened some central leaders and some local leaders to hold a working meeting in Zhengzhou. At the meeting, Mao Zedong criticized the wrong ideas of hastening the transition of the people's commune from collective ownership to ownership by the whole people, from socialism to communism, and attempting to abolish commodity production.

The speech stressed the importance of socialist commodity and commodity production, criticized the phenomenon of avoiding commodity and commercial problems and the idea of eliminating commodity production. Mao Zedong pointed out: “the people's communes must produce socialist commodities suitable for exchange, develop socialist commerce and use the law of value as tools of economic accounting during the transitional period in order to facilitate the gradual transition to communism. The law of value is a great school. It is of great use and if we can teach it to our several million cadres and several hundreds of millions of people, we can build socialism and communism”.

Mao Zedong insisted that commodity production is not exclusive to the capitalist period of economic development. He concluded that under socialism commodity production has a different nature, i.e., “Commodity production depends on its association with an economic system. Capitalist commodity production is linked to capitalist system and socialist commodity production is linked to the socialist system.”

In the period of socialism, we should use commodity production to unite hundreds of millions of peasants.

The speech also stressed the need for patience in socialist construction, criticized the idea of being eager for success and the transition to communism, and pointed out that there is a tendency now, like the faster communism, the better. Some people always want to become communism within three to five years. Some comrades are eager to declare that the people's communes are owned by the whole people, abolish commerce and allocate products. This is depriving the peasants and is wrong. Realizing communism is a step-by-step process, it is impossible to build socialism without patience.