Law of Value Is a Great School

It is composed of Mao Zedong’s four comments. They are Mao Zedong’s comments on the report of the first secretary of the Shanxi Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China Tao Lujia on March 29, 1959 on the situation of the five-level cadre meeting in the counties of Shanxi Province. Mao Zedong’s comments of the First Secretary of the CPC Committee Wang Renzhong reported on March 31, 1959, the provincial party secretary Wang Yanchun and other materials on the Macheng County Ten Thousands Conference report and other materials. Mao Zedong submitted to Wang Renzhong, Wang Yanchun and others about the 10,000 people in Macheng County Criticism written in the second report of the conference. Mao Zedong’s comments of the letter to hin on April 3, 1959, on the opening of the sixth-level cadre meeting in the province and the fifth-level cadre meeting in the county by Tan Zhenlin, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and secretary of the Secretariat. The comments written above involve the issue of whether the "one leveling and two adjustments" in the people's commune movement can calculate old accounts and refund compensation. It was included in the Collected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 8.

The Zhengzhou Conference held in November 1958 put forward that the old accounts are generally not counted. This policy has infringed on the interests of some peasants and caused great controversy. At the meetings of cadres at the fourth or fifth level of counties held all over the country, the question of whether to calculate the old accounts was generally raised. Mao Zedong changed his view that old accounts should not be counted, advocated that old accounts should be counted in general, and raised it to a theoretical level. Mao Zedong stressed in his instructions: “only with old debts can we put into practice the objective law of value. This law is a great school and only by making use of it can we teach our several tens of millions of cadres and several hundred million people and build our socialism and communism. Otherwise, everything is impossible.”