Will Non-Public sector of Economy (Private Economy) End after the Achievement of the “Two Centenary Goals” in 2049

May, 2022

The following article is from Jia Kang Academic Platform, authors are Jia Kang, Liu Wei, Wu Bingbing

This article is excerpted from the third and fourth parts of “Theoretical Research on the Long-term Existence and Development of Private Economy in the Primary Stage of Socialism after the Achievement of the “Two Centenary Goals”

III. The misunderstanding that “the primary stage of socialism will end after achieving the goal of building a modern and powerful country in 2050” and the approach we should take

(I) Based on the principles of Marxist historical materialism and the reality of human society, we know that there will still be a long period after 2050 when we need to further promote the construction of the “five-in-one” system, the development of productive forces and social progress before we can hope to welcome the “upgrade” of socialism from the primary stage.

Marxist historical materialism reveals the general laws of human social development that are hidden in the vast history and run through the past and present. In 1883, Engels brilliantly explained the basic connotation of historical materialism at the tomb of Marx: “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of the organic world, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history, namely, the simple fact that has always been obscured by the tangled ideologies: people must first eat, drink, live and wear clothes, and then they can engage in politics, science, art, religion, etc.; therefore, the production of the immediate material means of subsistence, and thus a certain stage of economic development of a nation or an era, constitutes the basis, and people’s state institutions, legal views, art and even religious concepts develop from this basis, and therefore must be explained by this basis, and not the other way around, as in the past” [1].

In short, the productive forces determine the production relations, and the sum of the production relations constitutes the social and economic structure. As the economic base, it fundamentally determines the superstructure such as laws, institutions, and the state apparatus. The historical materialist thought innovation represented by the principle that productive forces determines production relations and economic base determines superstructure, with its deep and rigorous logic combined with history, has formed the source of truth for Marxists to correctly understand the world and advocate the transformation of the world. It is based on this cognitive framework that the classical Marxist writers examined and analyzed the basic contradictions inherent in the social form formed by capitalist production relations, revealing that the development of productive forces will eventually determine that it will be replaced by a new social form, that is, the core concept expressed in the Communist Manifesto – the “association of free men” in the ideal society of the future, which will replace the production relations dominated by the capital employment relationship examined and analyzed by Marx and Engels with new production relations, because if the production relations (the decisive factor is the ownership of the means of production) are adapted to the level of development of productive forces in a specific period, it will promote the development of productive forces. On the contrary, it will constitute an obstacle to the development of productive forces and will be adjusted and changed by the objective historical process sooner or later. The historical destiny of capitalism is on this trajectory.

Classical Marxist writers applied the objective law that production relations must adapt to the development of productive forces and created a theory of social morphology that reflects the substantive categories of human social development stages and social types. That is, based on the understanding of the relationship between things and things, which is reflected in and contains the relationship between people, they can summarize the “three social forms”[2] based on the exchange relationship and the evolution of the subject relationship of human society; and summarize the “five social forms”[3] based on the investigation of ownership relations and the evolution of production relations between the owners of the means of production and between the owners of the means of production and the workers.

The “Three Social Forms Theory” takes the evolution of human beings in history as the main line, reflecting the characteristics of human social forms in various historical stages based on different levels of productive forces. The first stage, “human dependence”, is the initial social form. “Individuals either naturally or historically expand into individuals of families and clans (later communities), directly reproducing themselves from nature” [4]. Social groups are connected by blood relations and directly act on nature to maintain their own survival. Exchange is subordinate to the direct production of social subjects and occurs due to direct needs. Human production capacity develops within a narrow range. The second stage develops into “object dependence”. “The mutual and comprehensive dependence between unrelated individuals constitutes their social connection. This social connection is manifested in exchange value” [5].

Unlike the first stage, the communication relationship between people in the second stage is more and more isolated under the background of the development of commodity economy and the refinement of division of labor, and the emergence of currency further consolidates people’s dependence on objects. Free personality based on the comprehensive development of individuals and their common social production capacity becoming their social wealth is the social form of the third stage. Previously, under the capitalist mode of production, the development of wealth and communication objectively laid the foundation for the all-round development of man, but at the same time, under the domination of capital, production and labor became alienated, and the reality that a few people owned most of the means of production and social wealth continued to intensify social contradictions, so that labor ultimately eliminated alienation by resisting the changes of capital, so that the means of production and wealth in society were ultimately owned by all members of society as the main body of workers.

The “Five Social Forms Theory” takes the formation and evolution of social systems as the main line, with the core being the ownership of the means of production. The “Asiatic Form” is the original social form, manifested as a natural or tribal community, in which social members realize the unity of the owners of the means of production and the workers, and production is mainly for self-sufficiency. The “Roman and Greek (i.e. classical ancient) forms” as the second social form and the “Germanic ownership forms” as the third social form are representatives of slavery and serfdom respectively. Under the third social form, the land is divided and ruled by the commune and its members. The land is the private property of the commune members, and the public land owned by the commune is a supplement to private property. On this basis, exchange value gradually develops and “disintegrates production that is mainly aimed at direct use value and the ownership form corresponding to this production”, “leading to the formation of the labor market” [6], thus giving birth to capitalist society – the foundation of the fourth social form – wage labor [7]. The fifth social form is the future goal of human struggle – communism, when society can realize “free exchange between individuals united on the basis of common possession and common control of the means of production” [8]. The “three social forms” and the “five social forms” have a profound internal connection: “human dependence” roughly corresponds to the first three of the “five social forms”, “material dependence” is prominent in capitalist society, and communist society (including socialist society as its primary stage) is the best institutional choice orientation to achieve “the all-round development of individuals, and the common production capacity of social members becomes common social wealth”. These two social form theories concretize the abstract general laws of human social development in combination with human history, forming a cognition condensation and theoretical explanation of “from the particular to the general”.

The only revolutionary practice that Marx and Engels could observe during their lifetime, in which a new social form replaced the old social form, was the Paris Commune, which lasted for 83 days. Based on the principles derived from their research, they estimated that the decisive success of the revolution would be achieved when the productive forces further developed and the major developed countries in Europe emerged together in a revolutionary situation. The subsequent practice was the creative application of Marxist principles in the Leninist era to first establish the Soviet regime of workers and peasants in Russia, the weakest link in the capitalist world, and develop communism (i.e. socialism) as the primary stage of the transition to communism. Guided by the October Revolution, a series of major progress was made in China and other backward Eastern countries entering the socialist stage by revolution. Unfortunately, the socialist camp headed by the Soviet Union experienced a major split in the early 1960s. The Soviet regime collapsed after more than 70 years of existence, and the world communist movement entered a low ebb. The profound experience and lessons contained therein are worthy of our in-depth analysis and serious summary.

It is particularly noteworthy that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communists continued to hold high the banner of socialism, followed the basic principles of Marxist historical materialism, and sought to substantially liberate productive forces by “self-revolution of production relations” to adapt to the objective requirements of the development of productive forces, and achieved remarkable economic development and social progress. The existing practice of establishing a socialist system with Chinese characteristics has formed a further breakthrough and innovation of the above-mentioned Marxist law of “from general to specific”. The Marxist theory of social formations believes that the transition to a socialist system should be completed through revolution in capitalist countries with extremely developed productive forces. The transformation of the social form of New China to complete the “three major reforms” and establish a socialist system was based on the new democratic revolution and was born on the objective conditions of the extremely underdeveloped productive forces of old China.

In other words, China was still in the immature stage of “material dependence” at that time, or even the transition stage from “human dependence” to “material dependence” (this judgment can be made based on the complex economic foundation of semi-colonial and semi-feudal society). It did not have the basis of highly developed productive forces and conscious social division of labor, and after capitalist society. After the transition to a fully developed social form, a socialist system based on public ownership of the means of production is established. This practice has greatly enriched the Marxist theory of social forms and also embodies the diversity of social form changes. As Lenin said: “The general laws of world historical development not only do not in the least exclude the peculiarities of individual stages in the form or sequence of development, but on the contrary presuppose them.”[9] But at the same time, the general laws revealed by Marx and Engels clearly tell us through a series of summaries in China’s practice that we should not replace the process with the goal, and avoid trying to skip the stage and rush to transition out of good intentions or “left-wing childishness”. Otherwise, we will be obviously restricted by objective laws and even ruthlessly punished.

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