There is just one criterion for determining class standing. It is based on the different relationships of the people to the means of production, for this determines every kind of class difference. The possession or lack of the means of production, the quantity of the means of production owned, how these are utilized, and, moreover, all the various kinds of different productive relationships between the exploiter and the exploited—these, then, constitute the only criteria for determining class standing.
Jen Pi-shih
ON JUNE 12TH, the sectional groups of the Peasants’ Association met to classify the village once more. This time there was no need to review the status of every family. Only those families about whom some question had been raised were placed on the list for consideration. By the evening of June 14, all such cases had been considered by the small groups. A mass meeting was therefore called for the purpose of making a final review. It was held outdoors on the grounds of the mission compound.
All the peasants were tired after long hours spent hoeing corn and weeding millet. As a result, only a minority of the Association members showed up. Under the brilliant light of a waning moon, those who did come were very active, however. They finished off all remaining problems with gusto—a little too much gusto, it seemed, for they dispatched some very difficult cases rather quickly and left those concerned with an impression that inadequate attention had been paid to their complaints.
Old Lady Wang, who had for days resisted all attempts made by the southwest group to call her a new-middle-peasant, was immediately classed in just that category by the northern and eastern groups. To be thus classed meant the collapse of all her plans—plans for some good land close to the village, and for a few additional sections of housing for her son and his bride.
She strode to the center of the meeting and protested vigorously. Her argument was that she had inherited all the land she had received since Liberation from her brother-in-law and that she had bought the donkey she now owned with borrowed money. None of her wealth was due to the land reform. Could this be called a fanshen?
To prove that she had not fanshened, she talked louder, faster, and more sarcastically than she had ever talked before, but the people listened unmoved. When she finally realized that no word of hers could turn the tide she lapsed into silence, moved back to the center of her own group, and finally, with an oath, picked up her stool and stomped off homeward in a very surly mood indeed.
If Old Lady Wang had only stayed long enough to witness what happened to others like herself, she might well have taken a more philosophical view of her defeat. As it turned out, the upgrading of this old woman was only the beginning of a run on the poor peasant status of dozens of her neighbors in the southwest section. Because the other sectional groups of the Association had used strict standards of poverty in their preliminary work, they were quite perturbed when they saw who had been classed as poor in the southwest. They made Yuan-lung read the list through twice and then slashed it without mercy. Shen Ch’uan-te, Yuan-lung himself, Kuo Wang-yueh, and many others were forthwith promoted to the rank of new-middle-peasant.
The leaders of the upgrading movement were Hsin-fa, Party branch secretary, and Yang Yu-so, the man who had served as spokesman for the delegates at the first gate. These two squatted beside a kerosene lantern set at one edge of the crowd and by its light perused the lists. Having been classed as new-middle-peasants themselves they didn’t want to see any other family get by with a poor peasant designation if its material condition in any way matched their own. Since draft animals, carts, and farm implements were obviously in short supply, they ignored these things as fanshen requirements and based their arguments on the possession of land and housing alone.
Two single men with an acre and a half apiece were summarily upgraded. A peasant named Chang-Ian was not only plucked from the poor peasant group, but was pushed all the way up into the old-middle-peasant level on the grounds that he had for years possessed enough land for self-support.
A ripple of humor enlivened the meeting when the southwest group turned the tables on the upgraders by finding a man in the northern section who should have been called a new-middle-peasant. They based their argument on the half-donkey which he owned but which his neighbors had ignored. Caught in an oversight, Hsin-fa and Yang Yu-so apologized for having forgotten the donkey and promptly reclassified the family in a higher bracket. Someone remarked that the man now owned two half donkeys (the original donkey, a female, had foaled a few days earlier, and half the foal belonged to each owner). Whether two half-donkeys equalled a whole donkey became the subject of some comic debate.
Not all the changes made that night were upward ones. Li Ho-jen, the carpenter, and Huan-ch’ao, the blacksmith, won a determined fight to be called new rather than old-middle-peasants. T’ien-hsi, the militiaman, who had also been called an old-middle-peasant, disagreed so violently and won such support in his section of the village that the meeting finally voted to accept his view.
As the evening wore on, the proceedings grew more and more boisterous. Although the peasants from each of the three sectional groups had started their discussions sitting separately, as the moon sailed higher into the sky they somehow intermingled until it was hard to tell exactly what was being discussed by which group. Many people on the fringes of the crowd, unable to follow the trend at all, gradually lapsed into inactivity or fell to gossiping about personal problems. Toward midnight everyone became so eager to go home to bed that a number of decisions on very complicated cases carried almost without debate. Little wonder that some of those whose class was fixed that night felt bruised. But, as Little Li pointed out, it didn’t matter very much. There was still a third classification coming up and all those who disagreed could still ask for a review.