An Exploration On Planning And Practice Of Peoples Commune 1958—1962

This thesis studies on the plan of rural people’s commune during 1958 to1962. Except introduction to rural people’s commune, the author intends to explain the plan of rural people’s commune. That is why rural area is chosen to be the birth place of people’s commune. Henri Lefebvre said space is political. Space stems from reproduction of social relations and will also acts on it. The core of social relationship is productive relations that closely relates to economic activity. Therefore, this thesis not only discusses space itself, but also its relevance to society and economy. That is to say, the theme of this thesis is how space responds to the revolution of society and economy.In the first chapter, the author retraces the decline of traditional rural area and analyzes its reasons. First, imperialism’s invasion speeds the development of coastal industry and commerce, which leads to the reconstruction of traditional urban-rural relationship. Urban area, the former rural handicraft market, starts to compete with rural area to seize the market. Also, the exotic cheap goods shrink rural handicraft market. As a result, large part of farmer’s income fails to flow back to rural area and rural economy becomes on the wane. Second, squire is in charge of offering public goods and assisting magistrate to maintain public order in traditional countryside. But squire’s role alters and its activity area also changes from the rural to the urban with Constitutional Reform at the end of the Qing Dynasty and abolition of imperial examination system, which causes difficulty in supplying public goods in rural area and affects agricultural production because of rural power vacancy and local disorder. So at that time the urban blooms while the rural decays in China.Saving Countryside“ became prevalent in Republic of China era and we were forces to learn foreign experience. Many foreign experience and theories about urban and rural construction were introduced and widely discussed from 20 s to 50 s. What has a great effect on post-liberation space form is Russia collective farm and Japanese new village, and especially Russia collective farm, from which rural people’s commune borrows many methods. And this not only reflects on space but also social and economic plan. Communism policy, proposed by postwar Russia, aims to stimulate product flow by direct power interference in production and distribution. And collective farm is the spatial carrier of this kind of economic plan. What’s more, building new village is the purpose of our rural planning. That is creating a new way of production and life to replace the traditional rural area, which relates to utopia socialism in 18 and 19 centuries. New village plan failed to work on rural area whereas affected urban area in many ways. Therefore, rural communities and urban new village become a common space form in postliberation China.The Communist party strives to remold rural economy and society since the founding of PRC. They adopted similar ways to soviet communism: transfer power to countryside, stimulate cooperation and control market. These ways aim to rebuild rural power organization and create a new production and distribution system independent of market that makes country interfere in production at will so as to enhance productivity, which not only save costs on conveying national will but also reorganize productive relations and productive subjects. If we agree Lefebvre’s opinion that space is the result of the productive relations’ reproduction, the above mentioned reorganization of productive relations certainly leads to revolution of land use and space. The establishment of commune involves a new use of land that is able to adapt the change of productive relations and promote productivity. Therefore, many opinions appeared such as how to divide cultivation area to fit producing activity, how to distribute labor force(change of mode of living), how to zone crops so as to accommodate soil property and production team’s arrangement and how to design different fields to respond new technique and productive subject, etc. By thoroughly discussing and further planning, a distinct space organization came out, which is made up of settlement from different levels and correspondent clear and orderly cultivation field. New space represents power based on rational principle’s response to productive relations and imagination of future socialism. It is clear that the alteration of agrarian relation is not the consequence of productive relations’ change as Lefebvre said, but the outcome of power interference and overall design to adapt revolution of productive relations.At last, the author wants to have a discussion on three aspects of people’s commune, economic plan, social & daily life and material space plan. Though people’s commune is a kind of practice trying to optimize the factors of production to boost economic efficiency, actually it had done series of actions on improving technician and social organization, the result was not as good as expected. What factor impeded the growth of agriculture productivity from it should be, what was wrong with the three aspects above, and how did they connect with each other. I think, the link between space, as a dimension of society, and social activity would affect economic efficiency directly. Also, the space as the most important experience of individuals will get great infulence on his(her) indentity. The conclution is, to enhance economic efficiency by building a strong link between space form and social activity, and to model individuals’ indentity, shall be the core question in space planning.