7. Analysis of rural economic reform and theoretical economics research

Analysis of Rural Economic Reform and Theoretical Economics Research

? Xu Hong

Reflecting on the progress and achievements of theoretical economics since the reform and opening up, and how to deal with the great economic changes at home and abroad, many new theoretical problems have emerged in theoretical economics, such as economic crisis, inflation, CPI index, system transformation, new rural reform, land transfer and so on. And some long-discussed issues, such as the relationship between efficiency and fairness, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the construction methods and models of China's economics.

Economic Trend 2009(2):2 1-2

First of all, rural economic reform has brought a broad new field to theoretical economics research.

? In the early 1980s, the arduous socialist construction in China seemed to suddenly encounter a series of great historical opportunities: the great shift of the party's work focus; All-round development of modernization; Set things right and emancipate the mind; Economic system reform; Open policy and so on. Especially the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has brought a profound and rapid turning point to all aspects of our social life. Under this background, great economic changes have taken place in rural areas.

? Of China's population of1400 million,100 million are rural residents. This alone determines that things in rural areas can't be done well, and things in China can't be done well; Farmers are poor, and the country cannot be rich; If the countryside remained in ancient times, China could not be modernized. Therefore, rural economic reform is by no means an important task that can be easily completed. It is not only the innovation of agricultural management form, but also the adjustment of production relations. Under the strict constraints of weak foundation, less arable land and large population, the transformation from traditional mode of production to modern mode of production in rural areas of China was initiated, which laid a solid foundation for establishing a rural economic system with corresponding mechanisms. This change responded to the call of the modernization of the Chinese nation. Therefore, it will neither shrink back in the face of difficulties and obstacles, nor be complacent because of its first success. However, the grand and profound connotation of this rural economic reform goal was not clearly presented to people at the beginning. In practice, it has been at the forefront of the national economic system reform, and has been providing inspiration and encouragement for the reform of other fronts with a pioneering and upward trend, far exceeding people's initial expectations. Looking back on history, this situation is not surprising. On the one hand, the direct cause of the rural contract system reform is that the production and life of members are too difficult. The problems that needed to be solved at that time were the most materialistic practical problems: people's food, forage stored for animals, breeding seeds and fertilizers, disaster relief and so on. The grim reality does not allow people to make too many associations and inferences; Life can't stand to establish a complex equation related to "expedient measures" and modernization. On the other hand, for a long time, agricultural problems have been simplified to meet the needs of industrial and urban growth; It seems that national industrialization must be completed first, and agriculture will have a bright future. The all-round development of rural economy and society is simplified as the management of agricultural production. It seems that the peasant problem is only a very simple problem in the socialist era. Due to the legacy of history and the habits formed by some policies, there has always been a deep-rooted contempt for rural areas, agriculture and farmers in our social consciousness. All kinds of prejudices even hinder the simple evaluation and discrimination of rural economic changes. Therefore, although the parties to the great rural reform-cadres and members of the production team-have experienced many exciting sleepless nights in order to choose the appropriate contract system, from the social point of view, the initiation of this reform is not earth-shattering. Almost silently, this is the charm of rural reform. Things seem to have suddenly crossed a critical point: production quotas wants to expand; Expedient measures should be long-term; Family management should be universal. Transcendental mode is broken, and "abnormal" events appear in large numbers. Great changes have swept many people into the whirlpool like a trend. Fierce arguments accompanied by repeated investigations made us realize that we really knew very little about the countryside in the past. Then the process of change is dizzying: the enthusiasm of farmers is unprecedented; Demonstrate creativity in many ways; Promotion of contract system in various regions; Create a professional contract form; The prototype of the consortium; The emergence of migrant workers; The prosperity of trade and the development of exchange; The rise of new rural economic construction; The flow and combination of talents, capital and technology; The rising interest of farmers in science and technology; The growth of socialized service system; The upsurge of development management. Everywhere is full of vitality, the growth of wealth and the surge of talents. New situations emerge one after another. Public opinion pays attention to the countryside, and the decision-making power moves to the countryside again. People in the press, economic circles, theoretical circles, and even cultural and artistic circles have far exceeded the development, reporting, investigation, praise and performance of the economic changes in the new countryside in terms of quantity and quality. The countryside seems to be a high-speed reaction kettle. People often have no time to meditate on a large number of observation materials, resulting in brand-new ideas and concepts, and new practical changes have taken place and advanced. The rural reform seems to show its profundity and thoroughness. Later, the changes in the contract responsibility system for joint production have already exceeded the limits of rest and expediency, and the whole change can no longer be satisfied with the recovery of economic policies and forms in difficult times; It should face the development of rural economy today and tomorrow, create new forms, find new mechanisms and form new policies. All this needs to be based on systematic theoretical research. The rich and profound contents of rural economic reform, the creative practice of hundreds of millions of farmers and a large number of new urgent problems are all rare opportunities for the development of theoretical economics. Its significance is obviously greater than the establishment of ten economics universities. Therefore, the research and discussion of theoretical economics is expected to enter an unprecedented broad field.

Second, the study of theoretical economics should adapt to the current changes in rural economy.

? When people want to grasp the reality of the extremely grand new rural economic reform with the cognitive framework provided by theoretical economics (including concepts, categories and norms), they will find that this work is not only limited by the lack of perceptual knowledge, but also by some defects of existing theoretical thinking. At present, the accepted theory obviously lags behind the reality. We should not only strengthen the discovery, collection, classification, generalization and abstraction of actual materials, but also make an appropriate evaluation of theoretical economics that studies practical problems. The latter task is equally arduous and important. If our theoretical economics is still insufficient, the main reason is that the research on how economic activities operate is too thin. This is not only reflected in the form of theoretical economics achievements, but also shows that there are too few explanations and insufficient generalizations on the operation problems. It seems that there is a prejudice that theoretical economics does not need to study the operation problems of the economy at all. The debate on the economic reform of the new countryside clearly shows this point. Up to now, theoretical explanations have almost focused on the socio-economic attributes and consequences of various economic phenomena in rural areas. Different opinions are often just different answers to the same question. If we change the question, that is, discuss how these economic activities have been and will be run, we will find that the opposite answer tends to be the same vague assumption, or even consistent silence. Therefore, when the development of practice has crossed the stage of creating public opinion for change and entered the process of in-depth development, and when the question of "what-why" has changed into the question of "how to operate" in thinking, the weakness in grasping the real economic problems caused by the defects of traditional theories has aroused the distress and thinking of a generation including the author. The questions raised here seem to be in reverse order. What operational issues should we talk about before the nature of economic phenomena is clear? Who is managing it? For example, whether the quota system is socialism or capitalism has not been solved. If you discuss how it works, the order of the questions will be reversed. But this is the order of life. The popularization of household quota is not the result of the popularization of explanatory theory; A series of correct and effective policies to guide rural reform are by no means based on the principle of "omnipotence". In fact, the real secret to promote change is output and income, that is, the material results of changes that condense a series of factors such as labor attitude, management ability, production mode, exchange law, distribution system and social relations. Many old ideas have not been criticized; A large number of outdated arguments were not lost because of the debate, but the practice of fixing production quotas to households, which was quickly implemented, was put aside as a meaningless problem and was finally ignored. The reform can be carried out because of its obvious effect of increasing production and income. According to the survey, what really bothers the parties involved in rural reform (farmers and their cadres) is not the vague accusation of the general direction, but the practical solution to a series of very specific problems caused by the reform. For example, how to subcontract land, how to unify the contradiction between increasing production and raising land, how to find a way out for surplus labor, and how to help the poor. It is the practical solution of these problems that ensures the firm establishment of the fixed production quota and is qualified to be an example, causing a wide chain reaction. It can be seen that change, as a dynamic process, cannot put forward a stable economic phenomenon in advance for people to firmly define and discuss. New phenomena and new forms are almost accidental, and only by truly solving the part of how to operate can we stabilize macroscopically. At the fleeting moment of choice, trying to define "what" before saying anything else will inevitably lose many important opportunities. Thinking about the problem of "order" from a deeper level can also get other enlightenment. When people try to explore exhaustively whether many economic phenomena and economic forms in the economic system reform are socialism, they will first encounter the standard problem, that is, what is socialism. It must be affirmed that many scientific predictions and explanations made by classical Marxist writers about the socialist economic formation are of fundamental guiding significance to our understanding of the socialist economic problems. In fact, the contemporary socialist practice, including China's, is the result of applying these scientific principles in combination with the national conditions. At the same time, thirty years' practice has repeatedly shown that when we directly measure every specific thing in contemporary socialist practice with the classic judgment of classic writers, we will encounter two problems: there are many intermediate links of thinking between general scientific abstract provisions and rich specific provisions. No one can ask classic writers to complete all these intermediate links. For example, there are many intermediate levels of thinking between the principle of distribution according to work and the specific forms of joint production, such as assessment score and remuneration, and the theoretical explanation of these intermediate levels can not be found in ready-made books. Without the description, explanation, analysis and verification at the intermediate level, the abstract general provisions cannot be raised to concrete. The judgment of "disconnection" itself violates Marxist methodology. < 2 > The most general provisions on socialism itself need to be further refined, enriched and developed. Marx pointed out: "The most general abstraction always comes from rich and concrete development places, where one thing is owned by many things and * * * is owned by all things (1)". Therefore, before the concrete form of socialism is fully developed, the most general abstraction about it is actually impossible to obtain. Nowadays, many researchers who try to build a general socialist economic theory system will find that Marx's classical theoretical analysis of capitalism is based on the maturity of the object. Therefore, the fundamental difficulty lies in the inability to create social and economic subjects that should often appear in front of the theoretical system. Instead of suffering from not being able to make the most general abstraction, we should first make up our minds to make special thinking about the specific development form. History has proved that it is extremely harmful to the development of socialism to mistake a specific socialist economic model for the most general and abstract provisions of socialism. People can only solve historical tasks that can be solved, and theoretical economics is no exception. Therefore, what theoretical economics can do well at present seems to be to study the existing conditions, development crux and operation mechanism of various specific models of socialist economy, as well as the possible direction of adjustment and reform and opening up. At the same time, it is also necessary to compare the specific experiences and forms of different modes. These works have been done fully, and it may be more fulfilling to talk about the general "law" and even "legal system" (2). Only in this way can the most general stipulation about the socialist economy, that is, the standard scale, be truly refined and developed and become a thinking weapon for people to grasp the rich and concrete forms of socialism. In our time, if economists are not sure about the specific economic operation, then the general theoretical system of socialism they have established will certainly be unconvincing.

Three, theoretical economics research should be suitable for the operation law of rural economy.

? In short, it is not easy to study how the economy works. Studying how to operate is not only of great practical significance, but also of great significance to the development of theoretical economics itself. However, the nature of work puts forward many special requirements for the theoretical form itself.

? First of all, this kind of research focuses on the occurrence process. First of all, the theory should make clear the existence conditions, the motive force of production and development, the characteristics of evolution and the possibility space of further evolution. As Engels said, theoretical economics is a historical science. Without time process, it can't grasp the object. Correspondingly, there is no lack of a minimum sense of history here.

? Secondly, this research is based on the real feelings of economic movement. The so-called real feelings here refer to the real feelings and overall feelings about real economic activities. Because even if the concrete model is summarized, it is inseparable from the necessary abstraction (although it may not reach the most general abstraction and generalization at once, as mentioned above), any abstraction is always one-sided, and the reality is always abbreviated or simplified from a certain angle (4). Once these abstractions are divorced from reality as a whole, they cannot be verified and corrected, and the conceptual system thus established will ultimately not help to grasp the problem of economic movement.

? Third, this kind of research attaches great importance to the economic mechanism. Because economic mechanism is a more specific category than economic laws, it often reveals the operating mechanism of economic activities under the joint action of several economic laws, and even reveals the random influence of accidental factors on economic operation. The elaboration of economic mechanism may not be as simple as the strict expression of economic laws and conditions, but more importantly, it is to solve operational problems. In addition, new scientific methods provide new possibilities for drawing comprehensive laws of motion. Therefore, even if the most abstract laws cannot be described at present, we can start to study the economic operation mechanism.

? Finally, this kind of research not only thinks that analysis can only be carried out in connection with the movement of productive forces, but also tries to introduce non-economic factors that have a great influence on economic activities, which is an old problem that political economics, that is, theoretical economics, has debated for many years. But the root of the problem lies in the goal of theoretical research. For theoretical economics, which is determined to study problems, it is impossible to obtain the most necessary knowledge from separated rather than unified objects. As early as the early 1960s, a little-known theoretical worker wrote: "In the process of creatively studying political economy, Marx and Engels spent a lot of energy to study the spirit and attitude of the latest achievements of natural science at that time, which can not but inspire us greatly. This often reminds us whether there are too many arguments about the research object. Instead of arguing about the research object abstractly, why not learn more scientific knowledge about the object? (5) "Unfortunately, due to the limitations of historical conditions, this appeal failed to get the response and attention it deserved at that time. Historical and political obstacles have been transformed into obsolete knowledge structure and obstacles to updating knowledge structure. Today's theoretical economics can no longer turn a blind eye to this point. For the study of rural economy, it is of great significance to unify productivity with production relations and other social relations. Because the main body here runs in the interweaving of economic process and natural process, "pure production relationship analysis" is of no benefit at all.

? Therefore, there is no lack of theoretical content in studying economic operation. It needs to temper theoretical thinking repeatedly in the spiritual flame of seeking truth from facts, eliminate all metaphysical fantasies and engage in very difficult research and discussion. Only by introducing its own changes can theoretical economics grasp the changes in the economic system of rural areas and China, and constantly draw rich nutrients from the latter. The development of Socialism with Chinese characteristics's modernization road in practice has set the goal of studying economic operation for theoretical economics from one aspect. Although the road to follow this theoretical goal is not smooth, the times tell us that it is worth our efforts to engage in exploration and research.

Precautions:

① ② Zhou Qiren: The pursuit of "reappearing concreteness" in economics.

③ ④ Economic Science 1993 No.2

⑧ ⑧ Luo: "Try to examine some characteristics of agricultural production from the perspective of economics."

⑨ ⑩ Xinhua Abstract 1990 No.6

(1)(2) Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 2, p. 102- 1 10.

③ ④ Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 2, page105-107.

(5) Engels: On Anti-Turin, People's Publishing House, 1970, p. 144.