Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
While Russian and Chinese wage and distribution policies in general differ from each other in terms of specific provisions and regulations, they are also generically very similar, if not identical. To provide some insight into the nature of this unity and diversity of policy, it seems best to discuss first the distributive implications of their common ideological reference, i.e. Marxist-Leninist doctrine.
Distributive Strategy and Tactics
Both the Russians and the Chinese deal with any human action as a process of material transformation, and consequently view the totality of man's actions as a chain of material transformation processes, conditioned by the distribution of ownership of the means of production as the determinant of social relations of production. Both hold that while human action is governed objectively by material and social nature and its laws, it is determined subjectively by man's technical and social awareness and thus by man's technical and social experiences. Both assert that man's increasing comprehension of nature and its laws manifests itself in increasing accumulation and in enlarged reproduction, i.e., in economic growth. Both aim for the unity of objectivity and subjectivity, i.e., for the complete reproduction of nature by man at the earliest possible moment, and both strive therefore for the most rapidly enlarging accumulation over time.
1 For a more comprehensive discussion of the Marxist-Leninist model of economic growth see Schran, Peter, “Economic Planning in Communist China,” Asian Survey, II (12 1962), 29 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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4 The adoption of Russian designs and methods is advocated explicitly in Central-South Wage Reform Committee, General Office, ed., Kung-tzu ch'ang-shih chiang-hua (Common Sense Talk on Wages) (Peking: Chung-nan Kung-jen Press, 1952).Google Scholar
5 See ibid. p. 54, and Galenson, Walter, “The Soviet Wage Reform,”Google Scholar (Institute of Industrial Relations, Reprint No. 172; Berkeley: University of California, 1961), p. 10.
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