Gu Zhun - Main Economic Thought

Main Economic Thought

(Most of his works were written in 1973 and 1974.)

• He raised questions that his contemporaries did not dare to, and tried to give some tentative answers. In this process，he gradually moved away from the idealism still active in communist doctrine, and rediscovered Anglo-American empiricism and the value of liberty intrinsic to it.

• At a time when dogmas of central planning predominated, he was among the world pioneers of the idea that socialism should incorporate market economics. In arguing that socialism aimed at a "good market economy" as distinct from the "bad ones” found in capitalist systems, he emphasised the values of the rule of law and constitutionalism.

• In 1965, Gu Zhun was forced to work in Xinyang, Henan province. During Mao’s period, some 200,000 people died of hunger in that region. There were even cases of cannibalism. Shocked by what he saw, Gu began to ask how communist idealism could be the doctrinal source of such horrors, and how such tragedy could be avoided in future. He wrote,

“… today people turn idealism into dogmas in the name of revolution, hence I am turning absolutely to empiricism and pluralism, and democracy.”

• In his article "On Commercial Production and the Theory of Value under Socialism" (1957)，he insisted that the market, rather than a central Plan, should be the basis of productive decisions. Planning could not be expected to encompass everything, to interfere in detail with processes of production and transfer, let alone to perform with complete precision. At a time in which Karl Marx and Mao Zedong were accredited with quasi-divine wisdom, and their dicta treated as infallible, unquestionable and unalterable, Gu Zhun's new model of planning was nothing short of heresy. At that time, had an ordinary person been reported to have raised such ideas, they would have be put into prison, even executed. These, however, were the views that enlightened later key economists such as Sun Yewang and Wu Jinglian and form the core of the post-Mao reforms