What does eating a big pot of rice easily lead to?

Everyone has to eat. You have to cook if you want to eat. There are two ways to cook: one is to cook in a small pot for individuals or families; The other is a big pot of rice.

Once upon a time, the word "pot rice" became notorious. Some people vividly use it to describe the characteristics of an economic system that is considered wrong. It is said that this system characterized by "big pot rice" has hindered the development of productive forces. Is that really the case?

If you compare the big pot rice with the small pot rice, you will find that the big pot rice is not as good as the small pot rice because its property rights are not clear. Cauldron rice is cooking the rice of Zhang San and Li Si in a big pot. After the meal is cooked, we can't tell which meal is cooked by Zhang San and which meal is cooked by Li Si. Therefore, when Zhang San, Li Si and others eat the same pot of rice, it is inevitable that some people will suffer and others will take advantage. If everyone, such as Zhang San, Li Si, etc., just want to take advantage and don't want to suffer, try to put less rice into the pot (keep the rice to secretly cook their own small pot of rice). In this way, the pot rice will be cooked more and more thinly, from dry rice to porridge and finally to rice soup. Small pot rice is different. Everyone's food is in their own pot, and no one can take advantage of anyone. So everyone has the enthusiasm to put rice in the pot.

However, big pot rice also has its advantages: it saves labor and fuel. More importantly, by letting a few people specialize in cooking, the pot rice can free most people from the necessity of cooking and devote themselves to other activities.

Clay pot rice has existed since ancient times. In the feudal society of China for more than two thousand years, the individual mode of production was the dominant mode, and correspondingly, the small pot cooking mode with the family as the unit also occupied the main position. But there were also large-scale collective labor in ancient China. For example, many magnificent buildings left in ancient China are the fruits of large-scale collective labor. For example, large-scale collective labor and large-scale manual labor also appeared in the production fields such as ore mining and smelting in ancient times. Where there is large-scale collective labor, cooking is usually done in a large pot. Needless to say, military operations in ancient and modern times, at home and abroad have to be cooked in a cauldron. I've never heard of any army soldier who brought a small pot to cook for himself when he was marching and fighting. Therefore, where there is large-scale collective labor or activities, there is a pot of rice.

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On the issue of big pot rice, some people criticized the public canteen that appeared during the period of 1958 people's commune, and some even regarded it as one of the main reasons for the national famine from 1959 to196/kloc-0. In fact, in 1958, there are canteens for large institutions in rural areas and canteens for large institutions in cities. Later, public canteens in rural areas collapsed, while most public canteens in cities still persisted. We just need to look around: institutions, schools, factories, mines, construction sites and the army. As long as a little more units have their own canteens, they can't do without canteens. If any university announces the cancellation of canteens, can we let every college student cook their own small pots of rice after class?

There are three main reasons for the collapse of public canteens built in rural areas in China from 65438 to 0958:

First, it violated the law of value that Mao Zedong said at that time, and implemented free meals. So at that time, farmers were afraid that they would suffer, and they desperately wanted more rice, let go of their bellies and ate more, preferring not to eat, rather than cook less, which caused serious waste, that is, the so-called irrational consumption commented by some foreigners;

The second is the professionalization of cadres. Production team cadres, canteen management cadres and other canteen staff take advantage of their positions to eat more things that occupy more canteens. They often give poor meals to ordinary people, and when the people go to work, they secretly cook good food in the canteen. In the era of food shortage, this is what the masses hate most;

Third, the canteen is poorly managed. Many canteens use food in an unplanned way. When there is food to eat, they let everyone eat, and when the food is finished, they are helpless. Some canteens don't know how to change their patterns, so that members can eat "confused noodles" all the year round; Some canteen staff find it troublesome to find firewood and it is convenient to burn wheat straw, so they burn the wheat straw of the production team all the year round, so that the animals of the production team have no grass to eat, and so on.

At that time, the dining hall in the city generally implemented the meal ticket system. If you want to eat in the canteen, first go to the canteen administrator to exchange money and food stamps for meal tickets, and then use the meal tickets to buy food and cook in the canteen. Everyone wants to eat more, buy less if they want to eat, and spend more food stamps if they want to save, which is in line with the law of value exchange. In addition, at that time, all units in the city were generally strict with cadres and had high management level, so the canteens in the city generally persisted. This shows that whether the big pot rice works or not depends not on the nature of the big pot rice itself, but on other factors.

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At present, in many places such as Shanghai, most organs, institutions and enterprises have implemented the system of providing free lunches to employees. That is, a pot of rice that serves "free meals". For these units, it is beneficial to provide free lunch: if every employee is allowed to go home to cook a small pot of rice at noon every day, the time for employees to go back and forth, plus the time for cooking, eating and washing dishes, will not come down for three hours. If employees are provided with free lunch, they only need to stop working for 65,438+0 hours at noon (the actual meal usually takes only half an hour, and there is still half an hour for employees to do some work). We also see that in this kind of free lunch, the supply of food is usually limited, with one serving for each person and unlimited rice. From the enterprise's point of view, employees don't care about eating too much, and work hard when they are full; For employees, it is rare to eat free meals as desperately as 1958 rural canteen. I would rather eat more than throw it away, because after all, the material living standard has been greatly improved, and few people haggle over such things as eating.

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What economists call "big pot rice" is more of a metaphor. They use "big pot rice" as a metaphor for large-scale collective labor. As I said before, the place where big pot rice can't compare with small pot rice is that it cooks the meals of many people such as Zhang San and Li Si into big pot rice. Therefore, when both Zhang San and Li Si are afraid that they will suffer, it will seriously affect the enthusiasm of these people to put rice in the pot; The reason why large-scale collective labor is not as good as small-scale labor with family as a unit is because many people like Zhang San and Li Si work together in this way, so that the product of labor can no longer be distinguished between Zhang San's labor and Li Si's labor. In the case that Zhang San and Li Si are afraid of their own losses and think that "doing more and doing less, doing well and doing badly", their enthusiasm for work will be seriously affected.

However, replacing individual labor or family labor with large-scale collective labor is an important aspect of production socialization and the direction of social production development. Historically, the capitalist mode of production has promoted the great progress of productive forces. First of all, it is because the capitalists concentrated a large number of craftsmen in the same manual workshop and carried out large-scale collective labor, which led to the change of production mode. In the capitalist handicraft industry, the simple cooperation of workers has rapidly developed into cooperation based on division of labor. When the handicraft industry decomposes the complex labor of manufacturing a product into dozens or hundreds of simple operating procedures through division of labor, it provides a technical basis for the invention and application of machines. Therefore, the great development of modern productive forces began with socialized labor, not individual labor with family as the unit.

Many industrial industries are based on large-scale collective labor from the beginning, such as traditional industries such as metallurgy and construction, and most modern industries such as chemical industry, machinery manufacturing and shipbuilding. Without large-scale collective labor, these industries cannot exist. Textile and other industries, if produced by traditional hand tools, can be based on individual or family labor, but if produced by modern machines, it must also be based on large-scale collective labor.

In socialized mass production, the product of labor is the crystallization of many people's labor, and no individual can point to the product of labor and say, "This is my product"; In socialized collective labor, every member of collective labor becomes an organ or limb of "ordinary laborer", and the individual labor of each member only exists as an organic part of collective labor. Therefore, in the socialized large-scale collective labor, the coordination among workers and the organizational discipline of individual workers are particularly emphasized, which is the "team spirit" required by many enterprises when recruiting employees. For those who are always afraid of themselves in their work,

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To sum up, pot rice is a socialized way to solve the problem of eating, and the socialization of lifestyle consumption is also the development direction of human society. Even today, many places in people's social life are inseparable from pot rice; Some economists use "big pot rice" as a metaphor for large-scale collective labor, which is an important aspect of socialized mass production. Replacing individual labor with large-scale collective labor is also the development direction of social productive forces. In the feudal era of more than 2,000 years in China, the mode of individual labor with the family as the unit has always occupied a dominant position, and the ideological influence of small-scale peasant economy has been deeply rooted in the minds of agricultural workers in China, which has become a major obstacle in the development of socialized production in China. However, some economists in our country indulge this small-scale peasant economic consciousness, regard "big pot rice" as a synonym for the wrong mode of production, and take "breaking big pot rice" as a natural economic slogan, which actually leads to ideological misunderstandings.