In any economic system not in a state of complete stagnation, there must be somebody exercising the abilities to see new economic possibilities, the foresight to develop them, and the courage to take the necessary risks-the talents of the entrepreneur. Mao Tse-tung has always emphasized the importance of entreneurship. This is often obscured for the Western reader only by the fact that in the West people think of entrepreneurship as a characteristic of free market economies, and they do not even attempt to study entrepreneurship in socialist countries.
Mao's entrepreneur, however, is not the individual per se, but the collective, or more precisely individuals operating in collective economies. In many examples of good Maoist-type enterprises, there is almost always one named individual, or a small group of individuals, who have taken the initiative in a new development, worked out the idea, embraced the effective forethought, and persuaded the collective to adopt it. The aim is not of course the maximization of individual profit, but the maximization of collective production. These are the qualities of the heroic leaders of the Taching Oilfield, the Tachai Production Brigade, and of a thousand other economic enterprises, industrial and agricultural, which have been presented as models of Maoist organization.
Mao sees the education of peasants as the fundamental problem of the Chinese economy, and considers that economic growth as well as revolution must depend on the masses of the people and on everybody going into action, not depending on a few people issuing orders. Therefore, his strategy of developent is to bring peasants and local initiative more into play and, under the unified planning of the central government, let the localities do more. Given the one basic assumption that China's problems can only be radically solved by collective enterprise, there leaves no doubt that entrepreneurship within the collective organization is the keystone of Mao's hopes of rapid development, and a major object of educating peasants, sons into modern producers. Surely, maximizing these qualities within that system is one of Mao's greatest and most constant preocupation in the economic field.
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