Page 101 - SELECTED WORKS OF LIU SHAOQI Volume Ⅱ

SOME QUESTIONS CONCERNING
CO-OPERATIVES

1951

36
To explain some questions concerning co-operatives, I should
like to deal with the rural supply and marketing co-operatives and
not specific problems in the work of other co-operatives. This is
because the rural supply and marketing co-operatives perform rela-
tively complicated tasks. On the one hand, or first and foremost,
they organize the peasants as producers, helping them sell their sur-
plus produce and supplying them with farm implements and other
means of production. On the other hand, they organize the peasants
as consumers, supplying them with the means of subsistence. Once
the tasks of the supply and marketing co-operatives have been clari-
fied, it will be easy to expound on the particular problems of other
co-operatives.
Peasants in the rural areas wish the co-operatives or state-operated
economic departments chiefly to do the following four things for them:
1. Help them sell their surplus products at favourable prices;
2. Supply them with good-quality means of production at a
time when they need them and at reasonable prices;
3. Supply them with good-quality means of subsistence at a
time when they need them and at prices lower than market prices;
and
4. Provide them with credit services so that they can save
money and obtain loans at reasonable interest rates.
Experience has proved that the supply and marketing co-operatives
are not in a position to provide credit services, which must be hand-
led exclusively by banks. This is because any failure to collect loans

An unpublished manuscript written in July and August 1951.

99