In today's China, people no longer have any doubts about whether or not to engage in a commodity economy, but this does not mean that the discussion between "surname capital" and "surname society" has ended, because in the eyes of many people, it is self-evident that China is moving towards capitalism since it is engaged in a commodity economy. It can be seen that the issue of socialist public ownership and commodity economy still needs to be discussed.

1. The understanding of Marxist classical theorists on problems

Marx and Engels, the founders of scientific socialism, always believed that socialist public ownership and commodity economy were contrary to each other. "As soon as society takes possession of the means of production, commodity production will be eliminated, and with it the domination of the product over the producer. The state of nothingness within social production will be replaced by a planned and conscious organization, and the struggle for survival will cease. As a result, in a certain sense, talents finally broke away from the animal kingdom and entered the living conditions of real people from the living conditions of animals. The conditions of life that have been around people, which have hitherto ruled, are now in love with the domination and control of people, and for the first time people have become conscious and true masters of nature. (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. III, p. 323)

There is no doubt that in the communist society of the future, the commodity economy will be eliminated, however, Marx and Engels believed that even in the initial stage of communism, in the transitional period, commodity exchange could not exist. "In a collective, society based on the common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products, and the labour expended in the production of them is not represented here in the value of those products,...... We are talking here of a communist society that has not developed on its own basis, but, on the contrary, has just emerged from capitalist society, and therefore bears in every way, economically, morally and spiritually, the traces of the old society from which it was born. Therefore, every producer, after making all the deductions, receives from the social side exactly what he has given to society. What he gives to society is the amount of his personal labor. For example, the social working day is made up of all the hours of individual labour, and the individual labour-time of each producer is the part of the social labour-day that he provides, that is, his share of the social-labour-day. He receives from the community a certificate attesting to the amount of labour he has provided (net of his labour for the social fund), and by virtue of this certificate he receives from the social store a penny of consumer means equivalent to the amount of labour he provides. The amount of labor he gives to society in one form is all received in another. (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. III, pp. 10, 11)

Marx and Engels' understanding of this problem stems from their analysis and study of the commodity economy: "What is a commodity? It is a product produced in a society of more or less separated private producers, that is to say, first of all, a private product" (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 3, p. 345) "The concept of value is the most general and therefore the broadest germ of the economic conditions of commodity production, and it also contains the germ of all the further developed forms of commodity production and commodity exchange." Value is the expression of social labour contained in the private product, and here there is already the possibility of a distinction between social labour and private labour contained in the same product. If, then, a private producer continues to produce in the old ways while the mode of production of society is progressing, he will feel this difference acutely. The same phenomenon occurs when the whole private producer of a certain class of commodities produces more than is required by society. The value of a commodity can only be expressed by another commodity and can only be realized when it is exchanged with another commodity, and here there is the possibility that either the exchange cannot be established at all, or the true value of the commodity cannot be realized. Finally, if a special commodity appears on the market - labour-power, then the value of labour-power, like any other commodity, is determined by the socially necessary labour time to produce it. Thus, in the form of value of the product, the whole capitalist form of production, the antagonism between the capitalist and the wage worker, the industrial reserve army and the germ of the crisis are already contained. An attempt to abolish the capitalist form of production by the manufacture of "real value" is tantamount to an attempt to abolish Catholicism by the manufacture of a "real" pope, or to establish a society in which the producers finally dominate their products by the complete realization of the economic category in which the producers are enslaved by their own products. (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. III, p. 349)

The great Marxist Lenin had the same understanding of the problems of socialism and commodity economy as Marx and Engels, and the wartime communist system practiced in the former Soviet Union from 1917 to 1921, although it was not unrelated to the special war environment, could not but be seen to be inseparable from Lenin's understanding of the above problems. Beginning in 1921, the Soviet Union began to implement the New Economic Policy under the auspices of Lenin. The NEP is mainly to replace the surplus grain collection system with agricultural taxes, and to implement a concession system and freedom of trade, which in the final analysis is to recognize commodity production and commodity exchange. The NEP, which saved the Soviet economy from the brink of collapse under the wartime communist system, was undoubtedly the advance of the former Soviet Union on the road to socialism from our point of view today, but, in Lenin's view, the NEP was ultimately something that belonged to capitalism. He said: "This may be regarded as a strange argument, can private capitalism be a helper to socialism? But this is not a strange talk at all, but a completely indisputable fact economically." Since this small peasant state, freed from war and blockade, has suffered a major destruction in terms of transport, and politically it is led by the proletariat who controls transport and big industry. On the basis of these premises, then, it is inevitable to conclude that, firstly, local circulation is of paramount importance at the present time, and secondly, it is possible to promote socialism through private capitalism, not to mention state capitalism. (Lenin's Selected Works, vol. IV, p. 529)

The ideas of the classical theorists of Marxism have had a profound impact on the later practice of socialism, but they have also caused many obstacles.

2. China's practice

New China's understanding of socialism and the commodity economy has gone through a difficult and tortuous process. In the first 30 years of reform and opening up, like other socialist countries, although commodity production and commodity exchange never stopped, they always regarded the commodity economy as different. Even the peasants who exchanged a few eggs for pocket money were sometimes seen as the tail of capitalism.

The bold exploration and practice of the commodity economy began at the Third Plenary Session of the 11 th CPC Central Committee. First of all, it is necessary to implement the household responsibility system in the rural areas, raise the prices of agricultural products, solve the situation of deviation between prices and values, open up the trade of urban and rural markets to a large extent, and reduce the state's directive plans in production and sales. On this basis, in 1982, the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the principle of "giving priority to the planned economy, supplemented by market regulation", and the market economy was placed in an important position. In 1984, the Third Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) issued the Decision of the CPC Central Committee on the Reform of the Economic System, which clearly stated that the socialist economy is a planned commodity economy based on public ownership. Although a "planned" restriction has been added to the commodity economy, the institutional model is no longer a planned economy but a market economy. Finally, at the 14 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the general goal of China's economic structural reform was established as the establishment of a social market economic system. In China, breaking through the fetters and imprisonment of socialism on the market economy is not mainly in theory but in social practice. For today's China, there is no longer the question of whether or not to engage in a market economy and whether or not to engage in a commodity economy, but rather whether or not to engage in a commodity economy.

3. Why do we have to engage in a commodity economy?

The starting point of the commodity economy is the exchange of goods. Commodity exchange is first and foremost a way of intercourse among people, and even in a self-sufficient society, it is impossible for people to produce all their needs, and individual needs always have to be satisfied through exchange. In the process of exchange, we do not rule out commercial fraud, and we do not rule out that some people have suffered more or less losses or taken advantage, but as Marx did in Capital, the general tendency of commodity exchange is equivalent exchange. The value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor condensed in the commodity. The amount of labor depends on the average working time of the society, which is often referred to as the law of value. The result of the exchange is a win-win situation, with both parties getting what they want. It can be seen that the so-called commodity exchange is actually the mutual exchange of the same amount of labor of different qualities, and it is also the process of people providing services to each other, but the services must be paid and equivalent. The commodity exchange expresses such a form of interaction. If the production of a society is mainly in the form of the production of commodities, the economy of this society is a commodity economy. Therefore, to discuss why we should engage in a commodity economy is to discuss why people must give up their labor products for a paid and equivalent price. The fact that people have to sell the products of their labor for a fee and equal price is determined by the private nature of labor. We know that the process of primitive accumulation of capital is a process of expropriation of the means of production of the laborer. Capital can deprive the laborer of all the means of production and leave the laborer with nothing, but it cannot strip the laborer of the ability to work. Just as the socialist revolution can expropriate the expropriated and achieve public ownership of the means of production, it cannot change the private nature of labor at once. There are two main factors that determine the private nature of labor: one is personal freedom, and the other is the opposition between labor and enjoyment. The first point is obvious, for example, under the slave system, because of the slave owner's personal possession of the slave, the slave's labor did not have a private attribute to the slave, and under the feudal system, because of the existence of personal dependence, the peasant's labor did not have a completely private attribute to the peasant. We will focus here on the second point – the opposition between labor and enjoyment. Regarding the formation of the opposition between labor and enjoyment and its role in the process of human history, the author has discussed it in the article "Labor and Enjoyment" (published in "Jiangsu Social Sciences"), and here I only want to point out a basic fact: for modern people, labor is still a means of livelihood. In other words, people have to work in order to earn a living, and if they can earn a living without working and can obtain the means of enjoyment, people will of course prefer not to work. Therefore, only by using labor for compensation can labor be maintained and encouraged, and can labor enthusiasm be mobilized. The equivalent exchange embodies the principle of fairness and justice, so the commodity economy itself is an advanced stage in the development of human forms of exchange, and of course it is also an insurmountable stage. It may be argued that equivalent exchange does not have to take the tortuous form of commodity exchange. In his critique of the Gotha Program, Marx envisaged a regulated commodity exchange without money, which has been quoted in detail earlier. Engels also said: "Once society has taken possession of the means of production and applied them to production in the form of direct socialization, the labour of each individual, no matter how different its special purpose, becomes direct social labour from the very beginning." At that time, the amount of social labour contained in a product can be determined without first taking a roundabout way; Society can simply calculate how many working hours are contained in a steam engine, in a hundred liters of recently harvested wheat, in a hundred square meters of cotton cloth of a certain quality. At that time, therefore, since the quantity of labour contained in the product is known directly and absolutely, society will not think of continuing to express these quantities of labour in relative, vacillating, inadequate, previously obliged to adopt out of desperation, that is, by the third product, and not by their natural, equivalent, absolute measure, time...... One can handle all this very simply, without the famous "value" meddling in the middle. (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, vol. III, p. 348). Here, both Marx and Engels ignored a problem, that is, the influence of the laborer's attitude towards labor on the labor process, that is to say, there is a big gap in the value created by the laborer's different labor attitude in the same time. In Capital, Marx talked about the impact of the length of the working day, the intensity of labor, the improvement of the means of production, scientific progress, the length of the growth cycle, and the size of the scale of production on labor productivity, but never talked about the impact of the labor attitude of the laborer on labor productivity. To be sure, it makes no sense to discuss this issue in the context of the study of Capital, but it is crucial to our problems today.

Labor is an active and conscious activity that is unique to human beings. Just as human beings evolved from animals, human labor also evolved from animal instinctive survival activities, from animal instinct to human labor, this is the most glorious page in the history of human evolution, because all the transformation and utilization of nature by human beings began here. But just as all progress is a regression in another sense, the superiority of human labor over animal instinct lies in the fact that labor is a conscious activity that can be at its disposal, and it is precisely because it can be at its own disposal that it can decide to be lazy or even not to work, and there is no need for such worries about animals. In the same working hours, if one worker is active and the other worker is passive and slack, the results of his labor will definitely be different, and if he is only paid according to the working hours, it will definitely dampen the enthusiasm of the active worker. The end result can only be that there is nothing left in the social store to distribute. Isn't this the result caused by our so-called socialist big pot of rice or not, and whether or not to do the same, to do more and do less?

In order to eliminate the private nature of labor, it is necessary to eliminate the opposition between labor and enjoyment, and make labor itself enjoyable. In a society where the opposition between labor and enjoyment has been abolished, if anyone talks about the remuneration of labor and the exchange of equal value, it is a joke. As Marx put it: "In the advanced stage of communist society, after the obedience to the division of labour in slavery has disappeared, and with it the antagonism between mental and physical labour, and after labour has become not only a means of subsistence, but has itself become the first necessity of life,-- only then can the narrow limits of bourgeois legal power be exceeded, and society can write on its banner: to each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. III, p. 12)

Some people may ask, how can the antagonism between labor and enjoyment disappear, and how can labor become enjoyment? The elimination of the antagonism between labor and enjoyment is indeed unimaginable to us people today, but it is by no means impossible. A person with the simplest mind can tell him exactly what kind of activity is labor and what kind of activity is enjoyment, but it is almost impossible to simply determine what activity is labor and what is enjoyment. For example, operating a computer is labor for a computer operator, but it is a pleasure for a person who plays video games, driving a car is labor for a car driver, and it is a rare enjoyment for someone who wants to be addicted to a car. Farming is always labor, right? But the great people of the West would rather spend money to go to the countryside to do farm work and enjoy the pastoral pleasures. Therefore, it is not the activity itself that determines whether an activity is labor or enjoyment, but the knowledge of the activity. In the final analysis, people's understanding comes from the practice of people's production and life, and when people's production and living conditions change, people's understanding will of course also change.

4. Public ownership and the commodity economy

Professor Wang Huaichao said in the article "Several Major Ideological and Theoretical Issues of Current Concern to Party and Government Cadres": "I remember that a few years ago, a Japanese scholar talked to me about this issue. He said: In the history of world development, there are successful precedents for combining the market economy with private ownership, such as the Soviet Union during the Stalin period and the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. There is no precedent in the history of world development for combining the market economy with public ownership, and if China can accomplish this combination, he is willing to recommend that we win the Nobel Prize in Economics, and even apply for the Nobel Peace Prize. He went on to say that, in his view, the Chinese had come up with an unsolved equation for themselves. The implication is that, in his view, the integration of public ownership with the market economy is a fantasy. (Half Moon Talk, internal edition, 2001, No. 7, p. 59) In fact, this understanding is very representative. The key issue between the so-called socialism and the commodity economy is whether the market economy allows the existence of public ownership, or whether the commodity economy can develop under the conditions of public ownership.

Generally speaking, the ownership of the product belongs to the owner of the means of production, if the ownership of the product only belongs to the owner of the means of production, the commodity does not have private attributes under public ownership, which should be the crux of the problem. The problem, however, is that ownership and control of the product do not necessarily belong to the owner of the means of production. For example, in the joint-stock system, in which both public and private property are put into a joint-stock enterprise, the enterprise acquires a legal person property right that can dispose of property and products with full authority, which is different from the ultimate ownership. The property rights of legal persons enable enterprises to become producers of goods with full capacity for conduct. Marx said: The joint-stock system is the renunciation of private property, and in the same sense, we can also say that the joint-stock system is also the renunciation of public property. However, the shareholding system does not change the ownership of property, and the ultimate property rights still belong to the property owner. However, the ultimate property right does not prevent the enterprise from having full authority to dispose of all property and products. It can be seen that the problem is not the nature of ownership, but the form of realization of ownership.

Some people say that the commodity economy has caused us to abandon many of the principles of socialism. Of course, since we are engaged in a commodity economy, we must readjust our production relations and superstructure in accordance with the requirements of the commodity economy, and we must reform the economic and political systems. However, this is not an abandonment of the principles of socialism, but the healthy development of the socialist cause. What are the principles of socialism, and if they are the so-called rules and regulations that have caused our society to suffer greatly, socialism should be this way and not that kind of restraint, and it must be abandoned.

Historical materialism has long irrefutably pointed out that human society, like the natural world, also has objective laws that are not subject to anyone's will, and that the most fundamental principle for socialists who take the scientific world outlook as their guide to action can only be to act according to objective laws.

5. The socialist mode of the commodity economy and the capitalist mode of the commodity economy

Since both the socialist commodity economy and the capitalist commodity economy are commodity economies, they must have the general characteristics of the commodity economy. In the same way, the socialist commodity economy and the capitalist commodity economy, as two special forms of commodity economy, also have their own particularities, that is to say, they are different, and the fundamental difference lies in the fact that one takes public ownership as the main body and the other takes private ownership as the main body. Although through certain forms of realization, neither public ownership nor private ownership hinders the development of the commodity economy. However, in the operation of the commodity economy, due to different ownership systems, both the process and the result are very different.

Marx and Engels spoke highly of capitalism: "The bourgeoisie has created more productive forces in less than a hundred years of its class rule than all the productive forces created in all previous epochs." The conquest of the forces of nature, the adoption of machinery, the application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, the movement of steamships, the passage of railways, the use of the telegraph, the reclamation of whole continents, the navigation of rivers, the great population that seemed to be summoned from the ground by magic,-- what century in the past could have imagined that such productive forces were lurking in social labour?" (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 1, p. 256) These achievements enumerated by Marx and Engels are only a drop in the face of modern times. However, capitalism, while creating brilliant achievements, has also created one human tragedy after another.

In order to complete primitive accumulation, the means of production were separated from the producers, which caused thousands of laborers to be displaced and homeless. As Marx said, primitive accumulation is inscribed in the chronicles of mankind with words of blood and fire.

In order to rapidly expand capital and increase the amount of surplus value as much as possible, prolonging working hours, lowering wages, and increasing labor intensity and labor tension became the usual means used by capitalists in the early development of capitalism. In particular, working hours have been extended to an average of 16 hours a day, far more than the labour force can bear. In order to reduce costs, the working and living conditions provided for workers are very simple, and the housing is cramped and the working environment is suffocating. The average life expectancy of workers has plummeted to their thirties. On the other hand, the invention and improvement of machines, the adoption of new processes and scientific and technological progress, the most powerful levers for increasing the productivity of labour, which were supposed to be means of emancipating labour, have for a long time been the factors that have made the situation of the labourer even more miserable under the capitalist mode of the commodity economy. A large number of people are unemployed, female workers and child labor are used in large numbers, and workers are at a greater disadvantage in competition. In the course of developing the commodity economy, all of the above will never happen to socialism, which always puts the best interests of all workers first.

Then there is the economic crisis, which used to be a common condition in the early development of capitalism, which occurred on average once every seven years or so, and caused far more harm to human society than a flood of beasts. "What is the reason for the occurrence of a social plague in the midst of a crisis, which seemed absurd in all past times, that is, of overproduction, as if it were a famine, of a general war of destruction, which devoured all the means of subsistence of society, as if all industry and commerce had been ,--destroyed? (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 1, p. 257) If since the Second World War, capitalism has made painstaking efforts to alleviate the economic crisis, but this is what socialism can do from the very beginning in the process of developing the commodity economy, because this is where the advantages of public ownership lie.

Marx once pointed out of the workers' cooperative factories under capitalism: "The workers' own cooperative factories are the first gap opened in the old form within the old form, although in its actual organization, of course, everywhere it reproduces output and must reproduce all the shortcomings of the system." (Capital, Vol. 3, pp. 497-498) As the general commodity economy, the socialist commodity economy, in its development, will not only produce all the advantages of the commodity economy, but also produce the disadvantages of the commodity economy. For example, the domination of capital over labor. Unemployment, the fact that labor and commodity labor are still of a servantary nature, the surplus of certain products caused by the policy-free state of production within a certain range, and all sorts of social evils. But as Marx said in the preface to Capital: "Even if a society has explored the natural laws of its own motion,-- the ultimate purpose of this book is to reveal the laws of economic movement in modern society,-- it can neither skip nor cancel the natural stages of development by decree, but it can shorten and alleviate the pain of childbirth." (Capital, Vol. I, p. 11)

Note: The author's signature of this article is Wu Shipu, which was published in Hebei Academic Journal