Word: communed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...responsibility system" in Sichuan has demonstrated that peasants work best when they tend their own fields. For Westerners this recognition seems equivalent to the rediscovery of the wheel. But with a crucial difference. The state, via the commune, has replaced the old landlord. It owns the fields; the peasant rents an allotted share of land; if he meets the state's quota (once called the landlord's rent), he keeps the rest. This is progress. It is harsh; yet the Great Cultural Revolution was far more cruel...
...countryside, farmers now sign contracts with a commune unit for a fixed quantity of produce to be sold to the state at the official price. Anything over the agreed-upon volume may be sold privately on the free market, and the farmer keeps the profit. Says a Western diplomat in Peking: "To all intents and purposes, collectivization is being abandoned...
...tellin ya," he interrupted, "there's sompin crazy goin' on here. This old guy's runnin' aroun' here, he's flipped a lid or sompin. Damn Pinko. He's got a commune...
...blinked. "A commune? What's that hat you're wearing...
...time to refill the inkwell. "I need a breather," he confesses. "Investigative cartooning is a young man's game." Though the cartoonist will be off from the beginning of next year through the fall of 1984, he is not really abandoning the residents of the Walden Puddle Commune, just fiddling with them. "It's time to give them $20 haircuts and move them out into the larger world of grownup concerns," says Trudeau. "The trip from draft beer and mixers to cocaine and herpes is a long one, and it's time they got a start...