In Mao Zedong's view, the only way for farmers to achieve common prosperity is to take the socialist road. For them, there is no other way out except socialism. In order to get rid of poverty, improve life and resist famine, most farmers in the country can only unite and advance on the socialist road to achieve their goals.
In view of the fact that "the capitalist ownership of rich peasants and the individual ownership of peasants in the ocean" in the early stage of agricultural cooperation may lead to polarization and destroy the alliance of workers and peasants, Mao Zedong thinks that this problem can only be solved on a new basis. This is to gradually realize the socialist industrialization and transformation of handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce, and at the same time gradually realize the socialist transformation of the whole agriculture, that is, to implement cooperative transformation, eliminate the rich peasant economic system and individual economic system in rural areas, and make all rural people rich together. As long as it is cooperative, all rural people will become rich year by year.
Here, Mao Zedong not only regards cooperatives as a necessary organizational form for members to develop production and achieve common prosperity, but also acknowledges that cooperatives can avoid rural polarization, and thinks that only by taking the socialist cooperative road can the exploitation system be eliminated, and only by taking the socialist road can the common prosperity of all people be gradually realized. Common prosperity is the fundamental goal of socialism. This is the first time that Mao Zedong formally put forward the scientific concept of "common prosperity" in the history of our party.