Anti-Communist Mythology #2 - Was Democratic Kampuchea A Socialist Country?
Today marks 40 years since the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, effectively putting an end to the pro-U.S. Lon Nol regime that had governed Cambodia from 1970. They proceeded to evacuate most of the city immediately, moving the vast majority of the populace into the countryside. Almost from that very day, the actions of the Khmer Rouge have been used as an example of the ultimate evils of communism - after all, the Khmer Rouge claimed to be the premier communists in the world, "number one", with Albania and China ranking behind in 2nd and 3rd and Vietnam coming in as lowly "Comrade Number 7". The Khmer Rouge boasted that they had gone straight from feudalism to socialism and were up to a decade ahead of the rest of the Asian socialist countries. (Kiernan, 2008, pp.25-6). Nevertheless, the Khmer Rouge's surface rhetoric does not clarify either their own ideological conceptions or the character of Cambodian "socialism".
The Khmer Rouge itself was far from transparent about its aims. Its rise to power ended a long and devastating bombing campaign by the United States which had the aim of preventing Vietnamese insurgents using Cambodian territory for bases, but instead extended the conflict into Cambodia and led to the deaths of around 600,000 people (Kiljunen 1984, p.5). The bombing ended up achieving what America had aimed to avoid - the prospect of hostile, anti-imperialist governments in all three countries of Indochina. It was in these terms which the Khmer Rouge first described itself - as late as 1977, Ieng Sary claimed openly that "We are not communists ... we are revolutionaries" who do not 'belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina." (Vickery 1999, p.308).
It was somewhat earlier, in 1976, that the Khmer Rouge described themselves as "Marxist-Leninist" for the first time after the death of Mao Zedong. (Chandler 1983, p. 55). Nevertheless, even at this point the Khmer Rouge rarely expressed themselves in terms which actually had their origin in orthodox Marxism-Leninism. Chandler notes of the spokesman for the Khmer Rouge that "They claim that the CPK is a Marxist-Leninist Party, but say nothing about the writings of these two men." (Chandler 1983, p. 45). It was not until 1977 that the existence of the "Communist Party of Kampuchea" was even revealed, the organization having simply been known as the "Angkar" for the two years previous. (Chandler 1983, p. 37). Contrary to the principle that "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims", as Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, the Khmer Rouge rarely elaborated upon their ideology in any concrete way.
In this light, what came afterward is scarcely surprising. After the Vietnamese intervention and the subsequent collapse of Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge found themselves in alliance with the United States and other Western powers, eager to inflict revenge on Vietnam for the humiliating defeat of the war there. Happy to play the role of a U.S. proxy, the CPK was disbanded altogether in 1981 and replaced with the "Party of Democratic Kampuchea". While the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea declared it was in the process of constructing socialism, the Khmer Rouge now abandoned any affiliation with Marxism-Leninism, declaring their intention that they would "adopt the democratic system of government and will not construct socialism or communism". Ieng Sary was pleased by the election of Reagan in the same year and admitted that "we have given up socialism, at least for a generation, perhaps more." (Vickery 1999, p.268)
Leaving aside ideology, we can now move to the question of the Cambodian revolution itself. The essential class base of the Khmer Rouge was the peasantry as opposed to the proletariat, as with most Marxist-Leninist parties. The Cambodian proletariat was miniscule in 1975 and was reduced further by the subsequent relocations to the countryside. On this basis, it was impossible for socialism to be constructed in Cambodia in any form. Instead what the Cambodian social formation underwent was a blocking of any movement toward capitalism and an extension of tributary relations of production, albeit in a highly idiosyncratic form. As Vickery (p.286) described it: "In April 1975 the entire urban population, workers included, were demoted to the lowest class of the new society and with very few exceptions deported with minimal possessions, often to areas of extreme hardship, to perform agrarian labor. Although factories producing necessary goods or performing necessary services were not dismantled, and qualified workers in some cases were kept on the job, they did not form, even in theory, a privileged proletariat and were gradually, particularly after 1977, deported to the countryside and replaced by unskilled youth of favored poor-peasant background."
Democratic Kampuchea was nonetheless an extremely decentralized social formation and one torn with internal division and constant infighting by different factions within the CPK - it is difficult to really indicate any long term trends that could have developed, because by 1978 it was clear that the Khmer Rouge had alienated the peasantry and thus had little popular support left to sustain its rule. Its real ideology was driven by only two real consistencies - Khmer ultranationalism and extreme anti-Vietnamese chauvinism, both of which it shared with the Sihanouk monarchy and the Lon Nol republic, and in many ways took far further.
There are few predecessors for the dynamic elaborated here, though it can be argued that it stemmed in part from the complete destruction of the Cambodian economy by the United States which rendered any alternative development infeasible. Instead, and ironically, it was left to the People's Republic of Kampuchea to foster the creation of a capitalist mode of production in Cambodia through its lax restrictions on markets and small-commodity production. While some nascent forms of socialism began to be constructed during this period, they were largely dismantled during the restoration of the bourgeoisie to state power, culminating in a UN occupation of the country in 1993 and an eventual return to monarchy.
Bibliography
Chandler, D. & Kiernan, B. (1983). Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays. Yale University Southeast Asia Studies
Kiernan, B. (2008). The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Yale University Press.
Kiljunen, K. (1984). Kampuchea: Decade of the Genocide: Report of a Finnish Inquiry Commission. Zed Books.
Vickery, M. (1999). Cambodia 1975-1982. Silkworm Books.
babyhueypnewton posted:whats going to happen to all these slaves now that the cotton gin has replaced their labor? I guess they'll just be freed and live a life of luxury while the working day goes down to 4 hours.
you think you're criticizing me but you're agreeing with me.
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:everything from construction to farming to customer service to transport to war machines could be fully automated.
it is automate.d....... by ideology!!!!! o_o
deadken posted:the communists in china also had their class base in the peasantry rather than the proletariat and moved urban workers into the countryside, and they achieved several successes by bypassing capitalist relations and moving directly into socialism. was china also not marxist-leninist
the communists in china made rapid industrialization a priority, not the case here iirc
NoFreeWill posted:yeah because they turned capitalist and only the good socialist societies like Cuba count whereas all the other ones don't.
fuck man, I was just coming here to post exactly that....what we were all thinking but too afraid to say
Gibbonstrength posted:NoFreeWill posted:yeah because they turned capitalist and only the good socialist societies like Cuba count whereas all the other ones don't.
fuck man, I was just coming here to post exactly that....what we were all thinking but too afraid to say
His username says it all... No Free Will. Think about it.
deadken posted:the communists in china also had their class base in the peasantry rather than the proletariat and moved urban workers into the countryside, and they achieved several successes by bypassing capitalist relations and moving directly into socialism. was china also not marxist-leninist
it was actually ML orthodoxy until the 1950s that places like china didn't have the capacity to build socialism and had to go through a bourgeois-democratic period led by a socialist party. during the sino-soviet split, soviet allies held that basically any economy with pretenses of planning was non-capitalist, and that the eastern european countries had completed their bourgeois revolutions and were now socialist. china believed that they had completed their own bourgeois-democratic revolution and were now socialist, but that european soviet countries had regressed into capitalism. hoxha argued that none of these countries (other than the soviets) had ever achieved socialism in the main, and denied that Mao was a real marxist-leninist. i think hoxha's argument makes sense, although it doesn't matter all that much right now because antirevisionist ML parties are basically nonexistent in most of the world. and also because despite maoism being a garbled ideology it is still more progressive than almost everything else.
http://rainbowstalin5.ytmnd.com/
getfiscal posted:deadken posted:the communists in china also had their class base in the peasantry rather than the proletariat and moved urban workers into the countryside, and they achieved several successes by bypassing capitalist relations and moving directly into socialism. was china also not marxist-leninist
it was actually ML orthodoxy until the 1950s that places like china didn't have the capacity to build socialism and had to go through a bourgeois-democratic period led by a socialist party. during the sino-soviet split, soviet allies held that basically any economy with pretenses of planning was non-capitalist, and that the eastern european countries had completed their bourgeois revolutions and were now socialist. china believed that they had completed their own bourgeois-democratic revolution and were now socialist, but that european soviet countries had regressed into capitalism. hoxha argued that none of these countries (other than the soviets) had ever achieved socialism in the main, and denied that Mao was a real marxist-leninist. i think hoxha's argument makes sense, although it doesn't matter all that much right now because antirevisionist ML parties are basically nonexistent in most of the world. and also because despite maoism being a garbled ideology it is still more progressive than almost everything else.
I didn't know Prachanda posted here.
tpaine posted:
frontpage, imo
babyhueypnewton posted:I didn't know Prachanda posted here.
The Chinese revolution, in its character, is agrarian, anti-imperialist, anti-feudal. It is aimed against the foreign imperialist oppression, against Chinese feudalism and Chinese big bureaucratic, compradore bourgeoisie, closely linked with the foreign imperialists.
As J.V. Stalin has pointed out, the Chinese revolution, being a bourgeois-democratic, revolution, is at' the same, time a national-liberating revolution, with its sharp edge turned against foreign imperialists, an anti-imperialist revolution, which merges with the revolutionary movement of the working class of the whole world against imperialism. It grows beyond the framework of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, thanks to the leading role of the working class.
In the course of the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolution, the Chinese working class created a united front of the democratic forces, which includes: the working class, peasantry, urban petty bourgeoisie, intelligentsia, national bourgeoisie. The organising, leading and directing force of the united front is the working class, headed by its vanguard – the Communist Party; the stable alliance of the working class and peasantry forms the invincible basis of the united front.
Examining the Chinese revolution as the combination of two currents of the revolutionary movement – against feudal survivals and against imperialism – Comrade Stalin brilliantly foretold the nature of the power that would be established as a result of the victory of this revolution.
"I think", said J.V. Stalin in 1926, "that the future revolutionary power in China will, generally speaking, be reminiscent in its nature of the power which was spoken of in our country in 1905, i.e. something in the nature of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry with the difference, however, that it will be primarily an anti-imperialist power. It will be a transitional power to the non-capitalist or, more exactly, to the socialist development of China.” (Collected Works, Vol. VIII, pp. 365-66, Russian edition.)
Events in China are developing precisely as foreseen by Comrade Stalin. The revolutionary power established in China as a result of the victory of the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolution represents in its content something in the nature of the democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry. The Chinese People’s Republic is a State of people’s democracy at the first stage of its development. People’s democracy in China does not yet fulfil the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the present stage Socialist tasks, as immediate tasks, are not put forward and are not solved. This is a matter for the future. Mao Tse-tung has pointed out that only after flourishing national economy and culture have been established, after the necessary conditions have been created, will China, in accordance with the will of the whole of the people, begin to solve the tasks of building Socialism..
At the present time the work of people’s democracy in China aims at accomplishing the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Practically speaking, one of the tasks of this revolution – the national-liberation, anti-imperialist task – can be considered solved. At the same time the anti-feudal tasks have not yet been fully solved. In China the agrarian revolution is being widely developed, the abolition of landlord ownership and the establishment of peasant ownership of the land is in process.
- Peoples' Democracy as a Form of Political Organisation of Society (1951)
http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/sobolev2.htm
babyhueypnewton posted:getfiscal posted:deadken posted:the communists in china also had their class base in the peasantry rather than the proletariat and moved urban workers into the countryside, and they achieved several successes by bypassing capitalist relations and moving directly into socialism. was china also not marxist-leninist
it was actually ML orthodoxy until the 1950s that places like china didn't have the capacity to build socialism and had to go through a bourgeois-democratic period led by a socialist party. during the sino-soviet split, soviet allies held that basically any economy with pretenses of planning was non-capitalist, and that the eastern european countries had completed their bourgeois revolutions and were now socialist. china believed that they had completed their own bourgeois-democratic revolution and were now socialist, but that european soviet countries had regressed into capitalism. hoxha argued that none of these countries (other than the soviets) had ever achieved socialism in the main, and denied that Mao was a real marxist-leninist. i think hoxha's argument makes sense, although it doesn't matter all that much right now because antirevisionist ML parties are basically nonexistent in most of the world. and also because despite maoism being a garbled ideology it is still more progressive than almost everything else.
I didn't know Prachanda posted here.
I knew he did. ¡Presente!
It is an era in which the world capitalist front has collapsed in one part of the globe (one-sixth of the world) and has fully revealed its decadence everywhere else, in which the remaining capitalist parts cannot survive without relying more than ever on the colonies and Semi-colonies, in which a socialist state has been established and has proclaimed its readiness to give active support to the liberation movement of all colonies and semi-colonies, and in which the proletariat of the capitalist countries is steadily freeing itself from the social-imperialist influence of the social-democratic parties and has proclaimed its support for the liberation movement in the colonies and semi-colonies. In this era, any revolution in a colony or semi-colony that is directed against imperialism, i.e., against the international bourgeoisie or international capitalism, no longer comes within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, but within the new category. It is no longer part of the old bourgeois, or capitalist, world revolution, but is part of the new world revolution, the proletarian-socialist world revolution. Such revolutionary colonies and semi-colonies can no longer be regarded as allies of the counter revolutionary front of world capitalism; they have become allies of the revolutionary front of world socialism.
Although such a revolution in a colonial and semi-colonial country is still fundamentally bourgeois-democratic in its social character during its first stage or first step, and although its objective mission is to clear the path for the development of capitalism, it is no longer a revolution of the old type led by the bourgeoisie with the aim of establishing a capitalist society and a state under bourgeois dictatorship. It belongs to the new type of revolution led by the proletariat with the aim, in the first stage, of establishing a new-democratic society and a state under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes. Thus this revolution actually serves the purpose of clearing a still wider path for the development of socialism. In the course of its progress, there may be a number of further sub-stages, because of changes on the enemy's side and within the ranks of our allies, but the fundamental character of the revolution remains unchanged.
-On New Democracy, 1940
I would differentiate between bourgeois-democratic tasks and bourgeois-democratic government but you're right that Mao often doesn't. I guess my problem was with the word 'period' which seemed like revisionist language disguised as Maoism.
vampirarchist posted:basic minimum income will solve everything
jobs guarantee so we cna have full feudalism now
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:robots will take more and more menial labor jobs (starting with the destruction of any job that primarily involves driving) and less and less people will have necessary jobs, let alone jobs at all. the birthrate will collapse and low-skilled positions will cease to exist as the population of humanity withers away.
discuss.
the working class will be in charge of controlling the robots via virtual reality a la Elysium