daddyholes posted:and what exactly is the purpose of talking about Zen priests and Japanese soldiers before asserting that the examples given bolster an argument about the "radical revolutionary"; this reads almost exactly like a specific john dolan column about how Mao was a hard bro
zizke pls
swirlsofhistory posted:Mao was an idiot without equal. Khrushchev saved the world from nuclear war and lost his job for it because he valued the rule of democracy over his own vanity. Mao starved millions thanks to his economic ignorance and pigheadedness, and felt the party had wronged him. The arrogance of the man was astounding.
mao didnt starve millions, in fact, the completely naturally occurring famine during the great leap forward was the last famine to occur in china
getfiscal posted:also mao was joking.
fleights posted:swirlsofhistory posted:
Mao was an idiot without equal. Khrushchev saved the world from nuclear war and lost his job for it because he valued the rule of democracy over his own vanity. Mao starved millions thanks to his economic ignorance and pigheadedness, and felt the party had wronged him. The arrogance of the man was astounding.
mao didnt starve millions, in fact, the completely naturally occurring famine during the great leap forward was the last famine to occur in china
GLF begins -> famine -> GLF is scrapped -> no more famines
Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (1989). Hunger and public action. Clarendon Press. p. 215.
References
^ Martin Shaw. What Is Genocide? Cambridge, England, UK; Malden, Massachusetts, USA: Polity Press, 2007. Pp. 72.
^ Jacques Semelin, Stanley (INT) Hoffman. Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide. New York, New York, USA: Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. 37.
^ Martin Shaw. What Is Genocide? Cambridge, England, UK; Malden, Massachusetts, USA: Polity Press, 2007. Pp. 72.
^ Jacques Semelin, Stanley (INT) Hoffman. Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide. New York, New York, USA: Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. 37.
^ Martin Shaw. What Is Genocide? Cambridge, England, UK; Malden, Massachusetts, USA: Polity Press, 2007. Pp. 72.
iscrimination using HotCat) (undo)
for example, mao maintained that the party apparatus was "95% good" - he thought the anti-bureaucratic movement should only target a narrow stratum of "capitalist-roaders". he intervened to quickly shut down the shanghai commune. he also sent down the youth largely to demobilize them. he met with nixon and restored deng xiaoping to prominence. he made multiple interventions to stop further radicalization of the economy. the early deng-era reforms were often just normalization of practices that emerged in the late mao period and shortly after.
it's also obvious that within a few years of his death basically the entire party apparatus endorsed the shift towards markets, and no new party arose to combat it, which suggests the system was bureaucratic and rotten. the contemporary western maoist position is an elaboration of the left position within GPCR china that mass mobilization in councils of popular power could be used to fight bureaucracy. this seems almost virtually identical to the trotskyist position, however, if you read people like tony cliff on the issue. it also doesn't address the fact that this movement would be trying to build a movement against mao and the CCP, not within the existing framework (since contemporary maoists admit that a new party was needed). so it might be correct but it seems correct in spite of mao and not because of him, if that matters. it also seems notable that the strategy failed.
in fact, i think that's a major issue that all marxist-leninists have to face: things didn't end up working out. blaming revisionism is fine but that's not really a good call for marxists because any good theory should account for revisionism. beyond that, the societies it did produce had huge problems, and most of the revisionist actions were at least plausible attempts at addressing them. if popular power really is the solution then why not build into it a broader critique of the state (some maoists do this) which sees not only the stalinist period but the maoist period as well as seriously flawed.
jools posted:i do kind of want bhpn to bust in and talk about how great the khmer rouge was tbh
what up with the 1978 VPA then
jools posted:"despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former."
Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (1989). Hunger and public action. Clarendon Press. p. 215.
Indeed, and that's why India should throw off feudal bondage and develop its productive forces as China did. That, however, is not an endorsement of a primitive peasant-centred economy, as with the backyard furnaces of the GLF or Nehru's spinning wheel socialism, which is the very opposite of the modernization and centralization of the productive forces.
swirlsofhistory posted:GLF begins -> famine -> GLF is scrapped -> no more famines
i think it's fair to blame mao because he was paramount leader but it was probably more the fault of the governor of sichuan province. supplies of food nationwide were sufficient to avoid a famine (as is normal during famines) but the governor obstructed and lied repeatedly to avoid sanction. the result was that sichuan was devastated. mao's orders in response weren't followed. accordingly mao didn't think of it as a structural problem so much as a combination of weather and poor management. obviously if a network of officials can starve millions of people it is a serious problem, though.
i think the "human element" of the GLF famine was more a question of grainhoarding due to unequal distribution policies for the countryside & cities
jools posted:what's wrong with backyard furnaces? small scale production that wasn't much different at all was behind the 1980s Economic Miracle Of Deng Xiaoping...
i think the "human element" of the GLF famine was more a question of grainhoarding due to unequal distribution policies for the countryside & cities
Backyard furnaces mostly produced worthless slag because peasant knowledge of blast furnaces and metallurgy was sorely lacking, so people were melting down their useful tools and possessions for nothing.
swirlsofhistory posted:jools posted:"despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former."
Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (1989). Hunger and public action. Clarendon Press. p. 215.Indeed, and that's why India should throw off feudal bondage and develop its productive forces as China did. That, however, is not an endorsement of a primitive peasant-centred economy, as with the backyard furnaces of the GLF or Nehru's spinning wheel socialism, which is the very opposite of the modernization and centralization of the productive forces.
also, india hasn't been feudal for a long time.
in Amelica 10 miyon starve due to bad personal choices
wasted posted:I don't care for zizek, but who are jools' favorite philosophers?
to be honest i don't read that many Philosophers... but...
karl marx, walter benjamin, domenico losurdo, alasdair macintyre and frantz fanon
RescueCreditor posted:I was watching Nixon the other day and Breznev said that Mao had told him in 1963 that if he had nuclear weapons he would kill 400 million Chinese. Is this based on anything real? Thanks for taking my call, I'll hang up and listen.
This seems to be based on a quote from Peng Dehuai from 1956:
"...we are not afraid of atomic warfare. Why? Because China has 600 million people. Even if 200 million were killed by atomic weapons, 400 million would still survive. Even if 400 million people were killed, 200 million would still survive. Even if 200 million survived, China would still constitute a big country in the world. Furthermore, these 200 million people will absolutely not surrender. Therefore, at the end, America will lose the war."
ArisVelouchiotis posted:zizek wrote a thing
man, after tens of thousands of years women must get pretty sick of the excuses that men of all political stripes make to justify the terrible violence that befalls themselves and their children.
ArisVelouchiotis posted:zizek wrote a thing
man, after tens of thousands of years women must get pretty sick of the excuses that men of all political stripes make to justify the terrible and pointless violence that befalls them and their children.
jools posted:i do kind of want bhpn to bust in and talk about how great the khmer rouge was tbh
did you see that thing recently about how counterpunch sent a dude to Cambodia and he wrote this crazy shit about how they all loved the Khmer Rouge
