What was the Great Leap Forward?

[Kukulofori]

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[Socialist Scum]

Attempting to increase steel output. Backyard furnaces and the like.

People moved to cities.
Less farmers.
Starvation.

The end. Mao somehow gets the rap for 60 or so million deaths, as he of course personally went round with a rifle shooting each one.

Thats it in a pathetic nutshell.

[Manzil]

The 'Great Leap Forward' has to be seen in context.

Up until the late 1950s, the Chinese Communists had moved very cautiously. Given the devastating effect of the Civil War and the struggle against Japan, the government had realised the importance of a steady reconstruction of the basic economic structure. This explains the self-imposed limitations of reform under the early People's Republic. The redistribution of land to the peasants, state encouragement of 'modern' cultural attitudes, nationalization of key industries and stabilisation of credit would all have been at home in any moderately nationalist 'Third World' state recently liberated from foreign control, as shown by the later experience of 'African Socialist' regimes during decolonisation. The emphasis was on getting production going and jump-starting basic economic activities disrupted by war: at no cost should food supplies to the towns be disrupted, or the peasants provoked into rebellion by too rapidly imposing collective farming methods.

The Great Leap Forward arose out of the autarchic, nationalist development programme inherent in the broadly 'Stalinist' model adopted by China. Despite its economic growth after 1949 due to the global 'long boom', China was falling behind relative to the West. Seeking to move beyond the basic agenda of its first decade, but unwilling to envisage a democratic or humane conception of socialism prioritising the conditions of the people, they went down the road of primitive 'socialist' accumulation. The 'Leap' was designed to bypass the need for imports of raw materials and capital, and the resulting potential threat of needing to concede to the demands of foreign capital to ensure the profitability of investment. So the peasants were forcibly moved into massive "people's communes", and the central government totally subordinated their entire economic policy to the production of steel and basic foodstuffs - unfortunately the former took priority in the party apparatus as a symbol of modernity, and the latter was further damaged by rural discontent at the sudden, emergency collectivisation of agriculture.

Working hours were extended beyond all sustainability, with meal breaks dropped, massively increased labour discipline and unsafe practices overlooked. The common image of the peasant with a small and counter-productively inefficient smelter in their home, although a serious problem given the ongoing threat of famine, was a minor aspect of the 'Leap' compared to the ruthless control exerted over the cities' productive workforce. Essentially the whole idea broke down under the weight of its own breakneck speed and China, at least until the brief interlude of the Cultural Revolution, returned to a more orthodox programme of state-led economic development. The period belongs to those brief moments in the history of Chinese Communism where ideologists in the party overcame the realists who understood the basic limitations of 'Stalinism'.