Pol Pot

[Ned Kelly]

Is anyone on revleft a supporter of Pol Pot's 'year zero' agrarian communism policy? Or Pol Pot in general?

[Nial Fossjet]

I don't think this is the right forum for this...

[Comrade1]

Is anyone on revleft a supporter of Pol Pot's 'year zero' agrarian communism policy? Or Pol Pot in general?
I hope not.

[Rêve Rouge]

Neither is it a good idea to mention that name in the first place. I sense a bad feeling of long pointless arguments regarding Pol Pot and his regime.

By all means, I am no supporter of a madman. But I'm still curious as to what were his plans, his reasons, and just plain "why" he let such atrocities happened.

[Ned Kelly]

I don't think this is the right forum for this...

I'm not a supporter.

[Comrade1]

I'm not a supporter.
Then lets drop this topic, only will bring us to arguments and possibly tendency wars.

[scarletghoul]

There are no Pol-Potists on RevLeft, though there's a big schism that appears in every Pol Pot thread between those of us who are willing to explore the context and objective facts, and those who dismiss Pol Pot as a pure evil bloodthirsty madman who killed a trillion people for fun. There have been 2 or 3 hardcore Pol Pot supporters on revleft in the past but they have all ended up banned (they were from poor countries, and many third world comrades end up banned).

The Year Zero policy didn't appear out of the blue; we have to understand both the context and ideological influences. In 1975 Cambodia was pretty much at a 'year 0' anyway, with its infrastructure totally destroyed by war and intense US carpet-bombing (which killed half a million people). So when the Khmer Rouge came to power they had an enormous task of economic development from scratch. They evacuated the cities because they were overcrowded and on the edge of famine, with loads of people but no means of subsistence, and decided to develop the economy starting with the countryside. In fact, some of their agricultural methods were pretty successful and achieved what previous Cambodian governments could only dream of. But the Khmer Rouge were ultraleftist, going so far as to abolish money etc. This unexperienced ultraleftism, combined with impending Vietnamese invasion, a highly decentralised state, and a country that was already in ruins, caused disaster and suffering.

But anyway the main point is that developing the country from scratch was their only choice, and transferring most of the population to the countryside was no so crazy considering the problematic state of the cities (also they were a peasant movement and distrusted the cities as centers of capitalist decadence and so on). Evacuating the cities was a bit ultra-left but developing the countryside first is a good Maoist development model.The idea of calling it Year 0 might have come from the influence of the French Revolution (Pol Pot and the rest had studied in France and he was influenced by the french revolution)

So those are the general reasons behind the Year 0 and agricultural development policy of the Khmer Rouge. There are many other issues that haven't been mentioned so ask if you want. I left out details and stuff because I really need a wee and cant be arsed to type much.. theres trillions of old pol pot threads with more in depth answers to these and other questions, so please look for them too

[southernmissfan]

I wouldn't consider the Khmer Rouge "ultraleft" so much as a backwards peasant movement, to the point of being arguably primitivist. There were also strong nationalistic tendencies within this movement. Nothing about Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge are "Marxist" are proletarian.

[Glenn-Beck]

There have been 2 or 3 hardcore Pol Pot supporters on revleft in the past but they have all ended up banned (they were from poor countries, and many third world comrades end up banned).

why third world comrades banned?

[scarletghoul]

I wouldn't consider the Khmer Rouge "ultraleft" so much as a backwards peasant movement, to the point of being arguably primitivist. There were also strong nationalistic tendencies within this movement. Nothing about Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge are "Marxist" are proletarian.
Please explain exactly why they were primitivist ? They must be the only primitivists that have tank parades
-pDe0s9Xfg0

And yes they were ultra-left, apparently influenced a bit by Anarchism. It may be uncomfortable for ultraleftists and Anarchists to admit it, but this is what happens when such ideas are put into practice.. highly decentralised government, abolition of money.. it's crazy that there are still some people who call for that !

[Rêve Rouge]

I wouldn't consider the Khmer Rouge "ultraleft" so much as a backwards peasant movement, to the point of being arguably primitivist. There were also strong nationalistic tendencies within this movement. Nothing about Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge are "Marxist" are proletarian.

I wouldn't say they were primitivist. Pol Pot as far as I know did wish to bring about progress. But his extreme paranoia led to the destruction of his own dream. That's when corruption took over.



-pDe0s9Xfg0


Interesting; as revolutionary the lyrics are, the style of music is very traditional. Like as if it were an ordinary folk song I've heard before.

[scarletghoul]

Interesting; as revolutionary the lyrics are, the style of music is very traditional. Like as if it were an ordinary folk song I've heard before.
Yes, the Khmer Rouge were always nationalist and somewhat 'earthy'. Do you speak Khmer or have you just read the lyrics elsewhere ?

[Rêve Rouge]

Yes, the Khmer Rouge were always nationalist and somewhat 'earthy'. Do you speak Khmer or have you just read the lyrics elsewhere ?

Yes, but not fluently. Just enough to get by I suppose.

[Apoi_Viitor]

And yes they were ultra-left, apparently influenced a bit by Anarchism. It may be uncomfortable for ultraleftists and Anarchists to admit it, but this is what happens when such ideas are put into practice.. highly decentralised government, abolition of money.. it's crazy that there are still some people who call for that !

I've never heard of this 'anarchist influence' before. Can you explain to me how - in what ways, were they influenced by anarchism?

[southernmissfan]

Please explain exactly why they were primitivist ? They must be the only primitivists that have tank parades


And yes they were ultra-left, apparently influenced a bit by Anarchism. It may be uncomfortable for ultraleftists and Anarchists to admit it, but this is what happens when such ideas are put into practice.. highly decentralised government, abolition of money.. it's crazy that there are still some people who call for that !

I said arguably. A war on intellectuals and urbanization is one of the most remembered aspects of the regime, along with rejection of Western medicine. It was a backwards and reactionary peasant/nationalistic movement. A primitive, backwards peasantry has very different class interests than the proletariat. The devastation of war and foreign influence certainly had a negative influence on the situation. I'm not exactly who think the "ultraleft" is. The idea that the peasantry is the revolutionary working class is not "ultraleft" and not even Marxist. If anything this position puts the Khmer Rouge more in line with Maoism than other tenants of revolutionary socialism/communism. But it would be unfair to blame Maoism for this regime. Cambodia was a powderkeg of negative factors--a devastated economy, war and foreign influence, and a backwards population. As a result, an extreme, reactionary peasant ideology took hold. But I don't think "ultraleftists" or the majority of anarchists should be uncomfortable in regards to Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge. Those of us who actually believe the proletariat is the revolutionary class have nothing to worry about.

The goal of the revolutionary left is progress, not regression. I don't see how this Cambodian experiment can be seen as anything but reactionary.

EDIT: I believe there was a huge, shitstorm of a thread in regards to Anarchism and Pol Pot.

[Kléber]

And yes they were ultra-left, apparently influenced a bit by Anarchism.
Sort of - the party of Pol Pot was influenced heavily by Maoism and Maoism was itself heavily influenced by anarchism. There was virtually no Marxism in China until the Russian revolution inspired anarchists and nationalists to establish the CPC. All these anarchist aspects of Khmer Communism can be traced through Chinese Communism to the voluntarism and peasant orientation of Li Dazhao and Mao Zedong.


It may be uncomfortable for ultraleftists and Anarchists to admit it, but this is what happens when such ideas are put into practice.. highly decentralised government, abolition of money.. it's crazy that there are still some people who call for that !
In stooping to make this cheap shot at anarchists, you actually rebuke Maoism at its most radical. Do you support the PLA crackdown against leftists which ended the GPCR, and the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia which put a stop to Khmer "ultraleftism?"

[Kléber]

I wouldn't say they were primitivist. Pol Pot as far as I know did wish to bring about progress. But his extreme paranoia led to the destruction of his own dream. That's when corruption took over.
The paranoia was a direct result of the tenuous position of the DK regime, rivalry between Khmer and Vietnamese chauvinism as it was manifested in the national CP's, and internal contradictions within the Khmer Rouge between its mass poor peasant base and bureaucratic ruling clique.


Interesting; as revolutionary the lyrics are, the style of music is very traditional. Like as if it were an ordinary folk song I've heard before. It almost certainly was an ordinary folk song, with lyrics rewritten and possibly a slight adjustment in melody.

[Kléber]

I said arguably. A war on intellectuals and urbanization is one of the most remembered aspects of the regime, along with rejection of Western medicine.
Those are the most popular myths about the regime. The Pol Pot clique did conduct brutal Stalinist repressions, and its Maoist-inspired economic policies led to disaster, but they never rejected industry and medicine. There were still factories and doctors in Democratic Kampuchea.

This blog (written by a revleft poster) is a good place for interesting info and historical analysis about the period, that isn't pro-imperialist or pro-KR: The Eyes of the Pineapple (http://padevat.info/)

[synthesis]

Evacuating the cities was a bit ultra-left

In what way?

[chegitz guevara]

Sort of - the party of Pol Pot was influenced heavily by Maoism and Maoism was itself heavily influenced by anarchism. There was virtually no Marxism in China until the Russian revolution inspired anarchists and nationalists to establish the CPC. All these anarchist aspects of Khmer Communism can be traced through Chinese Communism to the voluntarism and peasant orientation of Li Dazhao and Mao Zedong.

Not so much this as that peasant "socialism" tends towards anarchism (Maoism's seeming anarchism doesn't come from this, but from its volunteerism). Peasant rebellions tend to be against all centralized authority, against towns and cities, etc.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

abolition of money.. it's crazy that there are still some people who call for that !

Like this guy:

http://www.marx2mao.com/M&E/Marx-old%28242x266%29.GIF

[Os Cangaceiros]

And yes they were ultra-left, apparently influenced a bit by Anarchism. It may be uncomfortable for ultraleftists and Anarchists to admit it, but this is what happens when such ideas are put into practice.. highly decentralised government, abolition of money.. it's crazy that there are still some people who call for that !

You mean like how factory production in the anarchist-dominated district of Aragon increased 20% during the Spanish Civil War? :rolleyes:

Anarchist production in Spain was in fact vertically-intergrated, and the CNT had some very, uh, hypocritical policies, but I find it interesting that you would attribute anarchism's supposed failure to people who did not call themselves anarchists, rather than people who did.

[Apoi_Viitor]

And yes they were ultra-left, apparently influenced a bit by Anarchism. It may be uncomfortable for ultraleftists and Anarchists to admit it, but this is what happens when such ideas are put into practice.. highly decentralised government, abolition of money.. it's crazy that there are still some people who call for that !

After re-reading this, I can't help but giggle. Khmer Rouge's tendency for 'ultra-leftism' and 'decentralization' was not because of any influence of Anarchism but of Maoism... And well, according to your profile, you are a 'Maoist'. Which is interesting, because if you're against a highly decentralized government, than you're probably against most of Mao's policies. Surely you disagree with the massive decentralization that occurred during the Cultural Revolution, right?

[MarxSchmarx]

why third world comrades banned?
Go ask it in the member's forum.

[scarletghoul]

why third world comrades banned?
A lot of them have some reactionary views which are widespread in poor countries but are unacceptable to some western leftists. Homophobia is a common example; there have been a lot of comrades from Eastern Europe and beyond who dislike gays as homosexuality there is seen as a liberal bourgeois decadence and so on (the consumer-hedonism marketed as 'gay culture' doesnt help tbh), so they express this pretty standard view on RevLeft and get banned because homophobia is against the rules here. I think it would be better to explain to them why they're wrong and how most gays are working class, but that's not what happens, so these good comrades get banned for expressing what in their countries is a standard view.

They are also sometimes banned for being 'trolls', which sometimes just means they are outspoken, down to earth, and not liberal-friendly..

In short, the forum is run according to particular western standards

[black magick hustla]

A lot of them have some reactionary views which are widespread in poor countries but are unacceptable to some western leftists. Homophobia is a common example; there have been a lot of comrades from Eastern Europe and beyond who dislike gays as homosexuality there is seen as a liberal bourgeois decadence
this is not true by the way. homophobia is widespread in the third world but not necessarily within the communist millieu. i never met an homophobic communist in mexico. i think you have very little understanding of what you are talking about. maybe if we spoke about massive maoist armies, but there is a difference between a soldier and politicized cadre

[Kléber]

In short, the forum is run according to particular western standards
Or you have an orientalist conception of the rest of the world as a giant primitive swamp where nobody can see beyond machismo and nationalism.


(the consumer-hedonism marketed as 'gay culture' doesnt help tbh)Yeah and the black bourgeoisie is partly to blame for white racism because they flaunt their wealth in hip-hop videos?

[Kléber]

maybe if we spoke about massive maoist armies, but there is a difference between a soldier and politicized cadre
Good thing that real life Maoists are more progressive: http://www.workers.org/world/2005/npa_0224/

http://www.workers.org/world/2005/npa1.jpg

[milk]

After re-reading this, I can't help but giggle. Khmer Rouge's tendency for 'ultra-leftism' and 'decentralization' was not because of any influence of Anarchism but of Maoism... And well, according to your profile, you are a 'Maoist'. Which is interesting, because if you're against a highly decentralized government, than you're probably against most of Mao's policies. Surely you disagree with the massive decentralization that occurred during the Cultural Revolution, right?

The decentralised nature of the weak state power in Democratic Kampuchea (which, we must remember, never really stood on its feet) had nothing to do with the Khmer Rouge being consciously inspired by anarchist influences. It was much more to do with the fragmented organisation of the rural areas the Khmer Rouge controlled during the insurgency and war, and the problems it posed for the central authorities after it. There was a regional aspect regarding power during the conflict, with a general line and coordination by the Communist Party, but relatively autonomous conditions for the regional forces to operate in. The central authorities after the war had formal power, but not complete real power throughout the whole country (which still lay with regional secretaries and military commanders). Saying that, there was pretty much general agreement on the policies chosen, but differences on the method and degree to which these policies were to be carried out. A centralisation drive of sorts occurred (Pol Pot and his allies in the central government) during the DK years, to subordinate the regional administrations to them. Something that was never completed when the Party was consuming itself and the Vietnamese invaded.

http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/1310/dkmap0001.jpg

DK was divided into administrative regions or zones (phumipeak), roughly identifiable according to the directions of the compass: Northern Zone, Northeastern Zone, Eastern Zone etc. These zones were further divided into sectors (damban), districts (srok), communes (khum), and individual villages (phum). At each level a committee was charged with implementing policy, with a political cadre assigned at the commune level if the chairman was deemed to be without sufficient revolutionary education to understand what was expected by the zone authorities, and in turn the central government (or Party Centre). The core, or main form of organisation within this, where power was exercised most effectively, was the cooperative. Cooperatives varied in size and consisted of families in the hundreds to a thousand, with permanent or mobile labour brigades formed out of them. This form of organisation had originally come from solidarity production teams (krom samaki) created in 1972 by the Front against Lon Nol and the Khmer Republic (the exiled royalists and Communists). To ensure the efficient production of food during wartime, they started off by collectively organising ten to fifteen families as a basic unit for agricultural work, and these teams would later form the basis of the cooperatives. That's your rural focus right there, but it was not the end goal of the revolution. It was this system that was to act as the base on which to rapidly industrialise the country. To provide the manpower and organisation needed for new infrastructure development countrywide, to increase and expand agricultural production, particularly rice for export, which would then bring in foreign revenue to be used for modernising and improving agriculture while also furnishing the means for industrial development. The DK government never got past this stage.

[Apoi_Viitor]

This form of organisation had originally come from solidarity production teams (krom samaki) created in 1972 by the Front against Lon Nol and the Khmer Republic (the exiled royalists and Communists). To ensure the efficient production of food during wartime, they started off by collectively organising ten to fifteen families as a basic unit for agricultural work, and these teams would later form the basis of the cooperatives. That's your rural focus right there, but it was not the end goal of the revolution. It was this system that was to act as the base on which to rapidly industrialise the country.

I've always heard that the Khmer policy of collectivization was highly successful during the civil war period... Yet, if this system was used for the basis of their entire program while in power, why did it pan in comparison to its success before the communists completely took power?

[milk]

As a way of helping rural people to cope in a severely disrupted society during wartime, the collective strategy the revolutionaries offered them enjoyed some success and support, but the peasants would come to dislike the increasingly strict and regimented organisation of rural life. And such militarised organisation would not be eased after the war was over, but expanded and deepened. It was all they had ever known in practice. For the Khmer Rouge it was basically about securing a reliable supply of soldiers and the efficient production of food needed to sustain them, while in a state of war. But after the war their revolutionary constituency soon came to reject them, and the entire urban sector of the country was placed into the enemy camp, ensuring that a considerable number of the country's population, whether genuine urbanite or peasant refugee who had sought protection in the cities and towns, would not support the revolution. The poor-peasant social forces also dragged Khmer Rouge modernising ambitions. The peasantry, despite being the revolutionary constituency were uninterested in the building of socialism as the Khmer Rouge understood it. The peasantry didn't want to be forced (which is what it amounted to) into a socialist stage, un-Marxist or otherwise, and many only joined them when wanting an end to the 1970-75 war and its devastating bombing, with a return to the social balance experienced pre-war, but on terms more favorable to their rural lives.

As mentioned above, their rural focus (organised along the lines of a Khmer version of war communism) was for the expansion of rice production to stabilise the food situation inside the country, and to create large surpluses for export, in order to bring in the foreign revenue needed for productive reinvestment, namely for the modernisation of agriculture and then related industrial development. Of course, there were issues of mastery and self-reliance, arrogant self-regard and hubris. There was also the fragmented state power and internal political divides along with warlord rivalries. And lastly, the simplified and literal Maoist ideological positions, the rigid militarised regimentation of the population and the Communists’ poor-peasant focus interfered with all this. It’s also a case of What If, for industrialisation never happened, they never got past first base. The revolution rapidly degenerated.

[scarletghoul]

this is not true by the way. homophobia is widespread in the third world but not necessarily within the communist millieu. i never met an homophobic communist in mexico. i think you have very little understanding of what you are talking about. maybe if we spoke about massive maoist armies, but there is a difference between a soldier and politicized cadre
I'm mostly talking about eastern europeans, a few of whom have been banned for homophobia with no one explaining to them why

Maoists are generally pretty good for lgbt issues. At least the CPP and UCPN(M) are, ive not heard from the others on the issue.

Anyway really are you denying that homophobia is commonplace in oppressed communities ??

[electro_fan]

Umm .. No???

[Iskalla]

By dropping their bombs on Cambodia, America sort of lay down the foundations for the Khmer Rouge to work from. The Year 0 thing was intended to be progressive, not a move back, but the mark of a new era, and I've read Viatnamese soldiers were responsibly for many of the deaths that occured, not Khmer Rouge. Thats how I usually hear Pol Pot and his comrades defended.

The manner in which they began developing their brand of 'Communism' was brutal and nationalistic, they probably meant well but failed miserably, ending many lives along with delivering blows to the reputation of socialism and communism. In that video interview he did, Pol Pot seemed to have a totally clear conscience and a sort of detachment to his role as leader of Khmer Rouge, sort of made it even more sinister.

[Iskalla]

Good thing that real life Maoists are more progressive: http://www.workers.org/world/2005/npa_0224/

http://www.workers.org/world/2005/npa1.jpg

That's awesome.

I can understand dumb, homophobic views from the far right, but I'd find it hard to accept they could come from a true communist in our times.

[milk]

I've read Viatnamese soldiers were responsibly for many of the deaths that occured, not Khmer Rouge. Thats how I usually hear Pol Pot and his comrades defended.

You've read wrongly then.

[Palingenisis]

Good thing that real life Maoists are more progressive: http://www.workers.org/world/2005/npa_0224/



Fair play for admitting that.

[Dimentio]

Please explain exactly why they were primitivist ? They must be the only primitivists that have tank parades
-pDe0s9Xfg0

And yes they were ultra-left, apparently influenced a bit by Anarchism. It may be uncomfortable for ultraleftists and Anarchists to admit it, but this is what happens when such ideas are put into practice.. highly decentralised government, abolition of money.. it's crazy that there are still some people who call for that !

Khmer Rogue weren't primmies, but some primmies (around Pentti Linkola), have advocated for a state armed with modern weapons which should empty the cities and destroy agriculture to reduce population.

[Palingenisis]

Khmer Rogue weren't primmies, but some primmies (around Pentti Linkola), have advocated for a state armed with modern weapons which should empty the cities and destroy agriculture to reduce population.

http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/Arkangel/Arkangel2.htm#nottoomuch

The founder of the Animal Liberation Front is pretty psycho too.

[milk]

Khmer Rogue weren't primmies, but some primmies (around Pentti Linkola), have advocated for a state armed with modern weapons which should empty the cities and destroy agriculture to reduce population.

Talking about the Khmer Rouge and primitivism is misleading. It's just a meme continually repeated, with information found in things like lazy journalism.

[milk]

Here's a clip taken from a French topical programme made in the early 1980s. This particular one featured the Yugoslav film made about DK, called Kampucija 1978.

It shows a revolutionary dance performance, which looks like a mish-mash of traditional Khmer ballet, influenced by the Cultural Revolution in China.

xy69mPW1494

Note the dancers representing industrial workers, in blue shirts, carrying hammers and spanners.

[Apoi_Viitor]

But didn't the Khmer Rouge promote violence against urbanites ("new people")? And didn't they harbor a disdain for the intelligentsia and western technology?

[Dimentio]

Talking about the Khmer Rouge and primitivism is misleading. It's just a meme continually repeated, with information found in things like lazy journalism.

I am agreeing with you there.

[milk]

But didn't the Khmer Rouge promote violence against urbanites ("new people")? And didn't they harbor a disdain for the intelligentsia and western technology?

The Khmer Rouge can't be viewed in complete abstraction from what was generally happening in the country prior to them winning power, i.e. war. And a war that pitted the rural areas against an enemy concentrated in the towns and cities. The Khmer Rouge was an alliance between the petty bourgeois and peasantry, and Democratic Kampuchea was peasant revenge against the city, and petty bourgeois revenge against the traditional elite that had rejected them. But while strong, it wasn't the only goal of the revolution. It would also be worthwhile to know how urban Cambodia operated, just who and what urban people actually were, and before the war too. Modern technology was not disdained per se, but KR ideology and voluntarism saw peasanitsation as a first step before proletarianisation within the cooperative system. And new technological training and innovations were to be achieved by way of shortcuts, as the economy developed. Firstly, though, there was a focus to increase agricultural production, and with it the belief in an individual's mental reconfigurability through manual labour. The non-poor peasant masses collected there in the cooperatives would learn to know what it is like to live as a poor peasant, the revolutionary constituency, and these people would be reforged with their participation in the simultaneous building of socialist infrastructure. All would be eventually transformed, as the economy industrialised. The poor peasant social forces dragged the modernising ambitions though. The peasantry was not interested in socialism as the Khmer Rouge understood it. But if we are to look at socialism within a Marxist context, then I may be wrong, but there is no known Marxist strategy for moving from a declining Asiatic mode of production straight to socialism, which is what the Khmer Rouge, using an incorrect analysis of Cambodian society, attempted. Indeed, with regard to theory and objective material conditions, they just cut the feet to fit the shoes.

[malthusela]

People should take into consideration the fact that had Pol Pot not existed, Jello wouldn't have wrote a very good song.

[devoration1]

Democratic Kampuchea is what happens when you let student radicals have a state. The 'anarchistic' idea of the abolition of money, states, markets, etc is not a proposal to be done overnight, in only one region or country, at any particular moment. It is the result of an international working class revolution- which itself takes time and has a number of contributing factors.

There was nothing 'ultraleft' (as we understand the term 'ultraleft' in political language as it pertains to the workers movement) about Pol Pot, his party or his regime and its actions. An elementary reading of left communist, councilist, anarcho-communist, etc texts would reveal this glaringly obvious difference.



After switching to a technical school at Russey Keo (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Russey_Keo), north of Phnom Penh, he qualified for a scholarship that allowed for technical study in France (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/France). He studied radio electronics at the EFR (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/EFREI) in Paris (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Paris) from 1949 to 1953. He also participated in an international labour brigade building roads in Zagreb (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Zagreb) in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Socialist_Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia) in 1950. After the Soviet Union (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Soviet_Union) recognised the Viet Minh (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Viet_Minh) as the government of Vietnam in 1950, French Communists (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/French_Communist_Party) (PCF) took up the cause of Vietnam's independence. The PCF's anti-colonialism (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Anti-imperialism) attracted many young Cambodians, including Saloth.
In 1951, he joined a communist (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Communist) cell in a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste ("Marxist (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Marxist) circle") which had taken control of the Khmer Student's Association (AER) that same year. Within a few months, Saloth also joined the PCF. Historian Philip Short has said that Saloth's poor academic record was a considerable advantage within the anti-intellectual PCF, who saw uneducated peasants as the true proletariat (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Proletariat).

Pol Pot was quite in line with the anti-proletariat (the real proletariet, not the substituted 'working class' composed of peasants and other groups), voluntarist, idealist fringes of Marxism-Leninism that took root all over the world during the renewal of working class struggles after 1968. The monstrosity that ensued was the result of the extreme perversion of communism due to the geopolitical significance of Marxism-Leninism during the Cold War.

[LibertarianSocialist1]

Pol Pot´s main flaw was his ultra-leftism.

[milk]

Pol Pot was quite in line with the anti-proletariat (the real proletariet, not the substituted 'working class' composed of peasants and other groups), voluntarist, idealist fringes of Marxism-Leninism that took root all over the world during the renewal of working class struggles after 1968. The monstrosity that ensued was the result of the extreme perversion of communism due to the geopolitical significance of Marxism-Leninism during the Cold War.

Yet the conditions that gave rise to the Khmer Rouge peasant revolution, allied with petty-bourgeois radicals, were quite independent of influence from developments out of the events of 1968. Indeed pre-date them and had more of an impact than, say, any Eastward-looking intellectual fads, or more meaningful worker struggles in the West.

Khmer War Communism made a Great Leap into disaster, but if we're to talk about a real proletariat, or international working class revolution, then while class struggle does exist what does this mean for a desperately poor, largely pre-capitalist country that has been unable to industrialise? (DK being the most radical and ambitious attempt to do so, and also the biggest failure.)

Cambodia's protectorate status and relationship with the French colonial presence never saw the country undergo the capitalist changes that occurred in the jewel of the French possessions, Cochinchina (today's southern Vietnam). There was no being rid of an old mode of production (indeed the old declining Asiatic one was maintained), and with independence, the following of a separate capitalist path. And then the country came to be engulfed in a conflict involving the leading power of the 20th century capitalist world bloc. The Cold War meant Hot War in Indochina, and the Khmer Rouge attempted to follow a separate socialist path after that conflict, separate to the idea of a Vietnamese-led Indochina socialist federation. With regard to that, and for reasons other than 'ultra-leftism,' they left themselves a narrow set of choices.

[Apoi_Viitor]

The Khmer Rouge can't be viewed in complete abstraction from what was generally happening in the country prior to them winning power, i.e. war. And a war that pitted the rural areas against an enemy concentrated in the towns and cities. The Khmer Rouge was an alliance between the petty bourgeois and peasantry, and Democratic Kampuchea was peasant revenge against the city, and petty bourgeois revenge against the traditional elite that had rejected them. But while strong, it wasn't the only goal of the revolution.

So the revolution was partly based on a conflict between the poor peasantry and the 'bourgeios' city dwellers?


It would also be worthwhile to know how urban Cambodia operated, just who and what urban people actually were, and before the war too. Modern technology was not disdained per se, but KR ideology and voluntarism saw peasanitsation as a first step before proletarianisation within the cooperative system. And new technological training and innovations were to be achieved by way of shortcuts, as the economy developed.

But didn't they reject modern medicine in favor of 'traditional' or holistic medicine? Also, who were these 'urban people' then?


Firstly, though, there was a focus to increase agricultural production, and with it the belief in an individual's mental reconfigurability through manual labour. The non-poor peasant masses collected there in the cooperatives would learn to know what it is like to live as a poor peasant, the revolutionary constituency, and these people would be reforged with their participation in the simultaneous building of socialist infrastructure.

Was it the Khmer Rouge's goal to re-educate the "urban elite" or exterminate them? Because the sheer number of skilled intellectuals slaughtered under the regime might point towards the latter...


from a declining Asiatic mode of production straight to socialism, which is what the Khmer Rouge, using an incorrect analysis of Cambodian society, attempted. Indeed, with regard to theory and objective material conditions, they just cut the feet to fit the shoes.

How were there petty-bourgeios in an Asiatic mode of production?

[milk]

So the revolution was partly based on a conflict between the poor peasantry and the 'bourgeios' city dwellers?

There was no Cambodian bourgeoisie, as we might understand it here. It was unable to form fully, under conditions explained below.


But didn't they reject modern medicine in favor of 'traditional' or holistic medicine?

Khmer Rouge voluntarism (extreme and Maoist-inspired) is confusing, and will require another post to explain, rather than one aspect in isolation.


Also, who were these 'urban people' then?

To many peasants the towns acted as an unwanted, indeed resented drain on the countryside, much of it directed at the lower representatives of the royal bureaucracy set up to maintain the elite. And then made worse with the tentative introduction of capitalist change, which did not affect the rural population in a decent way, but exacerbated already strained relations between town and country.

Industry, or the development of it, hadn't been at one time that important for the needs of the Khmer elite, more so into twentieth century, but a social phenomenon after the Second World War saw the urban population of the country increase for other reasons not related to what you may think would be industrial development.

Surplus for years had been extracted mostly for luxury consumption within the country, not much was desired for productive reinvestment, with a slow change in orientation eventually occurring at the top, but the old patterns of society remained, if partly altered, with Cambodia's mass base of largely self-sufficient farmers affected by capitalist impingement but not thoroughly changed by it. In the second half of the twentieth century one important aspect of the increase in the country's urban people was that, as well as thinly democratic changes post-war to the government and the narrowly-focused chances of social mobility, it was in part due to the expansion of formal education at all levels in Cambodia during the years of Sihanouk's government, and which may seem laudable even for its own sake, but many who passed through it saw education as useful when attaching only a status value to it. It meant to those people with even just a primary school diploma a channel in which to escape peasant life, but the only way for those who had had some schooling to find town-based employment for upwards mobility, was to enter a low-level bureaucratic career (the old government system set up to service the royalty), which by the 1960s had few positions for newcomers, nor teaching in the expanded education system. Development was also not occurring to make use of people who also by and large did not have the requisite educational qualifications needed for it, anyway.

In short there was the creation of a class, if you will, of semi-intellectual and useless people numbering in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps up to a million, who made up this increase in Cambodia’s urban population who didn’t, perhaps refused to engage in what little industrial labour there was. Attempts were made by the government to persuade them to return to the land, but once aspirations were firmly in peoples minds they could not be shaken away so easily, with many remaining to enter the many service jobs in the capital and elsewhere. These were in areas such as nightclubs, hotels, salons or as quasi-servants to higher status people connected to the court. Anything to avoid a return to the country, staying put where they thought an easier life could be had.

Instead of an increased industrialisation of urban Cambodia, or the modernisation of agriculture to help furnish this development, the towns acted as they had always done, by squeezing the peasantry as much as possible for the purposes of elite personal luxury consumption, with newly imported and expensive attractions, and the many commoners who wanted a piece of the same pie. The towns didn’t create wealth, but consumed it. The peasantry were viewed not only by the elite, but also came to be viewed by pretentious aspirants, as not only lowly, dirty, and unrefined yokels, but in the agricultural slack season as people who didn’t work as hard as they should, supplying the towns with their usurious debt payments, taxes and produce. When there was a demand for rice exports in the 1960s, even more pressure would be applied on the peasantry acting as a spark which with other antagonisms resulted in an explosion of rural violence by the late 1960s, so anti-town resentment and violence were part of Cambodian peasant life before and independent of Khmer Rouge influence. Of course the war would intensify this division between them, with the peasantry being hardest hit by shelling and bombing.

It may be wrong to take the simplistic and binary view of country = good and town = bad, for even though these urban people had no direct hand in the suffering of rural people during the war, they were very much identified as siding with the government dishing it out. The peasantry, with all they had had to put up with over the years perhaps couldn’t be blamed for indulging in a little schadenfreude when seeing these pretentious city folk brought down a peg or two.



Was it the Khmer Rouge's goal to re-educate the "urban elite" or exterminate them? Because the sheer number of skilled intellectuals slaughtered under the regime might point towards the latter...

No policy of extermination ever took place. The excessive violence of DK was a different phenomenon entirely. We need to determine with more specificity how the theoretical and material realities came together or were pulled together (poor-peasant social forces uninterested in socialism, their misdirected revenge for the suffering they felt during the war and a confused government with modernising ambitions, and riven with factions and rivalries, undergoing a bloody power struggle which ultimately tore it apart).



How were there petty-bourgeios in an Asiatic mode of production?

I said declining Asiatic mode. A better person than me, who can explain this, would be the Marxist academic and Cambodia specialist Michael Vickery (A few passages from The Creation of Modern Cambodia, found here (http://www.michaelvickery.org/)):


Among all of the countries of Southeast Asia which came under western colonial control, it was only in Cambodia that imperialism failed to perform what Marx in an early analysis accepted as its historic task – to smash the existing ‘feudal’ system and thereby open the way to the development of more progressive capitalism. In the other states of Southeast Asia the old structures were in varying degrees replaced by one or another type of European system based on capitalism, and now most of these states have taken off, as Marx supposed, on their own capitalist paths, and moreover show varying degrees of capitalist crisis. The same process prevailed in Thailand in spite of its formal independence. In this respect Burma and Viet Nam seemed for some time to lag behind the others, but perhaps deliberately in order to test innovations, and in the end they may be the most successful. Certainly now, in 2009, there can be no doubt that Viet Nam has been successful.

This process of smashing a pre-modern structure to embark on a path mimicking the West has only now, since 1991, begun in Cambodia, at a time and in a way which may prove disastrous. Under the French Protectorate not only were the royalty and the special type of bureaucracy supporting it not destroyed, they were solidified and protected under a benevolent, for them, French umbrella. Domestic opposition to the king, whether from royal pretenders or the lower orders, was successfully suppressed, and Cambodian kings, from Norodom (r. 1864-1904) to his great-grandson Sihanouk (r. 1941-1955, 1993-2005), sat more solidly on their thrones than at any time since Angkor. No capitalist bourgeoisie, either local or French, developed, for French economic interests lay elsewhere, and merchants were mostly foreign, thus outside political life, and, like the Cambodian elite, interested in accumulation for consumption, not investment for production. The great majority of Khmer were poor peasants.


The status of ‘protectorate’ rather than ‘colony’ must be understood. It meant that unlike Southern Viet Nam, Cochinchina, de jure, and all of Viet Nam de facto, a thoroughly French administration from capital to village was not set up. The old Cambodian state structure was left in place, the prestige of king, royal family, and aristocracy was preserved, with in fact much greater security from internal disturbances, provincial administration under governors from dominant local families was maintained, and in their usual activities most Cambodian villagers rarely had to deal with a Frenchman.

French control was maintained by a parallel structure of a Résident Supérieur in Phnom Penh subordinate to the Governor-General in Hanoi, and Résidents at provincial level, who gave ‘advice’ to their Cambodian counterparts. Cambodia was not a very important component of French Indochina, and except for the very heavy taxation, worse than in Viet Nam or Laos, French rule did not greatly impinge on the life of ordinary people.

After 1945, during a period of only 30 years, Cambodia attempted to move out of a backwater of Asiatic ‘feudalism’ through a bourgeois revolution followed immediately by a socialist revolution, without the classes which formed elsewhere to carry out either of those revolutions, indeed with a society whose structure was appropriate only to its own Mode of Production.

In contrast to Viet Nam, Burma, or Indonesia, colonialism had not carried out its progressive task of destroying the old society and setting foundations for capitalism, let alone socialism. A royalty already foundering and decadent was preserved in aspic in palaces which it could not have afforded on its own; the small number of newly educated, instead of becoming progressive proto-bourgeois, were coopted, or if hopeless rebels were exiled, and the mass of the population, peasants, remained under the hegemony of a complex of ideas in which the function of king was inextricably mixed with religion and the ceremonies necessary for social well-being.

As in other colonial countries, little was done to inculcate the best values of the West. Although the French babbled on about their mission civilisatrice, and the British, under protest, went through motions of establishing some democratic forms, what Asians saw of modern western society was simply a new, and foreign, ruling class, as rapacious economically and as exclusive socially as the old. In front of the fine rhetoric were brutal officials, secret police, imprisonment without trial, partisan justice, and political pay-offs.

If these negative features have been prominent in newly independent former colonies, and in formally independent Thailand, under heavy British imperial influence, it is not just ‘traditional’ society reasserting itself, but also imitation of the West as seen in its practice in Cambodia, Viet Nam, Burma, etc. In fact, Cambodia, because of the peculiar nature of its Protectorate, may have been imbued with the worst possible mixture of the negative features of both types of society. Whereas in Burma, where colonialism had carried out what the young Marx considered its progressive role, by 1908 new barristers were returning from education in England, while in protected royalist Cambodia there was no high school until 1935.

When the Pacific War ended in 1945 the royalty, like their counterparts in Malaya and East Sumatra, wanted nothing more than return of the protecting power. Like those other royals, they had neighbors where royal charisma had long been forgotten, and where there were strong movements for independence. Like the early Malay nationalist movements who desired inclusion in a Great Indonesia, there were Cambodian anti-royalist nationalist intellectuals who, while not advocating absorption of Cambodia by Viet Nam, saw Viet Nam as a more developed and progressive nation, and its language as a better vehicle for modern education than Khmer.

If by that time there was no longer royalty with equal fluency and interest in Vietnamese to counterbalance the Thai culture of the Norodoms, that interest had been taken over by members of a rising class who would play a role in elite politics for the next 40 years. Among those intellectuals was one tendency whose goal was multi-party democracy and capitalism, although they probably would have rejected the latter term, and a more radical group who admired socialism.

Unlike the situation in western Europe at a comparable period of its history, neither of these intellectual tendencies represented organic intellectuals of already formed classes. There was no industrial bourgeoisie trying to take political power, nor a fortiori, was there a proletariat needing guidance forward into socialism. The new class which naturally rose out of a dissolving Asiatic Mode of Production under the impact of colonial capitalism was a petty bourgeoisie. They existed in embryo in the interstices of the old society between the ruling class of royalty and aristocrat-bureaucrats and peasantry as petty traders, monastery-educated poor men trying to climb socially as independent intellectuals, or as private clerks in the personal retinue of the elite (in old Ayutthaya-Krung Thep the tnāy).

Their chance as a class came when the traditional bureaucracies were opened to all comers on the basis of education and talent, either after destruction of the old regimes by colonial powers, or, as in independent Thailand, when administrative modernization was seen as necessary to preserve independence, and, incidentally, to enable the royalty to overthrow the hegemony which the bureaucratic aristocrats had held since early in the nineteenth century.

The new petty bourgeoisie then develops within the new bureaucracy, the traditional locus of power, but they are blocked from becoming a ruling class like the old bureaucracy, for that slot is occupied by the colonial power, or in Thailand after 1870 by the royalty. Neither can the new petty bourgeoisie become a true entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, because that slot, if not occupied by colons, is maintained, as in Thailand, by a local foreign element originating in the agents of the state who managed trade under the old regimes (in Southeast Asia mostly Chinese).

The new petty bourgeoisie is envious of the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, as in Europe, but is unable to compete with them, and seeks administrative redressment of complaints through seizure of political control, as occurred in Thailand in 1932. This is made easier because entrepreneurs are a different ethnic group who cannot compete in the political arena, and class conflict is disguised as ethnic rivalry, even for outside observers and western social scientists.