Mao killed 80 millions.

[NorwegianCommunist]

I hear all the time that Mao killed 80 millions people under manmade famines, genocides and people getting killed if they didn't work etc.
I usually just say that I know nothing about Mao (which I don't)

How many deaths is he responsible for?
Is the number true or is it some rumors/capitalist propoganda etc?
How did the number of deaths happend?
Any great links to a website were I can read more about this?

[Caj]

I don't think it's helpful to blame deaths from things like famines, wars, etc. on specific individuals. It's absurd and perpetuates a "great man" (well, more like a "not-so-great man") perspective of history.

If you're asking about how many deaths there were during the Great Leap Forward, I've heard a number of different figures. The higher bourgeois sources are around 46 million, while most are around 30 million. The official estimate of Deng Xiaping's administration was around 15 million. I've heard Maoists argue that Deng was on a campaign to demonize and discredit Mao and that this estimate of 15 million must, therefore, be too high.

Also, it's important to keep in mind the methods that are used to calculate these estimates. A lot of them are based on "excess deaths" over the period of the Great Leap Forward. Using the same methods, one can show that there was something like 7 million deaths during the Great Depression in the United States.

[The Young Pioneer]

Great, another numbers thread where people will say what quantities they want to make their own politics look "correct" and slander others.

Srsly does no one learn.

[Ostrinski]

I feel like blowing the number of deaths out of proportion trivializes the deaths that did happen.

[Geiseric]

I'm sure that alot of people died in the Great Leap Foward as they did in the Industrialisation of the U.S.S.R. for pretty much the same reasons. Poor planning, rushing the working class and peasantry with impossible quotas, numerous things, however the exact number for finding our how many people died in the GLF would be impossible. But I wouldn't be surprised if the chinese government lied about their estimate to save their asses.

[Prometeo liberado]

I know personally of two hookers in Tijuana that were last seen alive with the Chairman. So lets count that as a definite/maybe 2 and work from there.



No offense to the OP but this is about as serious that this thread is gonna be.

[Ned Kelly]

A lot of people did die during the period of the great leap forward. Partly it was due to bad planning, partly it was due to the shocking drought that swept China during the period and partly it was due to the USSR pulling out a heap of funding, engineers, advisers etc. due to the deepening Sino - Soviet split.

[daft punk]

A planned economy would be good if it was done in the right way, democratically, but if it is a dictatorship you can have disasters. In China the bureaucracy favoured a certain scientist and they implemented some bad science into agriculture, resulting in millions starving.

There was also lots of repression.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Some good books on this subject include the following:

1. The Battle For China's Past by Mobo Gao
2. Through The Glass Darkly: American Views of the Chinese Revolution by William Hinton

My belief is that the numbers of the famine was inflated and cannot be completely blamed on Mao Tse-Tung. China was a huge country and prone to famine throughout it's entire history. Some of the things the government did didn't help, but it is not nearly close to all of Mao or his government's fault.

I don't like Mao, and I am personally no Maoist, but I also understand history and truth. If we are to criticize Mao, we should criticize him for real reasons, not fake ones.

[Rafiq]

Mao

M-a-o 3 letters.

80 * 3 = 240

240 million deaths.

There's your answer. At least my statistic actually involved calculating something.

[Drosophila]

Maybe they just ground up all the bodies and used them as fuel. That's the only way I think 80 million people could die without anyone knowing about it.

[Althusser]

The idea has been thrown around that because Mao had the farmers focus on steel production to compete with western powers, it slowed collectivization and people starved. I really don't think this is too relevent though because the famine was the main problem. That really can't be blamed on Mao, and whenever someone talks about the starving people they downplay the famine OR say Mao was responsible directly for it.

Just curious, what is the general maoist opinion of Stalin's Ukrainian "homodor"?

[MarxSchmarx]

Not to get too OT but:


A planned economy would be good if it was done in the right way, democratically, but if it is a dictatorship you can have disasters. In China the bureaucracy favoured a certain scientist and they implemented some bad science into agriculture, resulting in millions starving.


I'd be curious to know which scientist that was. The situation you describe is very similar to the popular conception of Lysenko's legacy in the USSR - as far as I know, Chinese agronomy never had a similar character and Chinese biology under Mao had actually been relatively independent of political influence compared to other countries, including capitalist ones.

Or are you referring to the 4 pests campaign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign)? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign%29?) In that case, the only real failure was with sparrows, which apparently Mao himself instigated.

In any event it's a little hard to pinpoint the effect of diminished sparrow populations - one issue is that sparrows eat a lot of grain, yes, but the inability of Chinese agriculture to resist massive herbivorous insect outbreaks was also due to the excessive pesticide use and the immense monocrops - not to mention the massive dislocation of the rural population and the collapse of subsistance agriculture beforehand.

As an aside, the struggle against rats and cockroaches continues
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3371659.stm

[Amal]

The idea has been thrown around that because Mao had the farmers focus on steel production to compete with western powers, it slowed collectivization and people starved. I really don't think this is too relevent though because the famine was the main problem. That really can't be blamed on Mao, and whenever someone talks about the starving people they downplay the famine OR say Mao was responsible directly for it.

Just curious, what is the general maoist opinion of Stalin's Ukrainian "homodor"?
http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html

[∞]

Any million is a bit too much, I reckon.