Cambodia and Pol-Pot

[LiamChe]

The Cambodia has been somewhat of a mystery for me (or at least I'm quite ignorant about what happened there). Was Cambodia socialist? It seems to me that they quickly fizzled out and became instruments of Global Imperialism. What happened there and why did they attack Vietnam? And what prompted them to become so revisionist? Are there any good books or resources on the Khmer Rouge?

[LOLseph Stalin]

I know that at one point Pol Pot was backed by the CIA and that Vietnam invaded Cambodia. Other than that though, good luck.

[tuwix]

The Cambodia has been somewhat of a mystery for me (or at least I'm quite ignorant about what happened there). Was Cambodia socialist? It seems to me that they quickly fizzled out and became instruments of Global Imperialism. What happened there and why did they attack Vietnam? And what prompted them to become so revisionist? Are there any good books or resources on the Khmer Rouge?

Cambodia was never socialist state because socialist state is just an oxymorone. But Pol-Pot was assuming that it is imposible to build socialism on ruins of capitalism and then started to kill all higher, in his opinion, classes exept his own bureaucracy.. Such "nice guy"...

[Remus Bleys]

Oh look, Revleft has a new Pol Pot thread.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Cambodia did not become 'revisionist' because the Khmer Rouge was never communist to begin with.

The Khmer Rouge were a crackpot-insanity political group obsessed with dictatorial control, 'primitive agricultural socialism' i.e. evicting thousands of people from cities and forcing them to work on death-farms with no infrastructure in ridiculous conditions. They also put some of the more crackpot maoistic ideals into practice - that is, murder anyone who looks 'upper class', including anything from French people to people with an education to people with glasses to (as inevitably this rabid chauvinistic haze tends to lead to) non-Cambodian. This lead to the infamous killing fields, where "counter-revolutionaries" (again, people with fucking optometric glasses and shit) and minority groups in Cambodia were lined up and shot. This culminated in a genocide that took the lives of over a million people. The Vietnamese army noticed the fucked up shit the Khmer Rouge was doing in the highlands and invaded Cambodia, ousting the Rouge from power. China, the 'anti-imperialist' state that it was, subsequently began an invasion of Vietnam. Unlucky for them and their US allies (the US was backing the Khmer Rouge intensively and continued to only recognize Khmer Rouge Kampuchea during the Vietnamese invasion, after the new government was set up and the subsequent UN transnational authority zone that succeeded it), the PRC lost the war.

Pol Pot was a monster. He's on a whole other level to other controversial leftist figures - he's a literal reactionary satan. Any leftist who barracks for this asshole is comparable to a Nazi in my book.

[Remus Bleys]

Cambodia did not become 'revisionist' because the Khmer Rouge was never communist to begin with.

The Khmer Rouge were a crackpot-insanity political group obsessed with dictatorial control, 'primitive agricultural socialism' i.e. evicting thousands of people from cities and forcing them to work on death-farms with no infrastructure in ridiculous conditions. They also put some of the more crackpot maoistic ideals into practice - that is, murder anyone who looks 'upper class', including anything from French people to people with an education to people with glasses to (as inevitably this rabid chauvinistic haze tends to lead to) non-Cambodian. This lead to the infamous killing fields, where "counter-revolutionaries" (again, people with fucking optometric glasses and shit) and minority groups in Cambodia were lined up and shot. This culminated in a genocide that took the lives of over a million people. The Vietnamese army noticed the fucked up shit the Khmer Rouge was doing in the highlands and invaded Cambodia, ousting the Rouge from power. China, the 'anti-imperialist' state that it was, subsequently began an invasion of Vietnam. Unlucky for them and their US allies (the US was backing the Khmer Rouge intensively and continued to only recognize Khmer Rouge Kampuchea during the Vietnamese invasion, after the new government was set up and the subsequent UN transnational authority zone that succeeded it), the PRC lost the war.

Pol Pot was a monster. He's on a whole other level to other controversial leftist figures - he's a literal reactionary satan. Any leftist who barracks for this asshole is comparable to a Nazi in my book.
but...but... national right to self-determination

[RevolucionarBG]

The Cambodia has been somewhat of a mystery for me (or at least I'm quite ignorant about what happened there). Was Cambodia socialist? It seems to me that they quickly fizzled out and became instruments of Global Imperialism. What happened there and why did they attack Vietnam? And what prompted them to become so revisionist? Are there any good books or resources on the Khmer Rouge?

Google it: Democratic Kampuchea is moving forward

I would post a link, but the restriction of 25 posts areis still used on me...

[Red_Banner]

n1HG9G54szg

[Crabbensmasher]

I don't really know much, but didn't they revere the Khmer Empire at some god-like status? You know, the one that existed hundreds of years before the Khmer Rouge.

I thought that's what prompted them to undergo that huge 'agricultural death camp socialism' program. It was to return them to the days when they were the breadbasket of Southeast Asia. Like returning them to former glory or something.

As I'm writing this I realize I might be completely wrong. Anyone know?

[Tim Cornelis]

I don't really know much, but didn't they revere the Khmer Empire at some god-like status? You know, the one that existed hundreds of years before the Khmer Rouge.

I thought that's what prompted them to undergo that huge 'agricultural death camp socialism' program. It was to return them to the days when they were the breadbasket of Southeast Asia. Like returning them to former glory or something.

As I'm writing this I realize I might be completely wrong. Anyone know?

I've heard this as well. It's reminiscent of palingenetic ultranationalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palingenetic_ultranationalism), the basis of the fascist ideology (staging a national rebirth on the basis of a romanticised golden age period -- e.g., Turkish fascism and the Ottoman Empire, Dutch fascists and the Dutch Empire, Italian fascists and the Roman Empire, Nordic fascists and Vikings, etc.).

[Comrade Jacob]

Pol Pot 101:
He was an ass-hole who was backed by the CIA that didn't know how to run a country, slaughter many people with glasses, called himself a Maoist after Mao died then got driven out by Vietnam.

[erupt]

Pol Pot 101:
He was an ass-hole who was backed by the CIA that didn't know how to run a country, slaughter many people with glasses, called himself a Maoist after Mao died then got driven out by Vietnam.

You must remember, though, that when Vietnam and Kampuchea were at war, China backed Kampuchea, as was stated earlier.

[Crabbensmasher]

I've heard this as well. It's reminiscent of palingenetic ultranationalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palingenetic_ultranationalism), the basis of the fascist ideology (staging a national rebirth on the basis of a romanticised golden age period -- e.g., Turkish fascism and the Ottoman Empire, Dutch fascists and the Dutch Empire, Italian fascists and the Roman Empire, Nordic fascists and Vikings, etc.).

Oh gawd, that really puts all the "Canada 1812" advertisements into perspective. Haha, some palingenetic ultranationalism on Harper's part?

[Os Cangaceiros]

The Khmer Rouge were only supported by the USA after they were a government-in-exile, in Thailand.

[blake 3:17]

The best account from a Marxist perspective is in Jonathan Neale's book on the Vietnam War.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/95810.A_People_s_History_Of_The_Vietnam_War

[d3crypt]

A psychopathic murder who has nothing to do with communism. Anyone who supports him should gtfo.

[Blake's Baby]

Yeah. He was a Maoist. The Chinese thought he was great. The Russians, however, backed the Vietnamese.

The CIA (and the British government) supported the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese invasion in 1979. Pretty certain they didn't before that. But it's part of the US-Chinese deal that emerged 'when Nixon went to China'. In order to prevent the USSR (enemy no 1) gaining more influence in SE Asia, the US started cosying up to China in the early 1970s. Vietnam was a Soviet ally; an alliance with China made it possible for the US to withdraw from SE Asia and hand over hegemony to the Chinese, who were at least anti-Russian if not exactly 'anti-communist'. Pol Pot's regime was as much a tool of China's foreign policy as Ho Chi Minh's was of Russian foreign policy.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

He wasn't a Maoist but rather a revisionist opportunist. For a detailed look at his policies see "What Went Wrong with the Pol Pot Regime" by RIM.
(http://www.aworldtowin.org/back_issues/1999-25/PolPot_eng25.htm)
Sent from my KFTT using Tapatalk HD

[milk]

Cambodia did not become 'revisionist' because the Khmer Rouge was never communist to begin with.

The Khmer Rouge were a crackpot-insanity political group obsessed with dictatorial control, 'primitive agricultural socialism' i.e. evicting thousands of people from cities and forcing them to work on death-farms with no infrastructure in ridiculous conditions. They also put some of the more crackpot maoistic ideals into practice - that is, murder anyone who looks 'upper class', including anything from French people to people with an education to people with glasses to (as inevitably this rabid chauvinistic haze tends to lead to) non-Cambodian. This lead to the infamous killing fields, where "counter-revolutionaries" (again, people with fucking optometric glasses and shit) and minority groups in Cambodia were lined up and shot. This culminated in a genocide that took the lives of over a million people. The Vietnamese army noticed the fucked up shit the Khmer Rouge was doing in the highlands and invaded Cambodia, ousting the Rouge from power. China, the 'anti-imperialist' state that it was, subsequently began an invasion of Vietnam. Unlucky for them and their US allies (the US was backing the Khmer Rouge intensively and continued to only recognize Khmer Rouge Kampuchea during the Vietnamese invasion, after the new government was set up and the subsequent UN transnational authority zone that succeeded it), the PRC lost the war.

Pol Pot was a monster. He's on a whole other level to other controversial leftist figures - he's a literal reactionary satan. Any leftist who barracks for this asshole is comparable to a Nazi in my book.

Where to begin with this.

Pol Pot was a failed Stalinist and the CPK, through a crude Stalin-Mao framework of development, attempted to mobilise the country to carry out a program of industrialisation at an accelerated pace. The only thing 'primitive' about that vision was primitive capital accumulation for an investment surplus.

Killing people merely for wearing classes is just a myth. There has been no evidence uncovered of this ever happening. It is part of a crude general understanding of their supposed anti-intellectualism.

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/1723/dkglasses.jpg

You also appear to be conflating those killed through execution and those who died from other causes.

To understand Pol Pot and DK, it is necessary to study the history of Marxism-Leninism in ex-Indochina, particularly in relation to the Vietnamese, as well as more serious reading on Maoism.

Talk of raging primitivists, crackpot psychopaths etc, is meaningless really, and originates in some of the more impressionistic garbage that's been written about them over the years.

And I'm speaking not as an apologist, either, before anyone starts.

[milk]

I don't really know much, but didn't they revere the Khmer Empire at some god-like status? You know, the one that existed hundreds of years before the Khmer Rouge.

I thought that's what prompted them to undergo that huge 'agricultural death camp socialism' program. It was to return them to the days when they were the breadbasket of Southeast Asia. Like returning them to former glory or something.

As I'm writing this I realize I might be completely wrong. Anyone know?

No. Socialism within a Stalinist context (or at its earlier point along the path the communism on a global scale) can only ever be defined within national boundaries. Drawing on aspects of the country's history to foster a more assertive national identity is not the same as what you posted above, and in Cambodia it was not just confined to the Communists. Other nationalist intellectuals did it before them.

[Dagoth Ur]

Except that Stalinists have always advocated world revolution albeit by pragmatic means (maybe too pragmatic).

That said DK was an opportunist state trying to suck off the teat of the ICM by playing Leftist. If they hadn't been such Cambodian-chauvinists they might have ended up being progressives.

[milk]

Except that Stalinists have always advocated world revolution albeit by pragmatic means (maybe too pragmatic).

That said DK was an opportunist state trying to suck off the teat of the ICM by playing Leftist. If they hadn't been such Cambodian-chauvinists they might have ended up being progressives.

Which was kind of my point, that they envisaged only when socialism (as they understood it to be) had been established the world over would national differences possibly eventually dissolve, and that being in the far-flung future, as full communism is approached.

[Professional Revolution]

Despite the horrors of the Khmer Rogue we should recognize that it was a deformed workers state and thus should be defended against Western imperialism.

[Dagoth Ur]

No the DPRK is a deformed worker's state because at one poking thy actually had an explicitly proletarian national doctrine. The DK never had this, and what's more served as a vehicle of Chinese and Western anti-communism. For this they are scum opportunists unworthy of even the most tacit support.

[Alexios]

Pol Pot 101:
He was an ass-hole who was backed by the CIA that didn't know how to run a country, slaughter many people with glasses, called himself a Maoist after Mao died then got driven out by Vietnam.

lol sounds like Mao apart from the glasses bit. Backed by the USA, slaughtered millions, and didn't know how to run a country.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Despite the horrors of the Khmer Rogue we should recognize that it was a deformed workers state and thus should be defended against Western imperialism.

How can a "worker's state" slaughter workers for wearing glasses? Or force them into agricultural servitude? That's not a "worker's state" it's a bureaucratic nightmare trying to force their country back into feudalism. The whole point of a "worker's state" is that the state is accountable to the workers, not the bourgeoisie or weird Quasi-maoist bureaucrats. Not to mention the fact that the KR became American proxies against Vietnam.

Also, it was the Stalinist state of Vietnam which put the DK regime in the grave.

[Illegalitarian]

Despite the horrors of the Khmer Rogue we should recognize that it was a deformed workers state and thus should be defended against Western imperialism.


What "western imperialism"? Even after the SRV was forced into defending itself and its plethora of ethnic Cambodians by ousting them, The Khmer Rouge was recognized as the "government in exile" of the area by the UN and most other imperialistic international bodies well up into the 90's.

Most of those millions killed under the Pol Pot regime were not killed under his regime at all. They were intentionally starved to death by western governments who refused to send any sort of help to the nation because "politics were involved". They died, of course, due to the sorry state the Khmer Rouge left them in with their "Year 0" policies, but the hand that the west had in this tends to be greatly understated in these sort of discussions.

[Prof. Oblivion]

Despite the horrors of the Khmer Rogue we should recognize that it was a deformed workers state and thus should be defended against Western imperialism.

DK doesn't even exist anymore so wtf are you talking about

[SensibleLuxemburgist]

Pol Pot was a nasty revisionist. Arguably, the Camobdian government that was installed by the Vietnamese in 1979 was more socialistic than Pol Pot's experiment.