Pol Pot apologetics

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

One of my favorite websites is Fundies Say the Darndest Things (aka FSTDT). On occasion, you'll see some rather....eccentric quotes by various modern leftists that defend infamous 'communist' figures like Ceauşescu.

Recently, I came across this:


[OP of the "In defense of Pol Pot" thread]

It seems like in the modern communist movement Pol Pot has become taboo, someone who must not be supported. However, I disagree. He took great efforts to rebuild the Cambodian nation from scratch under a socialist framework. The only reason he depopulated the cities is becauae Capitalism had so thoroughly corrupted Cambodia that it was necessary to reforge Cambodia from the ground up. Once a socialist foundation had been established, he would begin to remodernize the country but under a socialist, egalitarian manner.

Furthermore, the article below makes some excellent points about how Pol Pot's rule helped the millions of ordinary working Cambodians.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/18/pol-pot-revisited/

What is your opinion on this matter?

....I....I honestly don't know what to say. That broke my brain.

The fact that there are actually people who defend Pol Pot, the man whose regime slaughtered two million people in order to fit his own twisted pre-industrial agrarian 'socialist' utopia. That's just fuckin' loony.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Apparently you need to kill a quarter of your country's population because that's how you reforge a socialist society from the ground up

[Atsumari]

Wait until you see some electro-agrarian socialism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=053XPAqVmiU
Not to defend the guy, but I can understand where the Khmer Rouge were coming from, especially if you read lots of Sartre or Fanon which basically says that you can only change yourself not by lifestyle, but by participating in the revolution through the act of violence to bring about a new man which will free you from your bourgeois upbringing.Pol Pot had a bit of an interesting way of going about it.

[Os Cangaceiros]

*shrug* I do know that statistically you were more likely to survive an incarceration in Auschwitz than you were in Tuol Sleng prison (17,000 prisoners, 12 survivors)

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I've seen people defend polpot in real life orgs and on this site, it's not as uncommon as you might think.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Wait until you see some electro-agrarian socialism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=053XPAqVmiU
Not to defend the guy, but I can understand where the Khmer Rouge were coming from, especially if you read lots of Sartre or Fanon which basically says that you can only change yourself not by lifestyle, but by participating in the revolution through the act of violence to bring about a new man which will free you from your bourgeois upbringing.Pol Pot had a bit of an interesting way of going about it.

For Sartre and Fanon, the act of violence was only liberatory if it was against the oppressor. The KR killed people for all sorts of ridiculous reasons such as having eyeglasses, and Marxism has never been about destroying every physical artifact from liberal and feudal eras and killing their owners. It's about appropriation, not mindless destruction.

[Cosmonaut]

I hate Pol Pot! The one chance for Communism to prove it's not evil and bad, he comes along, calls himself a Maoist, and kills everyone in Cambodia! You have to hate him. He ended Communism's chance at redemption!

[TheEmancipator]

He's a reactionary, full stop. At best a primitivist.


I've seen people defend polpot in real life orgs and on this site, it's not as uncommon as you might think.

Well much like Maoists they tend to condemn all the killings and paranoia, but adhere to his ideas and theoritical deviations from Orthodox Marxism.

I think some of them call themselves anarcho-Maoists and argue for a barter economy between agrarian-based village societies, absent of both proletariat and bourgeoisie.

[Hagalaz]

I've seen people defend polpot in real life orgs and on this site, it's not as uncommon as you might think.

I've run into the same in other places. But then it's easy to do then when you are decades removed from it. Not to mention thousands of miles. Kind of like Stalin's "useful idiots' in the West in the 30's. "Can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs"! Meanwhile 10,000,000 are deliberately starved to death in Ukraine in the name of "collectivism".

[Dire Helix]

^
You sure about that number? My sources claim 100.000.000 of deliberately starved Ukrainians in the name of democratic centralism.

[BIXX]

He's a reactionary, full stop. At best a primitivist.


Not a primitivist. At all.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Pol Por supported revolutionary cannibalism and is one of our founding members. I won't tolerate any shit talking in this regard.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

There's another big elephant in the room some of these Pol Pot apologists seem to ignore...the freakin' Ethnic Cleansing campaigns against those of Chinese and Vietnamese descent. Yeah, they always manage to brush that under the rug.

[TheEmancipator]

Not a primitivist. At all.

Was he committed to eventually reversing his total de-urbanisation of society?

Why on earth did he depopulate cities in favour of going back to stone age agrarian living standards?

[BIXX]

Was he committed to eventually reversing his total de-urbanisation of society?

Why on earth did he depopulate cities in favour of going back to stone age agrarian living standards?


Neither of those characterize primitivism. Primitivists want to abolish civilization, he just wanted to mold it in a certain way.

[TheEmancipator]

Neither of those characterize primitivism. Primitivists want to abolish civilization, he just wanted to mold it in a certain way.


''Civilization : the process by which a society or place reaches an advanced stage of social development and organization''

When and where exactly did Pol Pot advocate this ''advanced stage of social development and organisation''?


Anarcho-primitivists advocate a return to non-"civilized" ways of life through deindustrialization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deindustrialisation), abolition of the division of labor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labor) or specialization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialization_%28functional%29), and abandonment of large-scale organization technologies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology).

Pretty much what Pol Pot managed to do. Again, I said he was a primitivist at best. Obviously it backfired spectacularly.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

When and where exactly did Pol Pot advocate this ''advanced stage of social development and organisation''?



Pretty much what Pol Pot managed to do. Again, I said he was a primitivist at best. Obviously it backfired spectacularly.

I don't see what's so intrinsically wrong about be critical of the socio-psychological and cultural effects of urbanization, industrialization and so on. Arguably with the advent of this hustle and bustle hooey has ushered in a whole new and even more fucked up and frightening era of fuckery.

[Kingfish]

The fact that there are actually people who defend Pol Pot, the man whose regime slaughtered two million people in order to fit his own twisted pre-industrial agrarian 'socialist' utopia. That's just fuckin' loony.


Whilst I dont like this I can certainly understand it, unpleasant and dare I say broken people like this are found in all types of organisations (leftwing or not). The same bigotry and narrow-mindedness that dwells in churchs all too often dwells in leftist organisations. For as long as you have peoples whose identities revolve around the notion of being a leftist or part of some movement/group you will have people like this (irrespective of how abhorrent this mindset is to the beliefs they profess) who will jump to attack anything that they feel threatens their views and as a result themselves.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

When and where exactly did Pol Pot advocate this ''advanced stage of social development and organisation''?



Pretty much what Pol Pot managed to do. Again, I said he was a primitivist at best. Obviously it backfired spectacularly.

Primitivists advocate some kind of return to pre-agrarian social relations, the Khmer Rouge on the other hand clearly had an idealized agrarian social relationship in mind that they were taking steps to realize. It doesn't do anyone any good to confuse the two, it would be like saying IS is a primitivist organization.

[TheEmancipator]

Primitivists advocate some kind of return to pre-agrarian social relations, the Khmer Rouge on the other hand clearly had an idealized agrarian social relationship in mind that they were taking steps to realize. It doesn't do anyone any good to confuse the two, it would be like saying IS is a primitivist organization.


The reason I associated Pol Pot with primitivism is because he favours a barter economy with no currency, while rejected urbanisation and industrialised society. Not all primitivists are hunter-gatherers.

I agree that it is was a mistake to equate Pol Potists and the Khmer Rouge with primtivism, but that's why i said Pol Pot is at best a primitivist ie if you want to justify his actions of reversing urbanisation, you'd have to be a primitivist.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

But all the aspects of modern society that primitivists oppose are linked, in their mind, to the agrarian change that put an end to nomadic lifestyles. So even a primitivist wouldn't support Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge's policies probably have more in common with modern Islamist movements than anything primitivists spout.

[Killer Enigma]

From another thread:

There's so much bullshit around Pol Pot and Democratic Kampuchea that it could have fertilized every farm around Phnom Penh. If you want to read the gold standard historical account of the period, read Michael Vickery's Cambodia: 1975 - 1982. Vickery was and still is a vocal supporter of the People's Republic of Kampuchea, which was the government that assumed power after the Khmer Rouge were driven out of power by the Vietnamese in 1979. It doesn't stop him from cutting through the absolute garbage and totally false accusations levied at the Khmer Rouge during the period. People talk about Chomsky apologizing for Pol Pot, which isn't true. However, I've personally corresponded with Chomsky on Democratic Kampuchea, and he told me the same thing I'm telling you now - if you want to understand the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, you read Vickery's book, no exceptions.

Ismail tells you Pol Pot was backed by the CIA. That isn't true, and it's based on a total misreading of the whole PRK period. When the Khmer Rouge was driven out of power, they amassed on the north and northwestern border with Thailand where they fought an armed conflict with the PRK government into the early 1990s. The deposed Prince Sihanouk, living in the United States at the time, was recruited by the CIA to organize the remaining monarchist elements in Cambodia and Thailand (huge amount of refugees fled across the border during the US bombing and the DK period) and form a provisional government, of which the remaining Khmer Rouge elements that didn't defect would form a nominal part.

This provisional government received diplomatic support by the US, China, a lot of Western European countries and Thailand, among others, and some limited arms and supplies were funneled to them. However, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge received no direct aid by the CIA or the US, and Sihanouk cut them out of the bulk of the operations, which was why the KR resistance eventually folded. That may seem like quibbling, but it's important because the CIA never wanted to support Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge, nor did they. It flies in the face of the easy cop-out response by leftists uncomfortable with the period and unwilling to learn the history. It's an easy one-liner to say that Pol Pot was a US puppet, but it's not consistent with the history or the demonization that took place then and now.

I like Vickery's point. The Khmer Rouge was a very impressive peasant resistance force to US imperialism and the Lon Nol puppet regime in Phnom Penh. At one point, their cadre numbers were no more than 100 - in other words, they had to have some very deep connection to the masses in order to have a tiny organization, even by Cambodian standards, seize power. The US intelligence services were so baffled by the KR's secrecy that they believed Pol Pot and Saluth Sar - the same person - were two different people, and they knew almost nothing about Pol Pot at that.

When they came to power, Vickery shows that the experience of the DK varied greatly by region. In the east, you had a much more relaxed, multi-ethnic agrarian socialist experience with very few executions and some serious gains in terms of living standards for peasants. In other parts like the south and southwest - the strongholds of the Pol Pot faction of the KR - repression was far more heavy handed, and the KR became very unpopular in the region because of it. And Vickery looks at all of the experiences in-between, which are very diverse. Needless to say, you can't paint the period with the same brush of 'house of horrors'.

Furthermore, life really didn't change for the better or worse for most peasants under the KR, other than they became the favored social class. Most of the horror stories come from Thai refugee camps by city dwellers forced to work in conditions that Cambodian peasants worked in for centuries. Imagine putting a CEO to work in a warehouse or autofactory and forcing them to work, at gun point, for the same wages as the lowest paid worker. They would reflect on the period as horrific too, but it wouldn't tell you much of anything about how ordinary workers perceived the events.

Most peasants were more than happy to see the city dwellers put to work. The cities had ruthlessly exploited the countryside for centuries, and there were fewer than 1,000 workers (in the Marxist sense of the term) in Cambodia at the time. Those people generally stayed in their jobs and were forced to train peasants to do urban labor. It's not socialism or a dictatorship of the proletariat, but it's enough to make me roll my eyes whenever people say Pol Pot hated workers and exterminated them. It just patently did not happen.

Vickery sums up the DK experience as an unleashed peasant hysteria against the bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements of the city that collaborated with Lon Nol and Prince Sihanouk. They made huge ultra-left errors in throwing nearly everyone onto the countryside, which represented enormous opportunity costs and provided no real way to change their objective conditions of underdevelopment. However, like it or not, the KR was made up of Marxists. They didn't really carry out Marxist-Leninist strategies for socialist construction, and no one is arguing that they built socialism, but they're part of the history of the left.

Trying to cut them out is just a way to placate the weak stomachs of Western petty bourgeois leftists. Read the stories about Cambodia before the KR. Now there's some stories that will make your stomach turn.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The demographics don't lie though - millions died under the KR regime, and it's not like the ruling class consisted of 2 million people. Forcing urbanites to work in the rice communes is a flawed Maoist idea (communism is not to spread the suffering of the peasants to all classes but to work to negate class as such), but even in China it was not carried out in a way that caused such devastation to both the economy and the material conditions of so many people, and which left such a high proportion of the population dead. Even if Vietnamese propagandists exaggerated the scale, the Khmer Rouge had a lot to answer for.

[milk]

The reason I associated Pol Pot with primitivism is because he favours a barter economy with no currency, while rejected urbanisation and industrialised society. Not all primitivists are hunter-gatherers.

I agree that it is was a mistake to equate Pol Potists and the Khmer Rouge with primtivism, but that's why i said Pol Pot is at best a primitivist ie if you want to justify his actions of reversing urbanisation, you'd have to be a primitivist.

He didn't reject industrial society, he wanted to create one (out of a largely rural, agrarian society).

Rural organisation was to be geared towards primitive capital accumulation, the surpluses used to fund a program of rapid industrialisation.

[Illegalitarian]

What happens when your utopian academic conception for what society should look like is entirely detached from reality or any sort of real theoretical basis in Marxism, you give a bunch of young kids guns and tell them to enforce your new, radical laws with very little oversight and you really, really hate Vietnamese people?


Pol Pot's Cambodia, apparently. He was a jr Maoist fueled more by nationalism than socialism and thus saw his society so tainted by "foreign" influence that he wanted to scrap it and start from scratch as a pure, Cambodian society for and by Cambodians.

All in all it was feudalistic social relations overcoming their inherent contradictions in the form of territory disputes by the landed peasant class in the form of personal grudges being acted upon through Khmer forces and the concentration of capital in the hands of party elites, being stripped from the old landed feudal class, ethnic clashes with Chinese and Vietnamese minorities, etc.

It was the intensified process of changing modes of production worsened by a mad man's dream of turning back the hand of time. Nothing mor

[milk]

What happens when your utopian academic conception for what society should look like is entirely detached from reality or any sort of real theoretical basis in Marxism, you give a bunch of young kids guns and tell them to enforce your new, radical laws with very little oversight and you really, really hate Vietnamese people?


Pol Pot's Cambodia, apparently. He was a jr Maoist fueled more by nationalism than socialism and thus saw his society so tainted by "foreign" influence that he wanted to scrap it and start from scratch as a pure, Cambodian society for and by Cambodians.

All in all it was feudalistic social relations overcoming their inherent contradictions in the form of territory disputes by the landed peasant class in the form of personal grudges being acted upon through Khmer forces and the concentration of capital in the hands of party elites, being stripped from the old landed feudal class, ethnic clashes with Chinese and Vietnamese minorities, etc.

It was the intensified process of changing modes of production worsened by a mad man's dream of turning back the hand of time. Nothing mor

Was Cambodia 'feudal' at the time? Or an 'Asiatic' mode of production particular to that society (an elite pumping surpluses from a peasantry in which the majority owned at least some of the land on which they lived and worked), with a very small and weak internal capitalist development given its status as a protectorate rather than a colony under the French.

Pol Pot's understanding of socialism and communism (a Leninist differentiation of two separate 'stages') was within a crude Marxist-Leninist framework, much of it as understood and taught by the Vietnamese.

[Creative Destruction]

Pol Pot's understanding of socialism and communism (a Leninist differentiation of two separate 'stages') was within a crude Marxist-Leninist framework, much of it as understood and taught by the Vietnamese.

IIRC, his understanding of socialism and communism came from his time with French Marxists.

[Illegalitarian]

Was Cambodia 'feudal' at the time? Or an 'Asiatic' mode of production particular to that society (an elite pumping surpluses from a peasantry in which the majority owned at least some of the land on which they lived and worked), with a very small and weak internal capitalist development given its status as a protectorate rather than a colony under the French.

Pol Pot's understanding of socialism and communism (a Leninist differentiation of two separate 'stages') was within a crude Marxist-Leninist framework, much of it as understood and taught by the Vietnamese.

Non-maoists hate the term but I think I would describe it as semi-feudal, even though feudalism was most definitely the dominant social relation. Perhaps semi-capitalist would be a better term, though Im sure I will be scorned here for using either.


Ieng Sary explained that Cambodia wanted "to create something that never was before in history. No model exists for what we are building. We are not imitating either the Chinese or the Vietnamese model.", and I think that's a pretty good description of the nature of what was done socially and economically in Cambodia. Pol Pot was fascinated by the French Revolution and loved the idea of starting a new society from scratch that we so so many Jacobins advocate for, which was the basis of Year Zero.

the Khmer Rouge did do a good job establishing many irrigation canals, ditches, dams, ditches, reservoirs, and thus it was able to expand cultivation into areas of previously untapped arable land, but in the end rice production still fell short of set quotas, though it did increase quite a bit (in the first year, a massive flood hit the Mekong valley and took a large portion of the crops).



It was the paranoid anti-Vietnamese sentiments in the upper echelons of the party that drove the state to reflecting the madness of its leaders, which I believe caused the government to rush along a project that it could have possibly intended to take several years.

Had the Khmer Rouge actually stretched this plan out over the course of a 5 year plan, with its established position as a Chinese ally post-Sino-Soviet split and the fact that the US tended to overlook them due to their anti-Vietnamese stance, they could have seen some semblance of success in autarky and established a decent base for industrialization, having their own little great leap forward which may or may not have went "well".

It's hard to say, but nothing truly progressive was ever going to come out of that situation, that's for sure.

[milk]

IIRC, his understanding of socialism and communism came from his time with French Marxists.

From the VWP and Chinese.

[Tim Cornelis]

words

Oh god. I'd like to subject this person to psychological evaluation, along nazi sympathisers and jucheists, to find out what makes them support or sympathise with these horrendous despotic regimes.

[milk]

Non-maoists hate the term but I think I would describe it as semi-feudal, even though feudalism was most definitely the dominant social relation. Perhaps semi-capitalist would be a better term, though Im sure I will be scorned here for using either.


Ieng Sary explained that Cambodia wanted "to create something that never was before in history. No model exists for what we are building. We are not imitating either the Chinese or the Vietnamese model.", and I think that's a pretty good description of the nature of what was done socially and economically in Cambodia. Pol Pot was fascinated by the French Revolution and loved the idea of starting a new society from scratch that we so so many Jacobins advocate for, which was the basis of Year Zero.

the Khmer Rouge did do a good job establishing many irrigation canals, ditches, dams, ditches, reservoirs, and thus it was able to expand cultivation into areas of previously untapped arable land, but in the end rice production still fell short of set quotas, though it did increase quite a bit (in the first year, a massive flood hit the Mekong valley and took a large portion of the crops).



It was the paranoid anti-Vietnamese sentiments in the upper echelons of the party that drove the state to reflecting the madness of its leaders, which I believe caused the government to rush along a project that it could have possibly intended to take several years.

Had the Khmer Rouge actually stretched this plan out over the course of a 5 year plan, with its established position as a Chinese ally post-Sino-Soviet split and the fact that the US tended to overlook them due to their anti-Vietnamese stance, they could have seen some semblance of success in autarky and established a decent base for industrialization, having their own little great leap forward which may or may not have went "well".

It's hard to say, but nothing truly progressive was ever going to come out of that situation, that's for sure.

Capitalist development within the country was very weak, Cambodia couldn't even be called 'semi-capitalist.' Society was overwhelmingly rural, peasant-based with most people engaged in subsistence farming, and to self-sufficiency in many areas. As for 'feudalism,' I'm not sure that it is such a useful term when it comes to land ownership and social relations in the countryside. That's why I mentioned the Asiatic mode, or rather, one that is particular to Cambodian society. the French presence introduced capitalism more thoroughly, but was in no way as transformative as in their colony of Cochinchina.

ieng Sary also said this in 1975:


Our economic policy entails taking agriculture as the base and industry as the leading factor. Agriculture furnishes the primary means for industry, which in its turn, serves the development of agriculture. Our objective is to make our country a modern agricultural and industrial country.


Pol Pot during his September 1977 CPK congress speech:


Our motto is 'when we have rice, we can have everything!' When the people have stilled their hunger, we will have rice for export and we will be able to import products (...) When we have solved the agricultural problems, then other sectors such as industry, handicrafts, the social and cultural sectors can develop as well.

The DK government drafted a Four-Year Plan to Build Socialism in All Fields (creating a base on which to build an industrialised society within two or three decades), but was never really implemented.

I don't actually believe that they could have achieved it by the way (and the regime survived because of Chinese support), nor do I think that DK was socialist, but they thought it was. And broadly speaking their understanding of it was within a framework of Marxist-Leninist doctrine that was taught to them by the Vietnamese (and Chinese). That they eventually became at odds with one another and finally mortal enemies does not mean that they jettisoned such doctrine. indeed it is by using it that they strove to demonstrate that they were better Communists than them.

[Illegalitarian]

Capitalist development within the country was very weak, Cambodia couldn't even be called 'semi-capitalist.' Society was overwhelmingly rural, peasant-based with most people engaged in subsistence farming, and to self-sufficiency in many areas. As for 'feudalism,' I'm not sure that it is such a useful term when it comes to land ownership and social relations in the countryside. That's why I mentioned the Asiatic mode, or rather, one that is particular to Cambodian society. the French presence introduced capitalism more thoroughly, but was in no way as transformative as in their colony of Cochinchina.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I know a great deal about the intricacies of Cambodian feudalism, because frankly I know, as the old saying goes, jack shit on the matter. It is clear, however, that there was a great deal of landless peasantry who did work for the landed peasantry, and the monarchy, up until the early 70's, did have control over the land for the most part. I wouldn't hesitate to call that feudalism, as it still saw essentially the same social relations, the same mode of production in place, as Europe and many other parts of the world did in the later stages of that particular system.

I'm not sure if "asiatic model" is quite specific enough for a proper class analysis.



The DK government drafted a Four-Year Plan to Build Socialism in All Fields (creating a base on which to build an industrialised society within two or three decades), but was never really implemented.

I don't actually believe that they could have achieved it by the way (and the regime survived because of Chinese support), nor do I think that DK was socialist, but they thought it was. And broadly speaking their understanding of it was within a framework of Marxist-Leninist doctrine that was taught to them by the Vietnamese (and Chinese). That they eventually became at odds with one another and finally mortal enemies does not mean that they jettisoned such doctrine. indeed it is by using it that they strove to demonstrate that they were better Communists than them.
[/QUOTE]


Taught by the Vietnamese and Chinese? Militarily, it's clear that they borrowed tactics from the Vietnamese, and when it comes to being agrarian-focused with regards to the base of development, it's no question that they borrowed from the Chinese, but other than that it still seems to be quite the unique model.


I don't think they were developing socialism, but I do think that what they were attempting could have worked had it not been so forced. I think that, had they not embarked on their ethnic cleansing campaign, had they not forced a great deal of their country into the countryside, that they could have developed Cambodia into a "nice" little Marxist-Leninist state ala a more opened DPRK.


While I have you here, so to speak, what is your take on Chomsky, Cummings and several Marxist academics of the day and their insistence upon the notion that the west was faking claims of genocide in the region? It stands to reason that this would have been the logical position to take since, well, the west certainly did not have a history of treating their coverage of the going-ons of self-professed communist states fairly, but the evidence, even back then, seemed quite clear.

The DK is an awfully interesting subject. Any articles etc you have on daily life in the region or the economic development of the DK and it's successes (if there were any) and failures would be greatly appreciated. While I consider myself knowledgeable on the matter, some of the finer details escape me.

I've always wanted to read Caldwell's work on the matter, as a foreign observer of the DK while it was operating.

[Homo Songun]

Oh god. I'd like to subject this person to psychological evaluation, along nazi sympathisers and jucheists, to find out what makes them support or sympathise with these horrendous despotic regimes.

You could maybe begin by reading the book he describes in his post... of course, your hands might have to hold said book in lieu of current activity, clutching your pearls while gasping in mock horror :)

http://i1355.photobucket.com/albums/q703/mattcr1/ThoatClutch_zps6934eae0.jpg


Read the stories about Cambodia before the KR. Now there's some stories that will make your stomach turn.

This. The US dropped more bombs on Cambodia than the entirety of World War 2. The KR never would have seized power without the genocidal US assault on Cambodia in the first place.

[Illegalitarian]

Over six million deaths, most of them civilian. Kissinger is the most prolific mass murderer alive today.

[Slavic]

This. The US dropped more bombs on Cambodia than the entirety of World War 2. The KR never would have seized power without the genocidal US assault on Cambodia in the first place.


And the US wouldn't have assaulted Cambodia if Spain didn't help finance Columbus's voyage over the Atlantic. How does any of this really relate to the atrocities committed by the KR?

[Homo Songun]

Both facts. One relevant, the other not.

[milk]

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I know a great deal about the intricacies of Cambodian feudalism, because frankly I know, as the old saying goes, jack shit on the matter. It is clear, however, that there was a great deal of landless peasantry who did work for the landed peasantry, and the monarchy, up until the early 70's, did have control over the land for the most part. I wouldn't hesitate to call that feudalism, as it still saw essentially the same social relations, the same mode of production in place, as Europe and many other parts of the world did in the later stages of that particular system.

I'm not sure if "asiatic model" is quite specific enough for a proper class analysis.


Taught by the Vietnamese and Chinese? Militarily, it's clear that they borrowed tactics from the Vietnamese, and when it comes to being agrarian-focused with regards to the base of development, it's no question that they borrowed from the Chinese, but other than that it still seems to be quite the unique model.


I don't think they were developing socialism, but I do think that what they were attempting could have worked had it not been so forced. I think that, had they not embarked on their ethnic cleansing campaign, had they not forced a great deal of their country into the countryside, that they could have developed Cambodia into a "nice" little Marxist-Leninist state ala a more opened DPRK.


While I have you here, so to speak, what is your take on Chomsky, Cummings and several Marxist academics of the day and their insistence upon the notion that the west was faking claims of genocide in the region? It stands to reason that this would have been the logical position to take since, well, the west certainly did not have a history of treating their coverage of the going-ons of self-professed communist states fairly, but the evidence, even back then, seemed quite clear.

The DK is an awfully interesting subject. Any articles etc you have on daily life in the region or the economic development of the DK and it's successes (if there were any) and failures would be greatly appreciated. While I consider myself knowledgeable on the matter, some of the finer details escape me.

I've always wanted to read Caldwell's work on the matter, as a foreign observer of the DK while it was operating.

Well, I also do not have a deep or sophisticated understanding of Cambodia's mode of production, just that I mentioned the Asiatic mode as providing some room for exploration, and to get away from the assumption that 'feudalism' in Cambodia followed the same path and consisted of the same social relations as in Europe. I fear that could be too lazy.

Also, landlordism was a minor problem in the country. 85% of the country's population was/is made up of peasants, and although by the late 1960s there was an increase in the number of peasants losing their land (doubling from 10 to 20%) they still represented a minority. Most peasants owned at least some of the land upon which they lived and worked. Landed peasant doesn't necessarily equal rich peasant, with many engaged in small-scale subsistence farming, producing not much more than their immediate families' needs, and many to self-sufficiency. Also, the concept of land ownership which we might understand here (and to a limited extent introduced there by the French) was/is not the same as rural Khmer people understood ownership. Unoccupied land can be claimed by a peasant and come to 'own' it only after a period of roughly three years, in which it can then be worked in perpetuity and passed on to family members following death. A loss of ownership occurs if the land is left idle for a period of, again roughly three years. The condition of ownership is continued productivity on it.

The Communists did carry out research in the 1960s (in some mimicry of the Vietnamese) in order to provide the appropriate analysis to guide political action, but they concentrated on two areas of the country where landlordism was acute and rare. The 'principal contradiction' was than extrapolated to include most of the country, as if the conditions found in these areas was to be generally found in much of rural Cambodia. This is one of the flaws which saw the Communists never achieve majority support from the peasantry (aside from deception of the aims of social revolution hidden behind the patriotic wartime united front).

Marxist-Leninist theory and codified doctrine as understood and filtered to them by the Vietnamese was of considerable importance to the Cambodians. After all, the Cambodian Communist movement was an outgrowth of (and for a time subordinate to) earlier Vietnamese political and military organisation.

I'll respond to the rest later.

[MonsterMan]

The fact that there are actually people who defend Pol Pot, the man whose regime slaughtered two million people in order to fit his own twisted pre-industrial agrarian 'socialist' utopia. That's just fuckin' loony.

It's not at all loony when you consider the history. Phnom Penh had become a vile, corrupted mini-state due to civil war and foreign meddling. Pol Pot hoped to sort it out by starting from scratch. The idea was noble.