Mass Executions In China?

[orihara]

I am a follower of Mao, and I highly respect him. I try to stick up for the Cultural Revolution as much as I can, but whenever this topic is brought up, I don't know how to respond:
"During the Cultural Revolution, anyone bring accused of being a rightist, or anyone against Mao was tortured, treated inhumanly, locked up, and persecuted. There were also mass executions where these people would be shot and their bodies thrown in the river".

How can I counter these arguments, especially of mass execution?

[Sabot Cat]

You don't, because they're absolutely true. Any political philosophy which requires a divorce from reality isn't one worth keeping.

[Illegalitarian]

Ask them to cite the claims they're actually making.

The excesses of the cultural revolution have only been written on by a few non-marxist authorities on the subject and almost every one of these authors are considered complete unreliable hacks by every other authorities on the matter.


There were excesses, of course, but obviously Mao didn't kill everyone who disagreed with him. If he had, there would have been no one left to oppose him, and as we now know there were quite a few of those floating around in the lower cadres.

[RedWorker]

Mao's regime repressed leftists too. So yeah.

[Sabot Cat]

Ask them to cite the claims they're actually making.

The excesses of the cultural revolution have only been written on by a few non-marxist authorities on the subject and almost every one of these authors are considered complete unreliable hacks by every other authorities on the matter.

Even the Communist Party of China eventually acknowledged the disastrous nature of this event, and Mao's complicity in it. Quotes from the 1982 report on the matter:


"New China has not been in existence for very long, and our successes are still preliminary. Our Party has made mistakes owing to its meager experience in leading the cause of socialism and subjective errors in the Party leadership’s analysis of the situation and its understanding of Chinese conditions. Before the “cultural revolution” there were mistakes of enlarging the scope of class struggle and of impetuosity and rashness in economic construction. Later, there was the comprehensive, long-drawn-out and grave blunder of the “cultural revolution". All these errors prevented us from scoring the greater achievements of which we should have been capable. It is impermissible to overlook or whitewash mistakes, which in itself would be a mistake and would give rise to more and worse mistakes.

"The “cultural revolution", which lasted from May 1966 to October 1976, was responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the’ Party, the state and the people since the founding of the People’s Republic."

Chief responsibility for the grave “Left” error of the “cultural revolution", an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong. But after all it was the error of a great proletarian revolutionary. Comrade Mao Zedong paid constant attention to overcoming shortcomings in the life of the Party and state. In his later years, however, far from making a correct analysis of many problems, he confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy during the “cultural revolution". While making serious mistakes, he repeatedly urged the whole Party to study the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin conscientiously and imagined that his theory and practice were Marxist and that they were essential for the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Herein lies his tragedy. [...]"


And it goes on, full report here for more context: http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm

The Central Committee nonetheless affirmed Mao as a great revolutionary, so it might be up the OP's alley in trying to figure out how to speak to the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.


There were excesses, of course, but obviously Mao didn't kill everyone who disagreed with him. If he had, there would have been no one left to oppose him, and as we now know there were quite a few of those floating around in the lower cadres.

Why would he know everyone who disagreed with him? I'd say that it's more likely that murders had a chilling effect which made his critics scarce in volume but not in number.

[Illegalitarian]

Not many leftists were actually killed by Mao's regime, as they were in the USSR, as far as I know.

It absolutely happened in the early days, but not on a large scale.

[Atsumari]

During the Cultural Revolution, there was what I guess you guys would call a left communist faction within the Red Guards that rose up in Shanghai that interpreted the contradictions taught in Maoist thought as disposing Mao.
Needless to say, they got slaughtered by the Liberation Army.

Anarchists got the boot as well

[Illegalitarian]

Erm, the Shanghai Commune was put down because it was highjacked by Zhang Chunqiao who then started to use the PLA as a weapon against anyone who opposed him personally and Mao decided to form it into a revolutionary committee in order to gain back control. It wasn't a bastion of anti-Maoism, just a clusterfuck power play made by party members who didn't want to seem less-revolutionary-than-thou, which characterized a lot of the GPCR

[Illegalitarian]

Even the Communist Party of China eventually acknowledged the disastrous nature of this event, and Mao's complicity in it. Quotes from the 1982 report on the matter:


"New China has not been in existence for very long, and our successes are still preliminary. Our Party has made mistakes owing to its meager experience in leading the cause of socialism and subjective errors in the Party leadership’s analysis of the situation and its understanding of Chinese conditions. Before the “cultural revolution” there were mistakes of enlarging the scope of class struggle and of impetuosity and rashness in economic construction. Later, there was the comprehensive, long-drawn-out and grave blunder of the “cultural revolution". All these errors prevented us from scoring the greater achievements of which we should have been capable. It is impermissible to overlook or whitewash mistakes, which in itself would be a mistake and would give rise to more and worse mistakes.

"The “cultural revolution", which lasted from May 1966 to October 1976, was responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the’ Party, the state and the people since the founding of the People’s Republic."

Chief responsibility for the grave “Left” error of the “cultural revolution", an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong. But after all it was the error of a great proletarian revolutionary. Comrade Mao Zedong paid constant attention to overcoming shortcomings in the life of the Party and state. In his later years, however, far from making a correct analysis of many problems, he confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy during the “cultural revolution". While making serious mistakes, he repeatedly urged the whole Party to study the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin conscientiously and imagined that his theory and practice were Marxist and that they were essential for the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Herein lies his tragedy. [...]"


And it goes on, full report here for more context: http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm

The Central Committee nonetheless affirmed Mao as a great revolutionary, so it might be up the OP's alley in trying to figure out how to speak to the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.



Why would he know everyone who disagreed with him? I'd say that it's more likely that murders had a chilling effect which made his critics scarce in volume but not in number.

I hate to be that guy, but they were the enemies of the old guard, of course they were going to denounce what they were doing. That's like taking anything seriously Stalin tried to say about Trotsky after he was sent out of the country.


There was a large amount of people who openly opposed him though (re: Deng, even) that he did not have executed.. there were entire segments of the population who opposed things that were going on before the cultural revolution, which was a big part of the reason he commenced it, to try and decentralize the issue of tackling various issues people around the country were having.


He didn't just go around slaughtering anyone who insulted his bald spot, the goals of the cultural revolution and the aims of the party were much less broad than that.

[Martin Luther]

For most of what you hear or read in the west, when it comes to Mao or Stalin there are no excessive exaggerations because the fact that certain things happened can be substantiated, but the extent or assumed nature of them cannot be. But extent and malice is always assumed and taken for granted. Hence the fact that rightists were purged and many executed turns into 'anyone who opposed Mao was slaughtered.'

But so what?

[The Disillusionist]

Why are people trying to apologize for this just because Mao was kinda-sorta a leftist? :confused: He was an asshole who headed one of the most devastating massacres in human history, killing millions upon millions of people. Who cares what his reasons were? They were bad, whatever they were.

[Sabot Cat]

I hate to be that guy, but they were the enemies of the old guard, of course they were going to denounce what they were doing. That's like taking anything seriously Stalin tried to say about Trotsky after he was sent out of the country.

I would say it's more like Khrushchev's words about Stalin, but okay.

What is an unbiased source about this matter? Or should we just be agnostic on the matter, other than your bald assertions to the effect of "I'm sure not that many were killed, probably."

[consuming negativity]

agnosticism is a valid position to have when you don't know and you really can't know

intellectual honesty and intellectual humility

they're wonderful things that this forum could use more of regarding dead old commie leaders

e: that said, you're both probably right to some extent or another, although i hate it when people characterize stalin/mao/hitler/pol pot/[insert shithead here] as deranged sociopathic comic book villains because it's such an intellectually lazy cop out

[Sabot Cat]

agnosticism is a valid position to have when you don't know and you really can't know

intellectual honesty and intellectual humility

True, but my main problem with it was that it wasn't agnosticism, it was the assertion that a) all of the mainstream sources are wrong and b) it wasn't really that bad, without anything to substantiate b. I could accept a alone, perhaps, but not a and b.


they're wonderful things that this forum could use more of regarding dead old commie leaders

e: that said, you're both probably right to some extent or another, although i hate it when people characterize stalin/mao/hitler/pol pot/[insert shithead here] as deranged sociopathic comic book villains because it's such an intellectually lazy cop out

I don't think I'm guilty of such; sure, they're all complex individuals, it's just not pertinent to the present discussion.

[Illegalitarian]

Why are people trying to apologize for this just because Mao was kinda-sorta a leftist? :confused: He was an asshole who headed one of the most devastating massacres in human history, killing millions upon millions of people. Who cares what his reasons were? They were bad, whatever they were.

literally billions of people :laugh:



I would say it's more like Khrushchev's words about Stalin, but okay.

What is an unbiased source about this matter? Or should we just be agnostic on the matter, other than your bald assertions to the effect of "I'm sure not that many were killed, probably."


As opposed to what, the well substantiated claims that he was a double-Hitler anti-Jesus 9/11 pedophile who killed 70 million people? That makes my assertion bald, somehow? lol

Mao Zedong and History of China in the twentieth century by Rebecca Karl is a good start.

Mao: The Unknown Story is where most of the absurd claims made about Mao era China come from and it is cringe-level bad. Like Hungarian emigire "the soviets are toothpaste and drunk from toilets" bad.

A Critical Introduction to Mao is also a must

Here is a fantastic paper that picks apart The Unknown story limb from limb

https://www.dropbox.com/s/es43vc857tlqnvq/Gregor%20Benton%20and%20Lin%20Chun%20-%20Was%20Mao%20Really%20a%20Monster%2C%20the%20Aca demic%20Response%20to%20Chang%20and%20Halliday's%2 0Mao%2C%20the%20Unknown%20Story.pdf


Honestly the only real position is one of agnosticism. When we start measuring bodies in these type of discussions, we've already lost because we're playing the game of western academics who collaborated with ex-CPC members 20-30 years after the fact.

I'm kind of shocked that there are still those on the left who give in to the "did you know communism killed thirty seven billion children" bourgeois academic noise.

[John Nada]

I hate to be that guy, but they were the enemies of the old guard, of course they were going to denounce what they were doing. That's like taking anything seriously Stalin tried to say about Trotsky after he was sent out of the country.I would say it's more like Khrushchev's words about Stalin, but okay.

What is an unbiased source about this matter? Or should we just be agnostic on the matter, other than your bald assertions to the effect of "I'm sure not that many were killed, probably."Does this mean it's credible or bullshit? I can't tell.
e: that said, you're both probably right to some extent or another, although i hate it when people characterize stalin/mao/hitler/pol pot/[insert shithead here] as deranged sociopathic comic book villains because it's such an intellectually lazy cop outThe thing is, nobody can do anything on a large scale, good or bad, alone. The Cultural Revolution almost seems like it was a civil war between different factions. Obviously Mao couldn't have killed everyone with his smile, and there was a strong capitalist faction that won in the end.

[Illegalitarian]

True, but my main problem with it was that it wasn't agnosticism, it was the assertion that a) all of the mainstream sources are wrong and b) it wasn't really that bad, without anything to substantiate b. I could accept a alone, perhaps, but not a and b.

The mainstream sources are all ex-post years after the fact with extremely suspect sources and have been thoroughly refuted time and time again, by people such as Chang and Halliday who, when called out for their complete lack of evidence for most of their claims, basically said "yeah we were at the fore of research into this matter for a decade and came to our own conclusions based on such... but we're not going to cite ourselves because uh, that's beneath us".

Calling bullshit on extraordinary claims with extremely little to no evidence isn't the absurd assertion, it's a response to absurdism.


That's not to say that Mao's regime was bloodless and that people didn't die, but the excesses are generally over exaggerated


@John, the Cultural Revolution could probably accurately be described as a civil war. Aside from its battle with the GMT, there was never really much of an internal reflection by the ruling apparatus, so when it came in the form of the cultural revolution, it came hard, and it came violently, with a wide scale attempt at realigning the entire base and superstructure through the barrel of a gun.

[Sabot Cat]

Illegalitarian, no need to deploy an army of straw men, I'll look into your stuff; I was just exasperated at the lack of any sources.


Does this mean it's credible or bullshit?

It means that the assessment was generally accurate, but comes from a place of bias for possible, contemporary political gain or to justify changes to the established orthodoxy.

[Illegalitarian]

Illegalitarian, no need to deploy an army of straw men, I'll look into your stuff; I was just exasperated at the lack of any sources.



It means that the assessment was generally accurate, but comes from a place of bias for possible, contemporary political gain or to justify changes to the established orthodoxy.

No strawmen here, but go ahead, they're all great pieces!


The assessment is loosely based in fact but extremely over exaggerated for political gain and to justify changes to the established orthodoxy.


Except Khrushchev has a bit more legitimacy because at that point GULAG was no secret, even if it did last a few years into his rule