A little biography on Mao.

[YoUnG192]

Source: Rotten Library! (http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/dictators/mao/)

Mao Zedong didn't set out to be the world's most lethal dictator. It was never his goal to kill more than 80 million of his own people. But then, sometimes things just happen. And anyway, somebody's gotta be the world's deadliest political leader.
Mao had a dream of bringing anarchism to China, and as quickly as possible. But there was a paradox. The only way to abolish the government and prevent its re-emergence would require eliminating all the people who are constantly fucking it up for the rest of us: landlords, financiers, bureaucrats, outside agitators, and other criminal types. And Mao realized that this could only be accomplished by imposing a total dictatorship. So the path to a government-free utopia began with autocracy.

Which is precisely what Mao announced after the Communists came to power in 1949. Ever since, China has reaped the rewards of its "people's democratic dictatorship," which has in turn manifested its beneficence toward the citizenry in myriad ways.

For instance, there was the Great Leap Forward, a revolutionary policy initiative intended to bootstrap China's fledgling economy and establish it as the world's largest steel and grain exporter. Announced in 1959, Mao's brainchild involved three major endeavors:

1.double the country's annual food production using only half the manpower
2.apply most of the surplus labor to steelmaking
3.apply the rest to national infrastructure projects

The genius of this plan was in its details. And with the Great Leap Forward, Mao established himself as one of the greatest outside-the-box thinkers of all time.
No one had ever suggested to farmers that they could double or triple their crop yields by simply packing their seeds two or three times closer together. In practice, however, this new technique failed miserably: the seedlings crowded each other and prevented any of them from receiving adequate sunlight and soil nutrients. But everyone was afraid of Mao's temper, and so no one told him that his idea was worthless. Instead, his underlings reported bumper crops, although the opposite was actually the case.

Another of Mao's agricultural tips fared almost as poorly. He decreed that farmers make a concerted effort to hunt down and kill each and every sparrow. The birds were seen as pests, which ate the farmers' crops. In actuality, the sparrows were eating insects which lived on the crops. So the farmers were in fact slaughtering one of their few allies in the battle for pest control.

And then there was the steel. Whereas you or I might have taken a hundred thousand idle farmhands and assigned them to work in a few steelmills, Mao's plan was something else entirely. He directed the farmers to stay home and wait for those bumper harvests to arrive. In the interim, they were to construct and operate backyard furnaces for smelting steel. They were given production quotas.

In order to meet the quotas, the ignorant peasants resorted to melting down whatever metalstuffs they had lying around: hinges, doorknobs, utensils, tools. It was all converted into useless slag and dutifully turned over to the government. This godawful steel found its way into public works, like bridges and dams. Not surprisingly, many of these poorly-engineered structures collapsed dramatically or were abandoned.

So the Great Leap Forward was an unqualified failure. But nobody wanted to tell Mao that. He believed himself to be infallible, and had a history of making life uncomfortable for anyone who dared question his policies. Which is why his lackeys waited months before telling him about the famine.

That's right, famine. As in: "the worst famine in the history of mankind." Some estimates put the total as high as 43 million dead.

Over a period of three years, beginning in 1958, China's agricultural production completely bottomed out. The combination of the economic policies of the Great Leap Forward along with an unprecedented drought resulted in disaster for domestic food production.

The entire population suffered. People all over China were starving. But hardest hit were the hapless populace of rural Henan province. When the farmers could not meet their production quotas in 1959, the local government declared that the farmers were hiding their harvests and denounced the citizenry as enemies of the people. Military patrols were sent to locate these hidden caches of grain. The soldiers beat families who failed to cough up the food they were assumed to have hidden.

When winter arrived, the peasants had nothing to eat but tree bark and grass. The officials saw to it that the families' cooking pots were smashed, to prevent them from cooking grass soup. As an incentive to finally release their hidden stores of food, thousands of peasants were tortured and murdered by the local government. Military forces patrolled train stations and roads to block escape.

The people had nothing to eat. They filled their stomachs with whatever they could find: leaves, weeds, leather, straw, feathers, dirt. When they had run out of everything, absolutely everything, they finally resorted to cannibalism. People dug up freshly buried corpses. When somebody died, it was common for family members to hide the fact and keep the body for themselves. The government turned a blind eye to the situation, as people were rarely prosecuted for cannibalism.

By 1961, Mao had no choice but to relent. He swallowed his pride and bought grain on the world market. He was forced to disband the communes and return to proven farming methods. The backyard steel efforts were abandoned. In political terms, the failure of the Great Leap Forward was a stunning personal defeat for Mao. And the critics inside his own government began to gather momentum.

During the next five years, Mao learns to better manage his public relations. At his direction, the Chairman's "little red book" is published, containing pithy quotations about the nature of struggle and so on. A cult of personality is born. Which brings us to Mao's other major achievement. In August of 1966, Mao launched The Cultural Revolution, an effort to purge the country of all dissident thought (by means of bashing in the brains of all dissident thinkers).
Leveraging his newfound popularity among the youth, Mao called for students to abandon their studies and form militia groups, to aid the army in the ouster of undesirables. The youths happily complied. Upwards of 11 million schoolchildren joined the Red Guard and traveled to Beijing to await further orders. Mao's defense minister told the mobs that their mission was destroy every throwback of traditional culture and philosophy.

Predictably, the Red Guard began by murdering teachers and school administrators. Then they destroyed the Tibetan monasteries. Foreign diplomats were lynched. Next were artists, scholars, and intellectuals. And whenever Mao denounced one of his former comrades, the Red Guard made it their mission to eradicate the offender. And when they ran out of enemies to torture and kill, the various Red Guard factions turned on each other, resulting in street warfare.

These waves of repression and killing continued in spurts for more than three years. Millions of people were killed, and the economy left in shambles. The Cultural Revolution continued unabated until Mao's death from Parkinson's disease in 1976.

Five years later, the Chinese government issued a declaration condemning the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. The sweeping "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China" included this tersely-worded indictment of the man:


-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. [...] far from making a correct analysis of many problems, he confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy. [...] Herein lies his tragedy.
Oh yes, poor Mao.

How can anybody with a right mind would look up to this man? You people are crazy. Can anyone here honestly defend Mao? Nope.

[Anarchist Freedom]

I hate mao.

[YoUnG192]

I just don't understand how people can like this guy. I've read some posts here in revolutionaryleft about how he was so great. This guy is a burden. Am all for communism, but only in its true form. I don't support killers like Mao.

[Patchy]

As do I. Too many people died because of him. He's in the same boat as Stalin as far as I'm concerned.

You're not the only one, young.

[redstar2000]

I really recommend that you consult more reliable sources than rotten.com. I had a look at their home page and it seems they are mostly interested in the display of mangled corpses. I did try to see what they had to say about Fidel Castro, but I kept getting a "connection refused" error message.

I believe that the most scholarly estimates for the "Great Leap" famine are in the neighborhood of 18 million excess deaths -- not "43 million". That is still a very large number -- but remember that China's population then was closing in on one billion.

In terms of the percentage of the population who died from starvation, there are probably many historical famines that were considerably worse.

The claim that Mao "killed 80 million of his own people" is simply absurd on its face.

Equally absurd is the claim that "millions of people" were killed during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. I've never seen any numbers on this...but written accounts of the details of the GPCR suggest that the number of deaths were quite small -- perhaps a few tens of thousands at most.

This is not to say that Mao was a "good guy" -- though I think he was quite sincere in his attempts to advance China to a higher stage of "socialism".

There are many sound political criticisms that can be directed against Mao and Maoism -- but the sort of "foaming at the mouth" rabid rant by rotten.com does not qualify.

They don't even understand what the GPCR was about!

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Clarksist]

Most Maoist are Maoist in guerrilla theory which is one thing Mao could actually do right (surprisingly). Mao was a despotic leader, and there really is no way to justify what they did. Although I warn you, you'll probably get bombarded by a bunch of BA-loving, RCP-joining Maoists. They are the worst kind.

[Capital Punishment]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14 2005, 02:54 AM
Too many people died because of him.
Too many people die from every socialist dictator.

[YoUnG192]

I believe that the most scholarly estimates for the "Great Leap" famine are in the neighborhood of 18 million excess deaths -- not "43 million". That is still a very large number -- but remember that China's population then was closing in on one billion.


- The population of mainland China was estimated to be about 672,070,000 at 1959. Closing in yes but very very far away.

- Li Chengrui, a former minister of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, estimated 32 million (1998).



You're wrong red star.

[Zingu]

You are going to have to realize that the word 'Communist' has changed in meaning, and can be used to label many different people.

Hell, even anarchists are communists as in the orginal sense of the word: "Ones who advocate the abolishment of private property".

Really, if you meant to attack us with this, your words are meaningless to us, many of us have nothing to do with Mao.

By the way, about your facts; you are going to come across heavy flak about them, leftists generally have their own versions of how history has gone; especially the Stalinists. :lol:

[dietrite]

I hate mao.

You are simplistic.

Redstar makes most of the points I would make were I to discuss this...most are either too simplistic, ignorant of the cultural revolution, too naive in terms of taking various media sources seriously when they should be investigating historically instead of just browsing google.com for rotten.com results on mao's "horrible famines" or whatever. It's simplistic and non-Marxist.

[YoUnG192]

Yeah like I said I hate Mao. I started this thread to see what people really think of him. Can anyone defend Mao and his views? What good has he done?

[dietrite]

I suggest you look over some of the Maoist parties of the world, and read critically, comparing it with other sources, not taking their cult-persona type atmosphere too seriously, but also noting that Mao wasnt some crazy pedophilic dictator as he has been portrayed.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by YoUnG192
- The population of mainland China was estimated to be about 672,070,000 at 1959. Closing in yes but very very far away.

- Li Chengrui, a former minister of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, estimated 32 million (1998).

Let's assume your numbers are correct. 32 million is about 4.76% of 672,070,000.

Adolph Hitler's "marvelous adventure", otherwise known as World War II, resulted in the deaths of 10 million Germans out of a total population of 80 million or so...say 12% of all Germans alive in 1939 or born between 1939 and 1945.

So, if your numbers are correct, then Hitler was 2-1/2 times worse than Mao...at least.


What good has he done?

1. He led the revolution that overthrew the gangster-fascist regime of Chang Kai-shek.

2. Under Mao, peasants tried and executed some 2 million blood-sucking landlords.

3. Under Mao, China took the first steps towards becoming a modern industrialized country.

4. Under Mao, public health came into existence for the first time in China's history...as well as things like clean drinking water, elementary education, etc.

5. Under Mao, China intervened in the Korean war and stopped U.S. imperialism from conquering North Korea.

6. Under Mao, China liberated Tibet from one of the worst serf-slave despotisms on the face of the planet.

7. Under Mao, China provided vital material assistance to the Vietnamese struggle against U.S. imperialism.

If you wanted to argue that much more could and should have been accomplished, I won't disagree with that.

I agree that the "Great Leap Forward" was a great FUCKUP. I think the big problem with the GPCR was that it did not go nearly as far as it should or could have. I think the public alliance with U.S. imperialism (the Nixon trips, etc.) was a horrendous blunder!

These are things that are as far beyond the understanding of a site like rotten.com as quantum mechanics.

But they are things you will have to learn if you really want to become knowledgeable about 20th century "communism".

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Donnie]

I'm not a fan of Mao either and you will find on here that not allot of other people like him either.
If the "dictatorship of the proletariat" results in people starving the government is obviously doing something wrong.

I don't know why we can just criticise Mao’s government when our own government’s and systems are just as bad and inhumane.

[KC]

Because people think that our system isn't as bad because we obviously don't have large portions of the american population starving therefore it works. What they don't seem to comprehend is the fact that the starvation has been moved to third world countries.

[Raisa]

It doesnt matter if you like him or not.

Learn from history dont live in it.

[dietrite]

It doesnt matter if you like him or not.

Learn from history dont live in it.

How profound Richard Simmons.

[novemba]

estimates for the "Great Leap" famine are in the neighborhood of 18 million excess deaths -- not "43 million"...but remember that China's population then was closing in on one billion.

Ouch. Redstar, I would expect better from you...or maybe not.

A death is a death, and death is not something that just be statisicalized. A loss of human life is THE BIGGEST loss in the world.

Which brings me to my next question...where do we draw the line for too many sacrificed in the name of a better world?

[novemba]

Originally posted by Redstar

What good has he done?



1. He led the revolution that overthrew the gangster-fascist regime of Chang Kai-shek.

2. Under Mao, peasants tried and executed some 2 million blood-sucking landlords.

3. Under Mao, China took the first steps towards becoming a modern industrialized country.

4. Under Mao, public health came into existence for the first time in China's history...as well as things like clean drinking water, elementary education, etc.

5. Under Mao, China intervened in the Korean war and stopped U.S. imperialism from conquering North Korea.

6. Under Mao, China liberated Tibet from one of the worst serf-slave despotisms on the face of the planet.

7. Under Mao, China provided vital material assistance to the Vietnamese struggle against U.S. imperialism.

If you wanted to argue that much more could and should have been accomplished, I won't disagree with that.

I agree that the "Great Leap Forward" was a great FUCKUP. I think the big problem with the GPCR was that it did not go nearly as far as it should or could have. I think the public alliance with U.S. imperialism (the Nixon trips, etc.) was a horrendous blunder!


Half-assed revolution is the same as reform. And we all know how you feel about reform.

And as lefitst we need to start erasing words like 'better' from our vocabulary. All we should be concerned with is 'best'.

[riverotter]

Well, I like Mao, after reading books like Fanshen, Away With All Pests and Red Star Over China I'd have to say he did a lot of good. But not alone, of course. What he did was lead people through line to do a hell of a lot of good.

It's true that many people died of starvation during the famine... but how many people died before revolution in China?

Between 1850 and 1932 there were 435 famines (http://economics.uchicago.edu/download/Chinese%20famines%20short.pdf); during which something like 1/3 (or some other horrific number - I'll have to check back) died. The average life-expectancy was about 25 years (http://csde.washington.edu/downloads/98-5.pdf) but it rose by about 30 years (http://rwor.org/a/v21/1020-029/1024/china.htm) under socialism. Besides these impressive statistics, the Chinese managed to rid society of arranged marriages, prostitution, and female infanticide and wipe out heroin addiction.

There were other achievements under socialism - like practically eradicating "snail fever" (http://rwor.org/a/006/snail-fever-china.htm)... and, unfortunately, under capitalism almost all of these gains have been reversed.

In fact, they're thought to be impossible... and they are. Under capitalism. But socialist China managed to achieve them.

[cormacobear]

I'm not sure that #5, and #6 are good things, but that aside. Things were pretty bad before so to say that he made things worse is pretty undefendable, I'm sure 2 million peasants starved many of the years prior to the revolution. and that would add up pretty quick.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by necro_oner
Which brings me to my next question...where do we draw the line for too many sacrificed in the name of a better world?

That's not something that we can ever know in advance.

Only after the "new world" exists can we say that X number died to make it possible...was it worth it?

You probably know that your question is a variation on Dostoevsky's famous version...

If all of humanity could enjoy eternal bliss through torturing one child to death, would it be worth it?

The fault is in the question itself: what's the mechanism that connects the death of one child by torture to "eternal bliss" for humanity? (Dostoevsky was a rather mystical chap and never concerned himself with vulgar things like "cause and effect".)

Suppose we are presented with a real-world question. Should we engage in proletarian revolution even though we know that it will cause an unknown but possibly large amount of human suffering and an unknown but possibly large number of deaths...in order to put an end to all the suffering and deaths accompanying capitalist society?

Or transfer the question to history itself: hundreds of thousands of people died in the American civil war...but it concluded with the abolition of slavery.

Was it worth it?

To any given individual, there's really nothing worth "dying for" -- because that's the end of everything as far as you are concerned. But you don't think, when you risk death, that you will be one of the unlucky ones -- the next guy will catch the bullet that was meant for you; you will be the executioner and not the executed; you will live to taste the fruits of victory, etc.

Che did not go to Bolivia to "achieve martyrdom" and "iconic status" -- he expected that the war would end with him riding on the back of a tank rolling into La Paz, waving to the cheering crowds, kissing the pretty girls...and leaving a pile of quisling corpses rotting in the mountains.

Would it have been worth it?

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[novemba]

As much as I hate to say it, because you can't put value on human life, I think it would be worth it. Even if a large-scale revolution failed, 50 million dead, easily 500 million radicalized by it.

And a better world is worth dying for. That's the purpose of all of us being on earth, to make it better for our children and grandchildren...and redstar knows about them grandchildrens... :P :D :lol:

just messin man.

[Xvall]

A loss of human life is THE BIGGEST loss in the world.

Why?

I'm not saying I disagree with it, or think you're wrong. I just want to know why.

[kingbee]

People seem to a) forget historical context, b) the economic contexts.

a) China was coming out of a semi-imperialist, feudal age, where poverty, famine and disease were rife. A united China is what was needed, or it would have descended into more and more problems- mao built China!

b) China was, and still is, a third world country. Famines happen, I'm afraid. You can argue that Mao's policies led up to famine, but then, as someone has already posted, a number of famines happened before Mao came to power- does this mean horrific economic policies led up to every famine then?

[apathy maybe]

Originally posted by redstar2000+Jul 15 2005, 03:15 PM--> (redstar2000 @ Jul 15 2005, 03:15 PM) 5. Under Mao, China intervened in the Korean war and stopped U.S. imperialism from conquering North Korea. [/b]
First, I would rather live in South Korea now, then North Korea. Yes it is good that Korea wasn't united under the southern despot. But surely if it would be better to be united.

redstar2000
6. Under Mao, China liberated Tibet from one of the worst serf-slave despotisms on the face of the planet.
Just like the yanks liberated Iraq eh?

[dietrite]

Just like the yanks liberated Iraq eh?

Yes, just like that apathy maybe, just like that.

Jackass.

[Sons_of_Eureka]

First, I would rather live in South Korea now, then North Korea. Yes it is good that Korea wasn't united under the southern despot. But surely if it would be better to be united.

http://www.labournet.net/world/0311/korea1.html

A good article on south korean industrial relations.

The criminal South Korean regime is nothing less than corporate fascism ruled by Japanese and US imperialist.

North Korea however may not be perfect but atleast the state provides and protects its people to the best of its ability and thus the peoples of the DPRK are happy and not over worked unlike its southern neighbor

As a worker I think North Korea provides quite adaquetly for its citizens thus given the choice out of north or south i would go north.


QUOTE (redstar2000)
6. Under Mao, China liberated Tibet from one of the worst serf-slave despotisms on the face of the planet.


Just like the yanks liberated Iraq eh?

Your ignorence astounds me
http://www.tibet-china.org/serie_book/engl...et/rbch2_at.htm

Maos china did not gain much ecconomicaly or millitarily from liberating tibet so china liberated them because of class-solidarity for the slaves of Tibet.


Which brings me to my next question...where do we draw the line for too many sacrificed in the name of a better world?

Was it Guevara? who said 'whether it takes the death of one or the death of a nation it does not matter because humanities survival is a stake'.

I agree with the quote.

[Hiero]

Mao had a dream of bringing anarchism to China

This is were we realise how foolish it is to read trash from sites like rotten.com.

Come on seriously stop wasting your time with trash like this. Rotten is not authority in politics and history.

You could of at least used a Wikepedia article which has a bit of anaylsis.

[apathy maybe]

Tibet is not liberated in any sense. Yes it is obviously different to Iraq at present, but the occupation is the same. It is not liberation when the power never moves out after 'liberating' the people. The Chinese government claims sovereignty over Tibet and has moved many ethnic Han Chinese into the area. Looks more like colonisation to me.

Sons_of_Eureka but the website said (and I quote) "Error!!! ", so I can't read it.

I would still rather live in South Korea then North Korea at the moment. In the past it may have been different, but the crazy at the helm in the North just turns me off.

[Hiero]

In the past it may have been different, but the crazy at the helm in the North just turns me off.

Actually they have had some gradual growth last year, around 3 GDP last year. They are starting to come out of the problems that began in the 90's. I even read something the start of this year that said they would no longer need aid in a 3 or so years.

If this are true, we must be more prepared for imperialist actions against North Korea, including a propaganda sloggin about the DPRK.

[jvs]

this reply really goes to young192, the person who started this thread.
sure, you're entitled to your own opinions, but for god's sake can u have some sort or factual base to them?

instead of regurgitating some incredibly bias anti-communist piece of trash u found on the web (on rotten.com of all places!?), form you're own opinion or support someone else's.

yes, mao did kill people, but he's no different to any other leader who's ever existed. you cant hope to liberate a country from fascists by strumming a guitar and singing songs about rainbows.

also, get your facts right. i thank heiro and redstar2000 for taking your head out of your arse and getting the truth right.

what you were doing on rotten.com in the first place i really dont want to know

[YoUnG192]

I found this article through a friend, we were arguing about the whole movement in China. Mao is no differen't than any other leader? Wake up kiddo. I started this thread because am sick and tired of people looking up to this guy and no nothing about him. The source being biased? I give you that, but name one source or news channels that aren't truely biased. People wearing Guevara and Mao shirts and have no idea what it means. This is sad. I asked a guy in my school what his shirt meant to him and what did the guy (Mao) on his shirt believed in, he couldn't answer it. Also these rappers wearing Che Guevara shirts and having diamond chains over the shirt is just sickening, its very disrespectful.

[kingbee]

im sorry about your t shirt wearing friends. but im sure we've all read up on mao, and have made our own minds up.

and ive only just realised the hilarity pf where the articles from!

[MoscowFarewell]

You got it from rotten.com


'nough said. Please excuse me while I go chuckle my ass off.

Rotten.com

Rotten who makes a large viewer base on horrific images around the world.

You can really trust every fact they have.

[Commie Girl]

I just read the reviews for this new book by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday called "Mao: The Unknown Story". 10 years of research, they estimate he killed 70 million people, here is an excerpt from a review:

"To the outside world, Mao was another charismatic, ideological leader, like Stalin and Hitler. The truth, as usual, is far more complicated and bizarre, not to say appalling. Unlike his fellow murderous ideologues, Mao actually had no real interest or belief in the ideology he espoused: his interest was simply in whatever would grant him more power and cement his position as leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, he intended and schemed, eventually the entire world.
Mao's Communists seized power from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, a change of rule which most of the population greeted with enthusiasm, believing as many did that Chiang's government was corrupt and power-hungry. From the moment he assumed power right up until his death, Mao was interested in one thing, and one thing only: keeping hold of power.

How he did this makes fascinating and often uncomfortable reading. Although he himself had been born a peasant, he had no interest in the welfare of the peasantry of his country, often telling his closest associates that a few million deaths meant little. As a way of maintaining power, Mao had the dream of gaining nuclear weapons. In what must be a manoeuvre unique amongst even the most insane of world leaders, he actually manipulated both his allies (and his allies were only ever allies for as long as they could be useful to him) and his enemies at the same time. He instigated wars in Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan, correctly predicting that the US would threaten to use nuclear weapons against China. Mao then told Stalin that he, Stalin, having signed the mutual-defence pact with China, would have to retaliate, thus causing a Third War world with nuclear weapons. Stalin, then, had little choice but to hand over the know-how to construct nuclear weapons. Mao thus shrewdly manipulated the US into threatening nuclear war in order to manipulate the USSR into giving him what he wanted. He also made it clear to his closest allies that he would be perfectly happy with a Third World War.

Moa made it clear that he could beat the Americans in a war because he had one thing they lacked: an inexhaustible supply of expendable soldiers. It was this callous disregard for life - and the life even of his own people - that set apart Mao's reign. He even encouraged other totalitarian leaders to be more ruthless, in his mould. Over the years, China gave out millions of tons of food in aid to other countries - many with a higher standard of living than his own people. This aid caused famine on a massive scale, resulting in over 22 millions deaths in one year alone.

As with Stalin, terror on a massive scale was Mao's key to power but, unlike both Hitler and Stalin, Mao liked to have his worst crimes carried-out in public, where they would act as a deterrent to the whole population. There was no fear that the outside world would find out, since all forms of media were strictly controlled, and the rare visits by foreigners were carefully organised so that no word of his murderous ways could escape.

Chung and Haliday have done a sterling job of presenting the true story of this terrible, vicious man. Their hatred of the man and the regime is clear, but a bare presentation of the facts is enough to instil this feeling in the reader. This deserves to become the standard reference work."

[redstar2000]

This sounds like one of the worst books ever written on the subject.

Thanks for the warning. :)

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Anarcho-Communist]

I find Mao and his theory annoying :angry:

[martingale]

Perhaps the greatest achievement of Mao and the Chinese Communists was the complete and total expulsion of imperialism from Chinese soil leading up to 1949. This earth-shaking event has inspired oppressed and colonized peoples throughout the Third World. It has also engendered the undying hatred by the world's imperial powers, especially the U.S. and Japan, towards China.

I found the following passage concerning the relationship between Chinese Nationalism and Chinese Communism very insightful. It is from the book "Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915 - 1949" by the French historian Lucien Bianco, published in 1971:

Quote:
----------------------------------------------
The Triumph of Chinese Nationalism

The triumph of Chinese nationalism was born of the extremity of the threat to China. The Japanese invasion not only helped China attain self-conscious nationhood, but also constrained the Allies, as reformed imperialists, to accord China the equal status that until then they had resolutely denied her. In 1943, the Americans and British renounced the extraterritorial privileges that Chinese nationalists had been inveighing against for a century. In the same year Churchill and Roosevelt conferred with their colleague Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, thus seemingly according equality to a country that for so long had had little more than colonial status in the white world. The end of the war in 1945 brought even more striking recognition: China was officially proclaimed one of the victorious Big Four.

But did Chinese nationalism triumph in 1945 or in 1949? To ask the question this way is to answer it. Despite the official celebration, 1945 was too obviously someone else's victory, with Hiroshima bringing to a close an air and sea struggle in which China had had little part. The war itself had already shown the illusory character of the diplomatic successes China had been allowed to win. The abolition of extraterritoriality was followed almost immediately by an agreement between Chungking and Washington removing American servicemen from the jurisdiction of Chinese courts. The American presence in Koumintang-ruled China was far greater than it had ever been in the era of "unequal treaties." And the author of "China's Destiny" (Chiang Kai-shek), who had attributed all the ills of modern China to imperialism, was reduced to making constant requests for the reinforcement and extension of this detested presence. With the Nationalists, Chinese nationalism came to be recognized, but not to be taken seriously.

The Communists, for their part, after shedding the theoretical internationalism that had hampered their early efforts, could plausibly claim to be more nationalist than the Nationalists, and indeed the only real nationalists. Whatever may have been the hidden thoughts and real feelings of the two parties during the war with Japan and the civil war, the evidence is beyond dispute: it was the Chinese Revolution, and only the Chinese Revolution, that brought Chinese nationalism to fruition. Did the Communists exploit nationalism for their own ends? Of course they did. But it was through Communism that nationalism triumphed. True Chinese nationalists, far from reproaching the Communists for their sleight of hand, welcomed their contribution to the nationalist cause. Most of the Chinese emigre intellectuals in France, for example, who come largely from the landowning and literati families that were the ruling class of the old regime and are today "enemies of the people", prefer Peking to Taiwan, the China of today to that of yesterday; the People's Republic is their pride. Not a man or woman among them was not gratified by the nuclear explosions in Sinkiang. For the first time since they were children, China is strong, independent, respected and feared. Such considerations weigh more heavily in their preference for Peking than the regime's social and ideological orientation.

In actual fact, Chinese Communism is first and foremost the triumphant assertion of Chinese nationalism. It is a nationalism of explosive vitality, as aggressive as it is vigorous, as often ill-considered as profound. And this is as it must be. After all, whether we are dealing with classes or with peoples, how else can we imagine the triumph of the oppressed?
-------------------------------------------

[Raisa]

Originally posted by Anarcho-[email protected] 31 2005, 05:02 AM
I find Mao and his theory annoying :angry:
What do you find annoying about his theories?

I actually read quite a few of the man's writings and think their interesting.

[kurt]

This sounds like the same crap my compciv teacher used to spew about Mao. This little peice is especially interesting.

80 million people, damn that's alot of people. Should have made it a nice round 100 million; three digits are always more shocking than two, and since they're both completely arbitrary, why not stretch and distort the truth even further? As far as the Great Leap forward goes, "experts" on the subject usually tend to rate the number at a more conservative 15-20 million people. Yes, that's a lot of people, but it wasn't as if Mao "purged" them, or as if they were part of some active extermination campaign. Most of the deaths during the Great Leap forward were due to poor crop harvests, droughts, and famines.

As far as the Cultural Revolution goes, I've heard numbers reaching a few tens of thousand, at best.

Although the Communist Party of the time probably would have credited Mao with sunshine and blamed "capitalists" and "revisionists" for bad weather, it doesn't mean he actually caused droughts and poor crop harvests.

I'm not a supporter of Maoists, or Mao, but I just hate blatant lying.

[kingbee]

Originally posted by Commie [email protected] 31 2005, 03:43 AM
I just read the reviews for this new book by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday called "Mao: The Unknown Story". 10 years of research, they estimate he killed 70 million people,
oh my god, that book pisses me off to the max. it goes as far to diss edgar snow, and his journalism in china in the early days- i suspect because he paints a good picture of mao!

[Capitalist Lawyer]

mao's "horrible famines" or whatever. It's simplistic and non-Marxist.

Then I guess one can say that all the deaths attributed to Christians weren't done by "true" Christians?

[Scars]

Originally posted by Capitalist [email protected] 12 2005, 12:21 PM

mao's "horrible famines" or whatever. It's simplistic and non-Marxist.

Then I guess one can say that all the deaths attributed to Christians weren't done by "true" Christians?
The two can't really be compared, however I would say that yes, the Crusades and the like are not representitive of what Jesus wanted. Christianity was one of the first mass revolutionary egalitarian movements ever. As i've said before- a religion isn't a guy in a silly hat, or retards blowing up arbotion clinics, or boooks. A religion is people.