Did Mao Kill Millions In The Great Leap Forward?

[Joseph Ball]

An article challenging the negative view of Mao's period of rule, prevalent in the western media and academic circles, has been published in the American Monthly Review magazine. The article is available at www.monthlyreview.org/0906ball.htm. I am the author of this article and my website is at www.re-evaluationmao.org.

The article argues that there is no evidence that millions of people died in the Great Leap Forward and that the charges of 'mass murder' and 'genocide' , frequently made against Mao in the West, in relation to this movement, have no basis in fact.

The Great Leap Forward began in 1958. This was a mass movement for the rapid development of agriculture and industry.

The allegation is made that 30 million died during the Great Leap Forward. However, the Chinese death rate figures that 'prove' this allegation only appeared 20 years after the event, during an ideological campaign by Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping against the ideological legacy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Even Judith Banister, one of the demographers who has done most to promote the 30 million deaths figure, expresses extreme doubts about the sources for it. She describes death rate data gathered before the 1970s in China as 'non-existent' or 'useless'. Yet without these figures there is little in the way of hard evidence to prove that such a massive famine took place.

Maoist rebels are on the verge of joining the government in Nepal. Maoists control vast areas of India. They are carrying out revolutionary struggle in Turkey and the Phillipines. Yet in the West, especially, people believe that Mao killed millions of his own citizens. How can it be that he still inspires so many? What is the truth about Mao? Is he an example to follow for those who want a better world, or a man who committed genocide and led his country to ruin?

In his lifetime, Mao Zedong was hugely respected for the way that his socialist policies improved the welfare of the Chinese people, greatly reducing poverty and hunger in China and providing free health care and education. Although everyone accepts famine happened in some areas of China in the Great Leap Forward, Joseph Ball questions how the fact that it was the 'largest famine in history' in which millions supposedly died was not known about until twenty years after it is meant to have occured.

[Zeruzo]

OMG! RED PROPAGANDA ON A RED FORUM!

[Lenin's Law]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2006, 09:08 PM
OMG! RED PROPAGANDA ON A RED FORUM!
LOL!! THE HORROR!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

http://images.artelino.com/images/images/chinese-propaganda-posters7.jpg

[Severian]

The article strikes me as a whitewash. Its description of Mao's forced collectivization politices, for example.


Originally posted by Ball's article
The peasants had already started farming the land co-operatively in the 1950s. During the Great Leap Forward they joined large communes consisting of thousands or tens of thousands of people.

As if that occurred voluntarily or spontaneously.

Or this:

Rural industry established during the Great Leap Forward used labour-intensive rather than capital-intensive methods......
The arguments about production figures belie the fact that the Great Leap Forward was at least as much about changing the way of thinking of the Chinese people as it was about industrial production. The so-called “backyard steel furnaces,” where peasants tried to produce steel in small rural foundries, became infamous for the low quality of the steel they produced. But they were as much about training the peasants in the ways of industrial production as they were about generating steel for China’s industry.

Which reflects an incredibly callous attitude about wasting huge amounts of peasants' labor. Human beings can only work so hard, and Chinese peasants did not have huge amount of efforts to spare on "training" in production methods which produced nothing of value.

Their margin of production over survival was not huge to start with.

You can argue about the size of the death toll if you want. I don't doubt that many estimates are inflated, and that anticommunist motives are at work.

But no reasonable, well-informed person doubts that the "Great Leap Forward" and forced collectivization were disastrous.

Ball's whole approach to evidence is tendentious. Anything that makes Mao look good is accepted; anything that does the opposite is nitpicked to death. For example: "Those who have provided qualitative evidence, such as eyewitness accounts cited by Jasper Becker in his famous account of the period Hungry Ghosts, have not provided enough accompanying evidence to authenticate these accounts." But "In his famous 1965 book on China, A Curtain of Ignorance, Felix Greene says that he traveled through areas of China in 1960 where food rationing was very tight but he did not see mass starvation. "

Against everyone quoted in Hungry Ghosts, we have....one western Maoist, who paints a rosier picture than Ball is willing to, today. "It is likely, that in fact, famine did occur in some areas. However Greene’s observations indicate that it was not a nation-wide phenomenon on the apocalyptic scale suggested by Jasper Becker and others. Mass hunger was not occurring in the areas he traveled through, although famine may have been occurring elsewhere."

See, Ball can't, today, flatly deny there was any famine. So: did Green coicidentally happen to travel only through famine-free areas? Or was he shown Potemkin villages? Or did he whitewash the regime he worshipped?

Despite that, Ball clearly finds him more credible than anyone who reports the opposite....it's a representative example of Ball's whole approach to evidence.

Monthly Review has sometimes been more serious - in the past, anyway. It's a shame to see such a simple whitewash there.

[Joseph Ball]

'Sevarin' asks why I trust Greene more than Jasper Becker. Well I asked Jasper Becker for more information about 'all the people' he interviewed and I did not get it. I went into detail in my article about why Becker's evidence is not convincing. For example, he relies on a lot of documents that appear on the face of it to be of doubtful origin and he does not say why he thinks they are authentic. He states that peasants he spoke to in China were not allowed to speak for themselves but were supervised and interrupted by Communist Party Officials (the Chinese Communist Party's line on the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution is very negative).

I am sorry but Jasper Becker saying he thinks his evidence is all reliable isn't really good enough. He needs to expose his methodology and data to more scrutiny.

As far as me ignoring everything that makes Mao look bad, I cite Professor Han Dongping's article about the famine that did occur in parts of China. The, undoubtedly true, events he talks about were very traumatic for China but nothing like a nation wide apocalypse-the scenario that many western 'authorities' on Mao have tried to create. I have thorougly examined all the major sources about the famine available in the West. I have found no convincing evidence. I have also examined the work of those like Carl Riskin and Han Dongping who actually have gone to China to look for evidence that 'Mao killed tens of millions' and have not found evidence that indicates this.

I doubt that the Monthly Review agrees with everything I say. However, their willingness to give space to points of views that challenge the dominant imperialist view of history shows that they are indeed 'serious'.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2006, 08:57 PM
What a load of red propaganda.
ya and the shit they teach in schools is fair, first, and fox :lol:

[AlwaysAnarchy]

Mao killed tens of millions of his people.
He also engaged in a sick personality cult where the people were slavisly devoted to him and not to the revolution.
Workers democracy did not exist in China.
The Party was centralized and controlled everything.
State Capitalism reigned and not workers control of the means of production.

In short Mao was really anti socialist and his policies were disastrous for the Chinese people and have , along with Stalin, deeply blacked the name of genuine socialism (anarchism, in my opinion) and made it more and more difficult for regular people to consider it.

[VenceremosRed]

People like Severian always complain because while real communists like Mao were out participating and contributing in revolution, while Trotsky was busy informing U.S. federal agents about the members of the CPUSA and inside information about the Soviet Union. So I can understand why he cries about "forced peasant labor" (which is a lie, of the most transparent kind.)

[VenceremosRed]

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b388/celticfire84/rcp/_C20_258MWuBiduanMaowPeo135.jpg

Some facts about the socialist revolution led by Mao:

- Between 1949 and 1975, life expectancy in socialist China more than doubled, from about 32 to 65 years.

- By the early 1970s, infant mortality rates in Shanghai were lower than in New York City.

- Literacy swelled in the span of one generation--from about 15 percent in 1949 to some 80 to 90 percent in the mid-1970s

- Agriculture grew by some 3 percent a year, slightly exceeding population growth. By 1970, the problem of adequately feeding China's population had been solved. This was accomplished through integrated economic planning, a system of collective agriculture that promoted grass-roots mobilization, flood control, steady investment in rural infrastructure, and the equitable distribution of food to peasants and rationing of essential foods so that all people were guaranteed their minimal requirements.

- China's industrial economy under Mao grew impressively--at an average rate of 10 percent per year, even during the Cultural Revolution. China, the former "sick man of Asia," transformed itself into a major industrial power in the quarter century between 1949 and 1976--a rate of development comparable only to the greatest surges of growth in history.

Of course, socialism in China did far more then this. It actively empowered the masses. It is something to be proud of and celebrate, and it should be something to learn from as we fight for socialism today.

Now, with criticism, of course, as communists we should have healthy criticisms.

Mine would be:

(Of Mao, himself)

- Relying on the cult of personality to fight revisionism. This worked against the building of an eqalitarian society, rather then the reverse.

- Not understanding the economic errors of the Great Leap Forward. I uphold the GLF as a positive model, however, there were clear mistakes made, and Mao as person responsible, deserves criticism. Yes, some people starved during this time, however 1) This was not the worst famine in China 2) The response to the famine was the fastest in Chinese history 3) There were accute contradictions in building communes and socialist development in the Northern parts of China. Finally, Mao did step down as head of state after the GLF.

- Allowing a clearly revisionist foreign policy to take power, and not recognizing Cuba's socialist revolution.

Overall, however, Mao was great revolutionary leader. His contributions of the mass line (from the masses, to the masses), the understanding of revisionism, mass participation, contradiction and dialectical materialism, and general socialist development -- is overwhelmingly positive.

[BreadBros]

In my view the Maoist era of China was really about consolidation, modernization and ultimately, a transition to capitalism. So I dont really see Mao as being "good" or "bad" as his relation to actually established communism is so far removed. Modernization seems to be pretty fucked up in any regard, conditions get worse (short term) and people die. Difference is it happened at blindingly light speed in China which made things seem worse than say, the decades of horrible conditions and starvation in industrializing England. He certainly did seem a bit callous and large amounts of people, whatever the actual number, died. He also helped establish the modern Chinese state, which is a productive powerhouse, has an increasingly high standard of living, and due to its power cant be pushed around by imperialist nations. Lets look forward to when the emerging Chinese proletariat starts becoming revolutionary, at their rate of growth they'll likely be caught up to Europe and North America.

[VenceremosRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2006, 03:55 AM
In my view the Maoist era of China was really about consolidation, modernization and ultimately, a transition to capitalism. So I dont really see Mao as being "good" or "bad" as his relation to actually established communism is so far removed. Modernization seems to be pretty fucked up in any regard, conditions get worse (short term) and people die. Difference is it happened at blindingly light speed in China which made things seem worse than say, the decades of horrible conditions and starvation in industrializing England. He certainly did seem a bit callous and large amounts of people, whatever the actual number, died. He also helped establish the modern Chinese state, which is a productive powerhouse, has an increasingly high standard of living, and due to its power cant be pushed around by imperialist nations. Lets look forward to when the emerging Chinese proletariat starts becoming revolutionary, at their rate of growth they'll likely be caught up to Europe and North America.
This like everything else so far is ridiculous. I am really disappointed among people with obvious access to mountains of information they can't get it together to formulate a somewhat accurate depiction of one of the greatest contributors to the socialist cause.

It is true, China like the Soviet Union had to pass through a bourgeois democratic stage, which Mao developed into New democracy, which is essentially a bourgeois-democratic stage that is on the path to developing socialism.

But Mao went much further then this, he pushed for the development of large communes and collectives, he argued for further decentralization of the state, and more automous power.

These are not the actions of the bourgeoisie, but a genuine communist revolutionary.

[Rodack]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 28 2006, 08:44 PM
An article challenging the negative view of Mao's period of rule, prevalent in the western media and academic circles, has been published in the American Monthly Review magazine. The article is available at www.monthlyreview.org/0906ball.htm. I am the author of this article and my website is at www.re-evaluationmao.org.

The article argues that there is no evidence that millions of people died in the Great Leap Forward and that the charges of 'mass murder' and 'genocide' , frequently made against Mao in the West, in relation to this movement, have no basis in fact.

The Great Leap Forward began in 1958. This was a mass movement for the rapid development of agriculture and industry.

The allegation is made that 30 million died during the Great Leap Forward. However, the Chinese death rate figures that 'prove' this allegation only appeared 20 years after the event, during an ideological campaign by Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping against the ideological legacy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Even Judith Banister, one of the demographers who has done most to promote the 30 million deaths figure, expresses extreme doubts about the sources for it. She describes death rate data gathered before the 1970s in China as 'non-existent' or 'useless'. Yet without these figures there is little in the way of hard evidence to prove that such a massive famine took place.

Maoist rebels are on the verge of joining the government in Nepal. Maoists control vast areas of India. They are carrying out revolutionary struggle in Turkey and the Phillipines. Yet in the West, especially, people believe that Mao killed millions of his own citizens. How can it be that he still inspires so many? What is the truth about Mao? Is he an example to follow for those who want a better world, or a man who committed genocide and led his country to ruin?

In his lifetime, Mao Zedong was hugely respected for the way that his socialist policies improved the welfare of the Chinese people, greatly reducing poverty and hunger in China and providing free health care and education. Although everyone accepts famine happened in some areas of China in the Great Leap Forward, Joseph Ball questions how the fact that it was the 'largest famine in history' in which millions supposedly died was not known about until twenty years after it is meant to have occured.
You make a great point, Stalin was accused of murdering 40 million of his own people but I have seen no proof of this. Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton called herself a Devout Stalinist on the steps of the Senate shortly after she was elected. If Stalin did murder 40 million Soviets I really do not think Hillary Clinton would align herself with a mass murderer, Comrades

[AlwaysAnarchy]

Originally posted by VenceremosRed+Sep 30 2006, 05:20 AM--> (VenceremosRed @ Sep 30 2006, 05:20 AM) This like everything else so far is ridiculous. I am really disappointed among people with obvious access to mountains of information they can't get it together to formulate a somewhat accurate depiction of one of the greatest contributors to the socialist cause.

It is true, China like the Soviet Union had to pass through a bourgeois democratic stage, which Mao developed into New democracy, which is essentially a bourgeois-democratic stage that is on the path to developing socialism.

But Mao went much further then this, he pushed for the development of large communes and collectives, he argued for further decentralization of the state, and more automous power.

These are not the actions of the bourgeoisie, but a genuine communist revolutionary. [/b]
I'm sorry, I don't buy it.

I have a post detailing the crimes of Mao, his state capitalism, his personality cult, dictatorship over the Chinese people, his lack of freedom of speech/expression, and deaths of over 20 million Chinese people. He wasn't a socialist, but a peasant-radical/nationalist with a fetish for personality cults and megolomania.

Here is my post again:


PacifistAnarchist
Mao killed tens of millions of his people.
He also engaged in a sick personality cult where the people were slavisly devoted to him and not to the revolution.
Workers democracy did not exist in China.
The Party was centralized and controlled everything.
State Capitalism reigned and not workers control of the means of production.

In short Mao was really anti socialist and his policies were disastrous for the Chinese people and have , along with Stalin, deeply blacked the name of genuine socialism (anarchism, in my opinion) and made it more and more difficult for regular people to consider it.

[VenceremosRed]

Originally posted by PacifistAnarchist+Sep 30 2006, 07:50 PM--> (PacifistAnarchist @ Sep 30 2006, 07:50 PM) I'm sorry, I don't buy it.

I have a post detailing the crimes of Mao, his state capitalism, his personality cult, dictatorship over the Chinese people, his lack of freedom of speech/expression, and deaths of over 20 million Chinese people. He wasn't a socialist, but a peasant-radical/nationalist with a fetish for personality cults and megolomania.

Here is my post again:


PacifistAnarchist
Mao killed tens of millions of his people.
He also engaged in a sick personality cult where the people were slavisly devoted to him and not to the revolution.
Workers democracy did not exist in China.
The Party was centralized and controlled everything.
State Capitalism reigned and not workers control of the means of production.

In short Mao was really anti socialist and his policies were disastrous for the Chinese people and have , along with Stalin, deeply blacked the name of genuine socialism (anarchism, in my opinion) and made it more and more difficult for regular people to consider it. [/b]
None of this shit holds water. Yes, Mao had a cult of personality. It was a communist tradition at the time (originated by Stalin) and it was believed at the time it would help fight revisionism (communist by name, capitalist by deed).

Obviously this was wrong. It encouraged dogmatism and religious worship of leaders. So Mao does deserve criticism of this, but does having a cult of personality mean Mao was a dictator?

No.

Did Mao "kill" 20 million (or 50, 100 million?)

No.

Probably about 15 million people died during the Great Leap Forward of starvation and starvation related health problems.

Mao didn't order the death of 15 million people, or actively prevent food from getting to these people (who were in the North, which had a history of drought and famine) -- keep in mind there were 400 million people in China -- and a multitude of efforts were put forward to prevent this, and stop it from happening further.

Mao also stepped down as president in 1959, but he remained Chairman of the CCP.

All your arguments are based on anticommunist propaganda. Was Mao perfect, a saint, a living god? No.

[RNK]

Every reliable source of information I've heard of states that the Personality Cult around Mao was mainly driven by Mao's close associates in the Communist Party, not by any effort of himself to create it.

[VenceremosRed]

Well, actually Mao did perpetuate his own cult.

And it was wrong.

Our Che, Rosa and Ho Chi Minh all failed to solve the primary contradictions of capitalist encirclement and the threat of revisionist decay.

[Invader Zim]

Did Mao "kill" 20 million (or 50, 100 million?)

No.

Probably about 15 million people died during the Great Leap Forward of starvation and starvation related health problems.

Say what?

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Mao

While I don't buy the sixty million figure, the famine is still of Mao's inept attempt to impliment socialist economics.

Fuck Mao.

[Joseph Ball]

The posts on this thread are incredibly subjective-Mao killed 30 million people, no it was 20 million people, no it was 15 million people. Which theory of Mao shall I pick off the supermarket shelf-some half-baked Trotskyist notion that revolutions can't happen in oppressed nations or some piece of anarchist, holier-than-thou moralism?

Discussing proletarian history is of vital importance for the future of the proletarian movement. Our understanding of the past forms our understanding of how to struggle in the future. Discussion of history and theory should not be like a video game where people push the keys on their computer in a more or less random fashion.

Mao was very clear that scientfic methods can uncover the truth in social and political matters. We learn from experience and practice. We need to apply such a method to the development of our own knowledge of such questions. It's not 'all a matter of opinion'. The ideas developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao form the basis for the scientific ideology of the proletariat.

[VenceremosRed]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 1 2006, 08:49 PM
The posts on this thread are incredibly subjective-Mao killed 30 million people, no it was 20 million people, no it was 15 million people. Which theory of Mao shall I pick off the supermarket shelf-some half-baked Trotskyist notion that revolutions can't happen in oppressed nations or some piece of anarchist, holier-than-thou moralism?

Discussing proletarian history is of vital importance for the future of the proletarian movement. Our understanding of the past forms our understanding of how to struggle in the future. Discussion of history and theory should not be like a video game where people push the keys on their computer in a more or less random fashion.

Mao was very clear that scientfic methods can uncover the truth in social and political matters. We learn from experience and practice. We need to apply such a method to the development of our own knowledge of such questions. It's not 'all a matter of opinion'. The ideas developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao form the basis for the scientific ideology of the proletariat.
The point isn't what exact number of people died from the Great Leap, but rather a point about method.

[Joseph Ball]

The question is whether the Great Leap Forward was a good policy or not. This is important because if it was good other developing countries trying to develop in a socialist way might want to repeat some aspects of it. No-one in their right mind would want to repeat aspects of a policy that killed tens of millions of people. There is no good evidence that tens of millions died in the Great Leap Forward, so why should socialists keep repeating this just because this is a favoured bourgeois line?

[VenceremosRed]

I am not sure that's really the issue.

Obviously, we communists wouldn't uphold a policy that killed millions of people, and a leader that allowed/perpetrated that policy. Having a situation where decisive cadres are conciously falsifying reports to the centre -- you don't have a good situation, period.

[Joseph Ball]

I'm not sure why you support the figure of 15 million. I know this is the Deng Xiaoping regime figure. My article challenges the Deng Xiaoping regime figures. Some people have argued that US demographers like Judith Banister were wrong to double this figure to 30 million. I am neutral about this aspect of the debate, I need to see more evidence. My principal contention is that there is no good evidence for the figure of 15 million and the argument about the 30 million is therfeore not relevant. If you believe the figure of 30 million, there may well be a reasonable case for doubling it to 30 million, using Judith Banister's method. See my article for a detailed discussion of this.

You can't simultaneously accept a figure of '15 million dead' and believe the Great Leap Forward was mainly positive! But why should we accept such a figure when there is no good evidence for it?

The Great Leap Forward was mainly positive because of what happened in 1958 (when the movement began) and because of the positive effects that became obvious after 1959-61. It would be very bold to argue that people felt mainly positive about it from the second half of 1959 to the end of 1961 when there were food shortages. You have to look at the thing in the whole. Look on the China Study Group's website for good historical analyses of the GLF and how the Cultural Revolution built on the positive aspects of the GLF (I do not share the same political perspective as the China Study Group but I respect their work)

[Janus]

the famine is still of Mao's inept attempt to impliment socialist economics.
You can't expect one person to effectively implement such wide policies. It requires the participation of everyone. However, during the Great Leap Forward, many bureaucrats out of optimism and corruption, grossly overestimated yields. This bureaucratic inefficiency was one of the main reasons for the failure of the Leap.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 2 2006, 02:06 PM
The question is whether the Great Leap Forward was a good policy or not. This is important because if it was good other developing countries trying to develop in a socialist way might want to repeat some aspects of it.
Nobody even in China wanted to continue the fundamental policies of the Great Leap Forward. And you think people in other countries might want to emulate it?

Mao himself called for the dissolution of the communes in 1959. The approach to crash industrialization was also dropped. Forced super-collectivization and trying to degree super-rapid growth were both failures. Then there were the Lysenkoist practices in agriculture.....

Within the Chinese Communist Party and government leadership, it was universally recognized that the Great Leap Forward had been a disaster. Mao paid a price for sponsoring these failed policies; his personal power and place in the leadership suffered greatly. Nothing succeeds like success and nothing fails like failure.

But even when he restored his unchallenged personal rule through the Cultural Revolution, he never tried to bring back the "communes" or the Great Leap Forward Approach. Mao learned he couldn't simply decree economic success, any more than King Canute could order back the tide.


No-one in their right mind would want to repeat aspects of a policy that killed tens of millions of people.

And yet, here you are.

There's a fallacy, BTW: the results were disastrous because the fundamental approach was wrong - that doesn't automatically prove every "aspect", every incidental thing, was wrong.

What you're evading and muddying up with this whole "aspects" thing, and "Mao made mistakes", is an evaluation of the fundamental approach.....

[Joseph Ball]

I don't understand what Severian is saying. The communes weren't broken up until Deng Xiaoping took power.

If the idea of rural industrialisation was so bad why did the Chinese government recently sponsor a book celebrating the acheivements of Township and Village enterprises?

There is the idea that undeveloped socialist countries should proceed at a snail's pace to socialism by following market forces in relation to industrialisation (the Trotsky/Bukharin approach). This is absolutely hopeless. All countries that industrialise, whether socialist or capitalist make leaps. Countries that don't leap like India and Africa do very badly ('shining India' proves to be a bit of a mirage when you actually visit the place).

If Mao's policies were so disasterous, why did the country industrialise and develop so much, while following the socialist line?

Severian has read my article but has not really engaged with the argument there.

[Janus]

Mao himself called for the dissolution of the communes in 1959
No, that's when the commune movement really took off. Up until then, they had been more or less unofficial and rare.


But even when he restored his unchallenged personal rule through the Cultural Revolution, he never tried to bring back the "communes"
There were already communes in the rural areas. Mao flirted with the idea of making the communes totally widespread at this point but soon withdrew on that.


If Mao's policies were so disasterous, why did the country industrialise and develop so much, while following the socialist line?
Industry developed so much because so many people were diverted to this field.

The PRC later recovered from the disastrous campaign when Mao withdrew from day to day politics.

[Joseph Ball]

The point of the Great Leap Forward lies in an aspect of rural work which commentators seem to be unaware of. Rural work consists of periods of intense activity e.g. harvest time and periods of relative inactivity. You will also find a lot of underemployed labour in general in rural areas in undeveloped countries.

The point of the Great Leap Forward was to give rural workers something to do in periods of inactivity. This included creating irrigation schemes, building flood defences and working in rural industrial concerns, for example producing cement or fertilizer. There was also the so-called 'backyard steel furnace campaign'. (Critics of Mao pretend that the latter was the only aspect of the rural industrialisation program).

If people read my article, I cite evidence that the Leap was not a failure, althought the initial success of the campaign was marred by natural disasters (and policy mistakes-but these were not the main cause of the problems that occurred).

I am not sure why people are not engaging with this argument. The article is available on the Monthly Review website at www.monthlyreview.org/0906ball.htm.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 4 2006, 12:48 AM
I don't understand what Severian is saying.
.....
Severian has read my article but has not really engaged with the argument there.
No, you had it right the first time. You don't understand what I'm saying, and as a consequence it's you who's failed to engage my points.

An example of how you're not even trying to engage anyone else:

If the idea of rural industrialisation was so bad
Obviously not my point - or the point of anybody that I'm aware of. Not even the bourgeois writers are opposed to rural industrialization!


The communes weren't broken up until Deng Xiaoping took power.

Formally. But as Wikipedia puts it:
In 1959 and 1960, most production decisions reverted to the brigade and team levels, and eventually most governmental responsibilities were returned to county and township administrations. Nonetheless, the commune system was retained and continued to be the basic form of organization in the agricultural sector until the early 1980s......
Production teams were designated the basic accounting units and were responsible for making nearly all decisions concerning production and the distribution of income to their members. Private plots, which had disappeared on some communes during the Great Leap Forward, were officially restored to farm families.
link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_China#Readjustment_and_Recover y:_.22Agriculture_First.2C.22_1961-65)

That article gives some idea of the other changes in policy resulting from the failure of the Great Leap Forward.

To repeat my main point from my last post: even the Chinese CP and government leaders realized the Great Leap Forward had disastrous results. Nobody else is going to be imitating the fundamental approach:

Forced collectivization (on a huge scale) and acting as if economic results can simply be decreed by bureaucratic fiat.


There is the idea that undeveloped socialist countries should proceed at a snail's pace to socialism by following market forces in relation to industrialisation (the Trotsky/Bukharin approach).

Another good example of you not even trying to understand other people's points or views. That was Bukharin's approach, more or less, but Trotsky was at the other end of the debate. Stalin was somewhere in the middle, and for years allied with Bukharin against the "industrializer" Trotsky.

I've noticed this is a common problem Maoists have on this board: they don't know how to discuss with people having different opinions. So they just repeat prerecorded speeches. Maybe this is because you don't get any practice with having actual discussion, with frankly counterposed differences of opinion, in the Maoist tradition - certainly not within most Maoist groups.

If you intend to keep on posting here, and want anyone to pay attention to you, I suggest you start by learning to discuss. The first step is to make an actual attempt to understand other people's points.

[The Author]

Originally posted by Joseph Ball+ Oct 5 2006, 02:46 AM--> (Joseph Ball @ Oct 5 2006, 02:46 AM)I am not sure why people are not engaging with this argument. The article is available on the Monthly Review website at www.monthlyreview.org/0906ball.htm.[/b]

I did manage to read your article at the Monthly Review, and I thought the article was very objective in its analysis of the Great Leap Forward. I was impressed with the criticism of the statistics on the death rate in China during the period in question and how there were too many anomalies between infant mortality and adult mortality- despite there being a population growth in China as a whole- and how you pointed out that in famines, mostly the very old and very young are at the most risk to famine. You raised a very good point about how many of the official statistics in China have to be questioned because of their release by the Deng Xiaoping regime- a government that wanted an excuse to restore capitalism, and because of this bias, we should be more skeptical of what the Chinese government has to say, and the West as well.

I had always been curious about the Great Leap. A lot of negative things are said about this historical period and that it was the government's fault for the problems, but I could never understand that if the government was so responsible, then why weren't the peasants rioting against the authorities and why is there still a positive view of Mao among people even today if he committed such mistakes? Your emphasis on natural events being the major cause for the problems of the Great Leap rather than government policy makes sense, and it would be interesting to know what people who lived at the time really thought about the policy if they weren't under such scrutiny by the current government.


[email protected] Oct 5 2006, 06:49 AM
If you intend to keep on posting here, and want anyone to pay attention to you, I suggest you start by learning to discuss. The first step is to make an actual attempt to understand other people's points.

I think he knows how to "discuss," as you have put it. Perhaps people are not paying attention to him, because they do not like what he has to say about the matter and they maintain a very subjective point of view- they pass quick judgment on him and his article without even bothering to read it because it runs counter to their ideological views. This seems to be a recurring phenomenon on this board concerning matters of history or politics.

[CombatLiberalism]

I've noticed this is a common problem Maoists have on this board: they don't know how to discuss with people having different opinions. So they just repeat prerecorded speeches. Maybe this is because you don't get any practice with having actual discussion, with frankly counterposed differences of opinion, in the Maoist tradition - certainly not within most Maoist groups.

This isn't true of genuine Maoists. Genuine Maoists are about proletarian science. Although there are plenty of zombies out there who self-describe themselves in all kinds of ways.

[Joseph Ball]

Sevarin argues that the communes only had a formal existence from 1959. There were actually peaks and troughs with the ideals of the Leap being revived in the Cultural Revolution and the ideals behind the communes getting a revival. Certainly when Deng got rid of the communes it had a very major effect on the peasants' lives with free health care and education being abolished, among other things. Check out articles on the China Study Group website, especially the one by Han Dongping on the GLF/Cultural Revolution but also the others about these two campaigns. I don't endorse all the political standpoints of the China Study Group but their work on these issues is very illuminating.

As far as Trotsky not sharing the Bukharin line goes, what about this quote from the 1927 'Platform of the Joint Opposition' in the 'Prices' section?
'The necessary acceleration of industrialisation is impossible without a systematic and determined lowering of the costs of production and of wholesale and retail prices of industrial goods, and their approximation to world prices.'
and in 'The Soviet Union and International Capitalist Economy' in the same 'Platform'-
'The goal of the economic leadership should not be a shut-in, self-sufficient economy...but just the opposite-an all sided increase of our relative weight in the world economy'.

Given the rest of the world was capitalist at the time it is clear that Trotsky and his friends wanted the integration of the Soviet economy into the world capitalist system-if the Soviets had accepted the market prices dictated by the capitalist market then all the development or indeed lack of development of the Soviet economy would have been determined by capitalist market forces. Trotsky told everyone this would lead to socialism, but this is surely just rhetoric-how could this be the case? Bukharin was more honest when he spoke of accepting the capitalist market and progressing at a snail's pace to socialism. Hence it is right to speak of a Trotsky/Bukharin line.

As far as Maoists not being used to having their views challenged-if only. Maoists are the most argumentative bunch of people in the world. We continually argue with others, challenge their viewpoints and in turn have our viewpoints challenged.

As far as 'Criticiseeverythingalways's post goes-I am glad you found my article interesting. When I say there is evidence natural disasters caused the famine-mainly-rather than policy errors, I am going on the evidence in Han Dongping's article. Han Dongping had family connections with the area where he discussed these matters with people. Possibly, he blended in better than a complete outsider would have done and so elicited more honest responses.

I trust Han Dongping's account, although he is perhaps less 'left' than myself, in some ways, he is clearly very sincere and deeply knowlegable about the Maoist era.

[Cryotank Screams]

Mao killed tens of millions of his people.
He also engaged in a sick personality cult where the people were slavisly devoted to him and not to the revolution.
Workers democracy did not exist in China.
The Party was centralized and controlled everything.
State Capitalism reigned and not workers control of the means of production.

In short Mao was really anti socialist and his policies were disastrous for the Chinese people and have , along with Stalin, deeply blacked the name of genuine socialism (anarchism, in my opinion) and made it more and more difficult for regular people to consider it

Did you even bother to read the article or visit and read the information provided on the site? Or did you just ignore it and continue your usual ‘pacifist’ ramblings?


But no reasonable, well-informed person doubts that the "Great Leap Forward" and forced collectivization were disastrous

I wouldn’t say that the Great Leap Forward was disastrous all together, it just had some flaws, that were brought on by ancestral competition with the west to get China up to speed, and prove the validity and might of the people’s revolution.


I'm sorry, I don't buy it.

I have a post detailing the crimes of Mao, his state capitalism, his personality cult, dictatorship over the Chinese people, his lack of freedom of speech/expression, and deaths of over 20 million Chinese people. He wasn't a socialist, but a peasant-radical/nationalist with a fetish for personality cults and megolomania

No you just sat there and posted some anti-Maoist bullshit, because you can’t get past bourgeoisie propaganda, and failed to give any consideration to what the original poster posted.

My Opinion;

I think some people may have died yes, but certainly not the 60, or 30 million people as claimed by anti-Maoists, and probably not even the 15 million; nor do I think the deaths of these people should stain the reputation and legacy of Mao because he did not want these people to die, planned for them to die, or created any plan to make them die.

I mean it’s like building a structure and then when it’s finished denouncing it because a couple workers died in the process; these were UNINTENDED DEATHS!

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph Ball+Oct 5 2006, 04:13 PM--> (Joseph Ball @ Oct 5 2006, 04:13 PM) Sevarin argues that the communes only had a formal existence from 1959. There were actually peaks and troughs with the ideals of the Leap being revived in the Cultural Revolution and the ideals behind the communes getting a revival. Certainly when Deng got rid of the communes it had a very major effect on the peasants' lives with free health care and education being abolished, among other things. [/b]
Which is an evasion, not a response. You're unable to refute my points about the reversal of the Great Leap Forward policies in '59-'60, so you change the subject to what Deng did in the 1980s.

It's helpful if you quote the people you're responding to. When somebody declines to do that, it's usually a dead giveaway they're not even trying.

There's more than enough historical rehashing of the Stalin-Trotsky fight on this board already, so I'm not going to get into your out-of-context quotes. I will point out that you woulda given a link if you were trying to be honest there (so people could readily check the context.)


As far as Maoists not being used to having their views challenged-if only. Maoists are the most argumentative bunch of people in the world. We continually argue with others, challenge their viewpoints and in turn have our viewpoints challenged.

Argument does not guarantee actual discussion. It can as easily be a shouting match or a dialogue of the deaf (as in this case.)

Consider the approach to "challenging viewpoints" followed by Mao himself, during the Cultural Revolution for example. We know what Mao had to say in that "argument". We know what Mao said others had to say. We do not know what they had to say for themselves....whatever speeches or writings Liu Shao-Chi and others may have made during that faction fight, they have not seen the light of day.

Fortunately, you don't have the ability to do the same here. My posts are there whether you deal with them or not; so you might as well learn to deal with them.


Scarlet Hammer
I mean it’s like building a structure and then when it’s finished denouncing it because a couple workers died in the process; these were UNINTENDED DEATHS!

That's an interesting analogy. As it happens, the workers movement has always denounced the bosses for "unintended" or "accidental" deaths on the job. [url=http://www.themilitant.com/2006/7038/index.shtmlRecently, thousands of coal miners in Kazakhstan struck because of 41 "unintended" deaths when a mine owned by a Dutch company exploded.[/url] Do you think that's ridiculous, too?

Deaths like those are not unavoidable - they are a product of the system. They are a product of the bosses putting profits ahead of human life. It's not that they want to kill their employees - it's just they have higher priorities.

Similarly (though not exactly the same), the deaths in the Great Leap Forward were a consequence of a setup that tended to manage the economy by bureaucratic fiat - not through conscious, democratic control by working people. And of the bureaucrats putting their own privileges ahead of the lives and needs of working people.

The bureaucratic managers of the USSR as well as the PRC often put a great emphasis on sheer bulk production ahead of quality, human consequences, longer-term considerations, or anything else. One reason is that the size of their privileges depended on the total social surplus they could feed off. The Great Leap Forward was an extreme case of that tunnel-vision, short-sighted focus on sheer bulk industrial production.

[VenceremosRed]

I have to, grudingly, agree with severian on this point -- to an extent.

There were problems, man-made with food distribution during the Great Leap. Mao was partly responsible, as were many other factors, like bad weather, lack of industrial experience among the Chinese peasantry, etc.

[Joseph Ball]

Sevarin-I shouldn't need to provide a link to 'The Platform of the Joint Opposition' to a Trotskyist! (My apologies if this characterisation of your politics is incorrect. Everyone admits there was a reversal in the communes policy in 1959 in terms of the extent of their activities and the extent of their ownership of land and property. I was just a bit surprised when you seemed to be saying they had been disbanded completely. I think we may have exhausted the possibilities of discussion on this one.


VenceremosRed-please give me sources for your 15 million figure, no offense but I can't just take your word for it! As I say, I think you are just referring to the figure from the Deng Xiaoping regime which was based on raw data of death rates which are themselves of very uncertain origin.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 6 2006, 12:43 AM
Sevarin-I shouldn't need to provide a link to 'The Platform of the Joint Opposition' to a Trotskyist!
Oh, you don't need to provide it for me. I already know the context, and know you're committing an out-of-context distortion.

But if you were trying to be honest, you'd provide it for everyone else - a source and context everyone else could easily check.

"Trotskyist" isn't an especially accurate label for me, or an especially meaningful label for anyone, but I'm resigned to Maoists using it as a means of changing the subject.


Everyone admits there was a reversal in the communes policy in 1959 in terms of the extent of their activities and the extent of their ownership of land and property.

Then deal with my point: since even the CCP leadership reversed the "Great Leap Forward" policy, acknowledging it had been a failure, nobody else is likely to imitate it.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 5 2006, 06:46 AM
The point of the Great Leap Forward lies in an aspect of rural work which commentators seem to be unaware of. Rural work consists of periods of intense activity e.g. harvest time and periods of relative inactivity. You will also find a lot of underemployed labour in general in rural areas in undeveloped countries.

The point of the Great Leap Forward was to give rural workers something to do in periods of inactivity. This included creating irrigation schemes, building flood defences and working in rural industrial concerns, for example producing cement or fertilizer. There was also the so-called 'backyard steel furnace campaign'. (Critics of Mao pretend that the latter was the only aspect of the rural industrialisation program).

If people read my article, I cite evidence that the Leap was not a failure, althought the initial success of the campaign was marred by natural disasters (and policy mistakes-but these were not the main cause of the problems that occurred).

I am not sure why people are not engaging with this argument. The article is available on the Monthly Review website at www.monthlyreview.org/0906ball.htm.
The real question now is what improvements or corrections could be made to avoid such a catastrophic mess if there is bad weather.

[VenceremosRed]

Joseph Ball: I am not going to argue exact numbers. I welcome your efforts to shed light on some issues: that the claims of the anti-Mao books are questionable (and downright lies) and that there is still new information to be brought forward, and that Mao was not a mass killer.

[The Author]

Here's what Mao had to say about the Great Leap Forward in 1962:


The situation in our country has not been very good for the past few years, but now it is starting to take a turn for the better. In 1959 and 1960 a number of things were done wrongly, mainly because most people had no experience to enable them to understand the problems. The most serious fault was that our requisitioning was excessive. When we did not have very much grain, we insisted on saying that we had. Blind commands were issued in both industry and agriculture. There were also some other large-scale mistakes. In the second half of 1960 we started to put these right — in point of fact it was quite early on, starting at the First Chengchow Conference in October 1958. Next came the Wuhan Conference in November and December 1958, while in February and March 1959 we held the Second Chengchow Conference. At the Shanghai Conference in April of that year we also paid attention to correcting our mistakes. Meanwhile there was a period in 1960 when we did not pay enough attention to it because revisionism came and put pressure on us. Our attention was diverted to opposing Khrushchev. From the second half of 1958 he wanted to blockade the Chinese coastline. He wanted to set up a joint fleet so as to have control over our coastline and blockade us. It was because of this question that Khrushchev came to our country. After this, in September 1959 during the Sino-Indian border dispute, Khrushchev supported Nehru in attacking us and Tass issued a communique. Then Khrushchev came to China and at our Tenth Anniversary Celebration banquet in October, he attacked us on our own rostrum. At the Bucharest Conference in 1960 they tried to encircle and annihilate us.[2] Then came the conference of the Two Communist Parties, the Twenty-six-Country Drafting Committee, the Eighty-one-Country Moscow Conference, and there was also a Warsaw Conference, all of which were concerned with the dispute between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism. We spent the w! hole of 1960 fighting Khrushchev.

From "Speech at the Tenth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee"

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/...-8/mswv8_63.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_63.htm)

[VenceremosRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 04:22 AM
Here's what Mao had to say about the Great Leap Forward in 1962:


The situation in our country has not been very good for the past few years, but now it is starting to take a turn for the better. In 1959 and 1960 a number of things were done wrongly, mainly because most people had no experience to enable them to understand the problems. The most serious fault was that our requisitioning was excessive. When we did not have very much grain, we insisted on saying that we had. Blind commands were issued in both industry and agriculture. There were also some other large-scale mistakes. In the second half of 1960 we started to put these right — in point of fact it was quite early on, starting at the First Chengchow Conference in October 1958. Next came the Wuhan Conference in November and December 1958, while in February and March 1959 we held the Second Chengchow Conference. At the Shanghai Conference in April of that year we also paid attention to correcting our mistakes. Meanwhile there was a period in 1960 when we did not pay enough attention to it because revisionism came and put pressure on us. Our attention was diverted to opposing Khrushchev. From the second half of 1958 he wanted to blockade the Chinese coastline. He wanted to set up a joint fleet so as to have control over our coastline and blockade us. It was because of this question that Khrushchev came to our country. After this, in September 1959 during the Sino-Indian border dispute, Khrushchev supported Nehru in attacking us and Tass issued a communique. Then Khrushchev came to China and at our Tenth Anniversary Celebration banquet in October, he attacked us on our own rostrum. At the Bucharest Conference in 1960 they tried to encircle and annihilate us.[2] Then came the conference of the Two Communist Parties, the Twenty-six-Country Drafting Committee, the Eighty-one-Country Moscow Conference, and there was also a Warsaw Conference, all of which were concerned with the dispute between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism. We spent the w! hole of 1960 fighting Khrushchev.

From "Speech at the Tenth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee"

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/...-8/mswv8_63.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_63.htm)
Yes, Mao is talking about the line struggle that was emerging between the Soviet Union and China.

There is a lot to investigate here on the role of the line struggle and its effects on the GLF. Soviet technicians were recalled, leaving many industrial plans to rot.

Fidel wrongly sided with Krushchev. And there is more there to discuss.

[Joseph Ball]

Venceremosred says 'credible scholars' believe tens of millions died in the Great Leap Forward. Yes, but I go through the reasons why they say this in my article and find them wanting. People mustn't just blindly worship experts, this is not a marxist-leninist approach.

Mao admits that he made mistakes in the Leap (which is acknowledged in my article). He doesn't say 'My policies killed tens of millions of people'. Why? Because this wasn't true.

I don't characterise MacFarquhar as a 'CIA stooge' as this would imply he knowingly received money from the CIA, something I have no evidence of. The magazine he edited, The China Quarterly, was however funded (partly) by a CIA front group. This is something he freely admits, albeit he says this was without his knowledge. See my article at www.monthlyreview.org (in the 'Commentary' section) for a fuller discussion of this.

[The Author]

One also has to take into account that there was a growing revisionist tendency among certain members in the Chinese Communist Party who sought to restore capitalism at least since the mid-1950s, and never looked favorably upon the Great Leap Forward. Hence why the Great Leap was officially abandoned and "reforms" which started to restore capitalism were instituted- because a growing majority of the Party wanted the capitalist reforms and had fallen into a bureaucratic degeneration. Such a right-deviation was countered with the Cultural Revolution- a political struggle to remove the revisionist rot through mass action and to maintain and strengthen socialism.

[VenceremosRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 12:21 PM
One also has to take into account that there was a growing revisionist tendency among certain members in the Chinese Communist Party who sought to restore capitalism at least since the mid-1950s, and never looked favorably upon the Great Leap Forward. Hence why the Great Leap was officially abandoned and "reforms" which started to restore capitalism were instituted- because a growing majority of the Party wanted the capitalist reforms and had fallen into a bureaucratic degeneration. Such a right-deviation was countered with the Cultural Revolution- a political struggle to remove the revisionist rot through mass action and to maintain and strengthen socialism.
Yes, there was line struggle, and this played a role.

My point isn't that we should uncritical accept bourgeois scholarly work on our history, but critically weed out those who are genuinely searching for truth (although limited by bourgeois scope) and those who are simply propagandists. It's an important destiction.

[Joseph Ball]

This business about famines being generally man-made comes from Amartya Sen who accepted the Great Leap Forward famine figures without real analysis. Read Han Dongping (referenced in my article at www.monthlyreview.org) to see how the peasants valued the efforts of the government to provide famine relief in 1959-61.

[Severian]

Originally posted by VenceremosRed+Oct 8 2006, 11:59 PM--> (VenceremosRed @ Oct 8 2006, 11:59 PM)
[email protected] 9 2006, 04:22 AM
Here's what Mao had to say about the Great Leap Forward in 1962:


The situation in our country has not been very good for the past few years, but now it is starting to take a turn for the better. In 1959 and 1960 a number of things were done wrongly, mainly because most people had no experience to enable them to understand the problems. The most serious fault was that our requisitioning was excessive. When we did not have very much grain, we insisted on saying that we had. Blind commands were issued in both industry and agriculture. There were also some other large-scale mistakes. [/b]
Thanks; I was looking earlier, without much luck, for Mao material clearly defining the Great Leap Forward policies beforehand and commenting on 'em afterward.

In part, this is what I've been referring to all along; Mao even seems to be describing the attempt to manage people by fiat.

Anyway, Mao is more critical of himself in this speech than Ball is 40+ years later! In Ball's article, he only refers vaguely to unspecified errors and mistakes. Certainly nothing as fundamental as Mao's comment that "When we did not have very much grain, we insisted on saying that we had. Blind commands were issued in both industry and agriculture."

Lemme suggest "errors" that fundamental are not just accidental slip-ups, especially when they are "insisted" on. They have a class basis, and that class basis is bureaucratic arrogance.


One also has to take into account that there was a growing revisionist tendency among certain members in the Chinese Communist Party who sought to restore capitalism at least since the mid-1950s, and never looked favorably upon the Great Leap Forward. Hence why the Great Leap was officially abandoned

More exactly, Liu and his allies gained in power coming out of the Great Leap, which they'd always opposed. Among other things, Liu replaced Mao as Chairman of the PRC (head of government) in 1960 or thenabouts. So they successfully pushed to reverse those policies. In part, their pressure may even have forced some of Mao's "self-criticisms."

But you're just postponing the question here: why did the opponents of the Great Leap gain in influence, while Mao and others who'd advocated it lost influence?

It's a law of politics that "nothing succeeds like success" and nothing fails like failure. Mao and co lost influence because their policies had led to disaster.


Fidel wrongly sided with Krushchev.

Misleading at best. The Chinese government insisted that everyone choose sides. It effectively cut economic ties with Cuba because Cuba - correctly - refused to cut ties with the USSR. Only then did Fidel denounce Chinese bullying. (http://lanic.utexas.edu/cgi-bin/search/lanic?language=English&verbose=1&listenv=PRE&application=&convert=&converthl=&refinequery=&formintern=&formextern=&multiple=0&descriptor=local%2fcuba%2fcastro-1960s%7c50%7c126864%7c1966%20%20%20SPEECH%20%20%20 %20%20UNIVERSITY%20SPEECH%20BLASTS%20CPR%20BETRAYA L%7cTEXT%7clocalhost:0%7c%2fexport%2fshare%2fwais% 2fdata%2fcuba%2fcastro-1960s%7c0%20126864%20%2fexport%2fshare%2fgopher%2f data%2fla%2fCuba%2fCastro%2f1966%2f19660314)

As for the line of the Cuban communists, they correctly called for unity of the "socialist camp", as they called it. Especially in defense of Vietnam. They blamed both China and the USSR, equally, for failing to act together and give all the aid they could have to Vietnam.

Truth is, from a revolutionary internationalist viewpoint there was little to choose from between Mao and Khruhchev...on Vietnam the USSR may even have been a bit better (especially later, by the time of the Nixon-Mao pact.....)

[Joseph Ball]

Yes, I fully accept that Mao criticised himself for errors in the Great Leap Forward. But how do we get from that to 'Mao killed tens of millions' in the Great Leap Forward? Why doesn't Sevarin really engage with all the great advances that occurred in the Mao era? Yes, there were bureaucrats in Mao's China. Mao struggled against them just like Lenin and Stalin struggled against bureaucracy.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 10 2006, 06:01 PM
Yes, I fully accept that Mao criticised himself for errors in the Great Leap Forward. But how do we get from that to 'Mao killed tens of millions' in the Great Leap Forward?
How do you get from my posts to ''Mao killed tens of millions"? I don't know who you're quoting there, but it ain't me.


Why doesn't Sevarin really engage with all the great advances that occurred in the Mao era?

Because this is a thread on the Great Leap Forward, not on everything that happened during the "Mao era"?

[VenceremosRed]

It effectively cut economic ties with Cuba because Cuba - correctly - refused to cut ties with the USSR. Only then did Fidel denounce Chinese bullying.

As for the line of the Cuban communists, they correctly called for unity of the "socialist camp", as they called it. Especially in defense of Vietnam. They blamed both China and the USSR, equally, for failing to act together and give all the aid they could have to Vietnam.


The PRC didn't insist on people chosing sides, obviously, Vietnam examplified that, they purposefully straddled the fence on the issue of revisionism. Comrade Castro has never understood revisionism, to his error. One of Mao's greatest contributions was the recognition of revisionism, and his historic struggle against it. Fidel was wrong. Che recognized the Soviet Union was a "pig mess" and extolled China for its revolutionary spirit, this obviously caused some divisions between Che and Fidel.

Mao meeting mith Nixon was a mixed bag - on one hand it was a tremendous victory for China, on the other hand - it was a slap in the face to revolutionaries in America like the Black Panters.

Calling for abstract unity among so-called communists is wasteful, and counter productuve. Calls for unity must be made on a correct basis - not just tailing everything that calls itself communist like the WWP.

Joseph Ball seems like an honest communist with honest intentions, however wrong some of his conclusions/allusions are.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2006, 07:09 PM
The PRC didn't insist on people chosing sides, obviously, Vietnam examplified that, they purposefully straddled the fence on the issue of revisionism.
Vietnam was a partial exception - it woulda been too obvious a betrayal to cut off aid to them while they were under attack by the U.S.

Mao's regime proceeded to cut off Vietnam shortly after the fall of Saigon - because of Vietnam's continuing relations with the USSR. Relations headed straight downhill from there and Deng's '79 invasion of Vietnam was a direct continuation of Mao's policy.

Which was an alliance with the U.S., and all the most reactionary forces in the world, against the USSR, Vietnam, and anyone in the world who accepted Soviet aid.

source (pdf): (http://wwics.si.edu/topics/pubs/ACFB2E.pdf)
From an academic paper describing declassified Vietnamese documents:

But the most serious private manifestation of tension between Vietnam and China came in a secret meeting between the leaders of the two parties in September 1975, five months after war's end....
According to Hanoi, the Chinese leaders "openly and officially" showed their dissatisfaction with the conduct of Vietnamese foreign policy, in particular in Vietnamese relations with the Soviet Union. Insofar as Vietnam continued this political line, they warned, it would not find support from China......
Le Duan's report demonstrated alarm about the decline of relations between the two
parties and countries. Despite this concern the Vietnamese leader opposed making any concession on the issue of most concern to China—Vietnam's relations with the Soviet Union.
China had begun to demonstrate its displeasure in tangible material ways. China's
assistance to North Vietnam declined rapidly during the second half of 1975. A number of DRV departments reported to the Soviet embassy that the amount of freight being unloaded off Chinese vessels in the port of Haiphong during that half year was half of what it had been for the same period of the previous year. Furthermore, the Vietnamese claimed, at the beginning of 1976 China recalled several groups of its specialists from Vietnam and delayed work on a number of
projects being built with Chinese aid.56
By early 1976 the Vietnamese leaders were telling the Soviets that they were very anxious about their relations with China. They specifically cited the lack of an agreement for long-term economic aid from China, and the failure of the Chinese to settle outstanding territorial disputes, particularly over the Tonkin Gulf and the Paracel and Spratley Islands.

Mao was still alive and in power during this time and 'til September 1976.

And I might point out that even during the war, Maoists internationally were denouncing Vietnam for accepting "revisionist" aid.


Che recognized the Soviet Union was a "pig mess" and extolled China for its revolutionary spirit, this obviously caused some divisions between Che and Fidel.
An old myth. Che's position on the Sino-Soviet split was the same as Fidel's, which I described earlier. For sources and details, see my post of Dec 29 2004, 11:27 AM
in this thread. (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=42762)


Calling for abstract unity among so-called communists is wasteful, and counter productuve

There's nothing abstract about a proposal for specific united action - for example, cooperation to send the maximum material aid to Vietnam in its fight against U.S. imperialism.

Unfortunately, Mao repeatedly rejected those proposals.

source (http://members.aol.com/asavets/documents/prcviet.htm)

For example, the Hanoi leadership sought a communist international united front to assist their war effort. They wanted Moscow and Beijing to agree on common support actions, particularly on a single integrated logistical system. They failed to achieve this objective primarily because of China's objection.85
....
Mao's rejection of the Soviet proposal of a "united action" to support Vietnam alienated leaders in Hanoi. During Kosygin's visit to Beijing in February 1965, he proposed to Mao and Zhou that Beijing and Moscow end their mutual criticisms and cooperate on the Vietnam issue. But Mao dismissed Kosygin's suggestion, asserting that China's argument with the Soviet Union would continue for another 9,000 years.92

During February and March, 1966, a Japanese Communist Party delegation led by Secretary General Miyamoto Kenji, visited China and the DRV, with the purpose of encouraging "joint action" by China and the Soviet Union to support Vietnam. Miyamoto first discussed the idea with a CCP delegation led by Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Peng Zhen in Beijing. The two sides worked out a communiqué that went part of the way toward the "united action" proposal. But when Miyamoto, accompanied by Deng, came to see Mao in Conghua, Guangdong, the chairman burst into a rage, insisting that the communiqué must stress a united front against both the United States and the Soviet Union. Miyamoto disagreed, so the Beijing communiqué was torn up.93

Pity he didn't have the same reaction to Kissinger's proposals for united action in Angola, for example.

In contrast to the concrete proposals for united action in support of Vietnam, Mao's bogeyman of "revisionism" is the most abstract thing possible. The word meant something specific when it was applied to Edouard Bernstein by revolutionaries in the early 20th century.

But today? It's a meaningless insult that can be applied, and was applied, to any of his adversaries. There's no possible definition of "revisionism" that would include the differing political ideas of everyone who the term's been applied to.

Go ahead, try to come up with one. I've asked before, and never gotten a coherent and meaningful answer. (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=42415&hl=revisionist+revisionism)

Unless it's "anyone who disagrees with me is a revisionist."

[Joseph Ball]

Revisionism just means to revise Marxism in a bad way. This happens in different ways at different times. Khrushchev revised Marx by advocating a peaceful road to socialism. The Deng Xiaoping regime introduced 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' which was basically state capitalism. Denial of the importance of class struggle or the belief it can be conducted mainly or exclusively by parliamentary means or swaping socialist economics (planning, use of mass mobilisation, stressing proletarian consciousness as an incentive to work as oppossed to exclusively relying on material incentives etc.) for capitalist economics are all examples of revisionism.

Is Sevarin saying she/he accepts Mao did not kill tens of millions in the Great Leap Forward? After all, that was the point of the article. The article wasn't really meant to be about convincing everyone to accept my own (Maoist) political line.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 11 2006, 12:36 AM
Revisionism just means to revise Marxism in a bad way.
If you agree with someone, presumably they are revising Marxism in a good way.

In other words, like I said: a revisionist is anyone you disagree with. (Who claims to be Marxist.)

This is not an analysis or a definition of a political tendency. "Revisions" you think are bad do not necessarily have anything else in common.

It is a meaningless insult.

(Unlike the use of "revisionist" in the early 20th century, when it referred to a distinct political tendency represented primarily by Bernstein.)


Is Sevarin saying she/he accepts Mao did not kill tens of millions in the Great Leap Forward?

Probably. As I said in my first post in this thread:

You can argue about the size of the death toll if you want. I don't doubt that many estimates are inflated, and that anticommunist motives are at work.

But no reasonable, well-informed person doubts that the "Great Leap Forward" and forced collectivization were disastrous.


After all, that was the point of the article. The article wasn't really meant to be about convincing everyone to accept my own (Maoist) political line.

Bullshit. You made a number of other claims in the article, and I responded to them.

Go back and look at my first post in this thread. I pointed out what was wrong with your article without making any claims about tens of millions dead.

Unfortunately, you chose not to deal with my points. It's not to late to start doing so, of course.

A hint: quote the points you're responding to (as I've done with yours.) Makes it a little harder to completely distort or ignore your opponents' views.

[Joseph Ball]

Originally posted by Severian+Sep 28 2006, 09:51 PM--> (Severian @ Sep 28 2006, 09:51 PM)


Ball's article
The peasants had already started farming the land co-operatively in the 1950s. During the Great Leap Forward they joined large communes consisting of thousands or tens of thousands of people.

As if that occurred voluntarily or spontaneously.

Or this:

Rural industry established during the Great Leap Forward used labour-intensive rather than capital-intensive methods......
The arguments about production figures belie the fact that the Great Leap Forward was at least as much about changing the way of thinking of the Chinese people as it was about industrial production. The so-called “backyard steel furnaces,” where peasants tried to produce steel in small rural foundries, became infamous for the low quality of the steel they produced. But they were as much about training the peasants in the ways of industrial production as they were about generating steel for China’s industry.

Which reflects an incredibly callous attitude about wasting huge amounts of peasants' labor. Human beings can only work so hard, and Chinese peasants did not have huge amount of efforts to spare on "training" in production methods which produced nothing of value.

Their margin of production over survival was not huge to start with.

You can argue about the size of the death toll if you want. I don't doubt that many estimates are inflated, and that anticommunist motives are at work.

But no reasonable, well-informed person doubts that the "Great Leap Forward" and forced collectivization were disastrous.



Against everyone quoted in Hungry Ghosts, we have....one western Maoist, who paints a rosier picture than Ball is willing to, today. "It is likely, that in fact, famine did occur in some areas. However Greene’s observations indicate that it was not a nation-wide phenomenon on the apocalyptic scale suggested by Jasper Becker and others. Mass hunger was not occurring in the areas he traveled through, although famine may have been occurring elsewhere."


[/b]
OK, I'll quote from Sevarin's post if it will make her/him happy!

[Joseph Ball]

Sorry, part of the reason I haven't been quoting as Sevarin wants is I don't really know how to do it. I'll try again.




'[QUOTE=Ball's article]The peasants had already started farming the land co-operatively in the 1950s. During the Great Leap Forward they joined large communes consisting of thousands or tens of thousands of people.

As if that occurred voluntarily or spontaneously.'

NEW POST: If you read Han Dongping's article, you'll note that there was support among peasants for the communes, although problems did occur.

'Or this:

Rural industry established during the Great Leap Forward used labour-intensive rather than capital-intensive methods......
The arguments about production figures belie the fact that the Great Leap Forward was at least as much about changing the way of thinking of the Chinese people as it was about industrial production. The so-called “backyard steel furnaces,” where peasants tried to produce steel in small rural foundries, became infamous for the low quality of the steel they produced. But they were as much about training the peasants in the ways of industrial production as they were about generating steel for China’s industry.

Which reflects an incredibly callous attitude about wasting huge amounts of peasants' labor. Human beings can only work so hard, and Chinese peasants did not have huge amount of efforts to spare on "training" in production methods which produced nothing of value.'

NEW POST: I have said before that the Great Leap Forward was meant to be about using peasant labour in slack periods, not harvest time or whatever.

'Their margin of production over survival was not huge to start with.'

NEW POST: Agreed, the point of the Great Leap Forward was to increase this margin of survival. Mao's policies, including the creation of communes and industrialisation did achieve this aim. We all agree their were temporary setbacks in 1959-61.

'You can argue about the size of the death toll if you want. I don't doubt that many estimates are inflated, and that anticommunist motives are at work.

But no reasonable, well-informed person doubts that the "Great Leap Forward" and forced collectivization were disastrous.
NEW POST: I point out all that the GLF achieved in my article in terms of improving rural infrastructure and helping industrialisation.


Against everyone quoted in Hungry Ghosts, we have....one western Maoist, who paints a rosier picture than Ball is willing to, today. "It is likely, that in fact, famine did occur in some areas. However Greene’s observations indicate that it was not a nation-wide phenomenon on the apocalyptic scale suggested by Jasper Becker and others. Mass hunger was not occurring in the areas he traveled through, although famine may have been occurring elsewhere." '

NEW POST: I am not the only person who has expressed reservations about Becker's book. Maurice Meisner of the University of Wisconsin writes in 'Mao's China and After' (1999 ed. p.241n) that the book is 'badly flawed' and 'essentially undocumented' though admittedly he also describes it as 'valuable'. Now I don't accept that a book that is 'essentially undocumented' is also 'valuable' but I am willing to hear arguments from Sevarin (and indeed Meisner) that it is a worthwhile study.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph Ball+Oct 12 2006, 12:47 AM--> (Joseph Ball @ Oct 12 2006, 12:47 AM) Sorry, part of the reason I haven't been quoting as Sevarin wants is I don't really know how to do it. [/b]
If you're having technical difficulties, punctuation quote marks or whatever would be fine.


If you read Han Dongping's article, you'll note that there was support among peasants for the communes, although problems did occur.

I note you don't claim that it was majority support. Common sense says if 99% of peasants are in communes a couple months after the word goes out from Beijing, this was not a voluntary process. Rather, that word was effectively an order.

The issue of forced vs voluntary formation is directly related to the drop in production. Openly voicing opposition was dangerous - opponents of the earlier formation of collectives had been subjected to an "anti-rightist campaign". So many peasants resorted to passive resistance.

CCP publications of the time include complaints about peasants killing livestock, cutting down fruit trees, and other kinds of sabotage.

All this was a negative confirmation of the need for gradual, voluntary collectivization of agriculture - which had been pointed out by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Cuba is a positive confirmation. The Marxist classics also pointed out there is no economic advantage to larger units of production unless sufficient technology and means of production are available.

If sufficient tools and machinery are available so that larger units of production are needed - then the advantages of collectivization will be obvious to the peasants.

The damage is not only economic, it is also political - the worker-peasant alliance can be permanently damaged or broken by forced collectivization.

Another issue which hasn't been mentioned was the commune cafeterias, nurseries, etc. No individual food rations were given out; everyone was to eat in the cafeterias.

Replacing the unpaid labor of women, and the family as economic unit, has always been part of the communist program. But like other aspects of the attempt to "leap forward" towards communism, this attempt was wholly unrealistic based on material reality. The quality of the cafeterias and nurseries was unacceptably low, and they were also shut down after a year or so.

The motive, probably, had less to do with liberating women than with putting them in the fields for 12 or 14 hours alongside the men.


I have said before that the Great Leap Forward was meant to be about using peasant labour in slack periods, not harvest time or whatever.

Really? Clearly that's not what happened in practice - and actions speak louder.

Even on paper, there was a clear trend towards intensifying labor. One CCP resolution of late '58 called for reducing the workday to 12 hours. So it was more previously...and even if the reduction really happened in practice, that's 12 hours of backbreaking labor with a hoe, or on a backyard steel furnace.

Definitely not sustainable, and carrying a heavy human cost.


Originally posted by [email protected]
'Their margin of production over survival was not huge to start with.

Joseph Ball
Agreed, the point of the Great Leap Forward was to increase this margin of survival.

Was it? How do you know, besides Mao said so?

It certainly functioned better as a way of increasing product collected by the state from the peasants. That's one obvious motive for bringing the peasants together in larger, more centrally controlled units. Mao admits in the quote earlier in this thread, that grain collections from the peasants were unrealisitically large.

Combined with the increased workday, this is reminiscent of what Marx called "barrack-room communism", (http://www.connexions.org/RedMenace/Documents/RM3-BakuninvsMarx.htm) which proposed to make people produce as much as possible and consume as little as possible. Like primitive capitalist accumulation, it carries a heavy human cost.


Mao's policies, including the creation of communes and industrialisation did achieve this aim. We all agree their were temporary setbacks in 1959-61.

How do you know Mao's policies were responsible for social and economic advances which took place over the decades since 1949? Why not, say, the "revisionists" - you can't deny their policy influence since you blame them for everything that went badly. (It's kinda like Christianity: good fortune is credited to God, and bad blamed on the devil.)

Or could it be....the effect of a deepgoing social revolution made by millions of working people, despite wrong policies promoted by both (several?) factions of a privileged apparatchik regime?

You chose to write an article about the Great Leap Forward and make that the thread topic. And that is a good choice for evaluating "Mao's policies" - it was probably the one time when he had the most control of economic policy.

And the result? You call it "temporary setbacks", I'd call it disastrous. In any case, it decreased agricultural and industrial production. In contrast to other periods, when the PRC made considerable progress.

This does not exactly prove Mao's policies deserve emulation by other countries.


I am not the only person who has expressed reservations about Becker's book. Maurice Meisner of the University of Wisconsin writes in 'Mao's China and After' (1999 ed. p.241n) that the book is 'badly flawed' and 'essentially undocumented' though admittedly he also describes it as 'valuable'. Now I don't accept that a book that is 'essentially undocumented' is also 'valuable' but I am willing to hear arguments from Sevarin (and indeed Meisner) that it is a worthwhile study.

My point was about your double standard in evaluating evidence, and that point stands. Unless the statements a solitary Western Maoist visitor can be considered well-documented.....

[Joseph Ball]

Sevarin'I note you don't claim that it was majority support. Common sense says if 99% of peasants are in communes a couple months after the word goes out from Beijing, this was not a voluntary process. Rather, that word was effectively an order.'

Joseph Ball-There is a dialectic between getting people's consent and using leadership to push things forward. People who study Mao's leadership a little bit more sympathetically than Sevarin will understand that Mao-and by extension the Chinese people-constantly grappled with this question. Mao greatly respected the people and the people returned that respect. He wasn't hated by the people as a tyrant. Again, read Han Dongping on this in relation to the Leap.

Sevarin-'All this was a negative confirmation of the need for gradual, voluntary collectivization of agriculture - which had been pointed out by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Cuba is a positive confirmation. The Marxist classics also pointed out there is no economic advantage to larger units of production unless sufficient technology and means of production are available.'


Joseph Ball-I am sorry but there is no snail's pace, easy way to socialism. It involves class struggle and sacrifice. Mao wanted to limit the sacrifice his people had to make to achieve socialism. That's why he reacted against Stalin's approach (and was perhaps a little unfair towards Stalin in his polemics against Stalin's model of industrialisation).

Sevarin-'If sufficient tools and machinery are available so that larger units of production are needed - then the advantages of collectivization will be obvious to the peasants.'

Joseph Ball- Mao's economic policies were about developing agriculture, light industry and heavy industry simultaneously. My article gives some examples of how this happened.

Sevarin-'The damage is not only economic, it is also political - the worker-peasant alliance can be permanently damaged or broken by forced collectivization.'

Joseph Ball-Yes, but this didn't happen in China. The people still respected Mao, as continuing respect for Mao among the masses illustrates.

Sevarin-'Another issue which hasn't been mentioned was the commune cafeterias, nurseries, etc. No individual food rations were given out; everyone was to eat in the cafeterias.'

Joseph Ball-This is gone into in my article. Communal eating is not some great oppression. The problem was that food was not rationed sufficiently in the communal mess halls and it ran out. So, next time we try to build socialism we don't repeat this mistake in countries where food is in shortage.

Sevarin-'Replacing the unpaid labor of women, and the family as economic unit, has always been part of the communist program. But like other aspects of the attempt to "leap forward" towards communism, this attempt was wholly unrealistic based on material reality. The quality of the cafeterias and nurseries was unacceptably low, and they were also shut down after a year or so.

The motive, probably, had less to do with liberating women than with putting them in the fields for 12 or 14 hours alongside the men.'

Joseph Ball-The Great Leap Forward was about breaking down the division between male and female labour as well as the division between mental and manual labour (hence the emphasis on ordinary peasants learning about industrial production processes-and I'm not just talking about the ill-fated 'backyard steel furnace movement' which ended in 1958 in any case)

Sevarin-'
I have said before that the Great Leap Forward was meant to be about using peasant labour in slack periods, not harvest time or whatever.

Really? Clearly that's not what happened in practice - and actions speak louder.

Even on paper, there was a clear trend towards intensifying labor. One CCP resolution of late '58 called for reducing the workday to 12 hours. So it was more previously...and even if the reduction really happened in practice, that's 12 hours of backbreaking labor with a hoe, or on a backyard steel furnace.

Definitely not sustainable, and carrying a heavy human cost.'

Joseph Ball-Yes, there were excesses, but this does not invalidate the idea of rural people using slack periods to carry out rural industrial development programs. The basic principle is sound its just a matter of lowering the tempo a little bit.


Sevarin-'
Mao's policies, including the creation of communes and industrialisation did achieve this aim. We all agree their were temporary setbacks in 1959-61.

How do you know Mao's policies were responsible for social and economic advances which took place over the decades since 1949? Why not, say, the "revisionists" - you can't deny their policy influence since you blame them for everything that went badly. (It's kinda like Christianity: good fortune is credited to God, and bad blamed on the devil.)

Or could it be....the effect of a deepgoing social revolution made by millions of working people, despite wrong policies promoted by both (several?) factions of a privileged apparatchik regime?'

Joseph Ball-Well which is it? Mao's socialist line led to the improvements in life expectancy etc. Or the capitalist line led to all of this? The government of India after independence pursued a capitalist line while claiming to have socialist elements in its ideology and it fell very, very far behing the achievements of China under Mao's regime. Massive achievements in terms of increasing life expectancy and industrialisation were achieved under Mao. As Maurice Meisner says, it is odd that western commentators give all the credit for this to Deng Xiaoping's 'reforms', when if it hadn't been for Mao there would have been nothing to reform. In fact without these 'reforms' Chinese people could have carried on enjoying the fruits of both development and socialism, rather than the unbalanced state capitalist model they have had to endure since 1976.

Sevarin 'You chose to write an article about the Great Leap Forward and make that the thread topic. And that is a good choice for evaluating "Mao's policies" - it was probably the one time when he had the most control of economic policy.

And the result? You call it "temporary setbacks", I'd call it disastrous. In any case, it decreased agricultural and industrial production. In contrast to other periods, when the PRC made considerable progress.

This does not exactly prove Mao's policies deserve emulation by other countries.'

Joseph Ball-Again I point to the evidence in my article that the policies of rural industrialisation would not have happened without Mao's line. It was this that sustained China's economy, especially after the break with the USSR. Deng just wanted to copy capitalist methods. Peng Dehuai wanted to copy Khruschev's USSR. Neither would have dreamed of following Mao's innovative approach to economic development.

Sevarin'
I am not the only person who has expressed reservations about Becker's book. Maurice Meisner of the University of Wisconsin writes in 'Mao's China and After' (1999 ed. p.241n) that the book is 'badly flawed' and 'essentially undocumented' though admittedly he also describes it as 'valuable'. Now I don't accept that a book that is 'essentially undocumented' is also 'valuable' but I am willing to hear arguments from Sevarin (and indeed Meisner) that it is a worthwhile study.

My point was about your double standard in evaluating evidence, and that point stands. Unless the statements a solitary Western Maoist visitor can be considered well-documented.....'

Joseph Ball-Felix Greene quotes others who came to the same conclusions as himself. There was a food shortage in China around 1959-61 but not the apocalyptic famine which Becker seems to believe happened. My main point was that if Becker's famine had actually happened we would not have had to wait 20 years to find out about it. As Carl Riskin notes, the idea that Mao's China was so repressive it was able to suppress evidence of such a massive famine is rather a 'problematic' concept.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph Ball+Oct 12 2006, 06:08 PM--> (Joseph Ball @ Oct 12 2006, 06:08 PM) Sevarin'I note you don't claim that it was majority support. Common sense says if 99% of peasants are in communes a couple months after the word goes out from Beijing, this was not a voluntary process. Rather, that word was effectively an order.'

Joseph Ball-There is a dialectic between getting people's consent and using leadership to push things forward. People who study Mao's leadership a little bit more sympathetically than Sevarin will understand that she/he-and by extension the Chinese people-constantly grappled with this question. Mao greatly respected the people and the people returned that respect. He wasn't hated by the people as a tyrant. Again, read Han Dongping on this in relation to the Leap. [/b]
How many people loved Mao, and when, is debatable, but in any case an evasion. Losing the argument? Just change the subject. You don't contradict my statement, but you won't explicitly admit it's true either.


Sevarin-'All this was a negative confirmation of the need for gradual, voluntary collectivization of agriculture - which had been pointed out by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Cuba is a positive confirmation. The Marxist classics also pointed out there is no economic advantage to larger units of production unless sufficient technology and means of production are available.'

Joseph Ball-I am sorry but there is no snail's pace, easy way to socialism. It involves class struggle and sacrifice.

A non sequitur, not a response to my post. See, that's the advantage of having the quote right there, it's obvious.

Unless by "class struggle" you mean the bureaucratic edict setting up the communes? That's the opposite of the usual meaning of "class struggle."

See, that's another obstacle to real discussion: we don't speak the same language.

Did Mao's edicts in fact help the "way to socialism"? No, and I'm amazed you claim they did. Most Maoists say that capitalism was restored in China shortly after Mao's death.

If you accept that, obviously his political course wasn't successful in producing socialism. If you don't, as I don't - still his successors have attempted to drive towards capitalism, limited mostly by worker and peasant unrest outside the CCP.

All the "Communist Parties" which carried out forced collectivization have collapsed, or openly turned towards capitalism. Even north Korea has its "free trade" zone, and is certainly few people have any illusion that it has anything to do with the worldwide fight for socialism.

There is one exception to the "collapse of communism" - Cuba. As it happens, that's a government which never carried out forced collectivization. A more general way of saying the same thing: its leadership never adopted the approach of administering, rather than politically leading, working people.

Ruling "Communist" parties collapsed or turned to the market elsewhere, including China, because they weren't communist. Or parties, really; more like clubs people joined to get privileges and advance their careers.


Mao wanted to limit the sacrifice his people had to make to achieve socialism.

Says Mao? Actions and results speak louder. The Chinese people got plenty of sacrifice, but no socialism.


That's why he reacted against Stalin's approach (and was perhaps a little unfair towards Stalin in his polemics against Stalin's model of industrialisation).

Oy. For you, even the Chinese Stalin was too hard on Stalin?


Sevarin-'If sufficient tools and machinery are available so that larger units of production are needed - then the advantages of collectivization will be obvious to the peasants.'

Joseph Ball- Mao's economic policies were about developing agriculture, light industry and heavy industry simultaneously. My article gives some examples of how this happened.

Another evasion. I'm sorry, but you can't plow a field with a plan to build tractors - you need an actual tractor. At the time of the Great Leap, many Chinese peasants were still working with hoes - even draft animals were in short supply.

So it was obvious - large-scale units of production were not going to be more efficient. As it turned out, much less.


Joseph Ball-Yes, but this didn't happen in China. The people still respected Mao, as continuing respect for Mao among the masses illustrates.

Hm...I say the worker-peasant alliance is damaged by forced collectivization, you claim the people still loved Mao. Mao = the working class? More translation problems.

Incidentally, even under monarchies, it's common for peasants to blame all problems on the emperor's greedy advisers, remaining verbally loyal to the emperor. That doesn't mean its true, and even the false consciousness can be an inch deep.


Joseph Ball-The Great Leap Forward was about breaking down the division between male and female labour as well as the division between mental and manual labour (hence the emphasis on ordinary peasants learning about industrial production processes-and I'm not just talking about the ill-fated 'backyard steel furnace movement' which ended in 1958 in any case)

As usual, I point out what actually happened and you just repeat slogans about what was "meant" to happen. An odd approach to history.


Originally posted by severian+--> (severian)
How do you know Mao's policies were responsible for social and economic advances which took place over the decades since 1949? Why not, say, the "revisionists" - you can't deny their policy influence since you blame them for everything that went badly. (It's kinda like Christianity: good fortune is credited to God, and bad blamed on the devil.)

Or could it be....the effect of a deepgoing social revolution made by millions of working people, despite wrong policies promoted by both (several?) factions of a privileged apparatchik regime?'[/b]

Originally posted by Joseph Ball
-Well which is it? Mao's socialist line led to the improvements in life expectancy etc. Or the capitalist line led to all of this? The government of India after independence pursued a capitalist line while claiming to have socialist elements in its ideology and it fell very, very far behing the achievements of China under Mao's regime.
Again, obviously not a response to what I actually wrote. I've sometimes made the same point about India myself - to show the progress due to the Chinese Revolution.

The question was, how do you know Mao's policies, exemplified by the Great Leap Forward, deserve the credit?

BTW, that's an oddly idealist way to describe the existence of capitalist property and a capitalist class in India - the government "pursued a capitalist line." Capitalism is a mode of production, not a line.


Again I point to the evidence in my article that the policies of rural industrialisation would not have happened without Mao's line.

You present no such evidence. Heck, you've even mentioned that the promotion of rural industry continued under Deng.

Again, the GLF - when Mao had the most influence on economic policy - was the worst period for every sector of the economy. You're reduced to arguing about exactly how bad it was.

And as many times as Mao purged Deng and the others - every time he brought them back and gave them high posts again. Why? 'Cause he needed them to manage the economy for him.

Their approach was just as bureaucratic as Mao's, of course. But they were economically competent bureaucrats.

Like Mao, they treated the peasants as beasts of burden. But a competent farmer doesn't work his draft animals to death.


My main point was that if Becker's famine had actually happened we would not have had to wait 20 years to find out about it.

Maybe it took you 20 years to find out about it. I think this is called the "argument from ignorance."

The full scale of the disaster didn't become immediately clear to people until later, and is still debated. That can plausibly be explained by the great effort Mao's regime made to keep outsiders, except for a few of the faithful, from visiting China or seeing and hearing much when they do. (Which was real internationalist, BTW. Again, contrast Cuba.)

But I have stuff written at the time pointing out that Mao's policies were disastrous, resulted in a great food shortage, etc. Some of this is collected in "The Chinese Communist Party in Power" by Peng Shu-tse. Some of it's available on the web...here. From 1960, (http://www.marxists.org/archive/peng/1960/x01.htm)


[email protected]
The general food shortage that began earlier this year, and the current liquidation as I write these lines, of communal kitchens in many communes, have been verified by various sources. The food shortage shows in a negative way that the CCP was unreliable when it announced the doubling of food production last year. Why has the shortage of food become so acute that the food quota of commune members has been reduced to two-thirds, or even one-half and city residents can hardly get enough food? Any other explanation is unlikely except that the bumper figures on the harvest last year were fake.

Dude! Mao claimed food production had doubled, and here you are having to argue about how large the famine was! Why do you still believe anything he said? (Other than the psychological difficulty of admitting you dedicated your life to a lie.)

He may not be one of history's biggest killers, but clearly he's one of history's biggest liars.

By '68, more facts have leaked out, and Peng is speaking more strongly: (http://www.marxists.org/archive/peng/1968/struginccp.htm)


Peng
The Great Leap Forward movement embodying Mao’s recklessness, fantasies and childishness—particularly the tempering of steel on an all-people’s basis and the practice of Satellite Fields—and the policy of the people’s communes have virtually ruined China’s economy......As a result of this reckless economic policy, China suffered a severe famine which lasted for a period of three years. Emphasis added.

Inside China, things were clearer. Mao's faction later accused Liu of saying at a 1962 conferece that problems during the Great Leap were "30% due to natural disasters, 70% due to artificial disasters." source (http://www.marxists.org/archive/peng/1968/ourposition.htm) If he did say that, it necessarily implies Liu's audience knew there'd been disasters, and the only dispute was over the cause.

[VenceremosRed]

Hopefully we can involve more people in this discussion and get more view points then just the three of us.

Severian, where I left on revisionism is very signifcant. I am glad we can find unity on the contributions of the Cuba experience. It was very groundbreaking, but also lacking.

Che said "Most important is the land reform law, which will soon be promulgated. Moreover. we will found a National Land Reform Institute. Our land reform here is not yet very penetrating; it is not as thorough as the one in China. Yet it must be considered the most progressive in Latin America...." A New Old Interview (http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1959/04/18-abs.htm)

I've been told, but never seen the actually source, that Che later noted Cuba had succesfully completed a socialist goal oriented land reform movement.

This is key - as the development of any pre-capitalist country towards a socialist base depends on land reform.

And Che was correct to use China as a standard - afterall it was the largest and most complete land reform movement in recorded history.

What does this have to do with revisionism?

Everything. The methods, aims, and objectives of land reform are pivotal in the development of socialism. And variations, aside from obvious geographical and specific necesities, can indicate which class is leading the land reform movement.

For example, in Vietnam, the land reform movement actually ended up empowering local bourgeoisie, and broke down some of the larger landlord classes, but made debt and acruing of debt more possible. Same in N. Korea.

In China, there was a complete break with the basis landlord relations. So how far land reform went in Cuba is obviously decisive.

If a non-proletarian class is leading the land reform, what does it mean for communists? Everything, since we aren't only interesting in destroying feudal relations, but all explotive social relations. This means we need to go far beyond just encouraging a "free and unfeddered" capitalism, as Bukarin would have suggested - but a New Democratic stage, that bring into play national and small bourgeoisie - but at the same time with an understanding that the train doesn't stop there - that it will continue on past that stage as well.

The Chinese land reform should be the template for communists. It was the most succesful and the most thorough in empowering the exploited classes. Che knew this. Obviously some feudal ideas remained, even with the most revolutionary elements, like the cult of personality around Mao, etc. But the economic basis for feudalism was destroyed. That is why we don't see CCP members of today turning into fuedalists landlords, but capitalists.

Revisionism is a question of political line - not all roads lead to socialism. Some lead to state capitalism, or worse. Mao was right to say line is decisive, because it is.

[Severian]

Lemme start by pointing out that throughout this post, you confuse two different things, tending to result in changing the subject.

One is land reform, the other is collectivization. In this thread so far, we've been talking about collectivization. The Great Leap Backward involved a further step in forced collectivization.

In your post, you mostly talk about land reform. In China, that was completed by 1950 or so (earlier?) Forced collectivization didn't begin 'til '56 or so; the communes in the Great Leap (58-59.) So clearly these are two different things.


Originally posted by VenceremosRed+Oct 15 2006, 01:58 AM--> (VenceremosRed @ Oct 15 2006, 01:58 AM)I've been told, but never seen the actually source, that Che later noted Cuba had succesfully completed a socialist goal oriented land reform movement. [/b]
Cuba implemented a second agrarian reform law in 1963. (http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FE481) It expropriated the rural bourgeoisie - all farms over 67 hectares. That article also gives an adequate summary of the process of voluntary collectivization in Cuba.

If there's a peculiarity of Cuban land reform, it's the move from large-scale capitalist property directly to large-scale state or collective farms. Probably has to do with the place of the sugar industry and the many agricultural wage-workers in pre-revolution Cuba. In past threads, RCPers on this board have nonsensically complained about this. (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=31514) But as I point out in that thread, nationalization is the more socialist path; though it's unfortunately not always possible to make that leap.


This is key - as the development of any pre-capitalist country towards a socialist base depends on land reform.

No. Land reform is a bourgeois-democratic measure. As Lenin pointed out, small peasant property and commodity production inevitably reproduces capitalism.

The development towards socialism depends on the voluntary collectivization of agriculture. Which is only possible on the basis of bringing technology to the countryside - Lenin once put this in shorthand as "Soviet power plus complete electrification equals shorthand."


And Che was correct to use China as a standard - afterall it was the largest and most complete land reform movement in recorded history.

Don't make too much of it - that was an interview with a Chinese publication, of course he makes a comparison to China. You might be right that it was "the most complete", I don't know, but I don't see how it could be much more complete than, say, the Russian revolution's nationalization of the land and equalization of peasant landholdings. So I'm not sure these differences are hugely important.


What does this have to do with revisionism? Everything.

Unfortunately, you still haven't even given a meaningful definition of revisionism. Joseph Ball gave a meaningless one that confirmed my point: Revising Marxism in a "bad" way is revisionism. It's like the medieval Church's use of "heresy."


If a non-proletarian class is leading the land reform, what does it mean for communists?

Damn few workers were in the CCP when it took power. It was a peasant-based party with a middle-class leadership. So obviously a non-proletarian class led that land reform, and everything after. The negative consequences included the Great Leap Forward.


This means we need to go far beyond just encouraging a "free and unfeddered" capitalism, as Bukarin would have suggested - but a New Democratic stage, that bring into play national and small bourgeoisie

Actually, "New Democracy" is a program for a "free and unfettered" capitalism. Free of feudal and imperialist fetters, that is. It was a Menshevik program for a two-stage revolution, with the Kuomintang supposed to lead the first stage. In 1949, the CCP abandoned the "New Democratic" policy and took power. It was forced to do that by Chiang's intransigence, and able to do that due to massive Soviet assistance and exceptional conditions coming out of WWII.

In more normal conditions - for example Indonesia - led to one of the biggest and bloodiest defeats in the history of the working-class movement. The huge Indonesian CP was wiped out due to its Mao-approved policy of alliance with Sukarno and his bourgeois nationalist government - the Indonesian Kuomintang or "dictatorship of all revolutionary classes." This Allende-like policy left the Indonesian workers and peasants unused to relying only on their own strength, and unprepared to resist Suharto's coup.

On New Democracy by Mao (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm)


Mao
If such a republic is to be established in China, it must be new-democratic not only in its politics but also in its economy.

It will own the big banks and the big industrial and commercial enterprises.

Enterprises, such as banks, railways and airlines, whether Chinese-owned or foreign-owned, which are either monopolistic in character or too big for private management, shall be operated and administered by the state, so that private capital cannot dominate the livelihood of the people: this is the main principle of the regulation of capital.
.....
The republic will take certain necessary steps to confiscate the land of the landlords and distribute it to those peasants having little or no land, carry out Dr. Sun Yat-sen's slogan of "land to the tiller", abolish feudal relations in the rural areas, and turn the land over to the private ownership of the peasants. A rich peasant economy will be allowed in the rural areas. Such is the policy of "equalization of landownership". "Land to the tiller" is the correct slogan for this policy. In general, socialist agriculture will not be established at this stage, though various types of co-operative enterprises developed on the basis of "land to the tiller" will contain elements of socialism.

A petty-bourgeois utopia of a capitalism which doesn't act like capitalism. Of course, such a policy couldn't last long in practice.

Spurred by the Korean War in 1950, the CCP abolished capitalism in industry and commerce. By '57 or so, the CCP stopped allowing a "rich peasant economy" - it zigzagged abruptly over to the opposite extreme with a rapid forced collectivization. It out-Bukharins Bukharin.

So in '49 and '50 the CCP actually abandoned the "New Democratic" utopia and followed a different course of action. That people still use the events of '49 and '50 to justify the "New Democratic" nonsense....


The Chinese land reform should be the template for communists.

Taking other countries as "templates" or models is not a good idea. At most, they can be examples of the correct general approach.

When you start making a big deal over relatively minor differences between agrarian reforms, you're well past example into copying models.


But the economic basis for feudalism was destroyed. That is why we don't see CCP members of today turning into fuedalists landlords, but capitalists.

That's true of all countries that had anticapitalist revolutions. They were all very thorough about cleaning up the unfinished business of the era of bourgeois-democratic revolutions.

But you were discussing what leads to socialism, and obviously Mao's "line" didn't.

Maoists claim China became state capitalist as soon as he died. And also that this proves Mao's correctness! Something doesn't compute there.

Louis the 15th said "After me, the deluge." But that's not a communist attitude. In building socialism, you gotta build to last, and rely on the consciousness and initiative of millions who think for themselves - not an infallible Great Leader or the bureaucratic caste he represents.

[VenceremosRed]

Severian: I certainly appluad your correct position on Cuba against the Avakianists. They have consistantly struggled to defend their contradictory and largely hypocritical position on the Cuban revolution. However, that doesn't mean you were entirely in the correct.

Mao made mistakes during his leadership, and in all honesty should have probably retired years before he died. Comrade Fidel, for his errors, seems to have completely failed to understand revisionism altogether. And this will probably come to a head after his (hopefully, far off) death.

[Joseph Ball]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14 2006, 04:18 AM


]





Joseph Ball. The point I was making about Mao and so-called 'forced collectivisation' was that if he had acted in such a tyrranical way, he would not have retained his popularity.

Sevarin-'Did Mao's edicts in fact help the "way to socialism"? No, and I'm amazed you claim they did. Most Maoists say that capitalism was restored in China shortly after Mao's death.

If you accept that, obviously his political course wasn't successful in producing socialism. If you don't, as I don't - still his successors have attempted to drive towards capitalism, limited mostly by worker and peasant unrest outside the CCP.'

Joseph Ball-The road to socialism is very long. Look how many bourgeois revolutions failed. In Britain Cromwell's rule ended in restoration, so did the French Revolution. The 1848 revolution in France led to the Second Empire etc. The study of the bourgeois revolution shows that there will be many attempts before one system is replaced by another, on a global scale. The fact that Mao's period of rule was followed by socialism is no more a sign of his personal failure than the collapse of bourgeois revolutions in the past was purely a result of the failure of the policies of those who led them. Many historical forces were at work in both cases.

Sevarin-'There is one exception to the "collapse of communism" - Cuba. As it happens, that's a government which never carried out forced collectivization. A more general way of saying the same thing: its leadership never adopted the approach of administering, rather than politically leading, working people.

Ruling "Communist" parties collapsed or turned to the market elsewhere, including China, because they weren't communist. Or parties, really; more like clubs people joined to get privileges and advance their careers.'

Joseph Ball-Is Sevarin really saying Cuba, as it stands, is a model for socialism? Look at the tourist 'dollar economy', prostitution, the extensive private ownership in the economy. I have no doubt of the sincerity of the leadership when they talk about socialism but they have not been able to sustain socialism in Cuba, especially since the collapse of the USSR.

Sevarin-'Says Mao? Actions and results speak louder. The Chinese people got plenty of sacrifice, but no socialism.'
Joseph Ball-Claiming that Cuba is/was socialist but Mao's China was not is just idealism. It's saying that because Sevarin likes aspects of Cuban socialism more than Chinese socialism, one model is socialist and one is not. Socialism is a scientific concept, not a matter of subjective preference.

Sevarin-'Another evasion. I'm sorry, but you can't plow a field with a plan to build tractors - you need an actual tractor. At the time of the Great Leap, many Chinese peasants were still working with hoes - even draft animals were in short supply.

So it was obvious - large-scale units of production were not going to be more efficient. As it turned out, much less.'

Joseph Ball-The success of Mao's agrarian policies is demonstrated by the increases in life expectancy and human welfare during his regime. In a mainly rural country surely Mao's agricultural policies must have had a large part in these improvements.

Sevarin-'Again, obviously not a response to what I actually wrote. I've sometimes made the same point about India myself - to show the progress due to the Chinese Revolution.

The question was, how do you know Mao's policies, exemplified by the Great Leap Forward, deserve the credit?'

Joseph Ball-Because Deng and the other revisionists wanted China to follow market forces in its development and the experience of India, sub-saharan Africa and oppressed nations in general shows that you cannot develop just by following market forces. You have to plan economic development and make leaps.

Sevarin quoting Peng'The general food shortage that began earlier this year, and the current liquidation as I write these lines, of communal kitchens in many communes, have been verified by various sources. The food shortage shows in a negative way that the CCP was unreliable when it announced the doubling of food production last year. Why has the shortage of food become so acute that the food quota of commune members has been reduced to two-thirds, or even one-half and city residents can hardly get enough food? Any other explanation is unlikely except that the bumper figures on the harvest last year were fake.'

Joseph Ball-I can't find where Peng's source is for this quote on food rations being cut by half. Given that Peng was clearly a dissident, it's unlikely to be 'inside knowledge'. Maybe Sevarin could indicate where in the text Peng sources this.

Sevarin-'Dude! Mao claimed food production had doubled, and here you are having to argue about how large the famine was! Why do you still believe anything he said? (Other than the psychological difficulty of admitting you dedicated your life to a lie.)

He may not be one of history's biggest killers, but clearly he's one of history's biggest liars.'

Joseph Ball-Before the Great Leap Forward Mao virtually abolished the existing statistical bureau in China, as he was worried that right-wing roaders there would issue misleading statisitics to undermine his policies. This meant that the statistics that did appear were not scientific. I don't think this proves that Mao lied. Those that gathered these statistics made errors of over-optimism, tried to make themselves look good etc. When the government realised what was going on, they revised the harvest figures downwards pretty radically.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 16 2006, 12:52 AM
Joseph Ball. The point I was making about Mao and so-called 'forced collectivisation' was that if he had acted in such a tyrranical way, he would not have retained his popularity.
And as I pointed out, peasants often blame bad policies on the emperor's evil advisors, not the emperor himself.


Is Sevarin really saying Cuba, as it stands, is a model for socialism? Look at the tourist 'dollar economy', prostitution, the extensive private ownership in the economy. I have no doubt of the sincerity of the leadership when they talk about socialism but they have not been able to sustain socialism in Cuba, especially since the collapse of the USSR.

Could it be that....you can't build socialism in one country, and everything depends on the world revolution?

Of course, that brings us to Cuba's revolutionary internationalist foreign policy vs Mao's narrowly nationalist foreign policy, which was taken to its logical conclusion with the Mao-Nixon pact....


It's saying that because Sevarin likes aspects of Cuban socialism more than Chinese socialism, one model is socialist and one is not.

Heh. I was just taking your assumptions to their logical conclusion, so look in the mirror to see who this statement applies to.

It's Maoists who assert that China is capitalist today - that it suddenly became capitalist because the wrong faction of the CCP came to power. Also, of course, Mao who proclaimed that the USSR, Cuba, and other countries were suddenly capitalist.


Because Deng and the other revisionists wanted China to follow market forces in its development and the experience of India, sub-saharan Africa and oppressed nations in general shows that you cannot develop just by following market forces.

Those are countries which never had an anticapitalist revolution. Deng could not and did not instantly turn China into India let alone sub-saharan Africa. Nor did China stop developing economically under Deng, obviously.....

See, you haven't explained how you know any of this, including how you know what the "revisionists" advocated. We know what Mao accused them of advocating - you assume that must be Gospel truth.

BTW, among other things they were accused of saying Mao was fallible. Since you also say he made errors and mistakes....off to the gulag for you, too.


Joseph Ball-I can't find where Peng's source is for this quote on food rations being cut by half.

My point in quoting Peng, of course, was simply to point out that it didn't take 20 years for news of the famine to leak out. Contrary to what you claimed earlier.

I've about run out of patience with this - in every post reiterating what my point actually was.

[Joseph Ball]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2006, 10:11 AM


Sevarin-'I've about run out of patience with this - in every post reiterating what my point actually was.'
Joseph Ball-It's a busy life promoting the most advanced socialist ideology that exists in the world, so I don't always have time to reply to Sevarin's every point in the detail I would wish, which perhaps explains her/his frustration. Unlike Sevarin, I have infinite patience for people that don't agree with me. It would be difficult to live in this world as a communist if I didn't.

Sevarin-'And as I pointed out, peasants often blame bad policies on the emperor's evil advisors, not the emperor himself.'
Joseph Ball-Unlike some of Sevarin's other points this was a bit trivial, so I didn't really bother with it before. The people of China are well-educated and sophisticated, they don't have this kind of supersitious attitude. Read Han Dongping's article on the China Study Group website for an insight into the peasants' thinking about Mao and the prejudiced stereotypes some Chinese revisionists have about their thinking (ascribing their respect for Mao to the kind of supersition Sevarin alludes to).


Sevarin-'Of course, that brings us to Cuba's revolutionary internationalist foreign policy vs Mao's narrowly nationalist foreign policy, which was taken to its logical conclusion with the Mao-Nixon pact....'
Joseph Ball-Maybe China had to make that pact for military reasons. I'm not an expert on military matters so its hard for me to say. When we judge historical figures we should unite with the good they have done and learn from their mistakes.



Sevarin-'My point in quoting Peng, of course, was simply to point out that it didn't take 20 years for news of the famine to leak out. Contrary to what you claimed earlier.'

Joseph Ball-Now I'm having to repeat points. It was well known there had been a serious food shortage in China between 1959-1961. Everyone in China referred to this period as the 'three bitter years' long before figures of 30 million dead came out in the 1980s. In some parts of the country there was real famine and this isn't a matter of controversy. The points I make in my article ('Did Mao Really Kill Millions In The Great Leap Forward? at www.monthlyreview.org, in the 'Commentary' section) are that: there is no evidence it was the greatest famine of all time, as is claimed now; there is no reliable evidence that 30 million died and lack of qualitative (eyewitness) evidence for such a huge famine makes the figure not credible; the peasants do not seem to have mainly blamed Mao's policies for the famine, believing natural disasters were the main cause.

I get the feeling that Sevarin and I agree that the famine death figures are probably very exagerrated. Our real differences are about political approach and whether some ideal version of socialism that avoids the hard choices that have to be made by socialist governments is possible.

I say to Sevarin what I say to all Trotskyists. It does your cause no good to go along with bourgeois slanders against Mao and Stalin. As far as the public are concerned, if Mao and Stalin really did murder tens of millions they are not likely to give marxism another chance. Talk of these regimes being 'state capitalist' or whatever is not going to change the public's mind on this issue. The whole business about 'state capitalism' is too obscure for most people, not to say very hard to swallow even when you have studied it. Sevarin does not go as far as some Trotskyists do in echoing bourgeois critics of Mao (such as the British Socialist Workers Party that endorsed the substance of Jung Chang's ridiculous book about Mao). However, like most Trotskyists Sevarin does go quite a long way down this road.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph [email protected] 16 2006, 03:08 PM
Sevarin-'My point in quoting Peng, of course, was simply to point out that it didn't take 20 years for news of the famine to leak out. Contrary to what you claimed earlier.'

Joseph Ball-Now I'm having to repeat points. It was well known there had been a serious food shortage in China between 1959-1961. ....blah blah blah.
Nope, actually you wrote:
"My main point was that if Becker's famine had actually happened we would not have had to wait 20 years to find out about it. "

Peng was writing about severe food shortage in '60 and famine in '68, so that's not the case.


Talk of these regimes being 'state capitalist' or whatever is not going to change the public's mind on this issue. The whole business about 'state capitalism' is too obscure for most people, not to say very hard to swallow even when you have studied it.

Excuse me, don't Maoists, or most Maoists, assert that China is state capitalist? And Mao himself who asserted that the USSR had suddenly become capitalist because Khrushev was cutting back on the repression and personality cult.

I do defend the progressive accomplishments of the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, or what's left of 'em. More importantly, workers and peasants in China are organizing hundreds of strikes and protests all the time in defense of those gains, against the effects of moves towards capitalism.

Most Maoists don't defend those revolutionary accomplishments - as soon as their God is no longer in charge, they lost all interest in them.

So for you to lecture me about this....

[Joseph Ball]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2006, 04:43 AM







Sevarin quotes ' Sevarin-'My point in quoting Peng, of course, was simply to point out that it didn't take 20 years for news of the famine to leak out. Contrary to what you claimed earlier.'

Joseph Ball-Now I'm having to repeat points. It was well known there had been a serious food shortage in China between 1959-1961. ....blah blah blah. [/QUOTE]
Nope, actually you wrote:
"My main point was that if Becker's famine had actually happened we would not have had to wait 20 years to find out about it. "'

Joseph Ball-I was talking about BECKER'S famine, i.e. the kind of apocalyptic famine he describes in his book with tens of millions dying, mass cannibalism etc. as oppossed to the famine that really happened. My article at www.monthlyreview.org makes this type of distinction clearly. Peng talks of severe famine, I asked what his sources were for his statements. A few others at the time like Joseph Alsop talked about severe famine but they did not show any evidence for it. As Felix Greene pointed out the media were claiming that mass starvation was occuring every year in China, throughout the 50s. This was clearly an exaggerration. It is certainly true that the Becker style famine was only 'discovered' in the early 80s.

Sevarin-'Excuse me, don't Maoists, or most Maoists, assert that China is state capitalist? And Mao himself who asserted that the USSR had suddenly become capitalist because Khrushev was cutting back on the repression and personality cult. '

Joseph Ball-China clearly is state capitalist. There may be a lot of state ownership but a large proportion of these state assets are 'leased' to capitalists. There is absolutely no egalitarianism.
After Khruschev's speech the Soviet communist hierarchy certainly adopted a capitalist mode of thinking. Look at the Kosygin reforms in the 1960s, analysed in Bill Bland's book on the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union or in the works of Alec Nove. There was state ownership but the hierarchy did everything they could to undermine socialist consciousness and practices. This led to progressive economic stagnation as the planners hearts weren't really in it and they were always looking to quasi-market solutions to everything (a bit like Tony Blair's policies towards the public sector in the UK)

[Severian]

Originally posted by Joseph Ball+Oct 16 2006, 03:08 PM--> (Joseph Ball @ Oct 16 2006, 03:08 PM) The whole business about 'state capitalism' is too obscure for most people, not to say very hard to swallow even when you have studied it. [/b]

versus


Joseph [email protected] 17 2006, 12:42 AM
China clearly is state capitalist.


You were right the first time. (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=47266)

[Joseph Ball]

On state capitalism. to clarify-I believe that Tony Cliff's idea of state capitalism (ie the idea that Stalin's USSR of Mao's China were state capitalist) has no basis in reality. Cliff adopted this for political reasons. I believe state capitalism exists where the state leads capitalist develoment, as it is doing in China. In the UK and USA I think the state tends to facilitate capitalism more than lead it. To be honest, this latter is just my own opinion, its not a fully worked out line, so don't read too much into it.

[Sky]

The famine in China resulted from two successive years of natural calamities and declining harvests. As a result, grain output dropped from 200 million tons in 1959 to 170 million tons in 1960 to 144 million tons in 1961. Through the system of rationing grain reserves and large purchases of Canadian and Australian wheat, the Chinese Government helped to alleviate the situation. Famine has been a chronic feature of Chinese history. In the first chapter of his book on the famine, Jasper Becker notes that 1,828 major famines were recorded during the years 100BC-1911 AD, that their severity and frequency appeared to have increased over the centuries, and that an 1876 famine in northern China left 15 milion dead, a higher percentage of the population than in 1959-61. As Becker and others state, it was not the intention of the Chinese Government to kill off a portion of a peasantry.

In late 1959, several natural disasters and bad weather conditions were reported in the press. Floods and drought brought about the "three bitter years" of 1959-62. After 1962, the economy recovered, but the politic was shifting toward a struggle against revisionism, which brought on the Cultural Revolution four years later. In March 1959, the entire Hunan region was under flood, and soon after that the spring harvest in southwestern China was lost through drought. In 1960, the situation deteriorated further. Drought and other bad weather affected 55 percent of the cultivated area.

The facts on China's demographics show that the consequences were not nearly as bad as some western demographers allege.
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan004767.pdf
Population and crude death rate in China:
1958: 659,940,000; 11.98/1000
1959: 672,070,000; 14.59/1000
1960: 662,07,000; 25.43/1000
1961: 658,590,000; 14.24/1000
1962: 672,950,000; 10.22/1000

Overall, these data demonstrate that there were about 12 million deaths above normal between 1959-61. Since the famine was caused by natural disasters and because the Chinese Government worked arduously to alleviate the situation, the Chinese Government cannot be held responsible for the deaths of people from disease resulting from malnutrition.

In 1990 the first UN Human Development Report indicated that about 10 million children under 5 years would die that year for want of basic medical care. Virtually all of them died in countries controlled by capitalists. Since then the figure has been 10-12 million annually, or at least 170 million over the past 17 years. Of course, there is no blame placed on the international monopolies or the capitalist system for this tragic fact.

[RNK]

I do not agree that the Chinese government can not be held atleast partially responsible; even in Mao's own writings of the period he alludes to a failure in the Party cadres, first in realizing the problem as it was occuring and then in dealing with it. While it's erroneous to blame all of the deaths on Mao's "infallible evil", it's nearly as erroneous to not analyse the situation correctly, else those mistakes can not be corrected.