Mao - Your opinions

[Wenty]

I've read little on Mao but know a bit about him from gcse history etc. What do you lot think about him? Good revolutionary. Stupid for making the chinese go home and shoot birds?

[canikickit]

He was a fucking asshole.
The attempt to eliminate sparrows caused a famine and the deaths of many, many people.
His "drive for steel" or whatever the piece of shit called it failed miserably, the steel was too weak and, in general, totally useless, due to the fact that the people didn't know what they were doing. They used doorknobs and all sorts of household items which weren't pure enough to do their job.

You should read "Wild Swans", it was written by a Chinese girl and tells the story of three generations of China.

[Cassius Clay]

Okay let's look at the positives and negatives he did.

Positives.

He Liberated China from feudalalism and from Imperialist agression.

He was a genius in geurrilla warfare.

He created a society that for all it's faults improved healthcare so much that from 600,000 million people in 1949 it had 1 Billion by the 1970's.

He pacificly liberated the peasants of China and it is worth remembering that strikes were infact legal under him yet in 1983 they were declared illegal by Deng and co.

His Ideology as of 2002 has inspired more people to take up arms against Capatalism then any other ideology as of today.

Negatives.

His policy's of the Great Leap Forward caused needles loss of life and enourmous suffering.

His 'Cultural Revolution' while I support fighting against beurcracy also had it's fair share of innocent victims.

He allied with U$ Imperialism (most favoured nation began in 1973) to oppose the Soviet Union.

His theory of 'Three Worlds' was infact based on rascism and a wish to make China a 'Superpower'.

There are plenty of other mistakes I could point out but this will do for now.

[Mazdak]

He also tried to encourage limiting number of children born (one child per couple) and China is now an atheist state. I have few problems with his theories, i have a problem with the fact that they for the most part failed in China.

[Sovietsky Souyuz]

not to piss on anyones' bonfire, but Mao was a great man appart from on little tiny problem that people tend to ignore :

He (chairman mao) had a penchant for de-flowering 12 year old girls.

Nuff sed really.

[Marxman]

He was a fucking Stalinist and a murderer. The rest can be read from Marxist books.

[Ian]

Mazdak, I digress, the one child policy became legislation in 1973 (under Chairman Mao) but I know for a fact that his opinion of the population was, to quote him exactly, "More people, More Help".

[Wenty]

yeah but if you've got a ridiculously high population you should do something about it and it has worked.