Video: Myths about Communism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8ZzVgOwM9w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9DY6n69JwA

I generally agreed with the first video (Haven't seen second). But it has two problems.

a) WTF is with that apologism for Pol Pot? Pol Pot wasn't even a communist, he was a utopian fuedalistic douchebag who self-admittedly didn't understand Marxism. He was overthrown by the Vietnamese Communists for crying out loud!
b) While you are right about population figures, Western capitalist historians generally only accept the 1937 census results as accurate. What is your opinion on this?

I generally agreed with the first video (Haven't seen second). But it has two problems.

a) WTF is with that apologism for Pol Pot? Pol Pot wasn't even a communist, he was a utopian fuedalistic douchebag who self-admittedly didn't understand Marxism. He was overthrown by the Vietnamese Communists for crying out loud!
b) While you are right about population figures, Western capitalist historians generally only accept the 1937 census results as accurate. What is your opinion on this?

Yeah, I liked everything in the first video except the Pol Pot part. I was almost not going to post it because of that but decided otherwise.

You know, it's extremely hard for me to trust anything Western capitalist throw forth at us. This just sounds like propaganda, I mean, sending people who worked for the census to gulags for not getting expected results. You can always tell when something is fabricated because it is so blatant. They go at any extreme. Most writers of history, especially when it comes to communism, are unreliable in our society. Just like this:

"So who is this responsible for this blatantly impossible assertion about Stalin? It was the son of a Trotskyist. Antonov-Ovseyenko was a Trotskyist who tried to use his military position to aid Trotsky take over the party in the USSR.

The bourgeois scholars in the West all clamored to support Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko's book. The endorsements on his book jacket read like a who's who of anti-Soviet propaganda. The book received an introduction and praise by Stephen F. Cohen, Princeton professor and darling of the social-democrats and revisionists for his sympathetic biography of N. Bukharin and political opposition to the Cold War. The other endorsers include democratic socialist Irving Howe, cold warrior and bourgeois scholar Robert Conquest, Robert G. Kaiser, Leonard Schapiro, Harrison Salisbury and of course the New Republic, which called it "the most important book to have come out of the Soviet experience since Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago." From this we can see how much credibility the mainstream discussion of Stalin deserves--none."

Those who write history are always the intellectual elites and wealthy, not the average peasants and workers who greatly benefited.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymmio9SwmKU

It's outright wrong about Pol Pot not being a Maoist. Pol Pot subscribed to the Three Worlds Theory and, like Mao, clearly placed the peasants as head of the revolution and society. If you read Ieng Sary's diary it clearly defends such views. It also goes into a bit more detail concerning why they went all primitivist. Basically they believed in restarting society under Communism since the current society was too corrupt in their eyes, then industrializing and such later on very carefully. Of course Communism is based on workers and not peasants, but we're talking about Pol Pot here.

http://www.geocities.com/groupstpp/ing.txt (Go to Materials and then Diary from Kampuchea)

Technique: Concerning the working environment, we must have strict organization; grasp tightly in both hands the particular situation of each country, each region. Keenly observing the situation can reflect the good points or bad points of Democratic Kampuchea. Along with this, (we) must observe the evolution of the first, second, and third worlds in order to make it easy to adopt necessary measures. This sector must have close relations with the general leadership of the Ministry.

(....)

I. The world is divided into three [blocs]: The first bloc is the American Imperialists; the West German, Japanese, French, English Imperialists and the capitalist countries including European countries, Canada. In all these countries, they use money as the main tool and they always have disputes with one another.
The second bloc is all the revisionists: the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe. In 1960, this group went revisionist by saying they were ceasing to make revolution.
The third bloc, the developing world, comprises the largest population but the people are poor and this group is less independent.

(....)

Besides, we educate them to be aware of the situation in the country and to adhere to the correct standpoint and also to make them aware of the world situation as well, especially the fact that the world now is divided up into three separate blocs 1) first world, 2) second world, and 3) third world; and that the revolutionary movements throughout the world are now in a rapid increase. Our goal is to properly carry out foreign affairs policy.

It's outright wrong about Pol Pot not being a Maoist. Pol Pot subscribed to the Three Worlds Theory and, like Mao, clearly placed the peasants as head of the revolution and society. If you read Ieng Sary's diary it clearly defends such views. It also goes into a bit more detail concerning why they went all primitivist. Basically they believed in restarting society under Communism since the current society was too corrupt in their eyes, then industrializing and such later on very carefully. Of course Communism is based on workers and not peasants, but we're talking about Pol Pot here.

http://www.geocities.com/groupstpp/ing.txt (Go to Materials and then Diary from Kampuchea)

While it is necessary to sort out truth from imperialist fiction, it is not possible to defend Pol Pot completely for the simple fact that he is an opportunist and not a Maoist.

That is not to say there was no relationship between the Khmer Rouge and China. At various times, the Maoist press praised the efforts of the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Korean peoples to struggle for self-determination and rebuild their countries, but never called their communist parties Maoist. China also gave aid to these countries and others like Tanzania in Africa which did not even claim to be communist.

Pol Pot himself never declared himself a Maoist until after Mao died. Even then, Pol Pot, acting as prime minister, denounced Mao's still living successors, the Gang of Four on October 22, 1976.

After more than 20 years of organizing and insisting that he did not follow any particular revolutionary leader abroad, Pol Pot declared himself a Maoist to China's new leader, Hua Guofeng (who also claimed to be Mao's successor) in October, 1977, one month after Vietnam had sent troops 10 miles deep into Kampuchea across a 650-mile border.

Even then Pol Pot's comrades in Kampuchea stressed to each other and the people that the Khmer Rouge is independent and follows no one. In any case, by October, 1977, Mao was not only dead but Hua had arrested Mao's supporters, the Gang of Four, which includes Mao's wife Jiang Qing.
Hua also rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping and in a reversal of fortune, works under Deng Xiaoping today. One of the last things Mao did before he died was to purge Deng Xiaoping from government posts and high party responsibilities.

In other words, Pol Pot was calling himself Maoist, but he was accepting the arrest of the Gang of Four. Hence, there was never a time when Pol Pot was a real Maoist by MIM standards.

In 1977, Pol Pot was criticizing Deng Xiaoping as a counterrevolutionary. Yet, by 1979, and after Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea, Pol Pot was praising Deng Xiaoping. The stuff about being Maoist went out the window because Deng Xiaoping had become China's top leader by replacing Hua Guofeng.

Pol Pot only called himself a Maoist to obtain military aid and sanctuary from China. He changed his line to flatter whoever was in power in Beijing and never supported the Gang of Four.

To say that Pol Pot is a Maoist is also a lie. One shred of truth possible in the critics' charges is that some theories of Pol Pot's resembled Mao's. But that would be true of many Third World revolutionaries' theories.

While it is an interesting question to what extent the Khmer Rouge picked and chose some policies that were Maoist or more extreme versions of Maoism and while it is interesting to evaluate the success or failure of these policies, it is simply inappropriate for a journalist to refer to the Khmer Rouge as Maoist. An appreciation of the issues requires much more study than possible in a Time or New Republic article

http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/faq/polpot2.html

The Three Worlds Theory is pretty damn unique. This is apparently an interview between Mao and Kaunda:

Chairman Mao Zedong (hereinafter referred to as Mao): We hope the Third World will unite. The Third World has a large population!
President Kenneth David Kaunda (hereinafter referred to as Kaunda): That’s right.
Mao: Who belongs to the First World?
Kaunda: I think it ought to be world of exploiters and imperialists.
Mao: And the Second World?
Kaunda: Those who have become revisionists.
Mao: I hold that the U.S. and the Soviet Union belong to the First World. The middle elements, such as Japan, Europe, Australia and Canada, belong to the Second World. We are the Third World.
Kaunda: I agree with your analysis, Mr. Chairman.
Mao: The U.S. and the Soviet Union have a lot of atomic bombs, and they are richer. Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada, of the Second World, do not possess so many atomic bombs and are not so rich as the First World, but richer than the Third World. What do you think of this explanation?
Kaunda: Mr. Chairman, you analysis is very pertinent and correct.
Mao: We can discuss it.
Kaunda: I think we can reach agreement without discussion, because I believe this analysis is already very pertinent.
Mao: The Third World is very populous.
Kaunda: Precisely so.
Mao: All Asian countries, except Japan, belong to the Third World. All of Africa and also Latin America belong to the Third World.
(From the verbatim record)
Mao Zedong on Diplomacy, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1998, page 454.

Sure, Pol Pot wasn't a true Maoist, but he was inspired.