What is Maoism ?

[ComradeMan]

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You obviously read it though... to post the "I'm ignoring you" message.

Anyway, Azaran.

Here's an article by William Shawcross
http://www.crimesofwar.org/a-z-guide...gious-grounds/

[milk]

This message is hidden because ComradeMan is on your ignore list.

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[Zostrianos]

It reminds me (although for the record I am not saying it is the same) of how Holocaust Deniers try to use the whole Nazi soap controversy as a means of "watering down" the Holocaust. They'll even get so pathetic as to quibble about how much soap was made from human victims and so on.

The latest one I heard of is Neonazis trying to prove that there were Jewish SS agents and German troops, and therefore the Nazis couldn't have possibly targeted Jews....

[milk]

I'm still waiting Azaran.

[Zostrianos]

I'm still waiting Azaran.

Well well, let's see. What I've seen so far from you are subtle attempts to divert attention from KR crimes, and to try and find alternate explanations for the disasters that were visited on Cambodia during that time, as well as to try and show that whatever happened, the KR had good intentions:

There were hardly any hospitals in Cambodia prior to the revolution for the Khmer Rouge to 'wreck.' New ones were built. It depends on where you were situated in the country at the time, in matters of availability and access to such resources.

The fact is that not all victims in DK were murdered.....
And, most doctors (there were few in the country anyway) had left the country before the war was over.

There was a rational basis to the changes they disastrously brought about.

[milk]

None of what is written there is pro-Khmer Rouge. Explain why, if you disagree.

[milk]

You have made one big and insulting assumption, Azaran, and need to back it up.

That aside from your laughable attempt to 'educate' me, by pointing to a poorly referenced and contradictory Wikipedia article, as well as ignoring information from the Yale Cambodian Genocide Program website I used (a site you pointed out that I should visit) because it contradicted your very own argument ...

[Zostrianos]

Arguments that attempt to deflect attention from established facts usually serve an apologetic purpose, and are, more often than not, a subtle way of defending and supporting a particular cause. Everything I've seen from you so far appears to confirm my suspicions.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Every debate between Comrademan and Milk:

ComradeMan: The Khmer Rouge were evil tyrants who brutally murdered millions of Cambodians.

Milk: Yes, but we need to understand what caused the Khmer Rouge to act that way.

ComradeMan: POL POT APOLOGIST!!!!!!!!

[ComradeMan]

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Not quite... although I did laugh....

Milk never actually does say what the causes really were though.... we just get walls of pseudo-intellectual referenced "waffle" that don't actually answer the questions.... On other points the issues are dodged or based on the opinion of "one" scholar here and there given in non-committal answers... such as the issue of whether the KR can be accused of being "primitivist" or "nationalist" or "racist" etc...

[milk]

Arguments that attempt to deflect attention from established facts usually serve an apologetic purpose, and are, more often than not, a subtle way of defending and supporting a particular cause. Everything I've seen from you so far appears to confirm my suspicions.

I've been merely repeating established facts.

The CPK embarked on primitive capital accumulation and carried out intensive agricultural development for an investment surplus, to kick-start industrialisation. That was their rational basis. I don't agree with it, but there it is.

Cambodia's healthcare system was almost non-existent to most ordinary people in the country pre-war. It is established fact that most doctors (a fair few being foreign) had fled the country before the war was over in 1975. The CPK attempted to find shortcuts through which to implement rudimentary healthcare, that had largely unsatisfactory results. A few well-equipped hospitals were also built in rural areas. I don't think such resources were utilised well, and there was also a huge amount of neglect, something I don't defend, but there it is.

Many people in DK died from physical exhaustion, disease, injury, starvation and conditions related to that, as well as murder/execution. Murder is a specific thing, and this is established fact. I don't agree with what they did, but there it is.

[Zostrianos]

I'm glad to hear that, although from the get go (assuming for the sake of argument that they really wanted to create a better society), they should have known that deporting people to the countryside, and turning back the clock on technology, would have adverse effects on society.

[ComradeMan]

Cambodia's healthcare system almost non-existent to most ordinary people in the country pre-war. It is established fact that most doctors (a fair few being foreign) had fled the country before the war was over in 1975.

Source...? I've read differing opinions, the situation was not good but the KR certainly made it worse.

Established fact?

http://www.hollows.org/Cambodia/Facts/#2

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs...NY_juillet.pdf

http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/51/7/935.pdf

Many people in DK died from physical exhaustion, disease, injury, starvation and conditions related to that, as well as murder/execution. Murder is a specific thing, and this is established fact. I don't agree with what they did, but there it is.

• Physical exhaustion
• Disease
• Injury
• Starvation

....caused/exacerbated by what?

As has been pointed out before, many victims of the Nazi camps died of the above- but people still talk of murder/genocide etc.

[ComradeMan]

I'm glad to hear that, although from the get go (assuming for the sake of argument that they really wanted to create a better society), they should have known that deporting people to the countryside, and turning back the clock on technology, would have adverse effects on society.

The most bizarre and ridiculous thing seems to be that when they initially marched into Pnomh Penh in 1975 they were welcomed by the people, the people who within hours would be marched into the countryside to their fate. They had initial popular support and what ensued was just criminally insane and completely unnecessary.

[Zostrianos]

That's right. The other day I watched a documentary on Pol Pot's life, and when the KR marched into the Capital they were greeted as liberators with flowers and praise. A couple of hours later, they had pulled out their guns and were holding the population at the end of a barrel, forcing them into the countryside.

[Zostrianos]

See here:

+ YouTube Video

Skip to around 6:30

[ComradeMan]

That's right. The other day I watched a documentary on Pol Pot's life, and when the KR marched into the Capital they were greeted as liberators with flowers and praise. A couple of hours later, they had pulled out their guns and were holding the population at the end of a barrel, forcing them into the countryside.

They also had political momentum behind them due to the US bombing and the general sorry state that Cambodia was in. There was no need for their "revolutionary war"- they had already got there. Perhaps they needed it for some psychological reason because it would have all been a rather revolutionary anti-climax otherwise? It's difficult to really rationalise the completely irrational though....

[milk]

I'm glad to hear that, although from the get go (assuming for the sake of argument that they really wanted to create a better society), they should have known that deporting people to the countryside, and turning back the clock on technology, would have adverse effects on society.

The ironic thing is, is that they did seek to create a better society. A modern, industrialised one as quickly as possible. Their path to industrialisation was rational, but executed badly. The country was largely a rural, agricultural society and so they sought to set in motion a closely interlocking process, whereby human labour power would be directed towards increasing agricultural production, the surpluses used for export and the revenues for productive investment, ploughed back into the economy. Agriculture would improve, become more modernised, and as modernisation became more established through new infrastructure and technological changes, light industry would grow related to agriculture, providing more products for export. More capital would flow in, unrealistically allowing heavy industry to develop and so on. It all went horribly wrong. They never got past first base, the first stage of this process (most people engaged in building the infrastructure needed to increase agricultural production). I don't support it, nor the methods used. Essentially poorly organised, they used force and terror to go about doing this.

[milk]

See here:

+ YouTube Video

Skip to around 6:30

Some of the people shown in that clip weren't actually Khmer Rouge, but belonged to a group called the Monatio. Also, here.

[ComradeMan]

The ironic thing is, is that they did seek to create a better society.

Has any movement in history every sought to create a worse society? Have they ever explicitly stated that "we're here to fuck things up even more"? Just about every political group or movement, left, right, third position or whatever else claims to seek to create a "better society".

However "you shall know them by their fruits"....

A modern, industrialised one as quickly as possible. Their path to industrialisation was rational, but executed badly.

It wasn't rational- there was no rationale to it whatsoever unless irrationality can now pass for rationale.

Let's create a modern industrial society by destroying the material elements needed to progress naturally through the stages that will, according to Marx, lead to communism. Cool story bro'..... We'll forget about things like the dictatorship of the proletariat, class consciousness, the working class development, the phases through capitalism (which they already had in a sense) and so on.... but afterall they really believed that they had excelled Lenin and outstripped Mao.