Mao's steel furnaces

[RisingSun]

I've seen sites that do a great job of explaining the positives of The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution but there are two Mao policies that I've never seen adequately defended.

The first is the backyard steel furnaces, which produced useless metal. Most Maoists I've seen defend them in a similar manner to this:

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. It's worth remembering that the 'leaps' Mao used to talk about the most were not leaps in the quantities of goods being produced but leaps in people's consciousness and understanding.

I see the logic there but overall it still seems like a negative to me. Is there anybody who can spin it into a positive?

Same question with the "Four Pests Campaign" which also seems to have been a mistake.

[PigmerikanMao]

This is a good question to ask, as it can be divisive among the contemporary Maoist movement, let alone the communist movement as a whole. First I'd like to throw out some quotes from Mao himself from the Red Book about correcting mistakes and educating one's self constantly:

To be aware of one's own mistakes and yet make no attempt to correct them, taking a liberal attitude towards oneself. This is an eleventh type [of liberalism].

We can learn what we did not know. We are not only good at destroying the old world, we are also good at building the new.

While there are a plethora of explanations that can be used to justify various events and trends in programs such at the Great Leap Forward or the GPCR, there are some experiments that flatly just didn't work. While there had been faults in implementing an industrial structure in the countryside, it is good to learn from these mistakes so that they are not repeated, otherwise they were meaningless.

That being said- in regards to the backyard furnaces, it is my understanding that different methods employed by different People's Communes yielded different results in quality of steel, and that over some time, better methods began to be implemented in the backyard furnace system. Some have claimed that while initially floundering, this program laid the foundation for industrial production in the Chinese countryside that was to emerge in the late 1970's and 80's. Whether or not this is true is debatable.

Mobo Gao talks about these programs in a book called The Battle For China's Past, but only briefly, as it mostly centers around the GPCR.

To start with, backyard furnaces were not Mao's invention. Nor did they come about because of Mao's order. In fact, as even Li [critic of Mao] has to admit, Mao was very skeptical and kept on asking: if backyard furnaces [are] so good, why do foreign countries have big iron and steel plants instead?

Mao did not actually think the backyard furnaces were a good idea, nor the pest control campaigns, but he agreed to them because of constant unwavering support from scientific advisers and engineers that they would benefit the country. This proved to be a false shortcoming of modern science at the time, not so much Mao or the party. Contemporary Maoists should look to history and recognize shortcomings to improve their ideology, not inhabit the roles of apologists for failed programs.

[PigmerikanMao]

Here are some videos about the Great Leap Forward and the Backyard furnaces are mentioned to some degree. The pests campaign isn't focused on so much, but to my understanding, the backlash to this campaign weren't as significant as other shortcomings. It's slightly critical of Mao, but I believe the video is apt in criticizing party bureaucracy and the causes of the famine. Despite political views, the documentary is very well done and raises some good points.

Chinese Economic Planning: Part 1/2

Chinese Economic Planning: Part 2/2