By Timothy D. Naegele[1][2]

Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung were the most ruthless killers of their own people in the 20th Century, and perhaps in the entire history of mankind.  They were responsible for the world’s deadliest holocausts—or the mass destruction of human beings—yet their victims have never been identified or honored.  It is time for the silent voices of those who died to be heard, and for these human tragedies of epic proportions to be recognized fully.

The famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal once spoke about the duty owed by survivors of the Nazi Holocaust to Jews and non-Jews alike to insure that other holocausts did not occur again, and of course he was correct.  Memorials have been erected to those who died at the hands of Adolf Hitler’s thugs.  However, those noncombatants who were killed by Japan prior to and during World War II, and by the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot in Cambodia, and in Africa and elsewhere are forgotten.

Saddam Hussein’s brutality with respect to the Kurds and Iranians, and those Kuwaitis whose fate has only been determined recently in shallow Iraqi graves, pales beside that of Stalin who was Hussein’s hero.  Aside from ordering the killing of those in the Soviet hierarchy, it is estimated that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of more than 30 million men, women and children—his own countrymen—including millions during the collectivization of the Soviet farms in the 1930s.

History has focused on Hitler’s rise to power during that period, and his atrocities in the Nazi death camps and on the battlefields of World War II.  Memorials have been erected to the fallen of many nations that brought an end to his cherished dream of a “Thousand Year Reich,” and to the Jews who were persecuted and systematically killed by the Nazis.  However, there are no memorials or tributes to those who perished under Stalin.

He was revered in the former Soviet Union for having defeated Hitler on his Eastern Front, and for the Red Army’s capture of Berlin—even though as the Soviets moved through Germany, they raped at least two million German women in what is now acknowledged as the largest case of mass rape in history.  As the truth about him became known following his death, a program of “de-Stalinization” was implemented.  However, never in the Soviet Union’s history were steps taken to honor fully those whose only crime was working on the land.  They were peasant farmers, most of them, but they stood in the way of “progress,” Soviet-style.  To increase agricultural production and to implement the multi-year plans that were being devised for their confiscated farms, which became state-owned lands, they were expendable—and liquidated.

For such a colossal crime to go “unnoticed” outside of the Soviet Union can only be explained by the gathering storm clouds of World War II, and the march of Germany and Japan, which focused the world’s attention elsewhere.  China and other parts of Asia came under attack and were later occupied by Japan, while Hitler marched into Poland and then conquered Europe.  Straddling the Atlantic and Pacific with Hitler in the East and Japan in the West, and still dealing with the Great Depression’s aftermath, the United States was preoccupied prior to World War II.  Also, there was a strong sense of isolationism—that America was an island, bounded by the Atlantic and Pacific—which militated against our involvement in the Soviet Union’s “internal affairs.”

China’s Mao Tse-tung was directly responsible for an estimated 30-40 million deaths between 1958 and 1960, as a result of what Mao’s regime hailed as the “Great Leap Forward.”  Like Stalin, Mao’s crimes involved Chinese peasants, many of whom died of hunger from man-made famines under collectivist orders that stripped them of all private possessions.  The Communist Party forbade them even to cook food at home; private fires were outlawed; and their harvests were taken by the state.  Those who dared to question Mao’s agricultural policies—which sought to maximize food output by dispossessing the nation’s most productive farmers—were tortured, sent to labor camps, or executed.

More than 60 million human beings are forgotten, seemingly having disappeared without a trace in the Soviet and Chinese Holocausts of the 20th Century, as if they never existed or were swallowed up by history.  Yet they did exist, and they might have produced descendants numbering in the hundreds of millions today.  One can only conjecture as to the contributions they would have made to mankind, which are forever lost like the contributions of those Jews, Gypsies and others who were killed in the Nazi Holocaust, and by Japan, and by Pol Pot, and in Africa.

Approximately 70 years have passed since this human tragedy of epic proportions occurred in the Soviet Union.  Approximately 25 years have passed since the comparable tragedy occurred in China.  It is time for the world to pay tribute to more than 60 million people who perished under Stalin and Mao.  While the precise numbers of the victims may never been known, each of us has a duty to honor their memories and take steps to insure that holocausts do not occur anywhere again.  China, Russia and the other former Soviet-bloc countries whose citizens numbered among the silent voices must take the lead, and other nations must join as well.

It is possible that relatives and people who knew those who died are still alive today, and can bear witness to what happened and give new meaning to their lives.  However, the likelihood of that being true diminishes with each passing day, and it is a race against the clock before they too are gone—certainly in the case of those who might remember victims of the Soviet Holocaust.  It is time for the silent voices to be heard again, so they are not forgotten, which would compound their catastrophic fate.

© 2010, Timothy D. Naegele

[2] This article was published first at MensNewsDaily.com on August 9, 2005.  See http://www.naegele.com/documents/StalinMaoHolocausts.pdf

Because more than four years have passed, the number of relatives and other people who knew those who perished, and can bear witness to what happened and give new meaning to their lives, has continued to diminish.  It is even more of a race against the clock before they are gone too, which would compound the catastrophic fate of those who were victims of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust and Mao’s Chinese Holocaust.

Russia’s dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin is every bit as sinister and evil as Stalin, and it is unlikely that he will be of any help in such an effort.

True, under Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976), China suffered but that isn’t the whole story. During Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, thirty-seven million died—many from starvation. Mao’s form of communist socialism did not work. 

On June 30, 1984, Deng Xiaoping said, “Given that China is still backward, what road can we take to develop the productive forces and raise the people’s standard of living? … Capitalism can only enrich less than 10 per cent of the Chinese population; it can never enrich the remaining more than 90 per cent. But if we adhere to socialism and apply the principle of distribution to each according to his work, there will not be excessive disparities in wealth. Consequently, no polarization will occur as our productive forces become developed over the next 20 to 30 years.” 

Deng Xiaoping on the cover of Time Magazine

Deng Xiaoping may have been right. Bruce Einhom writing for Business Week, Countries with the Biggest Gaps Between Rich and Poor, October 16, 2009, listed the top countries with the biggest gaps. America was number three on the list. China wasn’t on the list—yet. 

What does this mean for America? (CBS/AP)  The Census Bureau reports that 12.5 percent of Americans, or 37.3 million people, were living in poverty in 2007, up from 36.5 million in 2006. 

After 2000, the situation in America deteriorated quickly (with President George W. Bush in the White House)—all of the gains in middle-class economic security since WWII were erased within a few years.  

PBS reported in “Middle Class Squeeze” (December 13, 2002), the shape of income distribution in America is changing and many are finding it increasingly difficult to afford housing while keeping up with necessities such as food, clothing, transportation, and health care.” 

What does capitalism, Chinese style, look like? Under Deng Xiaoping’s economic policies, China became the world’s factory floor.

Prior to 1979, the year China opened its economy to world trade, it was rare to find anything made in China. Since then, exports from China have increased 10,000%, and this year China’s economy become the second largest in the world as Japan slipped to third place.  

In the last decade, something happened in China that Mao thought he had destroyed. China grew a middle class. During a trip to China in 2008, we saw the Chinese middle class everywhere we went. Instead of the majority of tourists being foreigners, they are now Chinese.

A middle-class family in China usually owns an apartment, a car, eats out and takes vacations. National Geographic in the May 2008 magazine, said, “they owe their well-being to the government’s (Deng Xiaoping’s) economic policies…” 

Current estimates show China’s growth will continue and grow between five and eight percent a year. China’s real GDP growth accelerated on a year-over year basis by a full percentage point, rising from 7.9% in the second quarter to 8.9% in the third quarter (reported Oct. 22, 2009)

Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning  My Splendid Concubine.

(or, what in the world nanorobots have to do with 10,000 BC)

Sentient computers and chimerical cyborgs sound far-fetched, but if inventor Ray Kurzweil is right, the future’s going to be even weirder—and isn’t as far away as we imagine.

Kurzweil is an accomplished inventor, entrepreneur, and author, praised by Forbes magazine as “the ultimate thinking machine.”  A high compliment, really, considering what Kurzweil sees thinking machines becoming after the “Technological Singularity” he predicts.

The Singularity, according to Kurzweil in his book The Singularity is Near, is a transition stage in human history—it’s the point where we “transcend the limitations of our bodies and brains.”  More than that:

We will gain power over our fates.  Our mortality will be in our own hands.  We will be able to live as long as we want (a subtly different statement from saying we will live forever).  We will fully understand human thinking and will vastly extend it’s reach.  By the end of this century, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence.

(And this circa 2005.)

It’s practically a truism today that your new laptop’s practically outdated the day you buy it (hey, maybe we’ll all have iPads tomorrow); but however lightly we make those comments, the real truth is that the rate of change, the acceleration of technological advancements, is kind of frightening. This is the basis of the concept of the Singularity: observation of accelerating technology.

If we tried to plot technological advances on a chart, even just intuitively, we’d probably get a pretty steep incline.  The problem, Kurzweil sees, is that our line would likely be straight.  However steep it is, a straight line assumes a constant slope—in other words, technology keeps marching forward, but the rate of that change remains constant over time.  If the rate of change itself is increasing, we won’t get a straight line but an exponential curve, in which, at a certain point, this conceptual curve shoots up to be almost completely vertical.

Recall that this theoretical curve doesn’t show how advanced our technology is, but how fast it’s advancing, which is a rather more shocking thought.  And that, friends, is how we get to the Singularity.

Kurzweil discussed this much, much better in his 2001 essay, “The Law of Accelerating Returns“:

When people think of a future period, they intuitively assume that the current rate of progress will continue for future periods. However, careful consideration of the pace of technology shows that the rate of progress is not constant, but it is human nature to adapt to the changing pace, so the intuitive view is that the pace will continue at the current rate. Even for those of us who have been around long enough to experience how the pace increases over time, our unexamined intuition nonetheless provides the impression that progress changes at the rate that we have experienced recently. From the mathematician’s perspective, a primary reason for this is that an exponential curve approximates a straight line when viewed for a brief duration.

So maybe explanation of the mechanics of the Singularity needs a mathematician, but Kurzweil in The Singularity is Near also waxes a little poetic himself when describing what happens after we get past that “knee-bend” in the curve (which is the next few decades, quoth our futurist):

The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but transcends our biological roots.  There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality.  If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend it’s physical and mental reach beyond current limitations.

At least for me, this is thrilling, chilling, mind-boggling, and vaguely horrifying, all at once.  It’s a world I’m going to leave to Charles Stross and David Louis Edelman to describe for now, until it comes around outside the realm of science fiction.

Because I’m pretty convinced it is.

Now I’m not any sort of scientist, and math majors terrify me, but I do know a little bit about history, and I can say this much—this won’t be humanity’s first Technological Singularity.

We are the species that inherently seeks to extend it’s physical and mental reach, Kurzweil asserts, and he’s absolutely right—human beings need technology to survive, a fact that’s been true well into prehistory.  We don’t have deadly claws, warm pelts, or species-wide instincts to help us survive; we can’t photosynthesize when we’re hungry.  What we do have, and have always had, however, is a reasoning mind; and what we do do, and always have done, is use that to make the things we need but didn’t have the good fortune to be born with—stone choppers and spears, atlatls, the Amazon Kindle.

And in about 10,000 BCE, the sudden explosion of this early human innovation resulted in the birth of what we call “civilization”—agriculture, written language, cities.  And it happened, mysteriously, after roughly hundreds of thousands of years of seeming stasis.  Our brains—human hardware, so to speak—were anatomically modern, but for whatever reason, it appears that we spent over 100 millennia just hanging out on the savannah waiting for that “great leap forward.”  (And if anyone comments that it was the aliens or Atlanteans, so help me God I will start a flame war.)

Key words here: hundreds of thousands years of seeming stasis.

The metaphor I like best is that of a snowball.  You start small, with just a handful, which grows as it rolls along, perhaps down a hill.  As it rolls, it picks up more snow, but also more speed, so that before you know it there’s an avalanche running down the other kids at the bottom of the hill.

Remember that the early stages of even an exponential curve start slowly, an incremental increase that gradually builds until that knee-bend moment when the rate of change shoots up into the sky.  I think 10,000 BCE was that bend in the curve.

Human beings weren’t doing nothing out on the savannah all those millennia—they were building up the rudimentary foundations necessary for “civilization” to emerge.  Cities doesn’t just sprout up overnight.

- 2.5 million years ago, we began to use stone scrapers to butcher dead animals we scavenged.

- 1.6 million years ago saw the development of the first hand axes.

- 1.5 million years ago, homo erectus began to manipulate fire (we’re not even at anatomically modern humans yet)

And then, in 10,000 BCE, we came to the Neolithic Revolution, with the development of agriculture.  Only a few thousand years later (and that’s a very short period of time considering the millions between changes in stone tool technology) brought the earliest written languages.

In other words, 10,000 BCE began humanity’s First Singularity.

So it’s not cyborgs.  Still, Kurzweil defines the Singularity as the merge of human and artificial, of “biological thinking and existence with our technology.”

With the development of agriculture, people could generate surplus food and have some protection from the vicissitudes of hunting and gathering—but it also tied early humans to certain land, to certain methods of production, to a lifestyle in which they “existed with their technology” to an unprecedented extend.

The decline of hunting and gathering meant the settlement of large groups of people together—thousands—rather than small nomadic bands or family groups.  Permanent houses and community structures were erected, meaning that in these first cities, we literally lived in our technology.

With writing, how we interacted with each other (trade) and even how we thought (religious or political use) was shaped by it.

10,000 BCE is exactly what Kurzweil describes—“civilization,” as opposed to nature, after all, is the human constructs that humans live in.  It’s existence within our technology—a merge unprecedented in human (pre)history.

For that, I’m inclined to believe that Kurzweil’s right about a modern technological snowball leading to a radical paradigm shift.  It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

The Times gives a nice in-depth scoop on yet another tainted milk scandal in China. The same industrial contaminant, melamine, again found its way into thousands of dairy products, ice creams, frozen yogurts, etc. The last time this was publicized was in 2008, but apparently contamination has occurred continuously throughout. More than 300,000 people were sickened in the 2008 outbreak, and the Chinese government felt itself compelled to execute 2 people over it. As they say, heads will roll.

The article reports that Chinese outlets are quoting the head of the Guandong Dairy Association as saying the contamination was kept quiet “in order to safeguard the good name of the dairy industry.“

This, I think, is significant. In the former Soviet Union and Mao-era China, scandals like these occurred at an unprecedented rate – and on a far larger scale. The failure of Stalin’s collectivization, the horrific famine attendant the “Great Leap Forward”, and China’s sham “backyard steel” industry were massive blunders that caused untold human suffering. (The Great Leap Forward alone killed 30,000,000 Chinese peasants.) But what’s striking about these mistakes was that they continued long after the plan’s stupidity became clear. Khrushchev tried planting maize in Russia and kept trying after years of crop failures. Mao continued to force his peasants to make steel in their backyards, long after it became clear that they could only produce worthless pig iron. What made these leaders so blind?

One theory is the hierarchical power structure of both countries. Power there was strictly a top-down affair; everyone had a boss, everyone a subordinate. And the bosses had unusual latitude in “firing” their subordinates.  In those countries (especially during their “great terror” phases; 1936-1945 in the Soviet Union, and 1966-1976 in China) being “fired” meant you were actually shot.

As a result, a culture of abject terror developed – if you were an inspector or some other bureaucrat, you simply couldn’t report bad news, or at least report it and expect not to be arrested the next day. So you had these spectacular failures in practice – but on paper the economy was still chugging along; growing, in fact, at an unprecedented rate.  Solzhenitsyn writes extensively about this system (called Tufkta) in Russia, and I can only imagine it was similar in China.

Over the years, these once-totalitarian countries began to ease the internal repression. They were still nominally one-party states, and you could still get in trouble for joining the wrong organization (see the Falun Gong in China) – but so long as you did your job and weren’t overtly anti-government, you could reasonably expect to avoid being arrested. Yet the same culture of Tuftka, of fudging the numbers to make things “look better” persisted. Hence China’s dizzying (and dubious) GDP growth.

China’s bureaucracy is not well-suited to solving problems like tainted milk. The opportunities for corner-cutting, for graft, are just too great – and after all, its ruling party doesn’t exactly have to stand for election. It will be interesting to see how they reassure the world of the quality of their products; whether they’ll execute a few more low-level functionaries to show us they mean business. For it’s clear that China seeks the world market. And it’s equally clear that Europe and America (as well as China’s domestic population) are not interested in a tainted product.

No dearth of pretenders - EU, Japan ... and now China!

There are three separate reasons for this … The reasons refer to the broad determinants of economic growth — capital, labour and productivity.

On the first, India is investing at the same rate as China (approximately 40 per cent of GDP), on the second, India’s labour force growth is about 1.8 per cent per year faster than China, and on the third, China has outpaced India by about 2 per cent per annum (for the last five years).

Most of this outpacing has had to do with the deep and deeper currency undervaluation practised by the Chinese authorities which led to two unsatisfactory outcomes: the great financial crisis of 2008, and now the largest and fastest growing polluter of the world.

For how long will the international community stand idly by? Not very, and this is the first big forecast for the ensuing decade: China’s exchange rate will appreciate significantly starting 2010. How significantly? A first year appreciation to about 6 yuan per dollar from the present 6.8 level. (via Surjit S Bhalla: India’s Shining Decade).

Plausible! Probable … Possible?

'Get to heaven by climbing the terraced fields'. Great Leap Forward poster, Artist - Yang Wenxiu, Published - 1958, September, © Stefan R. Landsberger

Surjit Bhalla outlines a plausible scenario – with China needing to adjusting their exchange rate upwards – much like other US client-states had to! Europe had to in the 70s, Japan in the 90s, Asian Tigers in last 10 years. As examined earlier in some detail by 2ndlook. One question is settled. There will be economic mayhem.

However, Bhalla assumes that the Dollar-Yuan revaluation will happen smoothly – without any significant disruption. And that is one, big, huge assumption – which is based on really, really slippery slope.

Bhalla would do well to remember that last time when China had a problem, it resulted in the India China War of 1962. Just after the disastrous Great Leap Forward and before the equally disastrous Cultural Revolution.

The Great Leap Forward began in 1957-58, saw famine and hunger across China. After the Communist takeover of China, land seized from land owners, was given to peasants in 1949. Ten years later, in 1959, the Chinese State took away the same land from the same peasant. Food shortages, starvation followed. Western (questionable) estimates are that 30 million people died during this period. War with India followed in 1962 – a diversion from the domestic Chinese catastrophe.

What will it be this time?

The approaching mayhem

The next few years will be tumultuous for China.

Much like, when Europe was weaned off the low exchange rate crutch in 1967-1974 period. Stagflation, oil shock, the Nixon Chop followed. How Japan had to live with endaka, the Plaza accord, with S&L crisis in the US.  Or the Asian Tigers had to reset to a higher exchange rate and higher foreign reserves, that accompanied the 1997 (Asian Crisis) to 2000 (The Tech meltdown).

What will follow the Chinese moment in the sun? What will set off economic mayhem in China?

Crime in China (a simmering threat), terrorism in Xinjiang (remote possibility), real estate bubble (a real scenario), dollar-yuan exchange ratio (significant risk)?

Will the Chinese Government be able to ride this storm? Without a war with India? Which side of the fence will China fall? Answers to these questions will be worth waiting for! And prepared with!

Signs of coming troubles?

Great Leap Forward poster "'Put organizations on a military footing, put actions on a war footing, put life on a collective footing'. © Stefan R. Landsberger; Source - Zhongguo meishuguan (ed.), 中国美术年鉴 1949-1989 (Guilin: Guangxi meishu chubanshe, 1993)

India – the loose cannon!

What kind of ending will we see ...?

Now, India is one box which defies description. By any global and historical standards, the country should not even exist – much less prosper, or be a significant global player. Too many languages, too much poverty, too much freedom, too many political parties, too many languages, too many religions, too many racial types are the common factors going against India (so goes the Desert Bloc narrative).

In such a situation, even in India, for the Westernized types or the remnants of the Desert Bloc admirers, India remains a failure waiting to happen.

Unfortunately, for these doubting Cassandra’s, India has proven them wrong for more than 5000 years now!

Does anyone know, or care, what Richard Nixon’s favorite pork dish was, or Gerald Ford’s most-loved place to swim?  Can anyone tell me if Dwight Eisenhower enjoyed poetry or if Ronald Reagan was an obedient child?  Didn’t think so.  Ask anyone in China those same questions about Chairman Mao Zedong, however, and you’ll likely get consistent and authoritative answers.  The Chinese know lots of facts about their former leader and they toss them around like the plot points of a “Seinfeld” episode.  At times though, it seems, the frightening details and consequences of his disastrous policies, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution included, get swept under the rug.

The cult of Mao manifests itself in many ways, not the least of which is the elevation of the former dictator to near god-like status.  One colleague told me that the Chinese think of him “almost like Jesus,” apparently believing the comparison would help me better understand his true stature.  A translator in Wuhan waxed on about his “beautiful mind,” based on his “inspirational” writings, and then proceeded to describe how a doctor-prescribed traditional treatment of black tea, black tofu and black beans had restored her gray hair to its natural black color.  Questioning the wisdom of authority figures, you see, just isn’t done.

For the record, Mao’s favorite pork dish was red-braised or hong shao rou, he loved Wuhan and particularly liked swimming in its stretch of the Yangtze River, he wrote many poems and allegedly was a good kid.  These are a few bits of his real or imagined history that acquaintances, tour guides, colleagues and strangers share freely and quite regularly.  Their collective belief in, continuous recounting and spontaneous recital of the minutia of Mao’s life are one of Chinese culture’s many unifying forces.

The perseverance of a certain myth involving George Washington, an ax and a cherry tree proves that Americans are no strangers to embracing propaganda and repeating it like fact.  Washington’s dentures were not made of wood either, but that “fact” is still tossed around as well.

While most fifth graders may not know what tricky-Dick was ordering up from the White House kitchen, they can tell you that Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin, Thomas Jefferson was also an architect that spoke seven languages and the Teddy Bear was named after Theodore Roosevelt.  The myths and inflated legends of past leaders mingle freely with actual details that we know and share.  Unlike the Chinese with regards to Mao though, some of us know to take our learned history with a grain of salt.  What unifies us most, perhaps, is our skepticism and agreement to disagree when necessary.

Chairman Mao died in September of 1976, but his image is still famously displayed in Tiananmen Square at the gate to the Forbidden City, as well as in homes and businesses and on pendants dangling from rear-view mirrors in private cars and taxis across the country.  The “opening up” and free-market policies of Deng Xiaoping are the true foundation of China’s current growth and economic development, but his image and personal trivia are, comparatively and surprisingly, missing in action.

Shanghai, Chongqing and Beijing are cities that reflect the potential and portend the future of China.  In their modernity and internationalism they project an image of the country that is in sync with, and in fact a leader in, the developed world.  Little details like the stubborn persistence of the cult of Mao, however, are the real barometers to watch for when determining China’s actual entrée into the modern world.  As soon as it starts being served up with a healthy dose of perspective, that’s when we’ll see a real great leap forward.

© Markus Horak, 2009.

Finswimming, Dancesport, Bridge.  The event schedule of an exciting senior’s weekend at the local Y?  Try sports officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee asswipe.  While these “sports” are totally lame, though not as lame as those goddamn Canadians and their curling (real Canadians, not black people), there are other, more awesome sports that sadly are no longer contested at the Olympics.  Here are some of them.

Tug-of-War

Ughhh! Who's better than us? Fucking no one.

Tug-of-War is an ancient sport that pits two teams against each other in a test of strength.  Also the name of a popular gang-handjob site, which isn’t even real, tug-of-war was contested at every Summer Olympics from 1900 to 1920 (so 6?).  Originally, the competition was entered into by “tug-clubs,” groups of men united not by patriotism, but by their love of tugging.  The tug-club system allowed countries to win several medals, with the U.S. sweeping in 1904 and the Limeys following suit in 1908.  This falling off by the Americans is not suprising, as by 1904 they were over the whole “tugging” thing and had started dating fine ass dime pieces on the reg.  Discontinued after 1920, tug-of-war is still recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and once tug-of-war enthusiasts, or “tuggers” as they hate being called, have amassed a large enough bribe, this ancient pastime may once again become an Olympic event, which would be fucking incredible.

Polo

Polo is a team sport traditionally played on horseback (or segwayback in San Francisco) in which the objective is to score goals against the opposing team by driving a small white ball into the opposing goal using a wooden mallet. Mallet!  A team consists of 4 riders, and at the annual Biblical Games, Heaven’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Genghis ”Black Death” Khan (pestilence), George “Bitch Slap” Patton (war), Mao “Great Leap Forward” Zedong (famine) and Joseph “Great Purge” Stalin (death) always defeat Hell’s Knights of the Liberal Agenda, John “The Artful Draft Dodger” Wayne (interracial marriage), Christopher “Crazy Legs” Reeve (stem cell research), Harvey “Party Boy” Milk (gay rights) and Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen (health care reform, as evidenced by his shooting of Doc Brown in the back over a matter of 80 dollars), ensuring that humanity is spared the eternal fire for another year.  Goddamn liberals.

I don't care what Croce says, if Reeve wears that faggy cape again, I'm tugging on it.

Introduced at the 1900 games, Polo was played in 1908, 1920, 1924, and 1936.  Why were 1904, 1928 and 1932  polo-lesser than a screamo concert you ask? Well  slice open your Fontanelle because it’s about to get infantile in here (warning: the following portion will probably be made up).  The 1904 Summer Olympics were held in St. Louis, Missoura, and no one showed up.  In 1928, the games were held in Amsterdam, and everyone had way radder stuff to do.  In 1932, the games were held in Los Angeles during the Great Depression, and all horses were  either being used as eatin’ food or sniffin’ glue (disclaimer: do not huff horse glue).  The teams were mixed between nations, and the redcoats of Great Britain won 3 gold, the gauchos of Argentina won 2 gold, and the cowboys of the U.S. won 1 gold.  Polo is still recognized by the IOC, which consequently wants nothing to do with horses after watching the infamous “Mr. Hands” video.

Game of the century, hands down.

Roque

Roque is an American variant of croquet played on a hard, smooth surface.  Popular in the first half of the 20th century, it was billed as “the game of the century” by its enthusiasts, which is fucking retarded.  The game is featured heavily in Stephen King’s novel, “The Shining,” though not in Stanley Kurbick’s film version because using a make-believe game as a major plot device is pretentious (j.k., Rowling, j.k.).  In the book, the character Jack Torrance actually wields a roque mallet, not an axe, which seems highly unrealistic to anyone who has played croquet, although roque mallets are built more like Nordic war hammers and less like wood chips stuck together with saliva and asparagus urine.  It was only played once, at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, and the U.S. was the only nation represented because Americans only like to play sports they invented and are awesome at (ex. any legit sport except soccer).  Roque, surprisingly, is not recognized by the IOC or anyone else for that matter and may not actually exist in real life.

Water Motorsports

Je suis sur un bateau! Je suis sur un bateau! Tout le monde me regarde, je suis sur un bateau fucking mère!

Water motorsports, or motorboating, was a demonstration sport at the 1900 Paris Summer Olympics, and in a fuck-up that can only be described as colossal, featured neither Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman nor Owen “Safety Razor” Wilson.  At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, three motorboating events were contested, each less successful than the first.  Each race consisted of 5 laps around an 8 nautical mile course for a total of 40 nautical miles or 70 kilometers, which is equal to approximately 5 real miles.  In each event, multiple boats started but only one finished, due primarily to the stiff Parisian gale that was blowing and secondarily to a Parisian named Gayle that was blowing stiffies that day, “stiffy” being a vulgar term for the erection of a man’s penis, and “penis” being a vulgar term for a man’s pussy hammer.  The results were: Class A (Open), France (Camille); Class B (Under 60 feet), Great Britain (Gyrinus); Class C (6.5-8 meters), Great Britain (Gyrinus).  Water motorsports is still recognized by the IOC, but probably won’t make it back on the programme because boat racing has absolutely nothing to do with athletic prowess and is stupid.  Suck it boating enthusiasts.

The Chinese Communist government is responsible for the deaths of roughly 50-60 million of its own people, thanks to its brutal rule and economic incompetence. (For example, the so-called Great Leap Forward of 1958-61 was officially estimated to have killed 14 million.) This is also a regime that wickedly cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators in the Tiananmen massacre of 1989. (An event approved of by President Obama’s first nominee to head the National Intelligence Council.)

So, naturally, New York is set to honor the 60th anniversary of this monstrous dictatorship by bathing the Empire State Building in red and yellow light, the national colors of China:

New York’s iconic Empire State Building will light up red and yellow Wednesday in honor of the 60th anniversary of communist China.

The Chinese consul, Peng Keyu, and other officials will take part in the lighting ceremony which will bathe the skyscraper in the colors of the People’s Republic until Thursday, Empire State Building representatives said in a statement.

I realize they do this for all sorts of occasions, but, guys, this is just indecent. They may hold massive amounts of our debt, but let’s not hold a party on the graves of their victims, shall we?

(Source: The Weekly Standard)

Years ago, I used to enjoy Thomas Friedman’s columns in the New York Times. Back then, he struck me as a thoughtful observer of foreign affairs. Then he became a self-important windbag spouting banal thoughts, and I stopped reading him. But now he’s outed himself as a loathsome admirer of fascism.

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

You will find no clearer statement of the liberal fascist ideal than that quote from Friedman. “Enlightened?” The same Chinese leaders who massacred pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square? Who have draconian childbirth and forced abortion policies? Who are conducting a slow-motion genocide of the Tibetan people? Who starved to death at least 30,000,000 people in an induced famine for… “critically important policies?” Wind power is more important that individual political liberty? This garbage from a man who grew wealthy thanks to the same liberal, free-market capitalist, democratic society he now sneers at?

Wow. Just… wow. 

(via Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn)

RELATED: I’m now convinced that Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism isn’t just good political history, it’s positively prescient.

LINKS: Victor Davis Hanson shakes his head. Power Line gives Friedman a good jolt. More from Ed Morrissey and Sister Toldjah.

The following essay focuses on the effect that students had in constructing the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. Our focus in this section on the GPCR is to draw the attention of comrades towards the concept of Social Revolution; that is to say, a revolution which attacks the very basic social relations of society in order to change them. The Social Revolution Party considers the GPCR to have been such an attempt. Furthermore, comrades should note that the role of students in the mass struggle is important. It is possible to change the world.

I. Introduction

…in the last fifty days or so some leading comrades from the central down to the local levels have acted in a diametrically opposite way [to Marxism-Leninism]. Adopting the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie, they have enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the great cultural revolution of the proletariat. … How poisonous! Viewed in connection with the Right deviation in 1962 and the wrong tendency of 1964 which was ‘Left’ in form but Right in essence, shouldn’t this make one wide awake?1

It was with these words, written in early August of 1966, that Mao Zedong officially marked the beginning of the great proletarian Cultural Revolution. After months of unrest in much of China, particularly amoungst students and young workers, Mao latched himself onto a growing movement and in doing so provided the legitimacy required in order for the blossoming revolution to become a truly national phenomena throughout China. One of the most controversial periods in the history of modern China had been born.

The Cultural Revolution is considered by many historians to have begun around August of 1966, however the end point remains more ambiguous.2 Historians are generally divided into two camps in regards to the ending point of the Cultural Revolution; some consider the Cultural Revolution to have ended in December of 1968 with the destruction of the Red Guards and the establishment of the Down To The Countryside campaign,3 whereas others, including the official line of the Communist Party of China, believe the Cultural Revolution envelopes the drama surrounding the Gang of Four and comes to an end with the abolition of the Down To The Countryside campaign in 1977. While not mattering greatly within the scope of this paper, I fall into the former camp.4

It goes without saying that the interpretation of such a controversial event in the history of China is also greatly disputed. Though unfortunately not within the scope of this paper to argue, it is my conviction that the Cultural Revolution was a legitimate and honest struggle for socialism within China4. The Cultural Revolution attacked most of the old state institutions that existed within China, and specifically went after party bureaucrats who had become entrenched within the post-1949 Chinese state. The Cultural Revolution saw attacks on bourgeois forms of education, saw the creation of workers’ and students’ councils, saw the arming of said councils and the formation of the Red Guards, and ultimately saw the establishment of the Shanghai Commune in 1967.5 This is the historical bias from which I will approach the subject matter being discussed. However, the Cultural Revolution provides only the backdrop on which the events discussed in this paper occur. The main intent of this paper is to show how the student movement in China was instrumental in constructing the Cultural Revolution. The power of the student movement in China during the time leading up to and during the Cultural Revolution exists as a shining example to student and worker struggles everywhere, and indeed the Cultural Revolution needs to be re-evaluated within this light if we are to have success within the student movement in Canada. Particular attention will be paid to the experience of students at Peking University, and Tsinghua University. In the end, it will be proven that the student movement in China was instrumental in constructing the great proletarian Cultural Revolution.

II. The Experience of Students at Peking University

The origins of the Cultural Revolution at Peking University can be traced back to the after-effects of the largely failed Great Leap Forward. Despite the fact that one of the main goals of the Great Leap Forward was to extend quality education to the Chinese masses, particularly peasants, by the time 1965 arrived the Chinese education system was still extremely stratified. According to Victor Nee:

At the top were all of the elite schools… Their students were to become China’s future leaders, scientists, and professional men. Below the elite schools were the general full-time schools, which were to train middle level technicians, engineers, and teachers, most of who were destined for positions in the countryside. At the bottom were the part-time schools… which were there to provide a minimal education for China’s future peasant and working classes…6

Such a hierarchy of education ran completely contrary to the ideals of the Chinese Revolution of 1949, and “threatened to perpetuate structures which could only reinforce the social values of traditional China.”7 It was in response to the relative stagnation of progress within China’s education system that Mao initiated the Socialist Education Campaign in 1962. The aims of the Socialist Education Campaign (SEC) were three-fold. First, the SEC wanted to ensure that graduates of China’s best schools would go to the countryside and use their skills there. Second, the SEC encouraged students to go on work-study programs into the countryside in order to counter the spontaneous restoration of capitalism within small villages.8 And third, the SEC hoped to increase the enrolment of working class and peasant students within the elite schools.

Initially the SEC was limited to the countryside, but slowly and surely the SEC made its way into China’s cities. In 1964 the campaign was officially adopted at Peking University and a work-team arrived in rder to expose those within the university administration that were allegedly taking “the capitalist road.”9 The university administration, in particular the chair of Peking University’s Party Committee, Lu P’ing, was quick to criticize the work-team and actively organized for their removal. Working with the Beijing Municipal Committee, a close ally to Lu P’ing, “struggle-meetings” were organized that denounced the SEC work-team and attempted to force the work team to engage in self-criticisms. When the work-team refused to submit to criticism, they were removed from Peking University and 80 members of Peking University’s faculty who had sided with the work-team’s criticisms of the administration were forcibly removed from campus to await trial inside of the International Hotel in Beijing. This group of radical academics was to become known as the International Hotel Group.10

Meanwhile, the play Hai Jui Dismissed from Office, written in 1961 by famed historian Wu Han, was beginning to stir-up new controversy. Despite initial positive reception from Mao, various prominent leftists within China felt that the play was in fact a thinly veiled critique of Mao and his dismissal of old army bureaucrats. Mao, responding to pressure from his base of support within China, brought up the idea of criticizing Wu Han at a Central Committee meeting in October of 1965. Fearing that the renewed criticism of Wu Han would empower opponents of Peking University’s Party Committee,11 Lu P’ing organized for nearly two-thirds of the students at Peking University, particularly those students who were not members of the Communist Party, to be sent to the countryside. Under the guise of fulfilling the goals of the SEC, Lu P’ing had managed to isolate most of Peking University’s students from both the International Hotel Group and the new leftist criticisms of Wu Han.

Attempting to regain popularity amoungst the remaining students remaining at Peking University, Lu P’ing called a meeting of Party members in early May of 1966 where he encouraged the academic criticism of Hai Jui Dismissed from Office. Following this initial meeting, Lu P’ing began to organize public meetings where he echoed his encouragement of academic criticisms of Wu Han’s play. Lu P’ing had however seriously over-estimated his support within the Party at Peking University, and when various revolutionary elements within the Party began calling for a political criticism of Wu Han himself12, a call echoed by those faculty that still remained at the International Hotel, Lu P’ing began to realize that his control over Peking University was slipping.

Finding an opening in which the Party Committee and administration of Peking University could be attacked, the International Hotel Group began preparing a big-character poster criticizing Lu P’ing’s role in suppressing criticisms of Wu Han. The poster, entitled “What Have Sun Shuo, Lu P’ing, and P’en P’ei-yun Done in the Cultural Revolution?”,13 almost immediately began to garner support from the students still left at Peking University and within hours the walls of the school were covered in other posters criticizing the administration.14 The administration’s reaction was fierce, and in mobilizing the Communist Youth League (CYL),15 it was able to effectively shut down any meetings held by leftist dissenters and install a “reign of terror”16 at Peking University.

Lu P’ing’s victory was short-lived. On June 1st, 1966, Mao made a special request that the text of the International Hotel Group’s big-character poster be broadcast across Beijing;17 he would later go on to suggest that the particular poster was “China’s first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster.”18 Following the broadcast, a meeting was held at Peking University in which the leadership of the International Hotel Group was able to make a series of statements. The result was that even those students that had initially supported Lu P’ing and the Party Committee found themselves on the side of the leftists.

Throughout the following day, parades of revolutionaries from around Beijing – university students, high-school students, workers, peasants, Party cadres, etc. — made their way to the gates of Peking university in order to join the student rebels. P’eng P’eiyun, Sung Shuo, and most importantly Lu P’ing were all dismissed from office. The two thirds of Peking University students that had been sent to the countryside under the auspices of the SEC returned to the campus of Peking University filled with revolutionary vigour from their work-study experience, and the International Hotel Group was regraciated into the life of Peking University.

At the same time as celebrations were being carried out over the victory at Peking University, a new Municipal Committee had been formed. Attempting to restore order at Peking University, a work-team was dispatched in order to put down the leftist uprising. The work-team immediately closed the gates of the university and began a series of “struggle-sessions” that sought to denounce the leftists. While this initially worked, on June 7th posters criticizing the work-team appeared on the campus of Peking University. The renewed sense of struggle gradually galvanized the majority of the student population against the Municipal Committee’s work-team, and upon Mao’s recomendation,19 a delegation from Mao’s inner-circle was sent in order to inspect the climate at Peking University. The delegation was quick to issue criticism of the work-team for two main things. First, the delegation criticized the work-team for “not encourag[ing] the active participation of the revolutionary students and teachers of the whole University in carrying out the Cultural Revolution,”20 and second for failing to establish a new representative body at the university. Following an official report the work-team was immediately disbanded on July 26th, , 1966, and those students that had been dismissed for attacking the workteam were reinstated at Peking University. Peking University was renamed New Peking University; an institution which was reorganized and modelled after the Paris Commune of 1871. Attempting to network with others across China who were swept up in the revolutionary overthrow of the old post-revolutionary China, a Cultural Revolution Committee was formed on September 13th with one of the leaders of the International Hotel Group at its head.

The Cultural Revolution was in full swing at Peking University, built almost exclusively by the students.

III. The Experience of Students at Tsinghua University

If the students at Peking University reserved the right to claim the first rumblings of the Cultural Revolution, then the students at Tsinghua Univeristy, also in Beijing, reserved the right to claim the most intense conflicts during the Cultural Revolution. Immediately after Mao requested that the big-character poster of the International Hotel Group be broadcast on June 1st, 1966, students at Tsinghua University wasted no time in laying siege to their own university administration. For ten days, between June 1st, 1966 and June 10th, 1966, the students of Tsinghua University effectively turned their university into one of the key battle-grounds of the Cultural Revolution by launching intense criticisms of not only conservative professors, but also of those in high positions within the Party.21 The reaction of the Party bureaucrats within Tsinghua University’s Party Committee and the Beijing Municipal Committee was incredibly quick and severe. A work-team was formed and arrived on the Tsinghua Campus on June 10th in order to restore a sense of order and to ensure that criticisms of those in high positions in the Party were quickly silenced. Despite being received positively on their arrival,22 it was soon clear that the work-team was not there to aid the rebels. On June 13th, 1966, a mass meeting was held where Yeh Lin, the organizer of the work-team, laid out a twofold plan to restore order at Tsinghua University. Yeh Lin’s program amounted to: all department- and university-level cadres [being] suspended and [being] ordered to report in groups for study. … all students [being] called upon to return to their classrooms for a major campaign of self-and-mutual criticism.23 It became clear to the students that the goal of the work-team was to break up the blossoming student movement in order to prevent them from effectively waging the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately for the work-team, the students of Tsinghua University were not ready to capitulate and resistance to the “white-terror”, as the period of the work-team was later to be known, began without much delay. On June 23rd a student named Kuai Ta-fu, who was to become one of the main student leaders at Tsinghua University, issued a poster known as “What’s this all about, Comrade Yeh Lin?” which viciously criticized the work-team. The work-team responded by calling a public meeting on June 28th in order to denounce Kuai as a counter-revolutionary.

The meeting resulted in an embarrassing failure for the work-team and posters began to surface that criticized the work-team’s commitment to not only the Cultural Revolution, but socialist revolution and Maoism in general. The work-team, reeling from criticisms, was thrown into disarray24. Rumours had been circulating that Liu Shao-chi’s wife, Wang Kuang-mei, was secretly in charge of the work-team.25 In order to hold the work-team together, Wang Kuang-mei was forced to step into the open at the June 28th mass meeting in order to ensure the work-team and the students of Tsinghua University that the workteam had the full confidence of the Party, particularly Liu Shaochi and Mao. Wang Kuang-mei’s appeal worked in that the workteam began to refocus itself, but the students of Tsinghua University were not convinced. The following day another series of posters criticizing the work-team appeared on campus.

In response to their waning influence, the work-team began a campaign directed entirely at Kuai Ta-fu known as the “Pull Out Kuai” campaign. Once again students did not respond and the resistance against the work-team further intensified. Everything came to a head when on July 22nd, 1966, Mao returned from southern China and wasted no time in questioning the purpose of the work-teams. Indeed, Mao had been a firm supporter of the student rebels and in reply to their queries wrote this: Red Guard comrades of Tsinghua University Middle School:

“I have received both the big-character posters which you sent on 28 July as well as the letter which you sent to me, asking for an answer. The two big-character posters which you wrote on 24 June and 4 July express your anger at, and denunciation of, all landlords, bourgeois, imperialists, revisionists, and their running dogs who exploit and oppress the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals and evolutionary parties and groupings. You say it is right to rebel against reactionaries; I enthusiastically support you. I also give enthusiastic support to the big-character poster of the Red Flag Combat group of Peking University Middle School which said that it is right to rebel against the reactionaries; and to the very good revolutionary speech given by comrade P’eng Hsiao-meng representing their Red Flag Combat Group at the big meeting attended by all the teachers, students, administration and workers of Peking University on 25 July. Here I want to say that I myself as well as my revolutionary comrades-in-arms all take the same attitude. No matter where they are, in Peking or anywhere in China, I will give enthusiastic support to all who take an attitude similar to yours in the Cultural Revolution movement. …” 26

This letter, which was printed on August 1st but would have undoubtedly been received by the students at Tsinghua University beforehand, proved that Mao did not endorse the work-team and on July 29th a mass meeting was held where the work-team was denounced and forced to withdraw from Tsinghua University.27 The question then arose as to how best re-organize Tsinghua University after the fall of work-team’s 50 day reign. Two different lines emerged amoungst the students. The first sought to rehabilitate old and reactionary faculty in order to allow the university to return to normal. The second, headed by Kuai Ta-fu, wanted nothing to do with the old faculty and instead suggested that only revolutionary faculty should be allowed to teach. On August 8th, 1966, the latter organized themselves into a group known as the 8-8s, and the following day, the former organized themselves into a group known as the 8-9s.28 Following two weeks of active campaigning against one another, the 8-9s appealed to the university administration for help. On August 23rd, 1966, they received the support of Chian Nan-hsiang,29 effectively throwing the 8-9s into the ruling circles of Tsinghua University and silencing the 8-8s.30

Despite the fact that the 8-9s had administrative support, the 8-8s continued to campaign and gradually gained more support from the students at Tsinghua University. The 8-8s were effectively waging an up-hill battle until October 6, 1966, when Mao hosted another meeting of the Red Guards in Beijing. At this meeting Mao directly endorsed all those who were struggling against the old, reactionary order which provided a massive boom to the 8-8s and effectively put them on the offensive at Tsinghua University.31 In the days following, the 8-9s found themselves losing support to the 8-8s to the extent that they felt forced to burn their seal and flag, and in early November of 1966 the 8-9s merged with the 8-8s to form the Chingkangshan Regiment headed by Kuai Ta-fu. Kuai, due to his unchanging, and eventually correct stance throughout 1966 and 1967, became a national icon for students everywhere to emulate.

Throughout most of November and December of 1966 the Chingkangshan Regiment began consolidating their power at Tsinghua University and organizing their own cadre. Due to the Chingkangshan Regiment’s prestige throughout China, as early as January of 1967, other universities began appealing to the Chingkangshan Regiment for help in fighting their own manifestations of the Cultural Revolution. The Chingkangshan Regiment sent delegates to various universities around China, particularly in outlying regions. It was through these delegations that the cadre of the Chingkangshan Regiment learned the necessity of seizing power in order to effectively wage Cultural Revolution; indeed, their comrades in China’s outlying regions were not fortunate enough to have sympathetic administrations and had been forced to take over their universities in order to simply publish material. As a result, in mid-January of 1967 the Chingkangshan Regiment seized power at Tsinghua University and deposed the administration.32 The Cultural Revolution had become firmly established at Tsinghua University.

IV. Conclusion

As has been demonstrated, it was the students in China that jump-started the Cultural Revolution. Initially it was student revolt, and student-based challenges to entrenched bureaucrats within the Chinese Communist Party that led to the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution at Peking University. Following Mao’s support for the rebels at Peking University, the students at Tsinghua University began struggling, and intensified their struggle to the point that they managed to extend the Cultural Revolution to other institutions around China. In this way, the student movement in China was instrumental in constructing the great proletarian Cultural Revolution.

End Notes
1. Mao Zedong, “Bombard the Headquarters – My First Big-
Character Poster”, Peking Review, August 5, 1966
2. An, MAO TSE-TUNG’S Cultural Revolution , 22.
3. Nee, The Cultural Revolution at Peking University, 74.
4. My conviction rests upon the entire body of work written by the anti-revisionist school of Marxist thought, of which only an infinitely small amount was used in the preparation of this paper. Though this school of thought is certainly open to criticism, focusing too much on Mao`s role within the context of the Cultural Revolution proper detracts from the overall series of events.
5. An, MAO TSE-TUNG’S Cultural Revolution, 28.
6. Nee, The Cultural Revolution at Peking University, 38.
7. Ibid, 39
8. This spontaneous restoration of capitalism included: “increase in private plots, excessive sideline occupations, rural free markets, the tendency amoung better-off peasants to “go it alone”, and the re-emergence of rich peasants.”. Ibid, 42.
9. Ibid, 42.
10. Ibid, 43.
11. Wu Han was also the deputy mayor of Beijing, and therefore sat on the Beijing Municipal Committee. The Municipal Committee had, of course, been a staunch ally of Lu P’ing’s while Lu P’ing sought to sieze control of Peking University from the SEC work-team in early 1965.
12. As opposed to a purely academic criticism of his play. Academic criticisms focused solely on the historical merits of Hai Jui Dismissed from Office, whereas political criticisms of Wu Han sought to uncover the class nature of Wu Han’s deviancy from revolutionary ideals.
13. P’eng P’ei-yun was the Party Committee of Peking University’s vice-secretary, and Sung Shuo was a member of the Municipal Committee’s Universities Department. Ibid, 54.
14. Ibid, 54.
15. The CYL was organizationally conservative, as the leadership
was tied directly to Lu P’ing’s administration.
16. Ibid, 57.
17. The request was made in a document written by Mao that criticized Liu Shao-ch’i, the then-Chairman of the Communist Party of China and one of the main targets of the Cultural Revolution. Ibid, 57.
18. Mao Zedong, “Bombard the Headquarters – My First Big- Character Poster”, Peking Review, August 5, 1966
19. Mao had recently returned from Shanghai only to find the budding Cultural Revolution in disarray due to the intrigues of the work-team. Nee, The Cultural Revolution at Peking University, 61.
20. Ibid, 66.
21. Hinton, 100 Day War: The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University, 44.
22. It was believed that the work-team was being sent by Liu Shao-chi in order to aid the rebel students. While, as it was later found out, the work-team was sent by Liu Shao-chi, it was most definitely to put down the Cultural Revolution. Liu was to later become one of the prime targets of the Cultural Revolution.
23. Ibid, 45.
24. Ibid, 51.
25. Indeed, the reason for the poster “What’s this all about, Comrade Yeh Lin?” was that a female member of the work-team pretended to be Wang Kuang-mei in order to gather confessions from students.
26. Mao Zedong, “A Letter To The Red Guards Of Tsinghua University Middle School”, Long Live Mao Tse-tung Thought, August 1, 1966.
27. Hinton, 100 Day War: The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University, 68.
28. Ibid, 69.
29. Chian Nan-hsiang was the president of Tsinghua Univerisity.
30. Ibid, 74.
31. Ibid, 96.
32. Ibid, 106.

Socialism and Reversal in China’s Countryside: From Great Leap to Flying Leap Part 2 of 5

by Prairie Fire

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

The roots of the Cultural Revolution are in the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap was the first attempt at reaching a higher level socialism that could serve as an immediate bridge to communism. The record of the Great Leap is a mixed one of both successes and errors. Many errors occurred as a result of going too far, too fast. However, Mao had the view that progress happened in waves. And, to go too far, too fast, was part of the learning process. Mao expressed the sentiment, repeated from Heraclitus to Marx, that “disequilibrium is normal and absolute whereas equilibrium is temporary and relative.” (1) Again: “there is nothing worse than a stagnant pond.” As Maoist theorist Chen Boda implied, Maoism rings a jacobin tone by embracing extremes, radical shifts, and conflicts as part of the process of moving forward. (2) And, it was following the Great Leap that the final, major conflict began to take shape within the Party leadership. Two factions emerged: a communist one and a capitalist one. Revisionists, the capitalists, are those who responded to the difficulties of the Great Leap with efforts to slow down, reverse socialism and restore capitalism. The Maoists sought to overcome difficulties by continuing the forward motion, by continuing to advance toward communism. During the years following the Great Leap, but prior to the Cultural Revolution, an uneasy compromise was struck between these factions as they prepared their forces for the life and death struggles of the next decade and a half. Maoist warnings of capitalist restoration were not mere rhetoric in a power-play between egos as bourgeois narratives suggest. Rather, such warnings referred to the very real, concrete policies that were being advanced in response to the difficulties of the Great Leap by those around Liu Shaoqi. And, after the Maoists seized power from their opponents, including Liu Shaoqi,  through the Cultural Revolution, they implemented a second, improved version of the Great Leap, the Flying Leap from 1968 to 1970.  For the vast majority of Chinese residing in the countryside, this wave of radical programs and class struggle was the high point of socialism in China.  Yet socialism would be reversed only a few years later, partially under the Chairman’s watch.

Maoist economics 1.0, the Great Leap Forward

In 1957, the Chinese leadership sought to expand agriculture production. Collectivization into cooperatives was carried out in the previous years, but now the Maoist leadership sought to make a leap to a higher level of socialism. However, there was a shortage in capital. Thus the leadership sought to shift away from capital-intensive to work-intensive approaches. (3) A main Maoist assumption was that the labor-intensive projects in agriculture and industry would not require, would not drain, capital, but rather, would generate capital. (4) This would be aided by China’s vast population, its vast labor reserves would make up for lack of capital. And, in the process, the leadership would tackle seasonal unemployment that affected 75 percent of the peasantry. In place of a heavy reliance on technology, the Maoist model of development would begin to take shape. The Maoist approach would place great emphasis on class struggle, mass movements, social experiment, collectivization of life, ideological indoctrination, moral incentives over material ones, politics in command, etc. The Maoist model conceived of itself as a bridge to communism, the elimination of all oppression. The Great Leap was the first time that a distinctively Maoist, socialist model took shape.

Even though Mao upheld Stalin overall, he criticized Stalin’s relationship with the peasants. Unlike the Soviet experience of collectivization, Maoists used a softer touch in the countryside. (5) During the early Great Leap, the leadership would rely on the experiments of mass mobilization that it had used from 1950 to 1956, expanding them and taking such mobilizations to new levels. The peasants of the countryside would be in a permanent mobilization, a kind of war-foorting for production. This, combined with mass line, provided for a greater degree of bottom-up and spontaneous initiative and participation by the peasants themselves. The Maoists had always seen a connection between politics and production. This would be taken to new levels in the following years. According to Maoist theory, gradual development would be surpassed by quantitative and qualitative leaps. Reliance on the masses would unlock the productive potential of China’s countryside. Fetters on production would be blown away. All of this aimed toward propelling society toward communism. These elements would continue to be central to the Maoist developmental model as it contended against its revisionist competitors all the way through the end of the Maoist era in the 1970s.

Contrary to Soviet, top-down, central planning, the Maoist model of the Great Leap implied the dismantling of the centralized bureaucracy and economic planning organs. The Maoist approach transfered decision making to the production units. The full utilization of local resources and labor power required decentralization down to the localities. This would harness the full creativity of local initiative and enthusiasm of the masses. (6) Self reliance, not to be reliant on a central authority, was also a large part of the Maoist outlook. Central to the new Maoist model were the People’s Communes.

The communes were not just experiments in egalitarianism. They also arose out of the concrete need to better handle the rural environment, especially water control and irrigation. Prior to the communes, a radicalization of the countryside was already underway as a byproduct of large construction projects. Peasants from different backgrounds and localities had been brought together under a militaristic discipline in brigades and teams to carry out large tasks. Prior organizational forms were not big enough to handle the large water projects, in which every canal that was created would be at the expense of somebody’s land. By pooling their resources and making joint plans, peasants insured that nobody had to starve. (7) (8)

In the months leading up to the formation of the People’s Communes in 1958, there was a struggle between the Maoist left versus the right and revisionist wing of the Party. On the conservative side were people such as Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun and Bo Yibo. On the other side were Mao, Chen Boda, and, for a time, Liu Shaoqi — although Liu Shaoqi would later lead the opposition to the Maoists as “the number one capitalist roader.” The rightists favored slower pace and capital intensive strategy for development. They emphasized the limitations placed on development by insurmountable “objective conditions.” The Maoists championed “greater, faster, better, and more economical results.” The Maoists emphasized “revolutionary enthusiasm” and the human factor. In addition, the Maoist left sought higher levels of collectivization, they sought to combine the existing cooperatives into larger units. These larger units would become the People’s Communes. In a pattern that Mao would later repeat at the onset of the Cultural Revolution, Mao circumvented the bureaucratic machine of the Party and state. Instead of going through bureaucratic channels. Mao first secured the support of provincial secretaries at regional conferences during the first months of 1958. Mao circumvented the central authorities by pitching his strategy directly to the lower level cadres. However, even at the lower levels, Mao’s efforts did not go completely unopposed. One provincial rightist who met Mao said that the Chairman talked “greater, faster, better and more economical” as if he were “chanting odes and prayers.” The rightist cautioned against Mao’s theory of leaps. (9) (10) However, the issue would soon be settled. Following Mao’s plan, the Henan provincial leadership went forward to move toward higher collectivization. They went ahead with mergers of cooperatives, forming People’s Communes. They did this before receiving permission from the central Party authority. The formation of the first communes were carried out by enthusiastic local activists close to the grass roots. Thus Mao was able to present the communes to the Party higher-ups as a fait accompli.  Chen Boda first introduced the word “communes” on July 1st, 1958. (11) (12) Later, Mao would remark positively on the communes, “the people’s communes are fine,” setting off a whirlwind, nationwide, semi-spontaneous movement to form more and more communes. With his allies in the provincial leadership, Mao was able to outmaneuver his conservative opposition concentrated in the central bureaucracies. In the spring of 1958, Mao then won over the majority of the Party leadership.

The policies decided on between 1957 and 1958 became known as the Three Red Banners:

1. the general line of socialist construction, simultaneous development of industry and agriculture using both modern and traditional methods.

2. the Great Leap Forward to “catch up and surpass” the per capita production of heavy industry with Great Britain within fifteen years, by 1972.

3. the People’s Communes, large rural collectives that were to become the basic unit of society to develop all aspects of society. (13)

By mid-July of 1958 communes had been established in most parts of China. However, communes were not uniform. In some places communes were only loose federations of cooperatives. In other places, communes exceeded expectations, going far beyond Party goals, collectivizing at even higher levels, collectivizing even more aspects of life. In general, four types of  communes came into being:

1. The most wide-spread, the rural commune, included about 5,000 households and was mostly identical to a hsiang.  As example of this kind of commune, the Leda commune in Henan, formed from 22 cooperatives. It had 4,746 households and 22,568 members. 53 villages were part of it. There were old people’s homes, 22 kindergartens, and 108 mess halls.

2. Urban communes were established on on the basis of city districts. One example, the West -Taigang commune in Henan had 10,618 households and 37,432 members. It extended 60 streets. It included 54 small factories and workshops. It had three elementary schools, a vocational school, 49 mess halls and 107 kindergartens, but no old people’s homes.

3. There were urban communes with some agricultural established on the basis of a large factory. One example was the commune of the textile-machinery factory at Zhengzhou, Henan. 10, 559 peasants in suburban districts  were responsible for the food supply. The staff and workers totaled 30,000. There were several elementary schools,  two secondary schools. and a number of vocational institutions. It had mess halls, kindergartens, old people’s homes, community rooms, a cinema and a hospital.

4. The large rural commune was for a period was considered the ideal, but rarely was implemented. A example was the commune of Xushui county in Henan. It has 238 villages in twenty hsiang with 64,640 households and 314,444 people. It’s work army consisted of 65,181 men and 52,622 women. Abut 135,000 acres of arable land was managed by the commune. The commune had 2,400 workshops, 1,498 mess-halls, 374 kindergartens and 75 nurseries.  There were schools, club houses, a few cinemas and a theatre. (14)

In 1957, Mao spoke of “contradictions under socialism.” The problem of bureaucracy occupied the minds of the Maoists. (15) The communes were an instrument to addressed this problem. The Party’s original description of the communes was that they were voluntarily established by working people under Party leadership. Communes were to be an expression of proletarian democracy. Weixing (Sputnik) was the first official commune. The 43,000 member commune was established in April of 1958 in Henan province. Its bylaws articulated this democratic ideal:

“The highest authority of the commune was the congress of the commune, which set policy. The congress included representative from all sectors of society: women, youth, old people, cultural and educational workers, medical workers, scientific and technical workers, the personnel of industrial enterprises, traders and minority people.. The management committee will be elected by the congress to take charge of the commune’s affairs.” (16)

Communes were also to merge with state power. This merger was to enable the transition to communism. In the Soviet Union, collectives were separate from the state. Contradiction of interests can arise between the collectives and the state. This duality of power keeps the peasants and workers at arm’s length from power. In China, the state power was to reside inside the commune. Communes seek to bridge the contradiction of interests, thus moving closer to communism and “ownership of the whole people.” Communes, it was thought, might still exist as cells within a future society without oppression, within a communist society. (17)

Communes were to manage all industrial and agricultural production, trade, culture and education. Communes organized production. Communes could mobilize people for tasks at any time. Communes distributed the harvest. Under the commune authority were the Production Brigades. Under the brigades were the production teams. Eventually, the brigade would be settled on as the economic accounting unit. The team was only the work unit, whose property was restricted to small tools like shovels and spades, etc. Communes took over the property, land and capital of the cooperatives. Houses, trees, bushes, animals. water sources, machines and larger tools were taken over by the commune. The system of remuneration was controlled by the commune. Equal distribution of parts of the basic food supply were combined with distribution according to work. In the case of an abundant harvest, food was to be distributed according to need, this was the experimental free supply system. (20) Work was assigned to the brigades and teams by the communes. Communes established people’s banks. Infrastructure such as streets, canals and telephone lines were controlled by the communes. Communes assumed controlled the rural militias. They organized political tasks in the area of the commune. The commune authority replaced the People’s Congress and People’s Government Council of the township. Thus the administration of townships was combined and united with administration of the communes. (18)  Communes were given the task of “creating the conditions for the gradual transition to the communist system of substituting step by step the distribution principle of: ‘From each according to his work’ with the distribution principle: ‘From each according to his needs!’ (19) As one article stated, “[the People’s Communes] are the best basic form of organization in China’s socialist society, and will be the best for the attainment of socialism and the transition to communism.” (21)

In the communes, the work hours were long. In the second half of 1958 people could work twelve hours a day, more during harvest time. Work was often regimented, organized using military models. Workers were divided into labor companies and labor platoons. In some places, peasants went to work marching in military formation. For example, in a village in Hebei, 400 women and 600 men were organized into a “shock labor brigade” to promote “militarization, combatization, and disciplinization.” Sometimes, workers carried guns while they worked in the fields. Work was done under the red flag. The workforce was sometimes described as a “work army.” (22) In some model communes, traditional housing was torn down and barracks were established as part of the collectivization and militarization of life. But, most communes did not follow this practice, which came to be seen as ultra-left. Most communes  did not replace housing with barracks.  (23) Military metaphors were applied to production. Tasks and nature itself were to be “conquered.” For example, in 1958, the population was mobilized to move 580 million cubic meters of earth in dam and water projects. (24) One famous error was the “battle” against the sparrows, which was part of an anti-pests campaign. Sparrows were considered one of the four pests. Child “soldiers” went out to kill as many of the birds as possible “The whole people, including five-year old children, must be mobilized to wipe out the four pests,” Mao stated on May 18, 1958. This disasterous error, couched in military language, led to tremendous loss of grain. Sparrows, as it turns out, consume insects that destroy grain. Insect infestation followed the campaign against sparrows. Later, in April of 1960, bedbugs would be substituted for sparrows as a fourth pest.  (25)

The goal was to create a workforce that was motivated by moral and political, rather than material incentives. The desire for a more just and equal society was to replace the desire for higher wages. A new kind of humanity would emerge alongside the new society. This new humanity would be willing to sacrifice their private gain in order to build a new, better world. However, at the same time, this message was often contradicted with the promise that a society of total abundance, communism, was just around the corner. This later mistake sometimes led to disaster when peasants, believing that total abundance was around the corner, consumed their future harvests. This mistake would not be repeated in the second attempt to return to the Maoist model of development under Lin Biao from 1968 to 1970. Instead, in the second attempt in the Lin Biao era, austerity and military spartanism was preached as part of the communist ideal.  (26)

Contrary to stereotypes, communes were not to be all work. For example, Weixing (Sputnik), the first official commune, was charged with creating activities for people during their leisure time:

“The commune shall encourage cultural, recreational, and sports activities. among the masses so as to bring forward communist people healthy in body and in mind. Steps should be taken to ensure that each commune has its own library, theatre, and film projector teams; that the production contingent has its own club room, amature theatrical troupe, choir and sports team; and that each production brigade has a small reading room and radio sets.” (27)

There was an effort to collectivize almost all of life. Not only was private property collectivized, but social functions such as the preparation of meals and, sometimes, even the raising of children were  collectivized. These social functions are historically tied to patriarchy. The communes often aimed  to end these oppressive aspects of the patriarchal family. To this end, communes established mess halls that provided two meals a day plus snacks. They also created nurseries, kindergartens and old people’s homes. People still lived in their homes, but management of their homes was transfered to the commune. Women’s work, such as preparing meals and raising children, was taken over by the commune. (28) The communes also set up sewing teams “to free women from household labor.” (29) This was part of ending patriarchy, advancing closer to the ideal of communism, the ending of all oppression. The organ of the Communist Youth League reported:

“[N]ow, as private estates, houses, and even part of the livestock has passed into the People’s Commune’s property, all bands which still tied the peasants to their property have been severed and they feel freer and more light-hearted than in former times. The peasantry say: ‘It makes no difference where we move. At any rate, we are at home in our Ch’aoying home.’ There is nothing in their homes which they long for. The People’s Commune is their home.

Now there are mess-halls and kindergartens in the villages. All houses are locked because all inhabitants march to the fields or to the workshops. The old habit of cooking in each individual household or raising the children there can no longer be observed. The framework of the individual family, which has existed for thousands of years, has been completely destroyed.”

(30)

Society was to be propelled toward communist, almost overnight. Mao stated that “deceleration” was wrong, those who opposed “rushing ahead” were letting the people down. In Moscow, on November 18, 1957, Mao stated that if the Soviet Union could catch up with the United States in the production of steel in 15 years, then China could catch up with Britain. Later, Mao would say that they would catch up to Britain in two or three years. Although Mao occasionally backed away from his statements, his overall push in terms of timetables was ultra-left. Mao stated in January 18, 1958 :

“Our nation is like an atom… When the atom’s nucleus is smashed the thermal energy that is released will have really tremendous power. We shall be able to do things that we could not do before.When our nation has this great energy we shall catch up with Britain in fifteen years…” (31)

This ultra-left hyperbole was repeated over and over. Chen Boda supported Mao’s tempo, writing that China was entering a period when “a day equals twenty years.” (32) In 1958, newspapers reported that the transition to communism should be completed in twenty years. A month later, this prediction was reduced to only ten or fifteen years. The Communist Youth League journal reported that those who were in their 70s or 80s would “live to see the Communist society.” (33) The Central Committee stated, “the attainment of communism in China is no longer a remote future event. We actively use the people’s commune to explore the practical road of transition to communism.” (34) Many skeptics dropped their reservations, joining in with the wave of enthusiasm.

Even though errors were made, the Great Leap did unleash the masses in order to reach for a better world. The theme of conquering all obstacles reoccurs throughout the literature of the Chinese revolution Most famously, it is the theme of Mao’s famous parable The Foolish Old Man who Removed the Mountains. In the parable, hard and patient work allow the foolish old man to complete a seemingly impossible task, removing twin mountains, which represent feudalism and imperialism. Mao had a deep belief in people power. During the Great Leap, this spirit was captured by the lyrics of a popular song:

“In heaven, there is no Jade Emperor,

On Earth, there is no Dragon King.

I am the Jade Emperor, I am the Dragon King.

I order the three mountains and five peaks:

‘Make Way, here I come!’” (35)

The versions of the communes at the beginning of the Great Leap reflected a utopian, farsighted, communist vision for society. A quarter of the world’s population was mobilized to make the transition to communism a reality. Communes were to eliminate the difference between town and countryside, between peasants and workers, between mental and manual labor, and even abolish the state’s domestic functions. (36) Even though the first attempt at implementing the Maoist model ran into problems, especially ultra-left excesses, its basic goals were correct. The Maoist model’s emphasis on class struggle, participation by the masses, social experiment, politics and ideology, and collectivization of life were correct. However, this model would be reversed to a large degree by revisionists following the difficulties of the Great Leap.

Notes

1. Maurice Meisner. Mao’s China and After (Free Press USA: 1977) p. 209

2. Chen Boda. Notes on Mao Tse-tung’s “Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (Foreign Language Press. 1954), p. 34

3. Jurgen Domes, Socialism in the Chinese Countryside (McGill-Queen’s University Press 1980), p. 20-22

4. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 221

5. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 220

6. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 222

7. Anna Louise Strong, “The Rise of the Chinese People’s Communes,” from People’s China edited by David Milton, Nancy Milton, ad Franz Schurman (Random House 1974) p. 308

8. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 235

9. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 23-24

10. Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature (Cambridge University Press 2001), p. 73

11. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 25

12. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 232

13. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 24

14. Jurgan Domes, 1980, p. 29-31

15. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 169

16. “Tentative Regulations (draft) of the Weixing (Sputnik) People’s Commune, August 7, 1958,” The People’s Republic of China  edited by Mark Selden (Monthly Review Press USA: 1979), p. 399

17. Anna Louise Strong, 1974, p. 30

18. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 29-32

19. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 30

20. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 32

21. Wu Chih-pu. From Agricultural Producers’ Cooperatives to People’s Communes. Hongqi No. 8, September 16, 1958.

22. Judith Shapiro, 2001, p. 69

23. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 26-27

24. Judith Shapiro, 2001, p. 67

25. Judith Shapiro, 2001, p. 86-88

26. The error of promising abundance around the corner, the Amerikan lifestyle, is connected to both the errors of First Worldism and the Theory of Productive Forces. Capitalists tell the masses that everyone can live like Amerikans. Of course, this First Worldist error isn’t true. Amerikans only live like they do because Amerikans, including their working class, exploit the Third World. Socialism does not mean that everyone gets to live like Amerikans. In fact, it means that Amerikans will have to make do with less. This First Worldism was implied in some of the rhetoric by Mao and others at the time. It is connected to the Theory of Productive Forces’ assertion that Amerikans are wealthy, not because they exploit the Third World, but because they have technology.

27. “Tentative Regulations (draft) of the Weixing (Sputnik) People’s Commune, August 7, 1958,” The People’s Republic of China  edited by Mark Selden (Monthly Review Press USA: 1979), p. 401

28. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 32-33

29. “Tentative Regulations (draft) of the Weixing (Sputnik) People’s Commune, August 7, 1958,” The People’s Republic of China  edited by Mark Selden (Monthly Review Press USA: 1979), p. 400

30. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 33

31. Mao Zedong. “Speech at the Sipreme State Conference, January 18, 1958,” The People’s Republic of China  edited by Mark Selden (Monthly Review Press USA: 1979), p. 382

32. Judith Shapiro, 2001, p. 72-74

33. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 29

34. William A. Joseph. The Critique of Ultra-Leftism in China, 1958-1981 (Stanford University Press, 1984) p. 84

35. Judith Shapiro, 2001, p. 68

36. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 212

**Also see:

Socialism and Reversal Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Two Roads Defeated part 1; Two Roads Defeated part 2; Two Roads Defeated part 3; On the Split between Mao and Lin Biao; Mao Declassified; Review of China: A Century of Revolution;Some of Us reviewed (Part 1); Some of Us reviewed (Part 2);Some of Us reviewed (Part3); A Maoist-Third Worldist Review of Mobo Gao, The Battle for China’s Past; In memory of the great Lenin..; Some lines within the CCP in the Maoist period; Shubel Morgan video On the Theory of Productive Forces; The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution; The Lin Biao Centennial, hooray!; Lin Biao excerpt on the TOPF with important commentary by Prairie Fire; Mao’s Bloody Revolution Revealed (with Philip Short, 2007); Really supporting the GPCR vs. Opportunist Yapping;Morning Sun (2003, Carma Hinton, Richard Gordon and Geremie R. Barmé); Shubel Morgan’s Series On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces”, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of Productive Forces,” part 1, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of Productive Forces,” part 2, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 3, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” part 4 (and video in English), Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 5a, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 5b, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 5c, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 6a, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 6b, Red Salute to Lin Biao!, The Red Violin

Socialism and Reversal in China’s Countryside: From Great Leap to Flying Leap to Reversal Part 1 of 5

by Prairie Fire

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

At the time of the revolution, China was largely an agrarian society with most of its population living in the countryside. The level of urbanization and industrialization was higher in pre-revolution, pre-1917 Russia than it was in the China of 1949. China’s agricultural production was very backwards. Even before the First World War, Russia had a higher agricultural productivity than China in the 1950s. (1)  Yet it was in China that socialism would reach its peak in the twentieth century. It was in China that a quarter of the world’s population embarked on the project of transforming their world into one without oppression.  The scale and depth of the Chinese revolution should silence critics who cannot see past their Euro-centrism, critics who stupidly claim that Mao Zedong was simply another “Stalinist bureaucrat.” Ultimately, this great, social experiment was defeated in the 1970s. Yet even a quarter century since its tragic defeat, even those who claim to sympathize with its goals, even those who claim to be Maoists, know little about the actual struggles that animated the Maoist era. 

Often narratives of the Cultural Revolution avoid examination of the agricultural issues that drove many of the conflicts of that period. Instead, such narratives focus almost exclusively on the urban side of the Cultural Revolution, forgetting that the majority of China resided in rural areas. In particular, such narratives focus on the clashes over art and culture, the urban mass movements, and the psychological aspects of clashes between the Chinese leadership. Whereas such accounts tie the loss in Maoist  power in the early 1960s to the economic crisis surrounding the Great Leap Forward, they fail to examine the clashes over agricultural policies during the Cultural Revolution decade. Thus they leave the story only half told. This is a significant blind spot, since socialism for most of the Chinese population was very much tied to the policies that governed agricultural life. Maoist narratives may give lip service to the importance of class struggle, but their analysis of the fight against capitalism rarely goes beyond the conflicts within the party elite and the, often superficial, rhetoric of that elite. In the worst cases, such narratives are versions of the great-man theory of history criticized by Karl Marx. Such narratives act as though the mode of production was tied to Mao’s heartbeat — so socialism is lost on September 9th,1976, or, just as bad, October 6th, 1976. (2) Such narratives fail to examine the concrete policies and visions for society that hung in the balance. This failure to deal with class struggle concretely reflects a basic lack of materialism in the historical narrative. Maoists claim with gusto that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was the furthest advance toward communism in human history. Yet, at the same time, such Maoists lack basic understanding of what capitalist restoration actually was in the concrete. In 1975 Maoist, and Gang of Four member, Zhang Chunqiao stated that “our proletarian dictatorship is more consolidated than ever, and our socialist cause is thriving.” (3) A concrete examination of the class struggles in agriculture reveal this statement as mere bombast. At the time it was written, Chinese socialism was being reversed since its peak in the Lin Biao years from 1966 to 1970. This reversal is not only represented by China’s well known turn away from global’s people’s war, and a turn toward the West in foreign policy, the reversal is also reflected in China’s reversal of the Maoist developmental model. This reversal is the restoration of capitalism.

Early Collectivization, 1951 to 1957

The population of China’s countryside tripled from 1650 to 1850, whereas arable land increased, at best, by about 20 per cent. This created a situation where the Chinese countryside was ripe for agricultural revolution. (4) Mao once made the comment that there were three choices available to revolutionaries. Revolutionaries could stand in back of the peasants, tailing them. Revolutionaries could stand in the way, getting run over. Or, they could stand in front, leading. Mao chose the latter. Thus the communist revolution to end all oppression piggybacked on this great upheaval involving nearly a billion peasants, a fourth of humanity; thus proletarian revolution would ride atop peasant, agrarian revolution seeking to uproot the semi-feudal mode of production with all of its cruelties. The Chinese Communist Party described the situation in the following way in “The Central Committee Directive Concerning the Land Problem” on May 4, 1946: 

“China’s agrarian system is unjust in the extreme. Speaking of general conditions, landlords and rich peasants who make up less than 10 percent of the rural population hold approximately 70 to 80 percent of the land, cruelly exploiting the peasantry. Farm laborers, poor peasants, middle peasants, and other people, however, who make up over 90 percent of the rural population hold a total of approximately only 20 to 30 percent of the land, toiling throughout the whole year, knowing neither warmth nor full stomach. These grave conditions are the root of our country’s being the victim of aggression, oppression, poverty, backwardness, and the basic obstacles to our country’s democratization, industrialization, independence, unity, strength, and prosperity… In order to change these conditions, it is necessary, on the basis of the demands of the peasantry, to wipe out the agrarian system of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation, and realize the system of ‘land to the tillers.’” (5)

It is this system that would first be uprooted by the revolution. Unlike Trotskyism, anarchism, or other utopian  approaches that seek to move to advanced socialism or communism all at once, Maoist revolution proceeds in stages, each stage laying the foundation for the next.  The Maoist agrarian revolution would begin with New Democratic policies that sought to move China out of feudalism and semi-feudalism. New Democracy brought bourgeois-democratic rights to the Chinese masses. In agriculture, New Democracy is characterized by “land to the tiller,” a policy that broke  feudal control of the countryside. New Democracy is a transitional policy toward socialism. And,  socialism is transitional itself, aiming at the ideal of communism, the end of all oppression. 

Except in some national minority areas, early 1953 marks the end of the bourgeois-democratic land reform movement. In 1952, cadres reported that 75 percent of all households in the countryside privately farmed. The remainder joined seasonal mutual aid teams with only a small number belonging to permanent mutual aid teams or to experimental cooperatives. Land reform of the previous stage, “land to the tiller,” created a situation where some families had more land than they could work. Other families experienced the opposite situation. Such imbalances led to hiring, renting, and leasing of land. In addition, as soon as land reform was completed, better off peasants began to lend money to poorer peasants. In some cases, debtors had to sell off their land to creditors. A new rural elite was emerging. A wave of peasant migration to the cities raised the rate of urban unemployment. (6) Left to itself, much of the old system of exploitation and oppression would return. As Lenin warned, “small-scale production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, with elemental force, and in vast proportions.” (7) 

Preparations were being made in 1953 to move from the bourgeois-democratic to the proletarian-socialist stage of revolution. The former is characterize by “land to the tiller,” the latter by nationalization of private industry, transformation of commerce and handicrafts into cooperatives, and the collectivization of agriculture.

The Party would rely on Mutual Aid Teams at first as the basis for collectivization of agriculture into the future cooperatives. Teams were comprised of mostly poor and lower-middle peasants that had come together during the land reform campaign. This alliance of poor and lower-middle peasants had always been an important part of Chinese socialism. The teams worked according to a rational, systematic schedule. They cultivated fields collectively. They purchased their tools and machines collectively. At the end of 1952, 52 percent of the population was organized into teams.

Initially, in 1951, Lover Level Agricultural Producers Cooperatives were formed on an experimental and voluntary basis. According to official policy, peasants were free to leave teams and lower level cooperatives. All tools and machines were collectivized, but arable land remained in private hands. Land was pooled and farmed collectively. Members of the lower level cooperatives received a share of profit according to a mixed system. Earnings were fixed at a ratio of 70 percent on the basis of size and value of the arable land brought into the cooperative. Thirty percent was based on work performance. An average of 27 households were combined per cooperative in 1955.  

In 1954, in the context of a grain crisis, a major debate emerged within the Party: Should the Party gradually persuade peasants to join the cooperatives or should the Party take action to prevent the rapid revival of a new propertied elite in the villages while at the same time accelerating participation in the cooperatives? Though the majority of the Party supported gradualism, the Maoists, who favored a more rapid pace of collectivization, were able to win out. 

Next came the formation of Socialist Agricultural Producers Cooperatives. Lower level cooperatives were merged into higher level cooperatives. In these, only houses and gardens remained in private hands. Tools, machines, and arable land were turned over to the collective. Remuneration was made on the basis of work performance. By 1955 an average of 156 households were combined per collective. Farming teams within cooperatives would range from twenty to sixty households depending on village size. The cooperatives sought to sever the connection between peasants and the land. This also is true of farm capital and its previous owners. Every household relinquished its claim to land and capital. In these collectives, peasants became de facto agricultural workers. (8) (9) (10) (11)  In 1955, only 14 percent of the households were organized in lower level cooperatives and less than one percent in the socialist cooperatives. By 1956 nearly ninety percent participated. (12) By the end of 1956, China had a dual system of property. In the urban economy, state property predominated. Collective property predominated in the countryside.  (13)

Collectivization of the population into cooperatives was accompanied by disturbances in the countryside. This was reported in the Chinese press as “unusual irritation” in the villages. Some lower level cadres resisted the collectivization by hiding grain, by procuring more than their villages were entitled to, and by manipulating population figures for their own advantage. Like years later, during the Great Leap Forward, there were transparency problems and deception by certain segments of the Party and state. (14) (15) In addition, there was worry about the restoration of capitalism. Mao stated:

“During the past few years, the influence of forces tending to develop spontaneously toward capitalism has been developing daily in the rural areas; new rich peasants have emerged everywhere, and many prosperous middle peasants and exerting efforts to turn themselves into rich peasants. Many poor peasants, due to their lack of means of production, still remain in poverty, some of them having contracted debts; others selling their land or renting out their land… If this situation is allowed to develop further, there will be increasingly more serious [class] polarization in the rural areas.” (16)  

In addition, the Party worried about cadres adopting to peasant ideology. Many cadres in the rural areas mistakenly thought that they should represent the peasants desire to get rich. Rather than raising the sights of the peasants toward communism, they tailed the peasants shortsighted, immediate interests. The Party stated, “the attitude of some of our comrades to the peasant question still remains at an old stage.. allowing capitalism to develop freely in rural areas.” (17)  

In a pattern that would later be repeated during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Maoists went forward with revolution, not backward, even in the face of difficulties. Mao’s secretary Li Rui reports of the 1955 to 1956 period:

“The speed of the original development model already dissatisfied [Mao], and he wanted to explore an ‘unusual’ road and speed; that is to say, he wanted to use a different method, to surpass the Soviet Union, to go faster than the Soviet Union.” (18)

In 1955, Maoists sought to address the problems, in part, by increasing the tempo of the revolution and with further, higher collectivization in the countryside. The goal of 1,000,000 cooperative farms to be established by 1957 was increased by 300,000 by Mao. (19)  Mao described this as “a raging tidal wave” that “swept away all the demons and ghosts.” Mao stated, “the people are filled with an immense enthusiasm for socialism.” (20) In the tone of his famous Hunan Report, Mao delivered a report in July of 1955 that stated, “Throughout the Chinese countryside a new upsurge in the socialist mass movement is in sight.” Mao went on to state that peasants demonstrated “spontaneous initiative.” There was “an active desire among most peasants to take the socialist road.”   (21)

The movement went forward unhindered. In 1956, there was a decline in agricultural production by 10 per cent. This was made up for in 1957 when China for the first time exceeded the output levels for the years 1931 through 1937. (22) Thus China had achieved the highest output since the century began. The collectivization process, mobilizing the population into cooperatives, had taken roughly four years from 1953 to 1957. In the fall of 1957, the rural collective economy was considered consolidated.  Collectivization, so far, was a success. 

China’s path differed from the Soviet path. In April of 1956, Mao addressed the politburo with a speech entitled “The Ten Great Relationships.” Here Mao’s vision of development very different than the Soviet five-year plans. Heavy industry was to continue with its rapid development, but light industry and agriculture was to be the focus of investment. Instead of further growth of the developed and richer coastal areas, resources and development was directed to the less developed and poorer areas of the interior. There would be a shift in emphasis from large-scale urban industrial to medium-scale and small-scale industries in the countryside. Central bureaucratic control would be replaced by relatively autonomous local communities that were the main socioeconomic units. Labor-intensive projects were to be favored over capital-intensive ones. Rapid social change was to go hand in hand with rapid economic development. There was a new emphasis on the initiative and the consciousness of the masses. (23) 

China’s model yielded different results than the Soviet one. The process of collectivization in China was carried out more smoothly than in the Soviet Union.  The relationship between the Chinese Communists and their peasantry was  different from their Soviet counterparts. At the time the People’s Republic was declared, the Chinese Communists had a relationship with the peasantry going back decades, this contrasts with the Bolshevik revolutionary experience, which, at first, was mostly an urban phenomenon. The Chinese revolution moved from the countryside to the city. The Bolshevik revolution went from the city to the countryside. 

The Communist Party used the methods of the mass movements that were developed and tested during the land reform movement. The Party used a delicate balanced of persuasion and compulsion. On the whole, the post-1949 development of the cooperatives was organized on a voluntary basis. It is inconceivable that such a massive social transformation could have occurred without the support of the vast majority of the peasantry in China. The radical transformation owed much to the traditions of the Chinese Communist Party with its deep roots in the lives of the ordinary Chinese peasant. This is connected to the Party’s use of the mass line as a tool of leadership. The mass line is a way that the Party addresses the, often spontaneous, localized, short-sighted, and disconnected, problems and ideas of the masses. In the process of solving the problem or addressing an issue, the Party leads by example. But, the Party also puts the problems and issues that the masses raise within an ideological framework. The Party ties the localized, short-sighted issues raised by the masses to the larger communist strategy. The flow of information goes, as Mao stated, “from the masses to the masses.” The information returns to the masses through the Party that situates the information in a scientific context. Thus, through this process, the consciousness of the masses is raised. (24) (25) (26)

Even in 1956, Mao was proposing a radical break. Mao was moving away from the Soviet orthodoxy. (27) This collectivization process up to 1957 set the stage for the higher development of socialism. The Chinese masses aspired to approach the ideal of communism. The stage was set for the Great Leap Forward. 

Notes.

1. Jurgen Domes, Socialism in the Chinese Countryside (McGill-Queen’s University Press 1980), p. 20

2. Some of the most superficial work on the Cultural Revolution has been done by organizations claiming to be Maoist. The work of the RIM, especially the RCP USA, is extremely superficial. Such organizations formed, for the most part, after the Cultural Revolution of 1965 to 1969, and after the radical period that lasted to 1970. Instead they formed when the forward motion in China was largely over.  They formed in the period when capitalist reversal and opportunism dominated the Chinese Communist Party. So, the narrative they picked up goes little beyond the superficial and, sometimes, falsified narratives in Beijing Review. Their narratives, like their “Maoism.” lack any substance. Their narrative is hype and fluff. 

3. Zhang Chunqiao. “On Excercising All-round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie. (Foreign Language Press 1975) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/zhang/1975/x01/x01.htm

4. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 4

5. “The Central Committee Directive Concerning the Land Problem,” The People’s Republic of China  edited by Mark Selden (Monthly Review Press USA: 1979), p. 215

6. Maurice Meisner. Mao’s China and After (Free Press USA: 1977) p. 141

7. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 146

8. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 13-18

9.  Ramon H Myers, “Agricultural Development,” The People’s Republic of China edited by Harold C. Hinton (Westview Press USA: 1979) p. 180-182 

10. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 12-13

11. Maurice Meisner, 1977,  p. 141-143

12. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 14

13. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 168

14. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 19

15. Raymond H. Myers, “Agricultural Development,” The People’s Republic of China edited by Harold C. Hinton (Westview Press USA: 1979), p. 148

16. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 143 

17. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 144 

18. Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature (Cambridge University Press 2001), p. 71 

19. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p 148 

20. Maurice Meisner 1979, p. 152

21. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p 148-149

22. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 15-16

23. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 182

24. Jurgen Domes, 1980, p. 15-16

25. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 147

26. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 156

27. Maurice Meisner, 1977, p. 173-174

**Also see:

Socialism and Reversal Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

 Two Roads Defeated part 1; Two Roads Defeated part 2; Two Roads Defeated part 3; On the Split between Mao and Lin Biao; Mao Declassified; Review of China: A Century of Revolution;Some of Us reviewed (Part 1); Some of Us reviewed (Part 2);Some of Us reviewed (Part3); A Maoist-Third Worldist Review of Mobo Gao, The Battle for China’s Past; In memory of the great Lenin..; Some lines within the CCP in the Maoist period; Shubel Morgan video On the Theory of Productive Forces; The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution; The Lin Biao Centennial, hooray!; Lin Biao excerpt on the TOPF with important commentary by Prairie Fire; Mao’s Bloody Revolution Revealed (with Philip Short, 2007); Really supporting the GPCR vs. Opportunist Yapping;Morning Sun (2003, Carma Hinton, Richard Gordon and Geremie R. Barmé); Shubel Morgan’s Series On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces”, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of Productive Forces,” part 1, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of Productive Forces,” part 2, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 3, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” part 4 (and video in English), Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 5a, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 5b, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 5c, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 6a, Shubel Morgan: On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 6b, Red Salute to Lin Biao!, The Red Violin

This week, while Congress is trying to rush through the cap-and-trade legislation, President Obama is busy selling his green energy initiative.  He  promises, as he did before, to transform this aspect of the American economy while saving the planet from the illusive man-made global warming (wonder why “climate change” is the preferred terminology nowadays?).  In the process, he will dump hundreds of billions into the  “green” energy industry and create millions of “green” jobs [1]

Unfortunately, this sounds all too similar to the Great Leap Forward [2] occurred in China back in the late 1950s.  A charismatic leader wanted to transform his country from a predominately agricultural society into an industrial one.  Following the footsteps of Stalin’s five-year plans, he wanted to increase the use of heavy machinery.  In order to build machines, he needed raw material, such as steel.  He therefore started a campaign to mobilize millions of peasants to scrap every piece of iron available and to refine them in their own backyards, while leaving the crops in the field to rot .

The result was disastrous.  Sure, millions of peasants were transformed into steel workers, but the farm-work they left behind resulted in a severe shortage of food, and tens of millions were unnecessarily starved to death.  How about all the steel they produced?  As anyone who knew metallurgy had known before, backyard furnaces could not produce quality steel, and thus most had little industrial value.

Today, we have a charismatic President, who know little about energy production, wanting to redirect massive amount of resources from energy producing sources that are already strained into others that are proven to be inefficient.

It’s different!  You may well say, that today’s solar panels and wind turbines are not backyard furnaces and the President is surely surrounded by advisers who know the energy industry inside out.  But how so?  The President recently visited the Nellis Solar Power Plant, the nation’s largest solar array that supposedly save the Air Force Base $1 million a year [3], at the cost of $100 million.  At this rate, the Air Base will break even in 100 years and begin to make money.  But wait!  Typical solar panels such as the ones used there are warranted for 25 years [4]. Natually, the Air Base did not pay for this installation [7], otherwise it may actually need to consider it’s worthiness.  Backyard furnaces they are not, but certainly inefficient energy sources. If the President’s advisers has told him the truth, he has certainly not listened.

Well, at least it will save the planet by reducing carbon dioxide emission, right?  Sure, according to Nellis, the solar arrays

…should [emphasis mine] reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 24,000 tons annually, which is equivalent to removing 185,000 cars from the roadways. [3]

That’s a lot of carbon dioxide, but compared to what?  We humans produce about 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, and nature produces about 180 billion tons [5].  If you don’t have a calculator handy, here are the ratios:

• 24,000/6,000,000,000 = 0.0004%
• 24,000/180,000,000,000 = 0.000013%

These are digits scientists and engineers typically do not even write down.  But every little bits help, right?  Let’s see, if we eliminate all 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide humans produce each year, which means everyone must stop breathing, it would be 6/186 = 0.03, or only 3% of the total.  But wait, as it turns out, carbon dioxide has only a small footprint among all the gases in our atmosphere, about 0.03% [5].  So, 3% of 0.03% is 0.0009% of all gases in the air.  That’s like a bucket of sand on a beach.  Surely cleaning up that bucket-full of sand is going to make a dirty beach look attractive!

I do not remotely imply that millions of people will die as a result of the President’s idealogy.  However, the result will be disastrous in today’s terms.  Many are predictable, even by Obama himself.  In a January 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, the “Anointed One” said that [6]

Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket

This will occur at a time, when many who work in fossil fuel related industries are out of work because of high operating costs imposed by  such a system, and when millions of manufacturing jobs are lost to foreign outfits who can maintain much lower energy costs.

In the rosy Utopian scenario, millions of jobs will be created in the blooming “green” industry, and surely, the fossil fuel and manufacturing workers who lose their jobs can be transferred into these newer and better jobs.  In reality, just as farmers did not know how to produce quality steel, such transfers will not be simple and straightforward, and will certainly not occur in haste.

Let us hope that people will come to their senses and see the true dangers of this initiative, but then this is precisely why the Democrats are trying to rush the bill through the Houses.  The more people ponder on it, the more difficult it becomes.

References

[1]  Steve Hargreaves.  Obama’s forgotten climate agenda.  CNNMoney.com.  June 18, 2009.  <http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/16/news/economy/cap_and_trade/?postversion=2009061813>

[2] Great Leap Forward.  Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward>

[3] Airman 1st Class Ryan Whitney. Nellis activates Nations largest PV Array.  Nellis Air Force Base. December 18, 2007.  <http://www.nellis.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123079933>

[4] Martin LaMonica.  Air Force base in Nevada goes solar with 14-megawatt array.  CNET News.  December 5, 2007.  <http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9829328-54.html>

[5] Monte Hieb.  Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective.  Geocraft.com.  Site last updated October 5, 2007.  <http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html>

[6] Ed Morrissey.  Obama: I’ll make energy prices “skyrocket”.  Hotair.com.  <http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/02/obama-ill-make-energy-prices-skyrocket/>

[7] Nellis Solar Power Plant. Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellis_Solar_Power_Plant>

This isn’t a reference to the Monty Python skit.

Kevin Rudd recently met with Li Changchun, the Chinese Minister for Propaganda (the name of the portfolio tells you something isn’t right). Big deal; except that it was supposed to be a secret from the Australian public. Why is that, we wonder? Could it be anything to do with China’s egregious record of human rights violations?

Sure, Chinese people were killed by their own countrymen in Tiananmin Square in 1989 and as a result of Mao’s Great Leap Forward – from agriculture to industry – in the 1950s, 20 million people were reported as having died from malnutrition. And of course, there is the fact that Chinese people who are practitioners of Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) are being arrested and their organs harvested. When someone, Chinese or foreign, wants an organ transplant, the Chinese medical institution claims it can usually have a compatible organ in one week!

Representatives of the international Falun Gong society asked David Matas and David Kilgour to investigate. This link gives the whole report; also downloadable as a pdf.

http://www.organharvestinvestigation.net

I’m sure 99% of Chinese people don’t know about this – after all, there are over a billion people there. Nonetheless, why doesn’t the international community do something about this abomination? The media is almost silent on it. Why? Could it be something to do with who owns the media and their connections – financially beneficial – with China? China is the backbone of the global economy. What if we did stop trading with them? What would then befall the world economy? If we did, everyone would suffer.

But what are groups like the United Nations, and national governments who are aware of this, doing about it? From what I last heard, the Australian government is dealing with three Chinese people who are giving testimony about their experiences with organ harvesting, and the Chinese government is trying to stop this.

But why aren’t they (1) telling us, the people, what is going on? and (2) making strong representations to stop it?

A snippet from yesterday’s (March 24th) The Australian may give an idea:

The visit by Mr Li, China’s fifth most powerful man, also comes at a time when Beijing wants to win approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board on the $US19.5 billion ($28billion) deal between China’s state-owned Chinalco and Australian- and London-listed mining group Rio Tinto. That deal is one of a flood of applications to the FIRB – including a $2.6 billion takeover of OZ Minerals by China’s Minmetals – which will define the business relationship between the countries for a generation.

It seems a case of money versus humanity.

Buy your Yo-Yo Ma: The Essential Yo-Yo Ma CD at the official NBC Store

Here are three dozen pieces of music, all played by Yo-Yo Ma, culled from his extensive discography. Aside from the technical mastery and beautiful tone that are absolutes in all of his playing, one is dazzled by his curiosity and ability to adapt to so many forms and types of music. His Bach and Vivaldi are pellucid and played with non-sentimental crispness, his tango music gritty and rhythmically pungent, his jazz seemingly spontaneous, the “Meditation” from Thais simply ravishing, “Anything Goes” a romp, and the Appalachian music performed with both respect and a great twang, while the traditional Chinese music is fascinating. It’s really a matter of how much Ma loves whatever he plays here, how entirely he becomes involved in it, and what a fine partner he invariably is to other musicians. This collection is a doozy–it is truly “essential.” –Robert Levine

The Essential Yo-Yo Ma is available at Amazon for $14.99. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• Appassionato
• Songs of Joy & Peace
• Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone
• Bach: The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites
• Simply Baroque

As a teacher I have been frantically trying to understand the economic situation of the last several months, because my kids are constantly asking for explanations. I’ve been going to the expected media outlets for information and I can say with a degree of confidence that I am reasonably informed.

As a history teacher I cannot help but to make references to past economic crises, and I do it constantly throughout my day. I, along with my students, find distinct parallels between the mortgage crisis and, to give you some examples, the stock market collapse of 1929, the demise of the silver-based Spanish empire of the 1600s, and the catastrophic Great Leap Forward in China.

On the surface, my high school students are quick to identify institutionalized greed as the unifying trend between these different downturns, and it is easy to agree. The New York Times in particular has had some scathing op/ed’s in the last few days (see Krugman’s from 12/19) that attack the perceived core values of Wall Street, with banks giving huge bonuses to its employees for making extremely risky loans with no long-term stability. And like I said, to a large part I agree. I think we are seeing the inescapable curse of Roman-Greco hubris taking its toll on our country.

However, I also think there’s more to it. Now that the auto industry in America is going defunct, despite the bailout they are getting, greed needs to be looked at a bit more critically. I have boiled it down that at its core, the “modern world” has a fundamentally flawed view of our planet and its resources, and that is what has driven the economic downturns throughout the last 500 years.

I caught onto this line of thinking when I first saw the Story of Stuff last year. It’s an online movie made by Annie Leonard that talks about the production cycle, and it starts off by pointing out the single largest flaw in it: In producing goods, us humans have relied upon the idea that our planet was going to produce an infinite amount of resources. However, since we live on a finite planet, such an assumption is fundamentally wrong, and I think at the center of what we are witnessing today.

(I’m going to insert a shameless plug here before I continue. In an elective I teach called “global issues,” my students made a video response to The Story of Stuff and posted it on youtube, which you can see here. She responded to our video, and agreed to sit down with my class and have a recorded conversation to be posted on our class podcast, which you can check out here. This whole thing was written about on a PBS Learning site, which you can read here. Yeah Web 2.0!!!)

Let’s get back to the issue. The American car making mentality was pretty clearly “bigger is better.” In order to be making cars bigger and bigger, the assumption seems to be that the resources that make the cars are infinite, the fuel that can feeds them s infinite, and the demand for the cars are infinite. Of course, none of this is true. I can’t imagine that the extremely intelligent people at these car companies didn’t realize this mistake in the face of countless science urging them to reconsider their production practices. It seems instead to just be a really reckless case of deliberate, wishful thinking. When gas prices started soaring, all of the sudden the car companies realized that the fuel supply is very much a finite thing. And when credit dried up, the demand also showed itself to be uncompromisingly finite. And now these companies, who deceived themselves away from embracing reality, have put the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk due to these flawed assumptions.

The credit crisis is the same. There was an absurd belief that the real estate market would never stop growing, that the roof was non-existent and profits were infinite, so any and all risky loans were totally acceptable because the houses they were buying would never stop increasing in value.

The Spaniards, when they ruthlessly pillaged the “New World” in the 1500s, set up a slave labor system in the mountains of Bolivia that extracted silver at a breakneck pace, mostly to feed the Chinese demand for it after the Ming Dynasty decided to abandon its paper currency. The Spaniards used the backs of Africans and indigenous Americans to pull more and more silver out of the ground, assuming the supply to be infinite ,and that the Chinese would always want more and more of it. Then, in a Marxian crisis of oversupply, the value of silver plummeted, silver production came to a screeching halt, and the once grand Spanish Empire, which had put all of its livelihood into silver, whimpered its way to the back of the line in global influence.

Mao had the distorted belief that the rice fields of China were not growing enough rice because greedy capitalists were deliberately not growing rice in order to keep the cost of rice high. Assuming an infinite capability for the ground to nourish rice, he instituted over-production and crop clustering that created the largest man-made famine in human history, ironically and tragically disappointing the name given to it: The Great Leap Forward.

What we’re seeing is not new, and we’re not just dealing with greed, although of course that is part of it. We’re dealing with a dangerous view that our planet can infinitely supply us with materials, and that people will infinitely want them. That has brought acute pains to localized economies throughout history, but it also has wreaked havoc our own environment in the long-term. It is now the case that in the 21st century, with a tightly globalized economy, what should be a localized economic hiccup has instead spiraled to suck everyone in.

In order to get back on track, we need to correct this view of our planet, and it is not going to be pretty. It’s going to be hard to take a species of almost 7 billion who are incorrectly sustaining themselves off a finite planet with the assumption that it is infinite, and to get them to view our planet in the right, limited way. For that reason, I’m not overly sympathetic to the auto industry right now and don’t support the bailout. We don’t need better gas-guzzling cars, we need a re-tooling of the way that we live and transport ourselves that reflects that this planet will not sustain us forever. What I am talking about is a pretty profound change, one that needs to be species-wide and a change of behavior and beliefs. People don’t do that willingly unless they need to because of an unavoidable threat. In some ways, that to me may be the only good thing to come out of this situation. The threat is real. People are losing their jobs. Temperatures and water levels are rising. The time for the wishful thinking of the Big Three is over.

This is probably the least optimistic I’ve been in a while, but human behavior takes longer to change than economic and environmental forces. I hope that this mandatory shift in mentality can happen with as few damages as we can manage, but we’ll have to sit back and see if everyone’s ready to get on board or not.

Rutherford B. Hayes Middle School will never be the same. Danika is in deep trouble for hitting Mrs. Hefty’s right temple with her brown bag lunch. Toni is trying out for the boy’s football league…against her dad’s wishes and the school rules. Kaitlyn is completely boy-crazy and will stop at nothing to express her love for her older brother’s best friend. Yuzi is the new kid at school whose name nobody can pronounce, and in a valiant effort to fit in she is traumatized by being invited to dress up like a stalk of corn at the town’s annual Popcorn Festival. Their worlds collide one afternoon when they all end up in after-school detention and the Secret Keeper Girl Club is formed to save the day. Full of comedy, action, emotion, and life-transforming lessons, each book includes a mother/daughter Girl Gab assignment in an appendix.

I love the fact that girls can read about such a wonderful character as Danika and the other girls to identify with.  Told with Christian values about how to be a true friend and make wise choices, the Secret Keeper books are much more valuable for young tweens then those other books that stress looks and boyfriends.   Packed with quotes about friendship, the girls’ insights into what true friends are, and “secret” keywords you can plug into the Secret Keeper Girl website www.for recipes and fun tips, this is a book that will be a blast for girls to sit down with. Secret Keeper Books are available at book stores everywhere and Amazon.

I LOVE Barefoot Books!  They have such a terrific selection of unique and beautiful books for children.  The drawings and imagary in them is incredible.  They would make great gifts for any occasion.  And they have made it easy for Christmas, they have many wonderful gift collections available right now.  You can purchase their books at BAREFOOT BOOKS WEBSITE. Below are some of my favorites.

Alligator Alphabet - Hardcover
“A is for Alligator! B is for bear! C is for Camel!
Chase us if you dare!”

Can you think of an animal for every letter of the alphabet? In this delightful ABC book, young children will learn the upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet as they meet a parade of exotic and familiar creatures – from alligators to zebras, and impalas to quails.

Colorful drawings and cute words will make your little one giggle and love reading about all the animals.

Counting Cockatoos - Hardcover
Count all kinds of creatures as they tumble, rumble, slink and flap across the pages of this playful book!  Count to twelve with help from tumbling tigers, winking owls and more, while you search for the two cockatoos hidden on every page.  This clever counting adventure makes the perfect gift when paired with Alligator Alphabet.

My four year old loves to count and learn about numbers and Counting Cockatoos makes it even more enjoyable.  I love the illustrations too!

Little Leap Forward - Hardcover
As featured in the New York Times Sunday Book Review!

The first in Barefoot Books’ Young Fiction line, this sensitively written, real-life story focuses on growing up in Beijing in the 1960s, at the time of the Cultural Revolution. Little Leap Forward offers children an intimate and immediate account of a child’s experiences as Mao Tse Tung’s Great Leap Forward policy tightens its grip on China.

Yoga Pretzels

50 Fun Yoga Activities for Kids & Grownups

What a fun and healthy activity to do with your kids!  We love the cards and feel great after we practice them.  Our four year old is so good at the poses!

Practice bending, twisting, breathing, relaxing and more with Yoga Pretzels, a vibrant and colorful set of illustrated cards that provide a healthy dose of fun and education while teaching all the basics of yoga to help your head and heart.

My Daddy is a Pretzel – Hardcover
Yoga for Parents and Kids

Daddy actually did this with our four year old, and they had so much fun.  It is great to read a book and have it be so interactive and educational at the same time. The pictures are fabulous!

Limber up with this unique, child-friendly yoga book! Created for parents and children to share together, but also suitable for adults and older children to use alone, My Daddy is a Pretzel not only introduces a range of postures, it also connects the practices to everyday life, showing how families can integrate their yoga with their activities in the world. A light-hearted look at yoga, yet one with a lasting message, My Daddy is a Pretzel is a wonderful introduction to yoga for readers of all shapes and sizes.

Whole World – Hardcover & CD
Featured in Oprah’s “O List”!

“Printed on forest-friendly paper, this sweet children’s book includes a sing-along CD and eco-tips for preserving the planet”—The O List
I would agree with Oprah!  This was our four year olds favorite!  The music and song was so fun to sing along to and read the book as we sang.  We sang over and over!
Share the message, hear the song, and see Whole World come to life! We are donating ten percent of sales from Whole World to benefit global conservation. To learn more about our environmental partners, please click here.
Sing around the planet, from high in the mountains to low in the valleys, in every town and every city, and with all the fish and birds, trees and flowers! Includes eco-tips on how to live green and a catchy singalong CD, sung by Fred Penner.

Learning a new language used to require tedious  translation, mindles memorization and grueling grammar drills. But learners want faster, easier and more effective language programs as they increasingly intermingle with other cultures both at home and abroad. Rosetta Stone Inc., creator of the world’s No.1 language-learning software, has introduced Rosetta Stone® Version 3 Personal Edition, the next generation of an interactive software program that uses technology to create an environment of complete immersion in the language — the fastest, most effective way to learn a new language. Rosetta Stone Version 3 is now available for U.S. consumers in the 10 most popular languages offered by Rosetta Stone. An additional 20 languages are available in Rosetta Stone Version 2. The Rosetta Stone product is backed by an unconditional six-month money-back guarantee for all purchases made directly from the company.  The website is www.rosettastone.com

This complete software package, enhanced with Audio Companion™ CDs, includes everything you need to learn Spanish at home and on the go.

Begin by building a foundation of essential language skills. Gain confidence and learn to share your ideas, opinions and feelings when you immerse yourself in Spanish with Rosetta Stone.    *  Version 3 Personal Edition CD-ROM software for Levels 1, 2 & 3 (Windows/Mac)
* Headset microphone
* User’s guide
* Audio Companion, a multiple-CD set to play or download to your MP3 player

This set will help you:

* Build your vocabulary and language abilities.
* Spell and write accurately.
* Speak without a script.
* Retain what you’ve learned.
* Read and understand your new language.
* Share ideas and opinions, express feelings and talk about everyday life.

Sample topics include:

* The basics, such as age and family relations
* Questions, greetings, introductions
* Times of day, calendar terms, the weather
* Directions, locations, telling time
* Present, past and future tense
* Apologies and polite requests
* How to order at a restaurant and give and receive directions
* Emotions, opinions and ideas
* Political, media, business and religious terms

I think I should start tagging my posts. In fact, I should go back and retroactively tag them, but I’m too lazy. Besides, who wants to read their own rants and musings from days past? And who could stomach such sappy, melodramatic crap anyway?

WordPress is claiming I have one comment. But when I go to view it from the administrative back end, I can’t seem to locate it. Perhaps it’s visible from the main site, but that doesn’t do me any good.

The more I read about Sarah Palin, the more I get this uneasy feeling that she’s going to be the US’s Madame Mao. Their similarities are quite frightening. The switch from the entertainment business to politics, the rise to power during a dividing and crucial period in the nation’s development, the ailing leader and the political position only a step from leadership, the anti-intellectualism, the frequent reminder of other’s patriotism or the lack thereof, the abuses of power, these are all characteristics of Madame Mao. Her greatest claim to fame is the Cultural Revolution, which set China back some 30 years. If Sarah Palin gets elected as VP, I have to wonder if the US will go through its own period of “Cultural Revolution.” That would be a sad, sad day indeed. But I think most people who actively follow current events with an impartial eye would see it coming from a mile away.

And, to take a play from the Republican’s book, Palin’s home state is closer to Beijing than Washington D.C. almost as close to Beijing as it is to Washington D.C.. She definitely qualifies for the job because she received experience just from watching the last woman leader on her side of the world!

The rational part of my minds insists McCain and Palin won’t win, simply because people are ready to get rid of the Republicans. But the skeptical part of my mind is fearful of the same Bush vs. Gore upset. And the practical part of my mind is screaming to make plans for when the undesired couple does win.

If the Democrats this election cycle get a good 10-seat majority in the Senate, it won’t really matter who’s president. But seeing as how congress’s approval rating is even lower than the president’s rating, I find that doubtful.

I recently finished the Service Station. I have to admit that it’s a neat little set, and a nice throwback to the Octan theme from the 90’s. But I can’t get into it as much as I would like, largely in part because of the gratitious use of special pieces, and the need for decals on all of the major image pieces. In fact, without the decals, the only thing that would hint at it being an Octan station would be the color scheme. And it isn’t as if there are any multi-piece decals either. For such a neat little set, and my first town set with a baseplate in a very long time (measured in decades), that’s a crying shame.

I saw the pictures of the new Power Miners line. The images are low-res, but so far, I’m not really feeling excited. The glow-in-the-dark puke green really doesn’t do it for me. Bring back Mtron I say!

(photo showing the excavation of mass graves in Srebrenica)

What is genocide?

Genocide is the deliberate, systematic and violent destruction of a group (an ethnic, racial, religious, national or political group). This destruction can take many forms:

• the outright murder of (the majority of) the members of the group
• inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction
• measures intended to prevent births
• systematic rape as a means of terror and a means to “dilute” the identity of the group
• forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
• destroying the (cultural) identity of the group (forceful assimilation; imposition of a language, religion etc.)

“Systematic” is important here. Short-term outburst or pogrom type actions will probably not amount to genocide.

The “intent to destroy” is also crucial when labelling actions or campaigns as genocidal. The destruction, however, doesn’t have to be physical (i.e. large-scale murder). As is obvious from the list above, cultural destruction or destruction of the groups’ separate identity is also genocide.

Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states that genocide is

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group…”

The “in part” bit has led to some confusion. When is the part of the group that is being destroyed big enough to warrant the label of genocide? There is still some discussion about absolute numbers of victims, percentages of the total population of the group, degree of killing in the territory controlled by the killers etc.

Of all the generally recognized genocides that have taken place throughout human history, the most infamous ones occured in the 20th century (the Holocaust, Rwanda, Armenia, Cambodia, Stalin’s forced famines, Mao’s Great Leap Forward etc.).

Stages of genocide

Before a genocide is actually carried out, the perpetrators usually take a number of “preparatory” steps:

• dehumanization of a group (vermin, insects or diseases…)
• promotion of narratives of “us and them“
• hate propaganda, polarization
• criminalization of a group (group has to be eliminated “in order that we may live”; them or us)
• identification of victims (“yellow star”)
• concentration of victims (ghettos)
• mobilization of large numbers of perpetrators
• state support and logistical organization (arms, transport, training of militias etc.)

Causes of genocide

The causes of genocide are often hard to pin down. They include:

• long-lasting tensions
• imbalances in political power
• imbalances in wealth or economic power
• scarcity
• religious incompatibilities
• indoctrination and propaganda
• civil war
• ideals of cultural purity and autonomy
• ethnological constructs (e.g. the creation of “hutuness” in Rwanda) which get a life of their own
• colonial heritage
• outside indifference
• etc.

Intervention to stop genocide

Here’s a post on humanitarian intervention, and here’s another. Most people around the world agree that the international community should intervene to stop a genocide:

(source)