The following are reposted from a history list:
From: David McInerney, Australian National University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Responding to Brad DeLong (May 3):
The point is though, surely, that there is a significant difference
between a state and/or party structured to systematically destroy a
community and another that, due to certain features of its structure,
produced the effect of depriving large areas and large numbers of the
rural population of sustenance (i.e., what happened in the GLF). The
Cultural Revolution was an attempt to overcome certain structural
problems of the Chinese party and state, which depended upon the
formation of parallel organizations supposedly under the direction of
Mao himself, turned against the party.
There is nothing that suggests that he exercised the control over those
organizations in the sense that the SS (for example) formed a
organization within the Nazi state against the armed forces and
bureaucracy, instead the "control" seemed to exist in a highly-charged
ideological situation in which Mao was able to influence these groups
through certain gestures or remarks, and that his opponents did not have
sufficient symbolic power to oppose him (or to appropriate his symbolic
power) while he was alive, and the Gang of Four was able to do so, given
Madame Mao's position.
The point is that the old "totalitarian" psychologistic explanation just
doesn't cut it, except with those who want easy answers. A concrete
analysis of the political institutions and their articulations with the
ideological and economic levels is necessary to make any sense of these
very different situations. Although the GLF and CR were disastrous on
the whole, they were not the result of a logic of genocide. The KKK and
Nazis are genocidal, racist organizations. The CPC is not, and has
never been, despite the effects of its administration upon the
population. The charges of "cultural genocide" that one often hears
with regard to the Tibetan case
could also be said with regard to the Han population, if the undermining
of practices of footbinding and Manchu pigtails could be considered the
destruction of a culture. The campaign against the "Four Olds" and the
Cultural Revolution would then be genocidal in intent. I'm not
convinced that such a definition of genocide really helps.
From: Jeff Sommers, Northeastern University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brad is right, this is more or less a "fact" on numbers in a sense. His
Burroughs adding machine is in good working order. Yet, there is room
for discussion on whether this is the last word on the subject.
For example, the University of Wisconsin's Maurice Meisner, who many
consider to be the dean of post WW II Chinese scholarship, presents
three related ways of looking at the 20-30 million deaths caused by the
Great Famine begun in the late 1950s under Mao's tenure in his THE DING
XIAPING ERA AND INQUIRY INTO THE FATE OF CHINESE SOCIALISM 1978-1994
(New York:
Hill and Wang, 1996). One, it was a horrible miscalculation. Two, it
was the end of famines on this scale (literally, that had been occurring
for the last few centuries off and on in China about every generation or
so).
In other words, it brought this horrible historical pattern to an end.
Or, three, it was both. Both a horrible miscalculation, while also
afterwards bringing this pattern of famine every generation of so to an
end, thus, perhaps, saving millions.
One could, for example, and I think many won't like this, see the US war
on Vietnam as a more direct attack on people with intent to kill, than
Mao's failed policies and the famine it produced.... Of course, I
understand your position is that it was intended to prevent more Maos
and Stalins. A position I don't buy as primarily causal in the
creation of those policies, for the same policy direction was taken
against a stridently democratic experiment such as Allende's Chile, or
because of the very democratic character of that phenomenon, perhaps
more accurately labeled Chile's Allende.
Stalin is more complicated. Let's just say that his main target was the
democratic left, who he labeled the right (Here, I'm referring to the
800,000 people actually shot under his 25 year rule, rather than the
millions killed through misguided policies). Made all the more
complicated the real siege conditions under which the Soviet experiment
existed. For anyone looking to escape ideological histrionics on the
subject (of which I argue most of the scholarship is and will be for
some time due to the politically charged nature of the subject), the
University of Michigan's, formerly of the University of Chicago, Ronald
Grigor Sunny handles this complex topic of a horrible period in his text
THE SOVIET EXPERIMENT (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1988).
Brad wrote: "these count as among the greatest human disasters of this
century..."
Again, Brad, I agree, yet at the same time, decontextualized from the
struggles of domination and freedom in the 19th and 20th century along
with ultimate multi-causality for these events, along with unintended
consequences of actions taken to prevent them, none of it will make much
sense, nor will we make any progress to prevent such future events. I'm
all for simplicity. I dislike complexity for complexity sake (often the
motor of the academy), so the complexity of these problems, believe me,
brings me no joy.
At any rate, I think David McInerney's point is well taken. Intent does
matter (and no doubt Stalin intended death for many), as do the
historically specific conditions and place in the global system which
created these people and events.
With all due respect to you Brad, an Economist, I think this is the
greatest failing of Economics currently. You can't just break out the
Burroughs adding machine to explain society, nor economy. I grant it's
helpful, but is not the last word, and would argue further that reliance
on mechanistic formulations are what have led Economists, and ideologues
generally, to having so badly faltered in predicting and seeing the
causes of recent historical phenomena, such as the Asian economic
crisis. Some exceptions exist, such as with your acquaintance P.
Krugman, who has completely reoriented away from unidimensional
methodological tools for explaining history, society, and economy, in
his most recent book. May I respectfully suggest you try the same?
Sorry to keep an old argument rolling Brad....
From: Henry C.K. Liu
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Responding to Brad DeLong (May 3):
Would Brad DeLong care to detail how many of the more than 30 million
people were killed by Mao? The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
Revolution were complex revoultionary undertakings that incurred heavy
cost for the Chinese nation, but only propagandists would describe them
as among the greatest human disasters of this century. These two
programs performed very critical functions in China's protracted
struggle against Western imperialism. I would think it would be more apt
to describe the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in three days as
the greatest human disaster of this century.
From: Adam K. Webb, Princeton University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Responding to Brad DeLong (May 3):
> Alas! The fact remains that Mao Zedong was (along with Josef Stalin and
> Adolf Hitler) the head of one of the very, very few regimes that managed
> to kill more than thirty million people in this century. Mao's Great Leap
> Forward and the Cultural Revolution these count as among the greatest
> human disasters of this century...
This is a distortion. Hitler and Stalin deliberately killed large numbers
of people as opponents. First, the famine deaths during the Great Leap
Forward are, of course, deeply regrettable. They were, however, the
result of mismanagement and the inability to implement a certain kind of
rural industrialisation under conditions of limited state capacity. It
may have been foolish and reckless in retrospect, but it did start from
sound intentions and would not qualify as criminal by most definitions.
Second, the Cultural Revolution was far less violent than most political
upheavals. The number of deaths was relatively low, and the worse that
happened to most victims is that they were removed from office, paraded in
the streets, and perhaps sent temporarily to the countryside. The
Cultural Revolution may have seen some excesses on the part of zealots,
but those excesses are blown far out of proportion by the current Chinese
regime and its overseas sympathisers. It is also widely believed, as part
of that regime's legitimising myths, that the Cultural Revolution was a
period of economic stagnation--when in fact the data show a consistently
booming economy through the 60s and 70s. I might note, moreover, that the
concerns that led Mao to launch the Cultural Revolution have been proved
valid by subsequent events. After his death, the technocrats have
increased inequality and eviscerated party ideology, exactly as he
predicted they would if given the chance. The man's motives were
legitimate. --AKW
