
Looking back on the Great Leap Forward - randomname2
https://www.historytoday.com/frank-dik%C3%B6tter/looking-back-great-leap-forward
======
ythl
I like the part where they killed all the sparrows and triggered huge famines
when insects started devouring crops unchecked.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign)

~~~
pastProlog
Yes, the PRC has been run so incompetently by the standing committee of the
Politburo of the CPC it has become by some measures the largest economy in the
world.

How about when they were so eager to increase production that they failed to
prevent wind erosion, causing massive crop failure, starvation, and I guess
that means its OK to call it a genocide? Oh yaa, that was in the USA, 19 years
before this happened. Where are the article on the Dust Bowl _GENOCIDE_ ? (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl)
)

~~~
flomble
Yes, since Mao's death and the complete reversal of his economic policies and
embracing of capitalism by Deng Xiaoping, whom Mao disgraced for his
unorthodoxy, the economy of China has rapidly developed. There is a reason
this article lays the blame for the senseless waste of life at Mao's feet and
not the CCP leadership as a whole.

Comparing the Dust Bowl to the Great Leap Forward is... questionable. How many
people died due to the Dust Bowl? Did the US government of the time respond to
it by doubling down on an absurd economic plan in the furtherance of a
political ideology?

~~~
pastProlog
> embracing of capitalism

Zhao Ziyang embraced capitalism, and he was arrested after the June 4th
incident. Capitalism run by the communist party of China?

Also, Mao and Zhou Enlai are who made peace with the USA, not Deng Xiaoping.

> Deng Xiaoping, whom Mao disgraced for his unorthodoxy

Mao and Deng had a falling out in the mid to late 1960s, but Mao empowered
Deng again in 1974.

Deng Xiaoping called himself a communist, not a capitalist. He did say it
doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.
If China was a capitalist system, it would be more like Japan or South Korea
or the US or Western Europe.

Deng said he was proceeding in a dialectic manner economically. If you don't
know what that means, then you don't know what communism is, and you wouldn't
be able to tell if Deng was a communist or not. Actually Mao was accused by
people to his left of abandoning communism due to his interpretation of the
theory of productive forces (as well as the role of peasantry and proletariat
etc.) Deng just expanded on that.

~~~
flomble
The reason Deng Xiaoping had to use a coy phrase about cats to avoid admitting
to his policies running counter to communism is that communism is at the core
of the Party's identity and history, and that abandoning it openly would
seriously undermine their legitimacy. The 'dialectical' approach to communism
has meant slowly discarding almost everything which makes an economy
communist. The "socialist market economy" allows private ownership, even of
means of production and allows the private accumulation of capital. If you
want to argue that it's actually communist because the transition was slow and
the leadership still claims to be communist with a straight face, I'm not
going to bother rebutting that.

The reason China's system is not more like the countries you listed is that it
is autocratic, and the reason Zhao Ziyang was arrested was his excessive and
open sympathy for a people's democratic movement.

~~~
twblalock
> The 'dialectical' approach to communism has meant slowly discarding almost
> everything which makes an economy communist.

The dialectical approach is the traditional approach, invented by Marx and
added to by Engels and others, which they used to explain pretty much
everything. It's not something invented by Deng Xaioping. It is in fact the
essence of Marx's philosophy.

In a nutshell, the dialectic is an explanation for the evolution of society
that looks at the systems by which society produces what it needs, i.e. "modes
of production," and how contradictions in these modes of production are
resolved through the creation of new modes. Hegel used the dialectical
framework to describe the evolution of ideas, but Marx turned it upside down
and argued that ideas were a consequence of the material conditions of life,
the basis of which is the mode of production.

The classic example of Marx's dialectical thinking is his analysis in _The
Communist Manifesto_ that capitalism "produced its own gravediggers," the
industrial proletariat. The proletariat would overthrow capitalism, but
existed _because of_ capitalism. The contradictions in the capitalist system
caused the creation of an entire class of people which would eventually
overthrow it and create a socialist society, and then a communist society. In
other words, communism could never exist without capitalism having existed
first, because the social class which would create communism would not have
existed unless capitalism had created it.

Marx, followed by others including Lenin and Stalin, insisted that the full
development of the productive forces was a necessary precursor to communism.
He elaborated on this in the _Critique of the Gotha Program_ , in which he
advocated a different distribution of resources than in a full communist
society -- some people would get more than others, according to their
contribution to society rather than their need. At a later time, the
productive forces would be developed to the point that they could provide
enough wealth to distribute to everyone according to need, regardless of their
contribution to society. (It's not unlike the arguments of some basic income
proponents -- automation (productive forces) has created a society in which
there is enough wealth to spread around to everyone, regardless of whether or
not they have jobs.)

Similarly, the Soviet Union initially instructed the Chinese Communist Party
to cooperate with the KMT in the 1920s, because they believed that full
development of productive forces, under a capitalist regime, was a necessary
precursor to communism. Not helpful, or merely good to have, but _necessary_
according to Marx's dialectical philosophy.

The reason Marxism and Maoism are distinguished from each other is that Mao
rejected that view, which was originally formulated by Marx, and advocated
that communism be built by rural peasants rather than the industrial
proletariat. Deng's ideology was closer to orthodox Marxism than Mao's was, in
many ways. Deng argued that Mao tried to move too fast and skip the stages of
social evolution that were necessary preconditions for communism, namely a
thriving capitalist economy. If you want to redistribute wealth, you have to
create it first. Deng argued that a market economy was the best way to do
that, and that some people would get rich, but that's acceptable because it
could be sorted out later when the productive forces were sufficient to
support a true communist distribution of wealth. This is very similar to the
views Marx expressed in _Gotha_ , but more accepting of private property -- as
long as it remains useful.

Maybe Deng was disingenuous and tried to sneak capitalism in through the back
door, or maybe he really did believe what he said. But you can't dismiss his
views as being non-Marxist ipso facto, because they are clearly derived from
Marx's theory of history and expressed via Marxist concepts.

~~~
eropple
This is probably the best post I've ever read on HN. Thank you for making it.
Deng's leadership, as you note, is so canonically, textbook Marxist that
arguments to the contrary sort of make me blink and go "what?".

Your post reminded me that the thing _nearly everybody forgets_ (and I'm
totally being generous when saying "forgets", because I'm convinced most
critics of Marxism--and I consider myself a partial one--have never read Marx)
is that Marx considered capitalism, in its state as, you note, as a necessary
precursor, to be a _good thing_. Capitalism, for its many, many, many faults,
is a damned sight better for your average person than feudalism is. (This is a
reason why, despite my own beefs with capitalism and even mixed economies, I
will hold up pitchforks and torches when the anarcho-capitalists come to town,
because anarcho-capitalism is functionally either wishcasting nonsense or
feudalism in a funny hat--no intermediate stage.)

~~~
twblalock
I'm not sure Marx would have agreed that capitalism was good, but rather that
it was necessary for society to pass through a capitalist phase in order to
get to the really good part, communism.

The sad thing is, most people who graduated high school in countries other
than the United States know this stuff. Considering the impact these ideas
have had on the world, they are worth learning about. I had to explain this
stuff to a lot of students when I was in academia, except the foreign
students.

~~~
eropple
To be clear, I mean "good" in a relative sense. I mean--like, capitalism, to
Marx, is if not a _strict_ positive development, it's real, real close to that
relative to the alternatives at the time Marx was writing.

Also, yes, that this is obvious to people who didn't have a K-12 education in
the United States is...troubling. But so are a lot of things about K-12.

------
douche
Mao is quite possibly the most murderous, irrational dictator of all time. The
communists party of China has more blood on their hands than the German Nazi
party.

~~~
sverige
Estimates of Stalin's body count range from 14 million to 70 million, so he's
at least a close second. And Pol Pot might hold the record for rate of mass
killing, wiping out over 2 million people in six weeks.

Some people scoff when I ridicule them for saying "Communism has never been
tried." No, the _communists_ have never been tried - in a court of law.

~~~
justratsinacoat
Honestly, the sort of True Believer who classifies Stalinist Russia, Maoist
China, Pot's Cambodia, Castro's Cuba, etc, as all "true Scotsman" communism
isn't worth talking to about communism anyway.

Rare is the person who is willing to describe some randomly selected
totalitarian dictatorship as a "capitalist" regime.

~~~
mc32
That's because capitalism isn't a form of government. It's an economic system.
Communism is both a form of government and an economic system (although there
is variance in the form of the economic aspect of it).

~~~
makomk
If you look at where the actual political power lies in (say) the United
States, it's clear that capitalism is both a form of government and an
economic system too.

~~~
theli0nheart
Until we create a form of government where money and politics can't mix, a
country's economic system and form of government will always be complementary.

~~~
ue_
Money is not required for an economic system; furthermore, Communism is by
definition moneyless.

~~~
theli0nheart
My point stands. It doesn't matter if you're bribing someone with seashells or
hundred dollar bills: it's still a bribe.

Corruption can exist in any form of government. Just because a form of
government might be moneyless doesn't mean that you can't exert influence with
power or wealth.

------
force_reboot
Most of my information on China comes from my father who was born in China,
and was very well studied in Chinese history, although he left when he was
young because of the famines during the Great Leap Forward. The part of
history that he emphasized to me, was that in spite of the Great Leap Forward
and Cultural Revolution killing tens of millions of people, communism was
still much better than what came before. There was _constant_ famine before
communism.

I'm not so well versed in Chinese history myself, but I believe this
narrative. One thing that confirms this is a graph of China's population. It
shoots up after 1950, and you can't really identify either of these major
catastrophes by looking at a population graph. The obvious explanation is the
population shot up because people had enough to eat, notwithstanding these two
discrete events.

Would Chiang Kai-shek have done better? The Guomindang certainly wanted to
institute land reforms that would have benefited peasants (the vast majority
of Chinese) without the central control of communism. On the other hand, it's
not clear that the Guomindang would have had the power to actually implement
these policies.

~~~
zubat
It's certainly true that China massively changed its land use policy following
the PRC's formation. What I think is most interesting to consider, though, is
whether the collectivization process had the same catalyzing action as
enclosure in pre-industrial Britain. In both cases villages were pushed from a
subsistence-driven existence towards top-down control, trade, and an uprooting
of labor that could subsequently move to cities and work in factories. China's
development into a modern industrial country may well have been premised on
the massive application of violence of the early PRC era.

This prompted me to Google for "enclosure vs collectivization" which brought
up this interesting-looking article on the topic [0].

[0] [http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm](http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm)

~~~
Animats
China has far less arable land per capita than most large countries.[1]
There's not much slack for major screwups in agriculture. This has been a
major driving factor in China's history. China had six famines in the 20th
century, and a long history of them before that. The Great Leap Forward was
the last and worst one.

[1]
[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC)

------
clw8
And the survivors still put portraits of him in their living rooms.

~~~
jhedwards
This is an interesting point. My wife is Chinese and she explained this to me:
people like her grandfather are thankful for Mao while they acknowledge his
failures. The reason is simple: before Mao there was a long period of Chaos,
and before that the Qing dynasty was an extremely oppressive government.
Without going into too many details, the peasants were being screwed for
hundreds of years. Because of Mao's efforts China became a unified country.
Sure, there were decades of terror and famine the severity of which are
astonishing, but they were relatively brief historicaly speaking and the
people were just happy that China was "theirs". Moreover, the government was
stable enough that the people who came after Mao were able to improve things,
which didn't always happen historically.

It's not a great comparison but a similar thing happened with the Ming
dynasty. If I recall correctly, the Ming emperor was terribly brutal, but
people were so thankful that it wasn't the mongolians that they didn't care.

~~~
eru
In a broader Chinese context it makes some sense to see the suffering and
rebellions of the late Ming dynasty and perhaps until Deng Xiaoping as the
'usual' chaos of a dynastic transition.

~~~
khuey
Presumably you mean the late Qing here?

~~~
eru
I do, thanks for correcting.

------
jokoon
> ‘He who does not work shall not eat.’

Funny that I still hear and read people who see things that way in the modern
west: "if you don't contribute, you deserve nothing from society". Welfare
still seems to be taboo for some voters.

I prefer to view the Great Leap Forward as a tragedy, rather than a genocide
or mao murdering people like it's a plain open intent. I mean if I align
myself with the definition of genocide and wikipedia's article, am I so wrong?
To me, the moment you starts saying "this was bad, this was worse", you take
sides, and I don't think it's objective enough when you deal with a country
that is so far away from the west.

I think chinese leaders were eager to not see their oldest civilization falter
(at least it was their political belief), so they chose to make huge
sacrifices, meaning cracking down on remote rural places that were anti state.

Pointing fingers and comparing the number of people dying with the soviets or
hitler, and dismissing the context seems a little easy, and will be perceived
as taking sides.

------
discreteevent
The book "Wild Swans" (written a good while ago) gives a very good insight
into what it was like for a young person to grow up in this madhouse.

~~~
daltonlp
Good recommendation.

A few more books worth reading:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Life_of_Chairman_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Life_of_Chairman_Mao)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_China_Blues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_China_Blues)

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/118690.This_Kind_of_War](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/118690.This_Kind_of_War)

It may not be possible to fully understand China's 20th century struggles, but
it's a fascinating subject.

~~~
AndrewOMartin
If we're recommending books, there's "Music, Food and Love: A Memoir" by Guo
Yue (whose name means "Little leap forward"). He grew up in the hutongs of
Beijing, when food and traditional music were pretty much the only subjects
you could talk about freely, he therefore became a musician and chef.

In fact he requested the position of flautist when he was forced to join the
Red Army, a remarkable request, only more remarkable because they made the
position for him.

Every chapter of his life is defined by the smells and flavours of the food at
that time, and so each chapter ends with those recipies so you can experience
it yourself.

He now owns a restaurant in London where he hosts 16 course banquets of his
food, serenading the diners with his flute music.

He's a lovely guy and his memoir, and food is the closest I'll ever get to
having a real _feel_ for that time.

------
jerryhuang100
I found most horror stories retold here are very familiar to what I heard
throughout the school years way back in Taiwan.

~~~
laretluval
And now you're hearing them from another member of the same team in the Cold
War.

------
peter303
Half of China population is under 30 and only known the good times of plenty.
The original revolution, the cultural revolution,,etc are as about remote as
the US revolutionary war and civil war to US citizens.

~~~
fma
More recently applicable, racial segregation and women's rights.

------
MichaelMoser123
the 'great leap forward' was a result of the policy of forcing all the
peasants into big collective farms (aka collectivization); it has been a
tragedy in all former communist countries that adopted this policy (Poland
didn't adopt it). In the Soviet Union it led to the famine of 1932-1933; this
one killed seven millions.

Now the collective farms were supposed to press money out of agriculture,
money that was needed for developing heavy industry; they did that, but it
cost millions of lives, In China they also had strange notions of backyard
steel furnaces in agricultural communes and the four pests campaign. In Russia
they had the great terror - but that came later than collectivization.

