Comparing Mao to Hitler

Henry C.K. Liu hliu at mindspring.com
Sat Jun 5 06:22:30 PDT 1999


Dr. DeLong employs the techniques of Dr. Gobble, except with flat humor. He thinks by repeating the same propaganda frequently enough, it would become true. He is unworthy of further attention. Bozo is too kind a word for him.

Henry C.K. Liu

Brad De Long wrote:


> >This appears to be still the problem of logic....
> >
> >Of course it is a weakness of a socialist state that 10 years after a
> >revolution it is not able to manage resources and reserves to avoid
> >substantial deaths from major natural disasters. It is also true that Mao
> >and others were associated with major left errors which disrupted the rural
> >economy through the Great Leap Forward. But it is also true that the
> >climate of China is regularly irregular.
> >
> >
> >It is ahistorical if Socialist China in its early formation is judged by
> >21st century standards of social management of economies.
> >
> >Chris Burford
> >
> >London
>
> *Snort* *Giggle* *Chortle*.
>
> I had written:
>
> >
> >I no longer find it funny...
>
> I withdraw my claim. It *is* funny--in a sick, perverted, demented, and
> despairing kind of way...
>
> Mao decides--throwing aside everything about economies of scale in
> industrial development that had been learned over the previous two
> centuries--that the people of China are to stop farming and make steel in
> their backyards. No one dares tell Mao that this policy is having a
> catastrophic effect on agricultural production. Thus when the local
> bureaucrats backed up by the PLA come to requisition the harvest, they take
> away so much of it to feed the cities that a very large number of
> people--perhaps between 8 and 80 million? we don't know in large part
> because the then-regime had no interest in permitting any contemporaneous
> documentation of what was going on--starve to death.
>
> And in a bold act of staring the facts in the face, Mr. Burford categorizes
> this as a "weakness of a socialist state."
>
> Surely it would be more appropriate to say something like my:
>
> > 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 count as among the greatest human
> > disasters of this century...
>
> But instead Mr. Burford wants to blame the "irregular" climate of China.
> And he wants to plead that it is "ahistorical" to judge "Socialist China in
> its early formation" by "21st century standards of social management."
>
> The first principle of power and rule--a principle very early established
> after the invention of agriculture, once it became clear that agriculture
> meant that the peasants couldn't run away from their fields, and thus that
> your thugs-with-spears could obtain an easy life for you and your priests
> by coming up to them and saying "your grain or your life"--the first
> principle of power and rule is that when your thugs-with-spears requisition
> grain, *leave* *enough* *for* *the* *peasants* *to* *live* *on*.
>
> It is not by 21st century A.D. standards of social management that Mao
> Zedong is weighed in the balance and found (severely) wanting. It is by
> standards of social management that were well-known to Sargon of Akkad, to
> Alexandros of Ilium, to Agamemnon of Mykenai, to Minos of Knossos.
>
> There is indeed a "problem of logic" here. But it ain't mine...
>
> *Snort* *Giggle* *Chortle*.
>
> Brad DeLong



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