At 06:23 07/06/99 -0700, you wrote:
>>
>>I was saying that an issue like the Great Leap Forward cannot fundamentally
>>be analysed only in terms of one man, however great, flawed, or wicked. The
>>dynamic of China's socialisation in the 50's was one in which millions
>>participated and had a momentum of its own, beyond the conscious control of
>>any one individual.
>>
>
>I am not sure that I agree completely. Trotsky held your view:
>
> "Mediocrity, yes; nonentity, no," I [Trotsky] answered him
> [Ivan Smirnov in 1925]. "The dialectics of history have
> already hooked him [Stalin] and will raise him up. He is
> needed by all of them--by the tired radicals, by the bureaucrats,
> by the nepmen, the kulaks, the upstarts, the sneaks, by
> all the worms that are crawling out of the upturned soil
> of the manured revolution. He knows how to meet them on
> their own ground, he speaks their language, and he knows
> how to lead them. He has the deserved reputation of an old
> revolutionist, which makes him invaluable to them as a
> blinder on the eyes of the country.... [I]f everything
> continues to go automatically as it is going now, Stalin
> will just as automatically become dictator."
>
>I cannot help believing that China's destiny would have been a much, much
>happier one had Mao suffered a fatal heart attack in late 1956, and had the
>Peng-Liu-Deng troika then taken supreme power.
>
>But on the other hand I cannot help believing that Mao's key role was the
>result of structural factors: I think that *any* democratic
>institutions--whether local elections or freedom of the press or freedom of
>debate within the Inner Party--would have made it impossible for the Inner
>Party to pretend that everything was excellent...
>
>
>Sincerely yours,
>
>
>Brad DeLong
Yes, this is an interesting "counterfactual". The exact optimum date of his death is difficult to decide. 56 or 57. Before or after the blooming of the hundred flowers? After the first or the second edition of "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People"?
Mao could have been enshrined for leading the second most important revolution this century, by perseverance over a much longer period than Lenin.
The Chinese Party would probably have felt unease towards the Soviet Union but the international communist movement might not have split so dramatically.
There would have been some famines.
But the Cultural Revolution would not have been launched. And although, like the Paris Commune, it was doomed to failure, it seems to me also an experiment that humanity had to try.
I am sure BDL's point is true that a developed western press would have prevented the PRC exercising a "peoples democratic dictatorship". (Though it concealed Kennedy's sexual indulgences as effectively as Mao's were concealed.)
But the CPC had its own feedback systems. Even some of the less creditable historical details seem to me to suggest the party was seething with interest in, and potential conflicts over, political and economic affairs.
Perhaps the comparison is with Ho Chin Minh, a less complicated and more likeable figure, and with the Communist Party of Vietnam, which had a less stormy history but still had to wrestle with major political questions, even without the benefit of a capitalist dominated 'free' press.
Chris Burford
London