Comparing Mao to Hitler

[Jacob Segal]

>Max Sawicky wrote:
>
>>That's a little short of a ringing endorsement:
>>"Read Mao!  He's no stupider than Bill Clinton!"
>>
>>I would urge higher standards for texts which
>>purport to liberate the world's people.
>>
>>Can you seriously deny that, under a Maoist
>>regime, you, me and Louis would be working
>>shoulder to shoulder in one of Liu's
>>"reeducation" camps?
>
>Look Max, I'm no Maoist. The Chinese CP has done a lot of brutal things in
>its reign. But this harping on the alleged childishness or whatever of
>their prose style is pretty childish in itself. It's not easy to run a poor
>country of 1 billion people surrounded by hostile foreign powers. We can
>sit here all we like and pontificate about their crimes and blunders, but
>that's really easy for us to do here in Imperialism Central. For all the
>crimes and blunders, I think the Chinese revolution was a good thing, and I
>think the same aboout the Russian revolution. India may be more pleasing to
>those of us spoiled by bourgeois democracy, but China's social achievements
>are pretty extraordinary. They reduce Nicholas Eberstat to tortured
>explanations of the relation between health & GDP.
>
>Doug

The Russian and Chinese revolutions were "good things?"  Compared to what?
Were the Bolsheviks better then the Czarist reign or better than a
socialist democracy under Kerensky?  I fail to see how any revolution that
leads to Stalin and the collectivization of the peasant or Mao and the GLF
and the Cultural Revolution can be deemed positive events, unless you make
some argument about the alternative.  The crimes of neo-liberalism hardly
constitute a defense of communist crimes.

Jacob Segal