In a "more normal" society, in times of famine, people rebel and kill their leaders. That's kind of the "healthy"/correct thing to do: even if you die trying to kill your leaders (no biggie since you likely would've starved anyway), in the end someone succeeds, they get replace by somewhat better leaders, worse case by foreign invaders that can only be better than current leaders anyway, some of your relatives carrying genes and ideas in common with you have better changes of surviving/multiplying. In a more evolved society, applying the rules results in relatively small number of death and explosive cultural and scientific progress afterwards - think about the French revolution (mostly triggered by famine btw). Also, even in the worst case scenario, when a country dissolve in a swarm of anarchic hordes, those hordes still are better off: they can go an pillage the neighboring countries.
If a society actually manages to turn its population into fully obedient sheeple, which is probably what the Chinese emperors managed to do, and then the communist party carried on doing... then you get catastrophic outcomes like these.
And they are truly catastrophic, worse than worse, because in a war at least you have some "survival of the best warrior" selection that improves the overall human gene pool...
The big lesson to be learned here is that training people to be obedient and non-violent makes it impossible for them to fix or destroy a sick social order, and this leads sooner or later to massive numbers of deaths. Our natural propensities for disobedience, individualism, and violence against authority are what keeps societies healthy when kept at a low-enough-but-not-zero level.
One can only wonder what catastrophes the "social credit score" thing will surely sooner or later lead too...
If famines persisted, it was seen as as the doing of the emperor and that they were unworthy and thus could be replaced by anyone who had military strength, the Han dynasty founder was essentially a middle-class policeman.
Moreover emperors have long been got rid of by the Chinese Revolution of 1911, if people are sheeple, why would they violently depose their emperor?
You seem to also have forgotten the Tiananmen protests and subsequent massacre, which were against the Cultural Revolution and Great Famine.
That's all not in small part because the best and brightest people of the generation killed each other in a civil war.
With all Jiang Zemin's flaws, his best move was to "politically castrate" the party, and distance intra-party affairs from state governance. This is what made the two decades of progress possible: civil servants without little red books instead of brains.
In the current CCPs internal lingo, there is a term "Marxist ghosts" that was around since Jiang first took reign. The party has been long purging Marxist hardliners, but so far, have not came to full realisation why they have to do so other than "because they screwed up"
Is Ireland a good counter example? Wouldn't you say the Young Irelander Rebellion was an unsuccessful rebellion in reaction to the famine, and the Land War was a more organized, successful uprising a couple decades later as famine threatened again?
You are letting your prejudice infect your perception of history, and your lack of knowledge about China's modern history shows. At the time of the Great Leap Forward, China then was reeling from far too many changes of power. The CCP threw out the KMT after fighting together in a terrible war against the Japanese; the KMT themselves had been in a bitter struggle for a China torn apart by upstart warlords, and this after the Xinhai revolution that made the Qing dynasty capitulate.
China had not seen proper peace for a generation, and it finally seemed to have it. And then to see here an ignorant comment calling a people weary from too many revolutions obedient sheeple, saying that they should have mounted a revolution and this "survival of the best warrior" bullcrap. In case you weren't listening, the instability of revolutions tend to attract tyrannic elements, as their history had shown them.
> worse case by foreign invaders that can only be better than current leaders anyway
If a revolution were to have happened, who's to say that China would still be better off? China had seen many foreign powers covet it and had freshly suffered at their hands; it is not improbable that a revolution then would mean a China divided and subjugated by unsympathetic foreign powers and abused, as the Japanese had done before.
Communists also tend to start hating people in countries where they rule, put bad tags on them. That's how they deal with the shortcomings of their policy. This is both for internal communist rulers and overseas communistic wannabees.
They blamed a million of different things on Russians, like being lazy drunkards; and shifting the hunger genocide blame from communists to ethnic Russians (for some reason).
Now they sure blame Chinese for... Being sheeple? Being hungry? I don't even know.
They don't blame Koreans for DPRK's hunger genocide, tho. That's Kims. Still not the communism.
Communism is so good, that it always end up in wrong people's hands who are just incapable.
Holy social darwinism batman... The amount of orientalism and McCarthyism in HN comments never ceases to amaze me but this comment here really takes the cake.
I don’t know of any countries that have adopted “true” communism. Mostly because it’s just easier to seize control of a command economy than figuring out a way to share power.
"Since communist nostalgia is a growing phenomenon in Eastern Europe today, it has different ways of manifesting itself amongst post-communist citizens. Nostalgic types are quite particular in their reverence for the past and share different things they are nostalgic about (this is shown in their electoral support for communist and socialist parties). Most of these individuals are nostalgic for job security, free education and reliable and affordable healthcare. This is because most Eastern Europeans remember and long for the vast social programmes and services that are no longer offered under capitalism."
"The poll showed 30 percent of Ukrainians approved of the change to democracy in 2009, down from 72 percent in 1991. In Bulgaria and Lithuania the slide was to just over half the population from nearer three-quarters in 1991."
PRC also wasn't even the "true" government of China. The US acknowledged ROC as the true government.
We couldn't be bothered to do anything about it when the ROC ran away to Formosa, but then Eisenhower realized US interests in the Pacific theater were threatened.
That's also why communism doesn't work. Self interest is a much better motivator.
We still live in a world where the Cambodian genocide murdered millions while we bombed the hell out of Indochina in a scorched earth policy. Laos is the most bombed country on earth and most people dont realize that.
A lot of people on HN have highly-demanded skillsets which keep them fat and happy and focused on problems away from the realities that the world is filled with a lot of evil people.
Those are the reasons "real communism" will never work in my opinion. Well-regulated self-interest is such a better way to govern humanities terrible behavioral problems.
>PRC also wasn't even the "true" government of China. The US acknowledged ROC as the true government.
PRC might not ave been the "true government", but who the "US acknowledged" is not the criterion.
>Those are the reasons "real communism" will never work in my opinion. Well-regulated self-interest is such a better way to govern humanities terrible behavioral problems.
Well, Stalin practiced exactly "Well-regulated self-interest" -- his self-interest, of course.
This 999999999 times over. Straight up Communism has been responsible for more deaths than Nazism. Both are bad ideologies for different reasons. The fact that many give communism and countries that still espouse its values (IE: China) a pass, while condemning Nazism are showing a very big double standard. Of course it becomes utter hypocrisy when a large group of (progressives) condemn Nazi's while wearing their communist logos, idealizing communist leaders etc.. Often many of them have never lived in or set foot in a communist country.
With the recent trend of banning speech you don't like/agree with under the guise of hate speech the west has opened up pandora's box for a similar thing. Sure what some people may say can be utterly repugnant, but what is happening today is similar in many ways to what happened with communist regimes. A few powerful individuals set the tone (replace the government with big tech and the media), they get the masses to do their bidding via propaganda, eliminating dissenting opinions (IE: Bans for things such as stating scientific facts on Twitter etc..) and crushing anybody who dissents from the narrative. The power goes to a few, and human nature in the form or greed, desire for power, ego etc. takes over in the leadership class.
It hasn't gotten to the point of murder in the west (yet), but looking at the progression it has already ratcheted up to violence.
I suggest to you that you may be a victim of popoganda. Thee is in your writing a sense of urgency and direness. Fear monger it is a profitable business for “news” organizations. I use quotes around news because such media is really entertainment. It’s easier to keep viewers hooked via fear monger it.
I’m old enough to remember when conservatives in the U.S. were the ones clamoring to regulate speech on college campuses and liberals decried censorship. Now it is reversed.
I’m guessing we have opposite political philosophies and in the cruelty environment there s little common ground. Perhaps though you’ll agree that he essence of the problems you fear and mentioned stem from too much power concentrated in too few hands. Let us strive for a system where power is spread out.
I'm responding to your unsaid argument, political power is the most dangerous type of power. There is a qualitative difference between the Rockefellers/Carnegies (the peak of economic power) and Maos/Hitlers/Stalins (the peak of political power) of the world.
All communism does is replace the economic class system of capitalism with a political one.
I remember that as well and rejected the extreme right control during that time. That said, what it has been replaced with has taking us from the frying pan into the fire with the tactics. When I see one side trying to force others into their belief system by shame, emotional blackmail, violence, character assassination, career destruction etc. I am generally very skeptical of that side's message as propaganda. To be very clear, beyond what I have read, I've personally experienced this at the alter of progressivism and know others who have as well.
The big thing is not that we come from different political philosophies. It is that all who want to espouse them are afforded the opportunity to debate and discuss them freely. These days in tech, many corporate settings etc., many fear losing their job, having their professional life destroyed, etc. for expressing views that go against the progressive narrative. Once again I have personally experienced this and know others who have as well in addition to what others have reported. Before things got so politically charged I used to enjoy learning about the views from the other side and having those discussions. These days a mono-culture has taken over and we have lost that which I reject.
But to your point, I agree that having power spread out it a better way. Let people have actual freedom to choose what works best for them, and, more importantly actually respect different view points...which is sadly a lost art today.
> When I see one side trying to force others into their belief system by shame, emotional blackmail, violence, character assassination, career destruction etc. I am generally very skeptical of that side's message as propaganda. To be very clear, beyond what I have read, I've personally experienced this at the alter of progressivism and know others who have as well.
Both sides do this, almost equally.
It isn't a progressive vs conservative thing, it is a "someone wants to crush the other side" thing.
Conservative commentators are forced to tow the party line or become outcasts. Progressive commentators, same thing.
If one of Trump's policies works out well, NYT isn't going to run an article about it, nor is Fox news going to give serious consideration to any of his failings.
Both sides will however name and shame anyone who doesn't tow the line.
> Before things got so politically charged I used to enjoy learning about the views from the other side and having those discussions. These days a mono-culture has taken over and we have lost that which I reject.
The problem is both sides are working to stifle free speech. Conservative trolls have no issue ruining the life of anyone who they decides deserves it, and many progressives have no qualms about doing the same!
It is sad that people cannot have even polite public discourse in this nation anymore for free of consequence from their fellow citizens.
Someone a world has been created where we need not fear the government, we need only fear ourselves.
How do you disallow ownership of means of production without totalitarianism? Imagine a person has a small auto repair or sewing shop. They will not give up on profit unless you raid them, rinse, repeat.
That's what communism is about and you have to confiscate a lot of pre-existing stuff. Yes you can have hybrid model where you leave a lot of small business around, which is no longer communism as we know it since there's a lot of bourgeois people feeling great compared to workers.
> How do you disallow ownership of means of production without totalitarianism?
The same way you disallow ownership of government office without totalitarianism; by making the thing that can't be privately owned publicly controlled via democratic accountability.
> Imagine a person has a small auto repair or sewing shop. They will not give up on profit unless you raid them, rinse, repeat.
Or, imagine a person owns the right to tax a small village. They likewise won't give up the profits unless you raid them, etc.; that doesn't make the transition away from feudalism totalitarian, it just means that changes in social concepts of property rights face resistance from those who have power in the old system that they would not in the new.
> Yes you can have hybrid model where you leave a lot of small business around, which is no longer communism as we know it
It's no longer a system where the only property that exists are what Communism holds to exist by right, which explicitly excludes the means of production, but since virtually every actual “Communist” state did some degree or another of that hybrid model in practice, it absolutely is “Communism as we know it”.
> since there's a lot of bourgeois people feeling great compared to workers.
Well, perhaps some petit bourgeois, but Communists more have problems with them as class allies of the haut bourgeoisie than directly.
>A few powerful individuals set the tone (replace the government with big tech and the media), they get the masses to do their bidding via propaganda, eliminating dissenting opinions (IE: Bans for things such as stating scientific facts on Twitter etc..) and crushing anybody who dissents from the narrative.
So like how the government still has anticommunist propaganda in textbooks and regularly on various TV shows? And how supporting any Communist-action committee, including the Communist Party USA, is a crime under US law?
I don't know who you call communist, but the actual communists have faced over a century of abuse far more direct than you mention.
All: please spare us the generic tangents about communism. Such discussions are all the same, therefore repetitive, therefore uninteresting, therefore off topic here.
If you believe you have discovered something new to say about this or some other grand ideological theme, you should probably write a book. Internet comments as a genre are not able to communicate that.
The famine itself was, of course, unimaginably terrible. I feel that another terrible thing this article highlights is the sad reality of political parties, systems and organizations in general:
"The root problem is the problem of the system. They don't dare to admit the system's problems … It might influence the legitimacy of the Communist party"
I think this is one of the biggest thing people forget about China. Their wealth is extremely new found. A lot of people alive today still had some sort of relative that has starved to death, particularly in the same age as our baby boomer generation. That's why the Chinese government is extremely strict and the citizens are willing to be "subjugated". Time were extremely tough for them not even two-three decades ago.
Side note, I believe most historians will agree that any modern famine within this past century is man-made. They are either created or mitigated poorly because of ignorance.
This explanation sounds nice until you start thinking about other countries which experienced famine in the last century and don’t look anything like china...
A great many famines in the 1900s were caused by war, unrest and "political stuff" (including forced relocation and creation of work camps / collective farms / prison farms, whatever you want to call them). There were some famines directly related to drought, but they look relatively minor compared to the ones with obvious human agency.
What famines were there where not either the government caused or ignored the problem, a colonial power ignored or caused the problem or a war was going on?
Chinese scholars had kept count of 1,828 instances of famine from 108 BC to 1911 in one province or another—an average of close to one famine per year.[50] From 1333 to 1337 a terrible famine killed 6 million Chinese. The four famines of 1810, 1811, 1846, and 1849 are said to have killed no fewer than 45 million people.[51]
Japan experienced more than 130 famines between 1603 and 1868.[52]
Most of those countries, like Uganda, look worse (in the sense that the average Chinese wouldn't pick to live in Uganda over China, nor it would give them more wealth or political freedom).
As for the others, the famines there were usually caused by external forces that have stopped being (e.g. foreign occupation, etc), so not the same.
I'm thinking about my grandma, who I see everyday, whose parents came from Ukraine in the beginning of the last century; their 3 month old daughter along with them in a cargo ship.
This is not even wrong. The CCP did not passively deal with a famine - it caused a famine, and used it to kill millions of people. This is not remotely disputable.
The CCP is strict because the only thing that really matters is holding on to power.
That same party is still in power today, and currently putting millions of Muslims into concentration camps. The lucky ones get a modified house arrest, with non-Muslim minders living with them and monitoring them at all times.
> When a lighter touch is all that is required, they'll use social credit points to allow someone to live their lives or not:
The only saving grace is their incompetence, as they are trialing facial recognition everywhere, the machines are unreliable enough that there's a good chance they still don't know where you are. I highly recommend escaping while they are still incompetent, because as soon as the system is functioning well (which may take less than two years), you may not be allowed to leave, at least not on a plane; and if you're allowed, you may not be able to afford it.
It's amazing that people can "#NotAllCommunism" away the wanton deaths of about a hundred million people, because they don't like that it contradicts their political fad.
There is a narrative by politics scholar that the current CCP is a reaction to Mao's CCP and is radically different. Mao was an anti-intellectual and a lot of the problems of the Great Leap Forward policy came from the decision to put uneducated people in charge and replacing knowledge by ideology.
This was such a disaster, and it harmed so much of the former elite (who ended up working in the fields and, predictably, sucked at farming) that they manage to unite and take over the CCP instances.
Nowadays, CCP leaders are highly technocratic and having a strong education is mandatory to rise in the hierarchy.
> That same party is still in power today, and currently putting millions of Muslims into concentration camps.
Yes, and even if they don't have an extermination policy that looks at least like STASI policies there.
The reason (and I only state a reason, not an excuse there) why China is so sensitive about religion is because it caused the most deadly civil war in human history, the revolt of the Taiping, when a guy believing he was the brother of Jesus brought half the country to worship him and fought the emperor.
They started their anti-muslim policy when ISIS was starting to have antennas in several countries. Religious movement triggers alarm in them in the same way as nazis do to Europeans: they know they can lead to 20 million death.
> Religious movement triggers alarm in them in the same way as nazis do to Europeans: they know they can lead to 20 million death.
I don't think that's quite right. They're sensitive because religion causes Chinese people to organize themselves outside Communist hierarchy, which they see as a threat to Communist power. They're sensitive to all similar kinds of organization, not just religiously motivated ones.
++ for Amartya Sen. I think he first covered this in the book Poverty and Famines, where he drives home the point that famines can happen even if food is available and even if food prices have not been driven up sharply. Modern famine is a failure of government (war is an obvious cause, but not the only one.)
Note: my mother side of the family were generational peasants in the Kiev region, the families of 5 siblings of my grandfather lived there through that time (the granddad took his family to look for better life elsewhere several years before that)
The "shoah" wasn't just aimed at "certain people", it was aimed at all opposition of any kind, political and social, that's how it started out originally. Tbh that's why I really don't like calling it "shoah", as that implies Jews were the only victims of these Nazis crimes.
I have no doubt that the Chinese government "prioritized" their food similarly, giving less to those it considered "opposition" while making sure it's actual power-base was taken care off and wouldn't starve to death on them.
Just like the Nazis prioritized who they killed first in Dachau not only by "Jewishness" but also the political and social influences these people held, which made them capable of opposing the Nazi rule and thus had to be "taken care off" first.
The interesting comparison is the epidemiological one. Fascism as a deadly infectious idea has terrible and terrifying outcomes, resulting in swift response to it, and a good understanding of what it looks like: we'll all recognize fascism upon hearing race-based rallying cries. Communism as a deadly infectious idea is probably deadlier yet; unfortunately, it is less immediately terrifying, so it doesn't get as rapid a response. And, unlike with fascism, we have a feeble understanding of when radical left-wing thought reaches malignancy, which is a problem we don't have quite so badly with fascism.
As to the morality comparison, denying agency to your entire country's farmers on the belief that you can just control everything from afar and keep it running isn't that different from claiming that your country would be running well if you could just get rid of all the Jews. They're both reprehensible actions undertaken based on nonsensical beliefs; one of those beliefs just takes a bit longer to think about.
How about the extermination of the native people of the Americas, the slavery of 20 million blacks for 4 centuries, and the enslavement of 2/3rds of the world in colonies, with untold number dying? Does the capitalist "self-interest" driven cruelties get a free pass?
American black guy here. Capitalism (capital-intensive but scaleable production) and the industrial revoltion ended slavery (inextricably linked). Within 70 years of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, slavery was abolished in the USA. Similar to how digitization at first benefited the Recording Industry because they used it internally and could rake in outsized profits from the reduced cost of music production, the cotton gin overly enriched plantation owners because they could just use slaves to operate the machines. Today, music playable whenever and wherever is prolific and the Recording Industries stranglehold has been broken thanks to digitization. Likewise, the cotton gin with interchangeable parts that could be produced in scale by factories only layed more seeds (metaphorically) to end slavery as it made it possible to produce agricultural goods at scale with a fraction of human (and animal labor). And that boom in cotton and cotton consumption drew the attention of European and American cotton consumers nowhere near plantations to how backwards the slave-system was. Slave labor was no longer in any way justifiable from a labor costs standpoint. The model of sharecropping became viable. All these factors helped end slavery. Also you can thank capitalism for helping end feudalism, where serfs and peasants were resigned to a fate of providing labor in the production of agricultural goods. In fact, the vast majority before the emergence of capitalism were enganged in providing labor for agriculture; it was not fun. Capitalism birthed the Industrial revolution. Communism did not birth the industrial revolution. Communism birthed famines. By 1920s when the first real Communist experiment called the Soviet Union began, global production of goods and services had already multiplied out of capitalist cornucopias. The Communists (Russia and China) got up in running mostly by sourcing parts and copying of manufacturing processes from capitalist countries. And US slavery had ended already. The Communists reintroduced compulsary labor. Automation in a marketplace has now driven down the costs of production so greatly that only a small fraction of capital is needed to startup a company (Silicon Vallye and the digital revolution). Capitalism 2.0 (low capital requirements) is working towards 'freeing' people of semi-coercive hourly-wage work. Are there bumps, like when plantation owners were intitually enriched. Yes, but it will get better.
One can only wonder why ... Or just look at Venezuela and North Korea today.
From that time we have an expression "like a hunger-stricken from the Volga region" ("golodayuschiy s Povolzh'ya", the region among the most affected by the famine) meaning like a completely debilitated by prolonged hunger and by overall extremely bad conditions person.
The main idea of communism is to kill «bad» people («Bourgeoisie and Intelligence», i.e. richer and smarter people), to grow «soviet people», which then build communism. Initial estimate in 1918 was to kill 10% of population. To do that, secret police created to spy on people minds, to find bad ones. Secret police reported that majority of Ukrainians are anti-communists. So, idea was simple - communists need to kill majority of «bad» Ukrainians, then communism will happen.
You may want to read [0] or similar documents for more information.
[0]: The new Soviet archival sources
Hypotheses for a critical assessment
Andrea Graziosi, 1999
>The main idea of communism is to kill «bad» people («Bourgeoisie and Intelligence», i.e. richer and smarter people), to grow «soviet people»
No modern Communist academic nor Marx himself spoke in these terms. You're projecting history onto ideology, which doesn't always work. The Marxist students being persecuted by China this year would very much disagree with your analysis, even having experienced this 'communism'.
First, you are mismatching communism ideology with transition from capitalism to communism. If somebody want to rule a country, he must use violence to beat previous government, no matter what is said in a book.
All revolutions are structured like that, from the German to the French to the American to the Russian to every war of independence. Violence is an unfortunate effect. Practice is informed by theory, and theory is informed by practice. A glance at Marxist literature would show this.
If a society actually manages to turn its population into fully obedient sheeple, which is probably what the Chinese emperors managed to do, and then the communist party carried on doing... then you get catastrophic outcomes like these.
And they are truly catastrophic, worse than worse, because in a war at least you have some "survival of the best warrior" selection that improves the overall human gene pool...
The big lesson to be learned here is that training people to be obedient and non-violent makes it impossible for them to fix or destroy a sick social order, and this leads sooner or later to massive numbers of deaths. Our natural propensities for disobedience, individualism, and violence against authority are what keeps societies healthy when kept at a low-enough-but-not-zero level.
One can only wonder what catastrophes the "social credit score" thing will surely sooner or later lead too...
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