How Mao Dealt With Green Shoots
I've been reading Mao's Little Red Book, which I gather achieved some level of popularity among the New Left in the 1960s, which is nothing short of astonishing, given its open and aggressive call for mass death against resistors and it's dripping-with-blood rhetoric about armed struggle from beginning to end. "Wherever there is struggle there is sacrifice, and death is a common occurrence.... All men must die, but death can vary in its significance."
In any case, this passage struck me as particularly telling as to how a communist dictator deals with the problem of peasants who are trying to make a buck in the service of others.
The spontaneous forces of capitalism have been steadily growing in the countryside in recent years, with new rich peasants springing up everywhere and many well-to-do middle peasants striving to become rich peasants. On the other hand, many poor peasants are still living in poverty for lack of sufficient means of production, with some in debt and others selling or renting out their land. If this tendency goes unchecked, the polarization in the countryside will inevitably be aggravated day by day. Those peasants who lose their land and those who remain in poverty will complain that we are doing nothing to save them from ruin or to help them overcome their difficulties. Nor will the well-to-do middle peasants who are heading in the capitalist direction be pleased with us, for we shall never be able to satisfy their demands unless we intend to take the capitalist road. Can the worker-peasant alliance continue to stand hrm in these circumstances ? Obviously not. There is no solution to this problem except on a new basis. And that means to bring about, step by step, the socialist transformation of the whole of agriculture simultaneously with the gradual realization of socialist industrialization and the socialist transformation of handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce; in other words, it means to carry out co-operation and eliminate the rich-peasant economy and the individual economy in the countryside so that all the rural people will become increasingly well off together. We maintain that this is the only way to consolidate the worker-peasant alliance.
Oh, also he invokes phrases that have become rather popular: "Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production."
Comments (9)
Walt D.
Jeffrey beware. When they make you hoe vegetables, in the same way that Chairman Mao made counter revolutionary university professors hoe vegetables, make sure you don't chop off the green shoots!
Published: July 6, 2009 9:16 AM
End the Fed
"Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production."
LOL...and I suppose the government knows better than anybody what's "equal" and what isn't. They forget that trade works both ways. The employer would be losing by not paying the true value, because those workers can do something else (and not work there).
Published: July 6, 2009 3:17 PM
David C
Interesting how that was written 5 years before the "great leap forward". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine (30 million died)
Eventually Mao had to give in to the farmer demands for property rights or face collapse. And who did Mao punish and blame for this? well the pro-Mao teachers and followers of course. (hint to Obama believers)
Published: July 6, 2009 5:06 PM
David Spellman
Didn't Mao say something like "political power grows out the barrel of a gun?"
Published: July 6, 2009 8:57 PM
brad maynard
the opening line really strikes me, "the spontaneous forces of capitalism.........". this pretty much is proof in my books that the power of capitalism or free trade is naturally inherent in human interaction. absolutely amazes me that there were those then who believed they could successfully circumvent natural laws of supply and demand and it is even more striking that no one seems to have learned from history today. western society i think is due for a massive shift once the spending of these countries comes back and bites them in the ass.
Published: July 6, 2009 10:16 PM
KY Leong
Hey Jeff, at least there were real green shoots, as in "spontaneous forces of capitalism have been steadily growing in the countryside..."
They're not the same delusional sprouts that Bernanke tried to hoodwink everyone with.
Published: July 6, 2009 10:49 PM
Alexander S. Peak
A few semesters ago I took a course on Asian politics, half of which was donated entirely to the study of China over the past century. The failure of Maoist thought is spectacular. If only he had used his passion to promote human liberty instead of restrictions on fruitful human action--how different China could have been!
I own one book by Mao. Haven't read it. Something to do with guerilla warfare, I think.
Alex
Published: July 7, 2009 12:31 AM
2nd Amendment
David Spellman,
"Didn't Mao say something like "political power grows out the barrel of a gun?""
So this is why democrats hates guns, because it gives "political" power and independence to hard working honest individuals.
Published: July 7, 2009 7:16 AM
Alexander S. Peak
Dear 2nd Amendment,
It's also why the Democratic and Republican Parties alike love to see guns in the hands of our statist overlords (i.e., themselves).
As a-human-right.com has pointed out, gun-"control" has never been directed at disarming the state itself, only its subjects.
Sincerely,
Alex Peak
Published: July 14, 2009 5:50 PM