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"Intellectuals claiming to be in the service of high intellectual ideas will show up in at least two of those (Stalin's farm purges, Mao's political purges)" T

"Intellectuals claiming to be in the service of high intellectual ideas will show up in at least two of those (Stalin's farm purges, Mao's political purges)" This is, maybe, a non-sequitur, but for the sake of intellectual correctness, I believe the Cultural Revolution, at least, was anti-intellectual. Mao closed down schools, burned books, and put teachers and intellectuals into re-education camps until they were ready to join work groups where they toiled in factories and fields. Mao's greatest intellectual rival, Deng Xiaoping, was held under house arrest for years. Mao promoted hard work and nationalism, not intellectualism.

jerf 17y ago
He did all that under the theory of Communism, though. "Mao Zedong (simplified Chinese: 毛泽东; traditional Chinese: 毛澤東; pinyin: Máo Zédōng; Wade-Giles: Mao Tse-tung) About this sound pronunciation (help·info) (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976) was a Chinese revolutionary, political theorist and Communist leader. He led the People's Republic of China (PRC) from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. His theoretical contribution to Marxism-Leninism, military strategies, and his brand of Communist policies are now collectively known as Maoism." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong (Wikipedia, the true sign of a lazy citer. :) )
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  So we should conclude that communism and intellectual thought are equivalent? Ridiculous. Look, it's a fact that ideas, when misapplied by powerful individuals or institutions, can lead to needless suffering. You could point to large scale suffering resulting from communism, from a misplaced belief in ethnic or cultural superiority, from capitalism, from religion, and so on. The fact that various beliefs (whose social implementation results in suffering) have been propounded by intellectuals does not warrant the conclusions you are drawing. I am tired of this tendency among some HN readers with a bee in their bonnet about communism to just drag it into any discussion and use the deaths of large numbers of people as currency for laying out an irrelevant political argument.
  - teeja 17y ago
    The world hasn't seen any communism yet. A lot of phonies using that banner to grant themselves enormous power -- but, like democracy, yet to be realized anywhere.

jerf 17y ago

He did all that under the theory of Communism, though. "Mao Zedong (simplified Chinese: 毛泽东; traditional Chinese: 毛澤東; pinyin: Máo Zédōng; Wade-Giles: Mao Tse-tung) About this sound pronunciation (help·info) (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976) was a Chinese revolutionary, political theorist and Communist leader. He led the People's Republic of China (PRC) from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. His theoretical contribution to Marxism-Leninism, military strategies, and his brand of Communist policies are now collectively known as Maoism." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong (Wikipedia, the true sign of a lazy citer. :) )

anigbrowl 17y ago
So we should conclude that communism and intellectual thought are equivalent? Ridiculous. Look, it's a fact that ideas, when misapplied by powerful individuals or institutions, can lead to needless suffering. You could point to large scale suffering resulting from communism, from a misplaced belief in ethnic or cultural superiority, from capitalism, from religion, and so on. The fact that various beliefs (whose social implementation results in suffering) have been propounded by intellectuals does not warrant the conclusions you are drawing. I am tired of this tendency among some HN readers with a bee in their bonnet about communism to just drag it into any discussion and use the deaths of large numbers of people as currency for laying out an irrelevant political argument.
- teeja 17y ago
  The world hasn't seen any communism yet. A lot of phonies using that banner to grant themselves enormous power -- but, like democracy, yet to be realized anywhere.