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In the Chinese case, it was less the Cultural Revolution, and more the Great Leap Forward, but yeah, turns out if you require everyone to produce unrealistic am
by zhengyi13 8y ago
In the Chinese case, it was less the Cultural Revolution, and more the Great Leap Forward, but yeah, turns out if you require everyone to produce unrealistic amounts of steel, they turn their plows and woks into steel, and then they can't produce food, and can't cook, and they starve.
- anbende 8y agoTrue, and it was more a failed experiment in central planning than a massacre of the landowners.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThe Great Leap forward was an example of so many things going wrong including the danger of refusing to admit being wrong and lack of domain knowledge. The famine also has roots in the pest eradication campaign lists including sparrows because they also ate grain. However they also ate locusts which makes the "sparrow tax" well worth paying compared to plagues of locusts scouring your fields. At least until you can control them sufficiently through pesticides or other measures anyway. They refused to consult actual farmers or industrialists and then when faced with evidence of problems turned foolishness into evil by refusing to modify their policies. Just not consulting isn't a sin in itself - at times disregarding prevailing wisdom can pay off contextually or generally - if you know what you are doing or modify in the face of failures to address not knowing before rollout. Those sorts of problems were endemic to communism along with refusing to recognize that while often overcompensated and not immune to foibles they do in fact do useful work. It is interesting to contrast with actual collectives of say farmers or occasionally artists - not leading the world by any means but a stable niche and a beneficial arrangement.