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Someone once commented to me that rather than blaming Mao personally, the blame for the negative consequences of The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution

Someone once commented to me that rather than blaming Mao personally, the blame for the negative consequences of The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution should be placed on the systemic forces that legitimised the absence of domain experts in policy making. It's a nice sentiment but I have a gut feeling that these kinds of frameworks - where blame is taken away from people and attributed to abstract concepts - lead to worse outcomes long-term. Is that gut feeling just my evolutionary instincts talking or is it a sign of something useful?

ipnon 4y ago
“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”
majormajor 4y ago
Well, where did those systemic forces come from? Does it take your right back to Mao? (I have no idea, it just seems curious that suddenly you'd have these systemic forces cause huge problems that didn't exist before...) "It's systemic" isn't a stopping point for an investigation. If you diagnose something as systemic it tells you something about how you're gonna have to fight it, but nothing really about blame. E.g. if you talk about the effects of systemic racism in the US the blame isn't abstract, you can clearly trace back many policies, biases, and differences to active, individual racism over centuries.
emaginniss 4y ago
Don't blame Mao, blame the system Mao built!
- type0 4y ago
  He was a delusional psychopat that was happy to kill as many people as he could
  - boeingUH60 4y ago
    You just described all communist leaders. Fortunately, most of them are extinct at this point.
    - 0xdeadfa65 4y ago
      Yes but there are many wannabe aspirants competing to be the next Mao
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dirtyid 4y ago
Official CCP position on was Mao 70% right and 30% wrong. There wasn't lack of domain experts per say, rather Mao pursued modernization agendas at aggressive rate, one that traded lives for progress. 4 pests / killing sparrows didn't lead to famines, the bureaucracy trying to hit Maos KPIs did. Which does not necessarily lead to... >worse outcomes long-term Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress was net good for long-term outcomes. Mao was bad statesman for right goals, he was excessive and did the hard things sometimes poorly, but it was important to do them none the less. The great leap forward killed millions, but ensured PRC also had the highest industrial capacity amongst developing peers after. Cultural revolution broke traditional social structures = 90%+ unified polity, speaking one language. Purging intelligentsia also overkill, but still had STEM priorities right, both nukes + first satellite developed in this era. In aggregate, disruptions setup/enabled PRC to exploit mass modernization efforts, established industrial base, and plenty of fungible bodies within a few generations instead of century+. Add oil on cramming developement atrocities to develop. Incidentally this is why pluralism of India and old practices (caste) etc is holding up development, India systemically couldn't destroy to renew, now it’s dragged down by the baggage causing 100s of millions of avoidable deaths and even more bodies with stunted development - a few decades of prolonged developing world infant mortality and food insecurity adds up. Treating human capital as actual capital is not nice, but it's effective. Hard to say if this was actually his thinking at the time, but he's also known for declaring: "I’m not afraid of nuclear war ... China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left."
- xeonmc 4y ago
  [flagged]
- cryptonector 4y ago
  > >worse outcomes long-term > Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress was net good for long-term outcomes. "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette." "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." "By all means necessary." "The ends justify the means." Disgusting.
  - 4y ago

ipnon 4y ago

“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”

majormajor 4y ago

Well, where did those systemic forces come from? Does it take your right back to Mao? (I have no idea, it just seems curious that suddenly you'd have these systemic forces cause huge problems that didn't exist before...) "It's systemic" isn't a stopping point for an investigation. If you diagnose something as systemic it tells you something about how you're gonna have to fight it, but nothing really about blame. E.g. if you talk about the effects of systemic racism in the US the blame isn't abstract, you can clearly trace back many policies, biases, and differences to active, individual racism over centuries.

emaginniss 4y ago

Don't blame Mao, blame the system Mao built!

type0 4y ago
He was a delusional psychopat that was happy to kill as many people as he could
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  You just described all communist leaders. Fortunately, most of them are extinct at this point.
  - 0xdeadfa65 4y ago
    Yes but there are many wannabe aspirants competing to be the next Mao

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dirtyid 4y ago

Official CCP position on was Mao 70% right and 30% wrong. There wasn't lack of domain experts per say, rather Mao pursued modernization agendas at aggressive rate, one that traded lives for progress. 4 pests / killing sparrows didn't lead to famines, the bureaucracy trying to hit Maos KPIs did. Which does not necessarily lead to... >worse outcomes long-term Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress was net good for long-term outcomes. Mao was bad statesman for right goals, he was excessive and did the hard things sometimes poorly, but it was important to do them none the less. The great leap forward killed millions, but ensured PRC also had the highest industrial capacity amongst developing peers after. Cultural revolution broke traditional social structures = 90%+ unified polity, speaking one language. Purging intelligentsia also overkill, but still had STEM priorities right, both nukes + first satellite developed in this era. In aggregate, disruptions setup/enabled PRC to exploit mass modernization efforts, established industrial base, and plenty of fungible bodies within a few generations instead of century+. Add oil on cramming developement atrocities to develop. Incidentally this is why pluralism of India and old practices (caste) etc is holding up development, India systemically couldn't destroy to renew, now it’s dragged down by the baggage causing 100s of millions of avoidable deaths and even more bodies with stunted development - a few decades of prolonged developing world infant mortality and food insecurity adds up. Treating human capital as actual capital is not nice, but it's effective. Hard to say if this was actually his thinking at the time, but he's also known for declaring: "I’m not afraid of nuclear war ... China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left."

xeonmc 4y ago
[flagged]
cryptonector 4y ago
> >worse outcomes long-term > Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress was net good for long-term outcomes. "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette." "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." "By all means necessary." "The ends justify the means." Disgusting.
- 4y ago