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Given the content, I can't tell if the allusion to the disastrous Chinese Cultural Revolution is intended or not. It seems more like Cringely's actually talkin

by kvb 12y ago

Given the content, I can't tell if the allusion to the disastrous Chinese Cultural Revolution is intended or not. It seems more like Cringely's actually talking about changing Microsoft's culture, which makes the title quite poor.

pessimizer 12y ago
That was the intention of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, too. It failed in the long term, but from the perspective of its architects, most of what we call its disasters were actually its successes.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Mass starvation? Technological stagnation? Which success are you referring to?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - leoc 12y ago
    > Which success are you referring to? Keeping Mao in power would be the major success, again very much from the perspective of the architect...
  - diego_moita 12y ago
    His (valid) point is not that the Chinese Cultural Revolution was a success but rather that, in their twisted minds, its architects perceived it as a success. They probably aimed at establishing ideological "purity" and authoritarian rule, they probably never thought of your valid concerns as being relevant. True believers have awful perceptions of what success means.
  - cstross 12y ago
    Presumably breaking forever the grip of the Confucian design pattern (left behind by the former imperial bureaucracy) on the imaginations of the low-level functionaries, without who no top-down empire can operate. An example uppermost in Mao's mind must have been that, despite Lenin's putsch of 1917, by 1927 the USSR ran along lines that would have been instantly recognizable to a Tsarist-era bureaucrat from 1907. The structure of governance of the vast Russian empire re-asserted itself under the guise of Actually Existing Socialism, once the Vanguard Party had replaced the top and middle tiers of the Imperial nobility and bureaucracy with nominally-loyal functionaries. The same sorts of person are attracted to power whatever the ideology of the regime, and aside from joining a party and paying lip service to the party's ideology, they make the same set of assumptions about how power is to be exercised. True revolutionaries are discredited, expelled, or purged: see the fates of Trotsky and Zinoviev, for example. Mao and his inner cadre saw the Chinese people, a generation after the revolution (itself largely pushed through by force of Russian arms, in the shape of the Manchurian campaign of 1945 that kicked the Japanese army off the Asian mainland), reverting to the social and political patterns of the Confucian bureaucracy that had run the empire they supplanted. True, the new bureaucrats paid lip service to communism as a guiding eschatology. But they weren't communists, much less revolutionaries. This was repugnant to Mao, so he fired up the whole social revolution that cost so many lives precisely to break that design pattern. It sort of worked. In the short term, it caused chaos and starvation and massive deaths: but in the long term, it laid the foundations for a technocracy. Today's Chinese party politburo are primarily engineers and scientists who grew up during the cultural revolution, not the spiritual heirs to the earlier system. Although I think the direction they've taken China in probably has Mao spinning in his grave so fast they could hook him up to a dynamo and power their national grid ...
    - cyorir 12y ago
      I would agree with most of this except for the establishment of the technocracy. I do not think Mao or the gang of four wanted to establish a technocracy. That is a bit different from the aim of the cultural revolution, which was hostile towards the academic class and the Western style of academia (Bach was targeted just as Confucious and Mengzi). A side product of the revolution and the departure of the Gang of Four, together with Mao's death, led to a power vacuum. This was filled a few years later when Deng Xiaoping and his supporters gained prominence. Deng Xiaoping was the true technocrat, and his reaction against the cultural revolution is what paved the way for today's technocracy. Now the question of whether Deng Xiaoping is spinning faster in his grave than Mao is open for debate.
    - jbooth 12y ago
      Great comment, and I'm not Chinese, but did they really break away from Confucianism? It looks like a civil service with an emphasis on standardized testing at the entry level and tending towards organizational politics at the medium->high levels.. where's the ideological sea change? The biggest difference from the dynasties seems to be the handover between premiers every decade.
      - cstross 12y ago
        Great comment, and I'm not Chinese, but did they really break away from Confucianism? As Zho Enlai allegedly said when asked about the significance of the French Revolution, "it's too early to say". (Spoiler: he may have misunderstood the question, but it's still a great anecdote: http://www.historytoday.com/blog/news-blog/dean-nicholas/zhou-enlais-famous-saying-debunked http://www.historytoday.com/blog/news-blog/dean-nicholas/zho... )
  - acornax 12y ago
    Mass starvation wasn't part of the cultural revolution. It happened as a result of the great leap forward which happened about 15 years before.
corprew 12y ago
I think you can assume that was his goal (an indirect reference to the cultural revolution that works in the way you say.)

by kvb 12y ago

pessimizer 12y ago

That was the intention of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, too. It failed in the long term, but from the perspective of its architects, most of what we call its disasters were actually its successes.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Mass starvation? Technological stagnation? Which success are you referring to?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- leoc 12y ago
  > Which success are you referring to? Keeping Mao in power would be the major success, again very much from the perspective of the architect...
- diego_moita 12y ago
  His (valid) point is not that the Chinese Cultural Revolution was a success but rather that, in their twisted minds, its architects perceived it as a success. They probably aimed at establishing ideological "purity" and authoritarian rule, they probably never thought of your valid concerns as being relevant. True believers have awful perceptions of what success means.
- cstross 12y ago
  Presumably breaking forever the grip of the Confucian design pattern (left behind by the former imperial bureaucracy) on the imaginations of the low-level functionaries, without who no top-down empire can operate. An example uppermost in Mao's mind must have been that, despite Lenin's putsch of 1917, by 1927 the USSR ran along lines that would have been instantly recognizable to a Tsarist-era bureaucrat from 1907. The structure of governance of the vast Russian empire re-asserted itself under the guise of Actually Existing Socialism, once the Vanguard Party had replaced the top and middle tiers of the Imperial nobility and bureaucracy with nominally-loyal functionaries. The same sorts of person are attracted to power whatever the ideology of the regime, and aside from joining a party and paying lip service to the party's ideology, they make the same set of assumptions about how power is to be exercised. True revolutionaries are discredited, expelled, or purged: see the fates of Trotsky and Zinoviev, for example. Mao and his inner cadre saw the Chinese people, a generation after the revolution (itself largely pushed through by force of Russian arms, in the shape of the Manchurian campaign of 1945 that kicked the Japanese army off the Asian mainland), reverting to the social and political patterns of the Confucian bureaucracy that had run the empire they supplanted. True, the new bureaucrats paid lip service to communism as a guiding eschatology. But they weren't communists, much less revolutionaries. This was repugnant to Mao, so he fired up the whole social revolution that cost so many lives precisely to break that design pattern. It sort of worked. In the short term, it caused chaos and starvation and massive deaths: but in the long term, it laid the foundations for a technocracy. Today's Chinese party politburo are primarily engineers and scientists who grew up during the cultural revolution, not the spiritual heirs to the earlier system. Although I think the direction they've taken China in probably has Mao spinning in his grave so fast they could hook him up to a dynamo and power their national grid ...
  - cyorir 12y ago
    I would agree with most of this except for the establishment of the technocracy. I do not think Mao or the gang of four wanted to establish a technocracy. That is a bit different from the aim of the cultural revolution, which was hostile towards the academic class and the Western style of academia (Bach was targeted just as Confucious and Mengzi). A side product of the revolution and the departure of the Gang of Four, together with Mao's death, led to a power vacuum. This was filled a few years later when Deng Xiaoping and his supporters gained prominence. Deng Xiaoping was the true technocrat, and his reaction against the cultural revolution is what paved the way for today's technocracy. Now the question of whether Deng Xiaoping is spinning faster in his grave than Mao is open for debate.
  - jbooth 12y ago
    Great comment, and I'm not Chinese, but did they really break away from Confucianism? It looks like a civil service with an emphasis on standardized testing at the entry level and tending towards organizational politics at the medium->high levels.. where's the ideological sea change? The biggest difference from the dynasties seems to be the handover between premiers every decade.
    - cstross 12y ago
      Great comment, and I'm not Chinese, but did they really break away from Confucianism? As Zho Enlai allegedly said when asked about the significance of the French Revolution, "it's too early to say". (Spoiler: he may have misunderstood the question, but it's still a great anecdote: http://www.historytoday.com/blog/news-blog/dean-nicholas/zhou-enlais-famous-saying-debunked http://www.historytoday.com/blog/news-blog/dean-nicholas/zho... )
- acornax 12y ago
  Mass starvation wasn't part of the cultural revolution. It happened as a result of the great leap forward which happened about 15 years before.

corprew 12y ago

I think you can assume that was his goal (an indirect reference to the cultural revolution that works in the way you say.)