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I saw this on my fb feed and it made me reconsider some things I'd assumed since childhood. Now to preface this I want it know I don't like Mao, would not have wanted to live under the SOB and think he deserves a place in any hell that might actually be, but, still, in light of the facts raised in this post do we need to re evaluate him at least somewhat?





"Mao killed 80 million of his own people" is often repeated, used as "proof" of the evils of communism. Regarding this claim, here is a very brief historical account towards potential objective assessment.
____________________________________

By mid 20th Century, monarchic rot, foreign domination, and many wars had reduced a millennia-old center of world economy and culture to a land of poverty, misery, and death.

In 1950, when the Communist Party liberated China from its many slavers, average life span was 35 years; 20% of population was addicted to opium; and literacy rates was something like 14%.

In 1976, at the end of Maoist era, merely 26 years later, average life span had doubled to 70; the opium problem was eradicated; and literacy levels had gone up to around 80%.

This was a man, a revolutionary, a socialist, who worked day and night, and dedicated his life to the freedom and health of his country from dynastic corruption, genocidal colonial rule, brutal capitalist oppression, and the resultant social diseases. What possible motive did Mao Ze Dong have for "killing 80 million of his own people"?
____________________________________

In 1960, 10 years after the successful revolution and victory against the rightists, the communist party was wildly popular. And then the famine occurred, caused by many factors:

1. Droughts, which have always been periodically rampant in China, a country with difficult geographic conditions for farming.

2. Ancient agricultural and transport systems which had been constructed for thousands of years for famine prevention and relief were destroyed or fell to ruin through colonial process, and could not be repaired in less than 10 years of independence.

3. Infrastructure and life support system of the entire country was further devastated by the wars against British and German colonisers, against Japanese colonialism, and the civil war against the reactionary KMT which had just ended some years prior.

4. Capitalist economic violence in the form of crippling sanctions and severe limits on agricultural trade with other nations, political violence in the form of enforced isolationism, and constant threat of military invasion which made industrialisation a desperate necessity.

5. The desperate push for industrialisation and modernisation in a country of 600 million extremely poor and under-educated farmers, in which many decisions were made to prioritise steel making and other technological advancement over agriculture.

6. The split with Soviet Union ended the assistance they had been providing China since the revolution, during those extremely difficult years of national reconstruction.

7. Terrible policy mistakes of the CCP, in the context of nationwide over-enthusiasm and over-optimism about independence, new-found freedom, reconstruction, industrialisation, and the future, during the "Great Leap Forward". These included the campaigns to eliminate pests which backfired by causing locust populations to rise, gross miscalculations of agricultural productivity and food requirements, etc.

8. Mao of course did have some personal responsibility as well, which can only be microscopic in relation to all of the above. To say that he alone, and intentionally, "murdered" anyone, much less 80 million, is nothing but a ludicrous and vile anti-communist lie.
____________________________________

35 - 42 million is the accepted figure In serious scholarship for victims of the "Great Chinese Famine". But this also includes the 24 million natural deaths during those 3.5 years (7million per year), as well as 4 million deaths directly caused by weather, floods, droughts, etc. So the actual victims of famine is around 7 - 14 million, which is not at all worse than the toll of the previous famine of 1907, or those during the 19th Century and earlier.

Even if we use the highest exaggerated and very inaccurate count of 35 - 42 million, that was around 5 - 6% of China’s then total population of 654 million.

• US invasion and carpet bombing of North Korea in 1950 killed 20% of population.

• French colonialists in Vietnam caused two million or 7% of the population to starve to death in 1945 during an episode of drought.

• The United States massacred 7% of the Filipinos, starting in 1898, when it colonised that island country.

• Ireland lost 25% of its population during the British-legislated Great Potato Famine Genocide 1845-1853.

• European settler colonists mass slaughtered something like 99% of native Australian populations.

• Murder, war, and disease from colonisation caused the deaths of 80 - 90% of native American populations.

• Countless massacres and genocide in Australia, Oceania, Middle East, India, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe during the last 500 years often killed much higher percentages of populations.

"The point is, in historical perspective, yes, 5 - 6% of the Chinese population lost during the Great Leap Forward period was a tragedy, which Beijing officially accepts. But it is by no means unusual, as an event nor in its magnitude." –– Jeff J. Brown
____________________________________

At this time the citizens of China was hard and embattled, who had just finished fighting a series of long lasting wars. There were grenade launchers and machine guns in every village.

But during or after the famine not a single revolt against the Communist Party occurred. Why?

Because the people understood very clearly that the bulk of blame for the suffering that they experienced could not be placed on the Communist Party. And because there was immediate government response in the form of massive nation wide relief programs and rescue missions.

And some years later, Mao was already bed-ridden and very ill, when revolutionary passion had tipped overboard into zealotry and witch hunts during the Cultural Revolution, largely engineered by the infamous Gang of Four. While the ordeal likely did have some positive effects on society in the long run, in eliminating residual decadent, bourgeois, classist, sexist, etc., mentality, most of the Chinese population is more critical than approving of that episode, as is the CCP. But that is maybe subject for another time.

How ever, today, it is crucial to understand that none of the recent epic and amazing strides of modern China would be possible without the liberation won and foundations built by the communist party under the leadership of Mao Ze dong.
____________________________________

This is all well documented information from serious historians, but remains unaccessible, and replaced with wild exaggerations, gross distortions, and utter falsehoods. Those born into capitalist centers and its spheres of influence, the global majority, grew up breathing such fictions about communism and communist leaders like air.




Now even after this I don't see Mao as a good man, but when a bigger picture than the one usually presented to make mao and any connection to communism, and therefore socialism by people who conflate the two is looked at I do have to wonder if he wasn't quite as bad as he is portrayed by people with a certain agenda. And the writer of this obviously had an agenda of their own, but does that nullify the facts and logic they presented?

I know very little about the contexts of Mao's China, but it is worth saying that even if the famine killed 'only' 7-14 million - you've missed out one major catalyst that was entirely Mao's fault - his idiotic sparrow-murdering campaign (conducted as part of the four pests policy and against the advice of all science) that allowed locusts to run rampage and annihilate vast volumes of crops.

Ok, good point. One I had not heard before. Must look it up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
Looked it up, seems to be true.

I'm confused by how the sparrows in the polish embassy were killed by drumming tho.

Still, after this I wonder is people in poland started telling chinese jokes...

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Ok, good point. One I had not heard before. Must look it up.

Really? You seem to have done a lot of research and it's not exactly shrouded in mystery or debated like the economic policies' impact. The sparrow campaign is the second section inder 'Origins' on the wiki!

Not home so without my sources some quick points.

Of course average lifespan shoots up from 1950 to 1976, given that 1920ish to 1950 was a period of war, civil war, famine, disease and natural disaster that killed dozens of millions. Anyone that could remotely settle things down could claim such a thing. The more curious thing is where the author got statistics on such data, seeing as such data was hard to gather in the preceding decades.

As for the famine, yes they do occur naturally but the Great Famine was created by Mao and its party being unable to grasp that the demands they put on agriculture were unrealistic. Economic flight really took off after Mao died because Mao had also quite some outdated economic views. This piece is very very generous in forgiving Mao for his involvement, it reminds me of pieces such as those talking about how Hitler didn't want/or know about the Holocaust or some Stalin rug sweeping. Especially the no revolt part, neither did Hitler get one from his 'own people' so? Does the author forget the terror? The forced labor camps? The bait and switch crackdown of the hundred flowers campaign?

I think Taiwan is an easy mirror to hold up for some comparisons.

nfe wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Ok, good point. One I had not heard before. Must look it up.

Really? You seem to have done a lot of research and it's not exactly shrouded in mystery or debated like the economic policies' impact. The sparrow campaign is the second section inder 'Origins' on the wiki!

The article i quoted was not my work, it turned up on my feed and i read it, and much of it seem plausible. I am not a big student of chinese history, I know enough about modern china to hate it's current government without having to hate it's past ones. One thing that stuck out was Maoism seemed to be blamed for every death in china during his reign, including the large number of natural ones that would occur in such a huge population.

The problem with "including natural ones" is that more competent or realisitc of reality approach could have prevented many of these natural deaths on top of those that died due to hairbrained schemes. Honestly I'm not a person that starts foaming when he hears socialism, I'm supportive of it.

But Mao was a dumpster fire when it came to running his country and the above piece wouldn't be misplaced as official CCP history with the new Mao rehabilitation approach by Xi.

It's not even just that there was mismanagement of resources that could have dealt with natural disasters. There was active refusal to alter course once they started flattening populations. Thousands of people dying at the doors of full granaries because managers were petrified of not meeting centralised grain quotas and other such horrors.

nfe wrote:
It's not even just that there was mismanagement of resources that could have dealt with natural disasters. There was active refusal to alter course once they started flattening populations. Thousands of people dying at the doors of full granaries because managers were petrified of not meeting centralised grain quotas and other such horrors.

Indeed, which is what makes the piece all the more questionable. The omitted but easily looked up information on CCP policies, the favorable vocabulary. This is a piece by believers for believers really.

The inclusion of other death tolls just says it all, if you have to bring up other monstreous atrocities to defend yours you already lost.

Could you stop posting questionable WHAT IF threads based on flimsy evidence and superficial research into the subject?

No, Perry, I will not let you bully and snark me into not posting valid speculations, which seem common here such as the posts about jutland or similar topics.

You could always put me on your block let as I've dine with you to keep from seeing my posts if you find them as irritating as I find yours.

The difference is that other people occasionally post something and usually have quality ideas, while you seem to post every idle thought you have with an understanding of the subject that is shaky at best. Getting your WWII history from LOL FRANCE memes, not even knowing about Mao's sparrow-murdering campaign and how it contributed to the famine in a defense of Mao, your entire "Marching Morons" debacle...

It seems a fair degree of Mao's death toll was due to errors and not due to intentional efforts to murder people. in fact the 4 pests was an attempt to save people by eliminating creatures which ate human food and spread diseases.

Others like Hitler and stalin launched intentional efforts at mass murder and extermination.

So even if mao has a higher body count can he be compared to those whose death tolls were fully intentional as opposed to his higher but not intentional death toll?

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
It seems a fair degree of Mao's death toll was due to errors and not due to intentional efforts to murder people. in fact the 4 pests was an attempt to save people by eliminating creatures which ate human food and spread diseases.

Others like Hitler and stalin launched intentional efforts at mass murder and extermination.

So even if mao has a higher body count can he be compared to those whose death tolls were fully intentional as opposed to his higher but not intentional death toll?

What are you actually trying to get at? It isn't a competition.

Chairman Mao is the greatest person to ever have lived.

-This message was sponsored by the People's Republic of China.

Jokes aside, in my opinion Mao fits in with other 20th century communist leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh as a mixed blessing. They achieved great feats and lifted their country to new heights as they went from being backwards third-world gakholes to regional or even world powers, fought off foreign imperialists and capitalists, massively improved the life of their people, introduced widespread education and literacy which brought their country into the modern era, built up widespread industry and infrastructure, encouraged the development of science and introduced electricity and other modern technologies until then only available to elites, etc. etc. etc. But they did so only at great costs. Perhaps those costs were avoidable, perhaps they were not. But it does somewhat tarnish their otherwise great legacy.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Chairman Mao is the greatest person to ever have lived.

-This message was sponsored by the People's Republic of China.

Jokes aside, in my opinion Mao fits in with other 20th century communist leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh as a mixed blessing. They achieved great feats and lifted their country to new heights as they went from being backwards third-world gakholes to regional or even world powers, fought off foreign imperialists and capitalists, massively improved the life of their people, introduced widespread education and literacy which brought their country into the modern era, built up widespread industry and infrastructure, encouraged the development of science and introduced electricity and other modern technologies until then only available to elites, etc. etc. etc. [handwaving qualification removed]

This message sponsored by Failed 20th Century 'Communist' Regimes.

It's a bit disappointing to see someone studying archaeology describe any place or society as backwards.

Saying things like unintentional and costs that could have been avoided conveniently sidestep the policies Mao willingly and intentionally imposed to affect 'progress' that led to the killings of potentially millions of 'undesirable' elements in society for zero long term gain, even ignoring the Great Famine deaths.

nfe wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Chairman Mao is the greatest person to ever have lived.

-This message was sponsored by the People's Republic of China.

Jokes aside, in my opinion Mao fits in with other 20th century communist leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh as a mixed blessing. They achieved great feats and lifted their country to new heights as they went from being backwards third-world gakholes to regional or even world powers, fought off foreign imperialists and capitalists, massively improved the life of their people, introduced widespread education and literacy which brought their country into the modern era, built up widespread industry and infrastructure, encouraged the development of science and introduced electricity and other modern technologies until then only available to elites, etc. etc. etc. [handwaving qualification removed]

This message sponsored by Failed 20th Century 'Communist' Regimes.

It's a bit disappointing to see someone studying archaeology describe any place or society as backwards.

That is a dishonest distortion of my argument. On the same note it is incredibly disappointing to see someone who has studied archaeology describe any place or society as 'failed'.
Only a blind man could deny that Russia in 1917 or China in 1927 were lagging far behind the industrialised West in terms of economy and standards of living. Communism changed that. Before the Revolution, in 1917, almost no one in Russia could read and write. Only a total fool would not describe that as backwards when in comparison almost everyone in Western Europe could read by that point in time. A few decades later Russia was the first nation to ever reach space. Communism made that rapid development possible. In 1927, China was a divided society languishing in abject poverty while Western nations and Japan did with it as they wished. Now China is a massive economic superpower. Again, it was reforms introduced by communist leaders that made that development possible.
In what a way was Communist Russia a "failed" regime? By their own standards perhaps, as they failed to reach the ultimate utopian goal they were striving for, but by any other standard they were highly successful. China is perhaps even more successful, as the communist regime there is still going very strong. They are anything but failed regimes. Compare this to the numerous capitalist regimes across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America that have and continue to fail. If you take economy and improving people's standards of life as the primary criteria, communism has been quite a bit more successful than capitalism in fact. Communism has massively improved the economy and standards of living in most of the places where it was introduced. Capitalism, outside of a small handful of European and North American nations where capitalism developed organically over time, has mostly failed. Besides North Korea, all of the poorest countries on Earth have capitalist regimes.

No. Chairman Mao does not need to be rethunk.

The improved living conditions you cited have more to do with US technology transfer programs from the 90s than anything the party ever accomplished. The only thing the PLA ever did was set people against each other to put their people into a state of cultural and social stagnation. Without a Western power giving them the tools to modernize, we would think of the entire country as a humanitarian crisis, similar to North Korea.

If you want to consider the character of Mao, start with Jiang Qing. She is the person who promoted the cult of personality around Mao and she was an absolutely brutal class warrior. One of her big things was setting up people's tribunals to go after landlords, any time the economy wasn't working that was what she fell back to. She hated the idea of personal wealth and was quick to take down anyone who dissented from her party line.

Not sure how anyone can ask this question with a straight face. Attributing humanitarian progress in China to Mao is like saying Hitler was good for making the trains run on time.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

nfe wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Chairman Mao is the greatest person to ever have lived.

-This message was sponsored by the People's Republic of China.

Jokes aside, in my opinion Mao fits in with other 20th century communist leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh as a mixed blessing. They achieved great feats and lifted their country to new heights as they went from being backwards third-world gakholes to regional or even world powers, fought off foreign imperialists and capitalists, massively improved the life of their people, introduced widespread education and literacy which brought their country into the modern era, built up widespread industry and infrastructure, encouraged the development of science and introduced electricity and other modern technologies until then only available to elites, etc. etc. etc. [handwaving qualification removed]

This message sponsored by Failed 20th Century 'Communist' Regimes.

It's a bit disappointing to see someone studying archaeology describe any place or society as backwards.

That is a dishonest distortion of my argument.

How so?

On the same note it is incredibly disappointing to see someone who has studied archaeology describe any place or society as 'failed'.

Yet, ironically, you describe 'the numerous capitalist regimes across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America that have and continue to fail' later in the post.

However, I didn't describe places or societies as failed. I described regimes as failed (as you went on to do). This is a very important distinction. Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh all failed to establish communist regimes and their attempts eventually collapsed into (or deliberately adopted) state-capitalism or simply disintegrated.

Only a blind man could deny that Russia in 1917 or China in 1927 were lagging far behind the industrialised West in terms of economy and standards of living. Communism changed that. Before the Revolution, in 1917, almost no one in Russia could read and write. Only a total fool would not describe that as backwards when in comparison almost everyone in Western Europe could read by that point in time.

If it's not a big part of your course it could be worth having a bit of a look at some of the last few decades of anthropological and archaeological theory before you call them all fools - because we stopped describing communities only in opposition to the society in which the author resides, or against an evolutionary scale, decades ago. Hell, it was out of fashion by the New Archaeology. In the 60s. It's only the echo-chamber philologist-historians that are still throwing that stuff around, and even most of them have gotten beyond it!

I'm not ignoring the rest, but it's a waste of time because you're arguing the validity of communism with me. I'm a sort-of anarcho-communist. I presume you've made the assumption that I'm calling those regimes failed because of an innate opposition to communism, but you are actually preaching to the converted.

nfe wrote:
you've missed out one major catalyst that was entirely Mao's fault - his idiotic sparrow-murdering campaign (conducted as part of the four pests policy and against the advice of all science) that allowed locusts to run rampage and annihilate vast volumes of crops.

And he didn't even do it the cool way where he violates space-time through sheer force of will.

If you're gonna kill a whole bunch of sparrows, and consequently a few millions people, at least do it with style!

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
It seems a fair degree of Mao's death toll was due to errors and not due to intentional efforts to murder people. in fact the 4 pests was an attempt to save people by eliminating creatures which ate human food and spread diseases.

Others like Hitler and stalin launched intentional efforts at mass murder and extermination.

So even if mao has a higher body count can he be compared to those whose death tolls were fully intentional as opposed to his higher but not intentional death toll?

No it doesn't make a difference. If you put into practice policies that cause the deaths of millions, be it through unintentional incompetence or deliberate malice, history will not and should not judge your kindly. Leaders are responsible for the policies they propose and implement which means they have to shoulder the blame when they are bad policies. Retconning Mao into a bumbling idiot instead of a sadistic murderer doesn't change the actual results of his policies and those results are what matters not his intentions.

Bull. Of course intentions matter. It's the difference between manslaughter, self-defense, and murder, for instance, and has profound implications on the way we understand an action.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Bull. Of course intentions matter. It's the difference between manslaughter, self-defense, and murder, for instance, and has profound implications on the way we understand an action.

Intention doesn't change the fact that you bear responsibility for the actions you choose to take. Mao causing the deaths of millions due to famine as a consequence of his sparrow extermination policy makes Mao responsible for those deaths. Stalin causing the deaths of millions due to his five year plan of agricultural collectivism in the Ukraine is just as bad. Both were bad policies with easily predictable and forseeable terrible consequences. Regardless as to whether or not Mao may have deliberately starved people for political and economic gain as opposed to just being incredibly stupid Mao is still responsible for the deaths he caused.

If you get drunk, drive drunk and unintentionally kill people in an ensuring car wreck, you're responsible for those deaths, you're a criminal, and people will judge you accordingly. If you deliberately plot the murder of people and commit those murder then you are responsible for the murders, you are a criminal and people will judge you accordingly. Intent doesn't make people be less dead or the perpetrators less responsible for their willful actions that caused those deaths.

Mao's image can't be rehabilitated by using "good intentions" as a rationalization for terrible decisions to enact horrible policies that killed millions of people. Mao has to own the responsibility for his actions and the consequences of those actions regardless of his intentions. There's no upside for Mao here, there's no mitigating circumstance that makes the death toll he's responsible for be less bad.

Prestor Jon wrote:
If you get drunk, drive drunk and unintentionally kill people in an ensuring car wreck, you're responsible for those deaths, you're a criminal, and people will judge you accordingly. If you deliberately plot the murder of people and commit those murder then you are responsible for the murders, you are a criminal and people will judge you accordingly. Intent doesn't make people be less dead or the perpetrators less responsible for their willful actions that caused those deaths.

Certainly, but whilst people will judge you accordingly in both cases, it is highly unlikely that many objective persons will accord the same judgement in both cases.

nfe wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

nfe wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Chairman Mao is the greatest person to ever have lived.

-This message was sponsored by the People's Republic of China.

Jokes aside, in my opinion Mao fits in with other 20th century communist leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh as a mixed blessing. They achieved great feats and lifted their country to new heights as they went from being backwards third-world gakholes to regional or even world powers, fought off foreign imperialists and capitalists, massively improved the life of their people, introduced widespread education and literacy which brought their country into the modern era, built up widespread industry and infrastructure, encouraged the development of science and introduced electricity and other modern technologies until then only available to elites, etc. etc. etc. [handwaving qualification removed]

This message sponsored by Failed 20th Century 'Communist' Regimes.

It's a bit disappointing to see someone studying archaeology describe any place or society as backwards.

That is a dishonest distortion of my argument.

How so?

Because instead of countering it by explaining why, according to you, those places can not be described as "backwards", you make a claim that an archaeologist supposedly should never describe a place as "backwards". That is a fallacy. Then you distort my argument further by implying I said an entire society was "backwards", while I said no such thing. From the context of the thread and argument it should be clear that "backwards" here refers to the political leadership, policies and infrastructure of the places indicated, not to their society as whole. Culturally, Russia or China were anything but backwards, and indeed when speaking about culture it would be dubious to call anything "backwards" since that would imply a ranking of different cultures. But when speaking about politics or infrastructure there are no such caveats.

nfe wrote:

On the same note it is incredibly disappointing to see someone who has studied archaeology describe any place or society as 'failed'.

Yet, ironically, you describe 'the numerous capitalist regimes across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America that have and continue to fail' later in the post.

I think you missed the point here. The irony was intended. You berated me for calling something backwards while ironically doing pretty much the same thing yourself. I added the retort as a sarcastic way (it being just a direct copy of your statement) to highlight this, not because it is my actual opinion that it is disappointing to see an archaeologist describe something as 'failed'.

nfe wrote:
However, I didn't describe places or societies as failed. I described regimes as failed (as you went on to do). This is a very important distinction. Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh all failed to establish communist regimes and their attempts eventually collapsed into (or deliberately adopted) state-capitalism or simply disintegrated.

And here we touch upon the central irony. Because neither did I. What I said was that their countries were backwards. Now "country" is a somewhat ambiguous term in that it can refer either to just a piece of land with set borders, the state that claims sovereignty over said land or the nation(s) that inhabits said land (or the combination of everything). But given the fact that this discussion is entirely about states rather than about land or nations, I don't think this should cause any confusion.

nfe wrote:

Only a blind man could deny that Russia in 1917 or China in 1927 were lagging far behind the industrialised West in terms of economy and standards of living. Communism changed that. Before the Revolution, in 1917, almost no one in Russia could read and write. Only a total fool would not describe that as backwards when in comparison almost everyone in Western Europe could read by that point in time.

If it's not a big part of your course it could be worth having a bit of a look at some of the last few decades of anthropological and archaeological theory before you call them all fools - because we stopped describing communities only in opposition to the society in which the author resides, or against an evolutionary scale, decades ago. Hell, it was out of fashion by the New Archaeology. In the 60s. It's only the echo-chamber philologist-historians that are still throwing that stuff around, and even most of them have gotten beyond it!

I'm not ignoring the rest, but it's a waste of time because you're arguing the validity of communism with me. I'm a sort-of anarcho-communist. I presume you've made the assumption that I'm calling those regimes failed because of an innate opposition to communism, but you are actually preaching to the converted.

I am not calling them fools. You are applying something somewhere it does not make sense. We archaeologists stopped describing communities on an evolutionary scale many decades ago, and I have never actually met any archaeologist or historian who still believes in such nonsense. But this applies to "communities" in the sense of societies and cultures. It does not apply to objects or infrastructure for which a scale with different levels of development is still very relevant.
It also does not apply to the political realm, to political leaders or state policies, which can be compared with those of neighbouring states. If there is a state in Europe in 1917 that still de-facto practices serfdom, a practice which has been abolished in the rest of the continent a hundred or more years ago, or where education is still not widely available to the general population despite this having become common in the rest of the continent during the previous century, or where the majority of people have never even heard of "electricity", than it is nothing but fair to describe that state as backwards in those respects.
In other words, just because archaeologists and historians have abandoned evolutionary thinking, doesn't mean that they can no longer acknowledge progress on a political/material level within a society or the lack of progress on those levels of a given society in relation to neighbouring societies. No one in his sane mind will claim that there is no difference of development between contemporary Europe and contemporary Africa, with Europe being more highly developed. But the way that archaeologists and historians nowadays think differently than in the past is that in the past, these differences in material and political development led to people also thinking there was a difference in cultural (or even racial) development, with African cultures being described as "primitive", "backwards" or "inferior". What has changed is that as so-called "primitive" cultures were studied more and more, people realised they were anything but less complex or inferior. Archaeologists and historians have come to realise that these societies are every bit as complex and highly developed as Western societies, coming to the conclusion that "ranking" different societies along some sort of evolutionary path is impossible. This does not mean however that archaeologists claim that you can't say that the infrastructure, the economy or the political or educational systems of Africa aren't as well developed as those of Europe (quite the contrary, they claim this all the time, it being a major reason why fieldwork in many places in Africa is more difficult than in Europe).
In other words, just because it is wrong to call a culture or a society as a whole backwards, that doesn't mean you can't call anything backwards. Different levels and rankings of development have been abandoned for cultures, but not for infrastructure, economics, politics, education or a whole lot of other things.

I am an anarcho-syndicalist myself. In my view anarchism is the only way to achieve the goal of an equal communist society without ending up with an authoritarian state that just becomes the new elite, as has happened in in Russia or China or other places where revolutions took place on an authoritarian Marxist-Leninist model.

Please don't copypasta Facebook trash apolgias as history or reasons to 'reconsider' history.

Have you looked into the Backyard Furnace program yet? part of the failed Great leap Forward of Chairman Mao, which involved having peasant farmers all across the country build forges in their yards (taking time away from farming) in order to melt local iron into steel? Only, you know, they put quotas in place, so locals wound up destroying their metal objects, like bicycles, chains, etc, in order to produce metal enough for the quotas? And that this included melting down their farming tools, leaving them unable to farm?

And, of course, the metal that this produced wasn't high-quality steel, or even low-end steel, but just pig iron, useless for girders and other construction materials like Mao wanted... so, in the end, they traded their farming tools in for nothing.

And then massive starvation the year after.

Mao was a *massive* failure who lead his people into massive death in the process of mismanagement.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Because instead of countering it by explaining why, according to you, those places can not be described as "backwards", you make a claim that an archaeologist supposedly should never describe a place as "backwards". That is a fallacy.

No. It is not. Backwards implies a qualitative judgement made about a places' inhabitants. This is never appropriate. It furthermore assumes an evolutionary perspective on social development, situating societies or places on a linear scale on which one can lie behind or in front of another, which is again never appropriate.

Then you distort my argument further by implying I said an entire society was "backwards", while I said no such thing.

I very clearly objected to calling 'any place or society'. China, Russia, and Vietnam certainly all qualify as the former, and China and Vietnam were nation-states (still are, in fact, though minorities have grown in both insofar as I'm aware) - maybe Russia was too, I've no idea - so referring to the countries does imply a reference also to the populace, at least without clearly indicating you are referring only to the political apparatus.

From the context of the thread and argument it should be clear that "backwards" here refers to the political leadership, policies and infrastructure of the places indicated, not to their society as whole.

I disagree. I'd also always err towards avoiding any and all doubt when using pejorative terminology to refer to nations - but then I'm usually writing in an academic context and would expect to get nailed to the wall otherwise.

Culturally, Russia or China were anything but backwards, and indeed when speaking about culture it would be dubious to call anything "backwards" since that would imply a ranking of different cultures. But when speaking about politics or infrastructure there are no such caveats.

Disagree. Politics and infrastructure are culturally contingent. Would you describe chiefdoms as backwards? If you were writing about the relationships of contemporary oppida and Roman settlements would you call the former backwards?

nfe wrote:

Only a blind man could deny that Russia in 1917 or China in 1927 were lagging far behind the industrialised West in terms of economy and standards of living. Communism changed that. Before the Revolution, in 1917, almost no one in Russia could read and write. Only a total fool would not describe that as backwards when in comparison almost everyone in Western Europe could read by that point in time.

If it's not a big part of your course it could be worth having a bit of a look at some of the last few decades of anthropological and archaeological theory before you call them all fools - because we stopped describing communities only in opposition to the society in which the author resides, or against an evolutionary scale, decades ago. Hell, it was out of fashion by the New Archaeology. In the 60s. It's only the echo-chamber philologist-historians that are still throwing that stuff around, and even most of them have gotten beyond it!

I am not calling them fools. You are applying something somewhere it does not make sense. We archaeologists stopped describing communities on an evolutionary scale many decades ago, and I have never actually met any archaeologist or historian who still believes in such nonsense. But this applies to "communities" in the sense of societies and cultures. It does not apply to objects or infrastructure for which a scale with different levels of development is still very relevant.

Except that it does. You're welcome to disagree with that level of relativism, but it would be useful to do so from the position of knowledge that avoiding all such summations of culturally contingent systems is the dominant paradigm in our field.

It also does not apply to the political realm, to political leaders or state policies, which can be compared with those of neighbouring states.

It is especially relevant when comparing neighbouring states (or groups of any kind). I refer you to the Roman example above. The dominance of relativism in anthropology and archaeology owes a huge debt to people's objections to the comparison of neighbouring communities - Roman and Greek interactions with the neighbours especially, but the same thing happened everywhere, really.

In other words, just because archaeologists and historians have abandoned evolutionary thinking, doesn't mean that they can no longer acknowledge progress on a political/material level within a society or the lack of progress on those levels of a given society in relation to neighbouring societies.

Progress is another problematic term. Development would be the usual phrasing today.

No one in his sane mind will claim that there is no difference of development between contemporary Europe and contemporary Africa, with Europe being more highly developed. But the way that archaeologists and historians nowadays think differently than in the past is that in the past, these differences in material and political development led to people also thinking there was a difference in cultural (or even racial) development, with African cultures being described as "primitive", "backwards" or "inferior". What has changed is that as so-called "primitive" cultures were studied more and more, people realised they were anything but less complex or inferior. Archaeologists and historians have come to realise that these societies are every bit as complex and highly developed as Western societies, coming to the conclusion that "ranking" different societies along some sort of evolutionary path is impossible. This does not mean however that archaeologists claim that you can't say that the infrastructure, the economy or the political or educational systems of Africa aren't as well developed as those of Europe

Nothing wrong with saying that infrastructure is less developed. Economics is more problematic because it assumes there's a logical end-point (and that its more-or-less The Wealth of Nations). Education doubly so because many societies teach children in completely different ways and prioritise different things - again in culturally contingent ways. By your scheme non-literate tribes are educationally backwards - but they do a fine job of teaching their children. In any case, less developed is not synonymous with backwards. Implications and connotations are important.

(quite the contrary, they claim this all the time, it being a major reason why fieldwork in many places in Africa is more difficult than in Europe).

I work in places that are difficult to carry out fieldwork in. People used to call them backwards due to these infrastructural and bureaucratic hurdles. I know of one person who has in print recent decades. I know for a fact they've been getting rejected from every funding panel for years as a direct result. It is not a thing people are doing all the time because every one with a job knows it isn't acceptable.



Now. Apologies all. I'll leave it there and we can get wired back in to how hard done by Mao is since he merely accidentally killed millions of people.

Mao is a SOB farmer, who is way over his head trying to govern a nation of billions. He is dumb MF, in order to make himself look competent, he kills and lower others who are much more competent down to his level, those around him are in fear, loyal to a fault and won't dare to disagree with him. I hope he suffers every single moment in the afterlife and bad omen to all of his decedents.

Yes, I am bitter to the extreme as his policies diectly affected me, my parents. My mom never got to finish HS and was sent to the country side to farm; my dad too but he later finished school and overcame that gak and became a professor. I lost a potential sibling when they force abortion on my mom. My grandfather on my dad side was a high official and the family lost a lot of wealth due to that debacle.