Originally Posted by jwb

@OH

I believe that he was inspired to do the great leap forward by Stalin's 5 year plan. And I believe that the 5 year plan intentionally allowed people to starve. It became apparent early on that the collectivization was a failure and that productivity of agriculture decreased, for a variety of reasons. When that became clear, Stalin continued to export food stocks instead of feeding the agrarian peasants who grew the food, thus causing the massive scale of of the famine. That's basically intentional mass murder via famine. Another collectivization effort happened in the USSR in the 1940s on a smaller scale, and once again it caused a (smaller scale) famine.

So yes, I believe that in part Mao had to have known that this sort of rapid industrialization would cost quite a few lives. I think it's possible he didn't realize it would grow to the exact scale it did in China's case, since some of that was due to really stupid and counter productive efforts to increase crop yields which ended up backfiring. But the lesson and example of the 5 year plan was more than enough warning of the hazards of such a policy that in general I don't allow him the excuse of ignorance.

It's also worth mentioning the reasons for the necessity of rapid industrialization were just as much based on internal politics and ideology as they were on military concerns. The blueprint for a workers utopia via Marx assumes that industrialization has already occurred under the stage of capitalism. And at least in the USSR there was a good deal of Bolshevik contempt for the agrarian peasant class as backwards, reactionary, religious and just not conducive to the party's vision of a revolutionary and class conscious proletariat. Probably not a coincidence then that they were the main ones to starve.

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Well yeah cause it's fun.

Originally Posted by Anteater

His devotion to the Soviet Union's idiocy aside, Mao was exceedingly anti-intellectual and pissed on the expertise of anyone who knew anything about engineering or science or agriculture despite a desire to supposedly cultivate technical expertise and knowledge in the general population.

Originally Posted by elphenor

fair enough

Im in another relationship now

she's only 20, a baby Bat, it might be good for me

Originally Posted by Trollheart

You sound like Buffy after they dragged her back from Heaven.

Originally Posted by WWWP

I want to open a school for MB's lost boys and teach them basic coping skills and build up their self esteem and strengthen their emotional intelligence and teach them about vegetables and institutionalized racism and sexism and then they'll all build a bronze statue of me in my honor and my bronzed titties will forever be groped by the grubby paws of you ****ing whiny pathetic white boys.

Originally Posted by MarieMarie

Hey, congratulations! Is it Houston girl?