Factual asessment of the reasons and effect of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

What caused Mao to launch this campaign?

An assessment of progress towards socialism in China, coupled with the worldwide spread ideas about such progress in the world. Ever since Marx, it was assumed that such transition would be pushed by the proletariat continuously, and the only reason it is hindered would be due to proletariat being oppressed by some force.
Therefore, Mao, observing no progress, came to a logical conclusion that his own government was obstructing proletariat, effectively embracing anarchist opinion. Of course, it failed to deliver, and disproved both opinions.

What are the consequences of the Cultural Revolution?
>Negatives
Insignificant one is that it was a major disturbance for all strati of Chinese society, however, it caused no consequential damage to any of them.

Significant one is that it resulted in several points of GDP growth loss over several years, which are lost forever.

>Positive
It advanced understanding of society, and disproved some wrong opinions about it.

It destroyed reactionary relics of Feudal and Imperial culture (i.e. foot binding, autistic ceremonies and customs), and made Chinese much more pragmatic towards both traditional and revolutionary communist culture, and overall in general. Which lead to them being effective actors in modern capitalism and world markets.

It advanced political culture of the Chinese government, to what they call scientific socialism, where instead of sweeping countrywide reforms, they first test and access various policies small scale. Overall, it put a clear end to revolutionary style of administration and replaced it with stable style.

Other urls found in this thread:

npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/11/15/564376795/from-cattle-to-capital-how-agriculture-bred-ancient-inequality
theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientists
nature.com/articles/nature24646?error=cookies_not_supported&code=c2ee1de8-4320-4a55-aa09-24544831375d
felineworlds.com/lion-feeding/
mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/alan-badiou_cultural-_revolution_.pdf
npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/12/21/572043850/u-n-investigator-on-extreme-poverty-issues-a-grim-report-on-the-u-s
npr.org
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Who is this spunk monk?

P.s. A mixed consequence of cultural revolution would be the international reaction, which was equally mixed.

It ranged from the Paris Spring, where the intellectual elite was captivated by Mao's work to a great extent, to overall smear caused by excesses and failures of the revolution. Overall, it exposed the West to Maoism, creating many allies, followers, as well as enemies to it.

>this fucking picture again

fuck off tankie

It's an iconic picture to some extent, that is bound to turn heads. May I ask for a more intellectual critique?

it's retarded weirdly sexualised propaganda

It is a brilliant worldwide known art. Sexualized (as if there's anything bad in it), but actually traditionally sexualized.

>tfw no revolutionary peasant qt gf

why the fuck is a 12 year old girl carrying a gun

Why the fuck would she be 12 years old? (a child for scale)

Why not?

Here is a negative, a shitload of ching chongs died for not reason just cause the Reds didn't like the way they dressed or how their name sounded. Also an incalculable amount of priceless Chinese artifacts were destroyed which the PRC government still has not bothered to attempt to figure out simply cause it would be 2 large of an embarrassment to the communist party on how badly Mao and his pals fucked up again. You trying to argue that somehow chinese society has achieved some from of enlightenment or some balance between modern and traditional ways of thinking. Seems like your just looking for a reasons to excuse the communists from fucking over everything they touch as usual. Free helicopter rides.

>pretending Child soldiers wouldn't exist especially in shitty revolutionary China

I don't think the Cultural Revolution was as bad as Western people tend to hype it up to be but I feel like you think the Cultural Revolution was some well intentioned altruistic movement that just got out of hand. Imo the explanations much simpler, it was just a purge to get rid of anyone else that threatened Mao's hold on power after the clusterfuck of the Great Leap Forward and the Thousand Flowers Campaign

Not OP but Chinese culture then was feudal and backwards even more so than today. Whether through chimping out or a gradual shift Chinese culture would have had to change to embrace the benefits state capitalism and mass industrialization would propel them to where they are today.

And you think it was worth largest mass slaughter in world history or nahhhhhhhhhhhh? Cause OP is clearly a faggot saying >Positive the loss of "Autistic ceremonies and customs". Cause clearly actually having some history and culture that isn't solely dedicated to glory of the communist state is terrible. Not like have a sense of national identity was ever a good thing.

>a shitload of ching chongs died for not reason
Most sources say - a million. A drop in the ocean.
>an incalculable amount of priceless Chinese artifacts were destroyed
Cultural artifacts were specifically protected by the government, as well as some vulnerable people, like the last emperor Pu Yi. Please name a valuable item that actually was destroyed.
>Seems like your just looking for a reasons to excuse the communists from fucking over everything they touch as usual.
I provided full facts, while you are spewing subjective nonsense and stale memes. And then you accuse me of bias. How sweet.

> it was just a purge to get rid of anyone else that threatened Mao's hold on power
Mao's position was unassailable to begin with, and besides, no politician was actually purged, considering that Mao himself developed Chinese political system with collegial style of rule and term limits.

OP is a fucking faggot, you cant say "reactionary relics of Feudal and Imperial culture", Imperial culture was there first. wtf was it reacting 2? It may surprise you but communism isn't the natural state of a nation.

>implying Mao wasn't just make some rationalization to stir up shit

Stop exaggerating.
It's not even close to the world largest slaughter

>Cause clearly actually having some history and culture that isn't solely dedicated to glory of the communist state is terrible.
Nothing at all happened with positive and adequate aspects of Chinese culture. Modern Chinese culture is one of the most authentic and rich, while the Western one is nothing at all but postmodern trash and cheap entertainment.

Closer to around 30 million people but Is your argument that there's a lot of ching chong there 4 its ok to kill them? Or is your argument that the chinese were communists there 4 they r not people there 4 its ok 2 kill them? Also the statue of the Yongle Emperor (destroyed). Parts the of Cemetery of Confucius were damaged. Metric fuck ton of books burned as well as art, we have photos of this. You communist fucks really need to actually look at your own history when you aren't busy burning the parts of it you don't like.

When I world largest slaughter I actually mean all the event within China including the "gr8 leap forward" not just the culture revolution part of the oh so gr8 communist revolution.

>Most sources say - a million. A drop in the ocean.
Haha you really are a maggot.

> being this delusional

Reactionary culture reacts to progress, contributing to averting and impeding it, due to not being fit for the new technological and economic environment.

Think Indian Caste and family system. While nothing quite as hideous as that existed in China, plenty of bad stuff that would seriously impact productivity, consumerism and entrepreneurship did.

>communism isn't the natural state of a nation
Of course it is. Anything that regularly and persistently occurs in nature is natural.

So when the Republic of China was formed and threw out the Qing, and then the communists reacted by rebelling against the Republic of China cause they weren't genocidal enough, the PRC are in fact Reactionary. Cause they were reacting to the progress that the RoC was trying to bring about. Also these were inanimate fucking objects like old books and statues and graves. Not sure if ur aware but inanimate objects can't "react" to anything, there were just sitting there and the commies destroyed them. Also "Of course it is. Anything that regularly and persistently occurs in nature is natural." Your an idiot, thats so stupid i'm going to leave you to keep making that point cause I want you to look stupid. Have fuck u fucking red!

Please, it's comman knowledge that Cash my check and his goons were incompetent corrupt chucklefucks. The communists were the best outcome for mainland china in the longrun

Im not saying Ching Chong kai shek was Numero #1. But you really think that the whole genocide this was the BEST possible outcome. No other way other than killing a shit load of ching chongs? I'll let you stop and think if MAYBE the red weren't the best option

Considering the Reds have an independent country that's the second most powerful in the world that's giving the US a run for it's money while the Taiwanese are stuck with a stagnant economy I feel like the Reds won out in the long run

I thought Reds gave a shit about the little guy or do you only care until you get into power. Then its use the blood of the workers to grease the wheels of industry. Also the PRC is a oligarchic corporatist dictatorship where all members of the "inner party" are also the heads of all the major corporations and they ruthlessly crush anyone in the middle class who gets to successful while leaving the lower class to live in libertarian unregulated capitalism. So yes the RoC is better.

Reactionary means to return to how things were before the revolution began. The choices for China were to be an investment destination for European industry or to nationalize their economy and have the Chinese state make decisions. The people of China chose the later. Neither choices are really reactionary. The white army during the Russian civil war who wanted to restore the czar and keep the peasants in bondage are a better example of reaction.

>the natural state of a nation
>implying any state is more natural than any other
>implying that nation states are the only fundamental social order to ever exist
This is some spooky shit.

Some would say the US is an oligarchy in itself.
Overall, it's just a pot calling a kettle black

Im not American

Well lets think about this. Do humans have natural tendencies? YES, Do some nations play off of normal human tendencies more than others? YES. If it normal for humans to be a little (or on occasion a lot) selfish? YES. Do human feel a natural desire TO OWN SHIT? YES. Does communism support the natural systems like private property? No. Naturally, if i kill a boar then that boar is mine, if a lion kills a deer is that deer divided naturally amongst the population? NO. If a lion lays on its ass for months on end will food magically appear b4 it, gather and ready for consumption? NO. Communism is not normal, its not natural, and its fucking gay. Also red is a shit colour.

You do realize that selfishness isn't an innate trait of humanity right? You can do some googling and realize the current consensus is that inequality and selfishness was something selected for during the advent of agriculture during the neolithic. Before then we were much more egalitarian and communal while we lived a hunter gatherer lifestyle. Selfishness and capitalism are not natural, just a product of the way we organize our societies

>realize the current consensus is that inequality and selfishness were selected for during the advent of agriculture
You're going to have to provide some actual sources that show consensus among the scientific community on that fact because I've found nothing.

>Does communism support the natural systems like private property?
Private property isn't innate system in the slightest.
>if a lion kills a deer is that deer divided naturally amongst the population?
Yes, actually. The lions get their share depending on the pride hierarchy, no matter who landed the killing blow.
>if i kill a boar then that boar is mine
Likewise, in a natural neolithic society, the tribe functions as the collective and shares the spoils. When a hunter kills the prey, he does not claim it for himself at all, although his utility may put him high in tribal hierarchy, and allow him a good share of its' values.
>Communism is not normal, its not natural, and its fucking gay.
For you.

If anything, Marxism is a movement to reembrace Neolithic social dynamics, the most natural and innate social structures in human history.

>selfishness isn't an innate trait of humanity
>inequality and selfishness was something that was selected for
>this thing that was selected for is now an innate part of humanity
you are an idiot

Here's a link
npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/11/15/564376795/from-cattle-to-capital-how-agriculture-bred-ancient-inequality

theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientists

And the paper cited
nature.com/articles/nature24646?error=cookies_not_supported&code=c2ee1de8-4320-4a55-aa09-24544831375d
Should be a good head start

In society not genetics numbnuts.
After all economic systems are just social constructs

>inequality and selfishness was something selected for
>selection
>not having anything to do with genetics
you are an idiot

Just like how agriculture has been selected for throughout the old world. I guess those agriculture genes must have been acted upon by natural selection huh?
GTFO brainlet

The paper you posted says nothing about selfishness being inate or not, it just says that inequality arose between people as soon as ownership of large amounts of capital became possible.

Shit, it doesn't even deny that wealth inequality existed in hunter-gatherer societies, it just says that it was less pronounced than in agricultural societies.

Why are all you commies so fucking stupid, is it genetic or is it just society that makes you such fucking retards? Can you pls name 1 nation and 1 leader that all u fucking reds can agree that if it goes red and fails that you will all agree to either shut the fuck up forever or let us throw you out of helicopters?

Like I said, it's a start. What I'm getting at is that capitalism was a product of wealth inequality spurred by the neolithic revolution and the advent of agriculture. Capitalism isn't the natural economic order, a more egalitarian barter system where goods and food were shared was the "natural order" back when we were more "natural"

And thats a lovley goal but we arent as "natural anymore, it might sound nice and natural if every person grew a small number of crops for themselves but it wouldn't be as effectively as role specialization that we have now. And especially in china when u have so many people

You're wrong about selfishness being unnatural, then. The paper you linked to also mentioned nothing about sharing or hoarding resources, and whether or not either of those happened in early hunter-gatherer tribes.
Your point about it being "natural" is also moot unless you're an anarcho-primitivist, because modern humans live in an agricultural society, therefore capitalism is more natural for us than for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

>Do some nations play off of normal human tendencies more than others? YES
I disagree with this entirely. Communism was a "natural" reaction to disparities in wealth, based on the all-too human emotions of both jealousy and wanting fairness. Whether it accomplished that is another matter, but communism was not some magic social tendency that just appealed to people and caused revolutions for no reason.

>If it normal for humans to be a little (or on occasion a lot) selfish? YES.
>If it normal for humans to be a little (or on occasion a lot) selfish? YES.
Yes, and? The Chinese working class wanted the shit that richer nations and the upper classes had.

>Does communism support the natural systems like private property? No.
Property is only natural insofar as you can maintain power over something. Redistribution of wealth, whether through revolution, war or welfare - is just as "natural" as existing capitalistic systems.

>No. Naturally, if i kill a boar then that boar is mine, if a lion kills a deer is that deer divided naturally amongst the population? NO
Female lions actually do share their hunt with other lions, but humans aren't lions anyway. A communist could make a comparison to bees or ants. Really, this is a shit analogy.
Modern human societies are just as natural as primitive human societies or animal social structures. We are beings created by the natural process of evolution, after all. There is nothing outside of "nature". The term is so broad as to be meaningless and exists only to perpetuate spooky value judgements.

>If a lion lays on its ass for months on end will food magically appear b4 it, gather and ready for consumption? NO
I'm guessing most chinks work harder than you, bud.

>NO. Communism is not normal, its not natural, and its fucking gay.
This would be a good Anal Cunt song title, but it's not really a good argument.

This, the Western view exaggerates but valuable parts of traditional culture were damaged and a lot of people died nonetheless. Deng and his successors are competent overall so I hope CCP makes up.

>Modern Chinese culture is one of the most authentic and rich
-_-

>A drop in the ocean
Utilitarianism was a mistake.

>It destroyed ... autistic ceremonies and customs
God forbid people have living history.
Footbinding was gay because it crippled people, but it's annoying when radicals (gommies or otherwise) snuff out candles that have been passed from generation to generation and call it "progress."
But then I remember I'm a brainlet, because heritage is divisive and we all need to be some sort of harmonious, perfectly equal whole that is totally on the same page about all issues. Wanting to see history alive and practiced, outside of records in a dusty book, is blase.
But hey, at least they had cute propaganda.
>tfw ywn marry a QT Chinese soldier girl, and use both your hugs and doting, tender affection to help heal the scars left on her by the revolution
Truly, why even live.

>clearly doesn't know what reactionary means.

Some would say that you're a faggot to make such broad comparisons on a HISTORY board. God damn, whats with the influx of /pol/ and /leftypol/ fucks lately? you tear down discussions regarding availability and legitimacy of facts and replace it with a useless politically loaded Goosechase-argument regarding the value of the culture. That's NOT what this board is for.
tl;dr: Go back to r/politics

And for the rest of you fags that are cringy enough to think you can #redpill us here with taken out of context data from Hitlers Germany. /pol/ is past reddit to the right.

>felineworlds.com/lion-feeding/
You live in a fictional world filled with paradoxes. You say that inequality and thus class is unnatural, yet you cite lions as an example, the species most known for its hierarchy. How is anything you claim "natural" if you need to lie or commit to olympics-tier mental gymnastics to back up your arguments? You're an untrustworthy person.

Not that user, but let's be real for a moment bud.
"Reactionary" as a pejorative or even as a term is pretty fucking dumb.
Considering that the foundation of Marx's work is Hegelian Dialectics (he just subtracted the notion of some gestalt spirit improving humanity through the dialectic - and added Communism as the inevitable outcome) then y'all should understand that everything is nothing more than a reaction to what came before it.
I think "reactionary" gets used as a pejorative because Marxists see the rise of communism as an inevitably, and anybody "reacting" against it is just a brainlet fighting the inevitable. But I think that's just indicative of their hubris. How many people have declared that their system would reign eternal, and that history was effectively over, before history marched forward and left them in the past, proving them wrong for all eternity?
Hell, it just happened. "History is over," screamed some jackass in the late 90's! And then 9/11 happened.

>the paper doesn't back up MY claim thus YOU are wrong
This is retarded. Veeky Forums is dead.

So let me guess, you think we should all be dancing around fires and living tents right now?

Im not saying letting go of or destroying the past is a good thing, but it happens to everyhting eventually, its called entropy, communists just did it in a faster and more directed manner

>What caused Mao to launch this campaign?
Butthurt about technocrats

Why don't you kill yourself now, since you're going to die anyway then?

>"it happens to evrything eventually"
Relying on faith to back up you arguments, now? How fitting... considering communisms basis in fiction. God damn it, Russeau.

Nice guess. But no, actually.
See, I'm just a guy that loves history. Nothing more.
And I wish that, rather than cheering when we intentionally send precious cultural relics and irretrievable memories into the misty past with a veritable viking's funeral, we would instead rage against the dying of the light. And you know, back up our shit. Preferably in fired clay, since that has quite the shelf life. Not in a massive and easily flammable library.
Everything has to die. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to preserve what's still living, or hold accountable those who would see the evidence of the past destroyed. That evidence is all that remains of what is now dead. If culture can only truly be said to live in the actions and minds of the people who practice it, then written sources and archaeological evidence amount to mummified culture.
Even in Europe, with all the documentation that it has, there exist plenty of holes and scant few sources to describe events. To say nothing of the historical wasteland that is the pre-colonial Americas.
Time is damaging enough to history *without* human intervention. Paper, papyrus, wood, metal, these all decay. Only the stone remains. Why shouldn't we curse or spit on the ones who stoke the flames in the pursuit of ambition or ideology? They trade priceless, irreplaceable knowledge for worthless, ephemeral things. All systems of government regress to some sort of psuedo-capitalistic oligarchy. All men with ambitions die. Why give a pass to the ideologue troglodytes or the "great man" they usually stand behind when they destroy something beautiful?

It was first and foremost Mao's last attempt to stay in power over Deng and Shaoqi who were taking over. Mao lost his grasp on the country after the failed attempt of the great leap forward, and mobilizing masses for the cultural revolution under his cult of personality was the ultimate solution. Remember, everyone had to own his quotations book, and almost every painting featured Mao.

This sentence is so funny. You are making a humanist argument but can't help dehumanizing chinese at the same time.

>AK47 in Chinese civil war

GTFO with this pleb tier fan art.

the only person dehumanizing anyone around here is the fucking PRC shill saying that the cultural revolution was a good thing.

>implying
We live in an industrial society and soon an automated society.
Communism is a reaction and tried to be a solution the changed economic circumstances of the industrial era.

>A herd of fuckin' ugly reds

I have destroyed OP on multiple occasions, usually when he gets beaten up he just waits and makes a new thread on the same topic. His posting style is extremely obvious.

Read Dikotter. Pre-WWII China wasn't as bad as caricatured by the Communists. The only thing that won them over is the Communists promised the rural countryside well-being but after the chaos of the GPCR nobody tried it anymore. It's natural that when China opened up trade the coastal region would be much more developed than the inner land. In fact, even before the modern era China has already progressed into such trends away from the Yellow river (Luoyang, Kaifeng). The River Elegy documentary was right. Judging from this perspective, the (Nationalist-)Communist CPC might have been the reactionary one.

All they had to do was just to take it easy and not being a tryhard.

Even if the CPC did nothing about the historic relics they would still be bulldozed later on for land development.

mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/alan-badiou_cultural-_revolution_.pdf
If someone wants something like a critical historical assessment.

>What caused Mao to launch this campaign?
He was a fucking idiot whose other great ideas included things like killing all the birds to save the rice and causing locust swarms because of it. That's what caused him to launch it, the fact he was not a very bright man in things not related to martial leadership.

>A drop in the ocean.

>Reactionary culture reacts to progress, contributing to averting and impeding it, due to n
The Nazis were fucking aeons ahead of the USSR. In fact, the Soviets had to lift 9/10 of "their" advancements from Britain, the USA, and Germany

>that's giving the US a run for it's money

user you literally have no idea.
The only thing china is not beating the US on is military and clean drinking water

It staggers me that some people actually define themselves as communists on here. I realize in the real world they're just basement-dwellers but it still defies belief sometimes

>The only thing china is not beating the US on is military and clean drinking water
And living standards, education, economics influence, scientific production, tech advancement etc

>living standards
The funny thing is, according to the Chinese they have the best living standards, and according to half the U.S. it's the worst place to live on the planet.

>Edcation
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

>Economic influences
What do you even mean by this?
That's way to general.

>scientific production
Arguable

>tech advancement
Patently wrong.
Chinas super computer outclasses the US's and that's an extremely big deal due to cryptography. Most of the "tech advances" you are seeing today already took off in China before coming to the US. The US gave up control of ICANN and China is moving in on it at this very moment.

Considering the Chinks got the first Quantum encryption satellites I think they're doing pretty well for themselves

Scratch the drinking water.
Flint still doesn't have potable water
Shit's embarassing

Let me translate this into non-shill speak:

>living standards
It's first world in T1 cities, and getting better reasonably fast elsewhere.
>education
China needs engineers, it's got engineers, end of story.
>economic influences
Doing fine in that department
>tech advancement
Again, it's doing fine. They specialize not in cutting edge tech, but on improving processes/making it cheaper. Also they're pretty much the only rival on AI development.

Barring a real 'collapse of china,' it's doing fine for now. Too early to say it's winning, but it's on track.

>>education
>China needs engineers, it's got engineers, end of story.
This is your mind on communnism

Pretty pathetic stuff considering the population size and gov't power

China is a shit hole outside of the cities. Even in the U.S you don't live in a shithole out of the cities.

Not as much as you think
npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/12/21/572043850/u-n-investigator-on-extreme-poverty-issues-a-grim-report-on-the-u-s

>npr.org

Would you like the UN report instead?

No, because its absolutely nothing to the purpose. You're attempting to justify China's system by comparing it to a country that has been artificially lowering its average by taking in millions of third worlders..

Please provide one (1) source that 30 million died in the cultural revolution.

West Virgina is full of millions of third worlders now? Glad to know you consider whites to be subhuman

>West Virgina is full of millions of third worlders now? Glad to know you consider whites to be subhuman
There aren't even two million people in West Virginia.
>your country has poor people therefore these millions upon million of third worlders have no effect

You seriously believe this shit?

>Modern Chinese culture is one of the most authentic and rich
I'm calling Dignitas, you're too retarded to live

It is my second post on Veeky Forums, probably.

Above all, you do not even realise what it means to have discussion, or win in it.

To have a discussion, means to keep it interesting for all parties. To win a discussion means to sway opponents or bystanders.

You seem to believe that if you screech autistically and spew lame insults and nonsense, you "destroy" your opponent by the virtue of screaming the longest, while everyone else lose interest.

>The funny thing is, according to the Chinese they have the best living standards

According to corrupted Chink communists? No, Chink's cities are polltutd shitholes full of poisoned water.

Chink's also have fucking inferior education, as they are sub-human bugmen without any creativity. Top 20 best universities are still mostly in America, while Chinks do not even have one in top 50.

China's supercomputer is a piece of shit, and cannot even match US computer despite theoriticaly having ''superior'' power. And no, Chink sub-humans are incapable of developing their own technology, and all they can do is steal from superor western countries.

Wake the fuck up, Chinks are rape-babies of sub-human mongol horder, not the fucking people they were 2000 years ago, when China was still somehow relevant. The 105 IQ is a fucking meme, you dumb fuck. They only tested a small elite caste of Shanghai Chinks on that test.

China is, and allways will be inferior in every fucking way to United States.

>increasinglynervousamerican.jpg