Comments on: Tedium in Death: Kampuchea and Mao’s Funeral

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:54:37 +0000

On to the Great Leap, with industrialisation and the peasantry. Before its launch the Anti-Rightist campaign had primed the countryside with people who could be used for this kind of endeavour. Of course people can’t eat pig iron, but that wasn’t the point I’m making, but rather where this diverges with Khmer Communist policy was the rejection of old-society expertise, or a refashioning of it to serve the purposes of the newly emerging polity. Experts wouldn’t help in the development of a Socialist economy but rather first learn to be poor and with the peasantry reforge themselves mentally through manual work. A refashioned mind would create new technologies for a new society. Better than that of the old. There were exceptions, as modern technology was used and also modified in ad hoc fashion. The engines of army jeeps used for creating water pumps, generators and the like. Chemical pesticides imported from abroad, as well as new tractors and other equipment brought in. Its use wasn’t completely foresworn, but apparently the CPK leadership were enthused by reports (false or otherwise) of development advancing in line with their stress on labour-intensive methods by trial and error. The revolution was in the name of Cambodia’s poor peasants who had suffered and sacrificed much, so working elan meant the necessary revolutionary consciousness supposedly already found in this coarse mass would somehow be created (but in reality never was) in ‘new’ people. Then both old and new sections of the population would be transformed as the economy developed further. Taking an agricultural route to industrialisation was rational, but their methods weren’t.

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:55:25 +0000

Yes, it’s good to note that although the Cultural Revolution saw its militancy being imitated beyond China, regarding DK policy its effects were superficial in the Cambodian siltation. It’s true though that urban political activists, with a significant Chinese presence, were receptive to it, particularly the concept of mass democracy. Those who were part of Phnom Penh’s educational milieu, and who were oriented towards the left, supported a China-Cambodia Friendship Association, of which future DK leaders were involved. This was shut down by Sihanouk who believed the organisation was acting as a transmitter of political subversion. It’s also true that before the Khmer Communist insurgency got off the ground, in the wake of the Samlaut Rebellion in 1967, Lon Nol soldiers and police confiscated printed Cultural Revolution material translated into Khmer. They also seized Little Red Books, printing materials and equipment for propaganda purposes upon discovering caches of weapons and supplies for the rebels hiding out in the countryside. Some of those rebels who were either captured dead or alive through 1967 and 68, were identified as students of known leftist teachers who had fled to the maquis, and had followed them. Some were also rural teachers themselves.

The Cultural Revolution may have been inspiring, but what happened in China did not correspond with the ideological choices made by those in the Cambodian maquis, or rather the Pol Pot group who had left for the countryside in 1963, and who would become more dominant politically than those educationalists who left the capital and other towns in 1967. The main bloody battles of the Cultural Revolution in China were fought in the urban centres, between rival factions of middle school and university students. The Khmer Communists emptied the urban areas, and their own revolution was carried out in the name of Cambodia’s poor peasants, most of whom were uneducated. Despite send downs of urban youth and other assorted Red Guard groups larking about in the countryside on summer trips, China’s peasantry were insulated from much of the Cultural Revolution’s turbulent developments.

Of more relevancy in trying to find a comparison of Chinese and Khmer Communist policy would be the Great Leap, yes. Although there are significant differences here too. I’ll post more on this topic when I’ve got the time.

By: Yetta

Yetta — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:55:39 +0000

This is interesting too for the Cultural Revolution, although it’s something which has been confused with the Great Leap as a major influence on the KR. The latter has some similarities with the KR’ strict work regimentation, and a rural base for kickstarting industrialisation. The CR was largely an urban phenomenon though, and given the KR view of the urban areas as being parasitical, and their policy of emptying them isn’t congruent with the former. Anti-intellectualism of both the CR and KR is misunderstood too, although the lessons of any Maoism learned by the Cambodians were warped to the extreme. Blank slates and the literalness of cadres in applying policy, often meaning through force or the threat of. They just thought a new and better intellectual life would flourish after the socialist infrastructure had been built and the population had been reforged. A very simple view, although their process was a complex one, all trying to closely mix this development and reshaping consciousness. Mobilisation for this revolution of theirs was not voluntary on the part of a significant part of the population. You can’t change humanity by government decree! The Cultural Revolution had a huge well of popular support, millions of people, frustrated Chinese finally finding a way to be actively part of a political process. The KR were a minority movement imposing its will on a people. At first there was a considerable amount of popular support from the poor peasantry, but they couldn’t carry it through to another stage. Eventually alienated their core support with disastrous policy decisions and terror.

The paper seems to have gotten it wrong. Mao didn’t create the Red Guards, he just endorsed them.

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 07:26:12 +0000

Cambodia as a pawn to be used by larger foreign powers, from either of the two old world blocs (contemporary conditions are in a different context) is nothing new. A liberal defence? Hmm … Well, the ‘Pol Pot regime’ didn’t formally become DK until 1976. However, British interests were served a little with the DK government’s exporting of Cambodian rice. A trading house was established in Hong Kong, the Reng Fung Company, through which DK could deal with foreign countries and find outlets for its products. These countries included the UK.

Now, putting my tongue firmly in my cheek, if the DK regime had survived then the defence of a contemporary approximation of an isolated ‘Socialist’ state with an unacceptable level of repression, but acts as an interesting holiday destination for adventurous professionals (as pointed out in the Guardian travel supplement) would go something like this:

‘Here we have a country which has transformed itself from a once ruined land into a place of self-sustainability and a pioneer in ‘green’ government policy regarding the widespread development of organic, environmentally friendly agriculture. In this country, since 1975, household carbon footprints have increasingly become the envy of the world.’

By: mau

mau — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:17:04 +0000

Say, if there’d been some geopolitical reason the Pol Pot regime was beneficial to the UK, what would a middle class liberal defence of Democratic Kampuchea be like?

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 13:15:19 +0000

That stuff is old hat now mate. But just to be on the safe side here’s some glossy, positive spin on the 1989 Tiananmen Square ‘incident.’

Notice the pervy solider checking out the behind of the saluting majorette.

By: mau

mau — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:11:06 +0000

That’s you buggered now sunshine. The CCP’s cyber censors will ban your popular blog from the Chinese internet.