JimW
支那暗杀团
Sounds like Shenzhen?
Maoists in Brixton
- Thread starter Orang Utan
- Start date
Sounds like Shenzhen?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
er... that is the the entire statement
seventh bullet
sovietwave
It's a little bit more complicated than that.
Naxalism is varied and has a decades-long history of disagreements and splits (including violence) as well. I think you're referring to the main armed organisation currently fighting the Indian government, that being the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Yes it is. To be honest I had never heard of it until I met my Chinese friend.
There is a whole lot of recent Chinese history that in the West is under reported.
JimW
支那暗杀团
I was a boomtown out of what had previously been just a fishing village IIRC in the post-reform period, location chosen as it's just over the border from HK. Loads of people from across the country went there to make it rich and it had a pretty well deserved reputation for gangsterism, corruption and excess for a long while too. Think it's where Deng did his famous appearance on his Southern Tour in the early '90s to get the 'reform' (= market restoration) back on track after 89 social movement had emboldened conservatives.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Have you read Frank Dikotter book Maos Great Famine? Goes into this. The archives were accessible to him in China.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
My friends family were early pioneers. So I get impression they are relatively well off. She says there are still a lot of migrant workers in city. So when its holiday time the city is half empty.
She never said anything about gangsterism.
Its a staggering city to look at. Seen photos.
But as she says it all about work and making money. She says people do not have ideals like in old days.
JimW
支那暗杀团
I'm not keen on him (met him too actually, he was at SOAS when I was), he's a terrible axe-grinder and inflates the figures when not doing so is damning enough, but his overall conclusion in that is about right IIRC, that it was policy-driven because cadres were enforcing unrealistic quotas often with violence even when people were starving.
Here's a critique from a demographer that goes into how Dikotter likely massages the figures:
Full review here in PDF: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2011.00398.x/pdf
seventh bullet
sovietwave
It'd be around ten percent of the population lost to the famine. Seems too high to me.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Thanks will have look at this.
My criticism of Dikotter is that throughout a lot of the book his axe to grind is to show how State control and management leads to economic mistakes. Without explicity saying so he has a free market ideology he wants to show is better than state management.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Yep, that's mine too and it's fairly blatant in some of his other work IIRC - he did a contrarian retake on the Opium Wars which I've not read but listened to him doing an hour-plus lecture on at a uni in HK that was a bit of free trade special pleading as I recall.
Various historians of famine have pointed out that even with the biggest policy driven disaster as China had, it still starved less people in the three decades of high Maoism than a comparable populous nation like India did over the same years (if you look at excess mortality due to poor/inadequate nutrition), and it was those state-led interventions that led to the massive drop in mortality over the longer haul of them decades in the PRC. Of course there's a lot more to say than that - did it the successes have to be made in the form that also did play a part in the utter failure, etc. - but as O Grada points out, Dikotter seems determined to isolate the GL famines from a longer economic history.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Also reading Dikotters book it came across that there was dissent in the party about Mao policies. It would have been good if he had gone into this more. As I do not think it was something that happened in the Soviet Union when forced collectivization and similar grain requisitions caused starvation in the Ukraine in the 30s. By that time Stalin had eliminated any serious opposition in the party.
I also wonder if the Cultural Revolution was a response to the weakening of Mao’s power after the failure of the "Great Leap Forward". As the book says some of the more vocal party members who criticized the failures of the Great Leap Forward suffered during the Cultural Revolution.
If Mao had not rejected the Soviet and East European advisers who came to China to help modernise the economy and build up heavy industry, due to his mistrust of the Soviet Union, then I do not think the worst excesses of the famine would have happened.
I get the impression from my Chinese friend that the Maoist period is as little understood by her generation as it is to westerners. She was in the north of China recently and took some photos on large Maoist murals on sides of buildings. I get the impression for her its this distant period in China that she does not know what to make of. But one where people had ideals. Her generation grew up in the period of reforms by the post Maoist leadership. She said in Chinese education system you are not taught to be to critical. So new generation do not have skills to look critically at social problems in modern China.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
More was yet to come in the USSR, although opposition was dealt with inside the party but not popularly outside of it. The theoretical underpinnings of the following terror were something that Stalin genuinely took seriously and believed in as well, despite the absurdity of its excesses. He believed it was inevitable, and it wasn't an innovation of his either, as is sometimes thought.
As socialism approaches (or socialism as they understood it to be) the struggle sharpens to a heightened level, that in their desperation the defeated residue of enemy classes give out a last gasp of resistance. What Georgy Plekhanov earlier called the 'energy of despair.'
It wasn't all just cynical moves to eliminate real and imagined enemies, even though from where we are it can look that way and the fact that the majority of people who died were innocent of the crimes they were accused of committing.
The Cultural Revolution didn't follow along the exact same lines, the circumstances in China and cleavages were different, and for a period of time took a different form with top-encouraged attacks on the bureaucracy 'from below,' but that belief was there too.
ETA: Post went a bit weird.
SovietArmy
Well-Known Member
Well all slavery propaganda I don't even believed in the first place, this is slowly war against socialist, communist, and other left wing intellectuals.
A 30 year "bringing them down from the inside" thing?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i see they've left you well alone
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
My mate who is a Telegraph reading ex-LBL councillor was speculating that the alleged slave cult were originally squatting in Villa Road or somewhere like that and rehoused by Lambeth into Peckford Place - a somewhat chichi new-build Metropolitan development for the older resident - solar roof panels etc.
He also said the Police could end up with egg on their face. Given the published contents of "letters to a neighbour" the so-called cult leader(s) could claim to be looking after a vulnerable woman rather than keeping her enslaved.
I think there are interesting parallels with domestic abuse. These enslaved women seem to have been unhappy yet toed the line within a quasi-family relationship for 30 years and couldn't do anything about it apparently. Now they perceive this to be a form of control and intimidation.
He also said the Police could end up with egg on their face. Given the published contents of "letters to a neighbour" the so-called cult leader(s) could claim to be looking after a vulnerable woman rather than keeping her enslaved.
I think there are interesting parallels with domestic abuse. These enslaved women seem to have been unhappy yet toed the line within a quasi-family relationship for 30 years and couldn't do anything about it apparently. Now they perceive this to be a form of control and intimidation.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Channel 4 news had a detailed report yesterday at 7 pm. Interviewed a newsagent in a shop opposite the Acre Lane/Solon Road people's centre. Newsagent was a elderly Jamaican and said he had been given a Little Red Book, though it was "in the basement somewhere".
The Guardfian has a detailed review here: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/25/london-slaves-cultlike-political-group
Professor Steve Rayner, who did his PhD thesis on Marxist milinerian groups apparently was interviewed this morning by John Humphrys on the Today programme.
ska invita
back on the other side
There was another family tree of UK splits Ive seen on the boards before, I think you may well have posted it - any chance you could dig that out again? It includes SWP, WRP, that kind of stuff
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I can only think of this now very outdated one off the top of my head.
ska invita
back on the other side
THats the one, thanks.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
so it now turns out. The proximity of Peckford Place to Villa Road led to that association I reckon.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
sorry cannot get the quotes to work.
Been looking at the what the police are reported to have been saying.
The first day they say this is worst case of servitude they have seen.
Next day they so its far to simple to see this as domestic servitude.
Also they say there is no evidence of sexual abuse.
The polce are going to have to prove that these women were held without access to the outside world. As in recent cases in Austria and US.
Otherwise what will be the charges?
Been looking at the what the police are reported to have been saying.
The first day they say this is worst case of servitude they have seen.
Next day they so its far to simple to see this as domestic servitude.
Also they say there is no evidence of sexual abuse.
The polce are going to have to prove that these women were held without access to the outside world. As in recent cases in Austria and US.
Otherwise what will be the charges?
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CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Yesterday's report in the Standard is much more troubling: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crim...ath-fall-at-suspect-couples-home-8964340.html
Seems the younger woman might be the daughter of a cult member who committed suicide. The leaders then kept her - didn't declare she existed or send her to school. This would of course be criminal on their part - and negligence on the part of Lambeth.
