TimS comments on Open Thread, March 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 01 March 2012 08:51AM

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Comment author: TimS 05 March 2012 07:19:01PM 2 points [-]

Is the Cultural Revolution in China an example of mass murder? I learned that there was lots of oppression, suffering, and starvation. But deaths were not an intended result, only a byproduct that the ruling elite didn't care to prevent. By contrast, Stalin's starving of the Kulaks was intended to cause death.

Regardless, the Cultural Revolution doesn't reflect well on communism.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 March 2012 07:58:15PM 2 points [-]

Is the Cultural Revolution in China an example of mass murder?

This question is so startling to me I'm not sure I understand it.

Comment author: TimS 05 March 2012 08:33:45PM 2 points [-]

There are things as morally wrong as mass murder that don't qualify as mass murder.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 March 2012 09:05:23PM 2 points [-]

I think you should read the article you linked to all the way through; starvation is not the only kind of violence that occurred. If someone dies during or as a consequence of your torturing them, it is standard to say you've committed murder even if your intentions were non-lethal, right? (I think it is too generous to grant such good intentions in this case, but irrelevant). If you torture ten thousand people and one hundred of them die, you have committed mass murder. This kind of mass murder was common throughout 20th century communist china, routine during the cultural revolution. There were some events during the CR on an even more enormous scale, in tibet and inner mongolia.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 March 2012 07:25:55PM 1 point [-]

See also Tthe Great Leap Forward.

I'd say they count-- if a system doesn't allow for quickly changing (or better, preventing) policies which cause death on a grand scale, there's something wrong with the system.

Comment author: TimS 05 March 2012 07:27:11PM *  3 points [-]

Something very wrong - yes.

Mass murder - ??

Edit to add: On reflection, the Great Leap Forward is a lot more like Stalin and the Kulaks than the unedited version of this comment might suggest.

Comment author: Rhwawn 05 March 2012 10:26:23PM 0 points [-]

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/the-institutional-causes-of-chinas-great-famine-1959-61.html pointed to an interesting paper on that topic. I read it, but I don't know enough about China to really evaluate it.

But nevertheless, I have a hard time reconciling the observations with non-incompetence explanations:

It presents two empirical findings: 1) in 1959, when the famine began, food production was almost three times more than population subsistence needs; and 2) regions with higher per capita food production that year suffered higher famine mortality rates, a surprising reversal of a typically negative correlation.

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