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Because they don't support Pol Pot.
Pol Pot apologia is fucking crazy lmaooo
Knows nothing about Democratic Kampuchea award
Ok, I was making fun of you earlier, but now I'm genuinely interested.
Explain to me why you think Democratic Kampuchea was a Socialist State, and I presume, didn't actually commit a genocide.
Because as far as I've ever been able to tell, pol pot apologia tends to be fairly flimsy, and be coming more from a place of defending China's position after the Sino-Soviet split, rather than Cambodia itself.
How about the Vietnamese-backed state of the People's Republic of Kampuchea? Was it Socialist? Why or why not?
There is no strict definition of a “socialist state.” DK was led by a communist party which set out concrete plans for developing a self-sufficient “socialist economy” and a “socialist culture” and was able to follow through on some of those in its short time. There is nothing that makes it “non-socialist” in comparison to other projects.
You can presume that based on the fact that the allegation of genocide clearly violates the meaning of the word.
I don’t see why not.
Yea no, I'm not a Pol Pot defender.
The only way I can imagine you don’t defend Pol Pot, as a communist, in any regard is if you don’t actually hold to the notion of taking back communist history from “bourgeois historiography”™ and not automatically accepting prepared narratives. "Historical idealism" in the sense Losurdo talks about in "Hegel, Marx, and the Ontology of Social Being."
Pol Pot admitted to not being a communist, had an agrarian focus, committed what I would consider to be genocide against Vietnamese and pro-Vietnamese Cambodians, and was pro-US and supported by them. I can't support that.
Pol Pot did not admit to not being a communist, this is just a lie.
The CPK had an agrarian focus because the reality was that US bombing had destroyed much of the country’s agricultural capacity and there was a threat of mass starvation (and a need of a massive amt of agricultural labor to prevent this); as mentioned, the CPK had (in 1976) laid out a four-year plan which included the development of (light and) heavy industry (which was actually partially carried out with the restoration and expansion of factories) with the goal of building a fully self-sufficient national economy. After the evacuation of the cities, they were repaired and the process began of repopulating them. The assumption that anything was motivated by some ideological reverence for agrarianism is a very clear instance of “historical idealism.”
Pol Pot never ordered the targeting of Vietnamese people for their nationality. There is the problematic characterization of border disputes as outbursts of nationalistic hatred (supported by complete acceptance of the Vietnamese narrative of DK as the sole aggressor) and of all actions of cadres as necessarily being ordered/allowed by central leadership. Not even in the ~mainstream is there a broad consensus that Cambodia committed a genocide against ethnic/national minorities. To add, “pro-Vietnamese Cambodians” wouldn’t even be a protected group against which genocide could be committed. There’s another side to this because the KR never got close to the amt of Cambodians killed by Vietnam in its invasion.
Deng and Mao were both “pro-US” (in opposition to the Soviet Union), to the point of supporting the expansion of US power on the international stage and the formation of united Western bloc, and in the case of Deng, coordinating with the US in support of the Afghan resistance forces against the USSR; I’m sure you would call this a mistake, but the recognition of Mao and Deng as communists and mostly positive remains. If you can point me to support of the US by Pol Pot that goes above and beyond this, then fine, but being pro-US in any regard is clearly not a dealbreaker; Pol Pot (/the CPK) was supported by the US against Vietnam (and Soviet influence in general) as the US had devoted significant support to the USSR (/Stalin) against Germany. And there are contradictions in both of these in terms of the leadup to this; the notion that being supported by the US against another group = ideological betrayal is just “historical idealism” again. I’m not saying you have to support Pol Pot, but it is inconsistent with your stated principles to accept narratives about Pol Pot without any investigation.
Pol Pot admitted to not being a communist. He attacked the urban proletariat and proletarian intellectuals, and the communists that fled Cambodia for North Vietnam left Cambodia largely with nationalists. This nationalism took on a highly reactionary character when targeting communists and Vietnamese, which led to war with Vietnam.
Pol Pot's agrarian focus wasn't just due to being underdeveloped, as were China's and Vietnam's economies, but also due to a severe distrust of the proletariat. Pol Pot essentially made a dictatorship of the reactionary peasantry against the proletariat, and against socialism.
Further, I find your comment about Deng and Mao with the US to be misplaced. Deng and Mao made mistakes in allying with the US. Pol Pot's mistakes far exceeded their mistakes. The fact that someone makes a mistake is not inherently an entire judgement of them, but when understood in the context of their entire character and actions it becomes clear that Pol Pot was used as a tool to extend imperialist interests in the region.
It's not idealist to note the class nature of what happened under Pol Pot.
Pol Pot is quoted exactly zero times in this article. To address the Ieng Sary quote, which is probably what you mean to refer to, Furr alleges that “the Pol Pot group [...] sometimes described themselves as communists [...] in an attempt to get help from China,” yet doesn’t consider that Sary might have done the inverse to gain the support of ASEAN (to whom he told the quote, referring to the same page from Vickery). This is something Castro famously did to try and get the support of the US.
Prev. addressed the main example of the CPK’s “attack on the urban proletariat”; and otherwise the “attack” on the old ~intellectuals and on a certain section of the “urban proletariat” has nothing to do with a disdain for the proletariat in general but with the overall goal of ~erasing the past and constructing a new “revolutionary culture,” which does not exclude factory work (the GPCR had the same targets and many others and yet was also motivated by a genuine belief in communism).
I’ve already explained how the CPK objectively didn’t fetishize agrarianism, which rules out the possibility that they fetishized agrarianism “due to a severe distrust of the proletariat”. You can further look at confidential CPK documents, including the four-year plan I mentioned previously, where for instance it’s resolved to “continue to strengthen and expand the building of revolutionary culture, literature and art of the worker-peasant class in accordance with the Party's proletarian standpoint” (p. 113). And in doc. 6, Pol Pot reports that “We have nourished political consciousness, proletarian patriotism and proletarian internationalism” and that “proletarian patriotic consciousness and proletarian internationalism can transform people's nature into something new. As for the problem of nurturing a Marxist-Leninist viewpoint, we should allow this to seep in according to our chosen methods” (p. 202). Clearly the “Party Center” believed that they were representing(/serving the interests of) the proletariat, and that this was the basis of their legitimacy.
That may be so but I'm only saying that in terms of support for the US, Pol Pot is not unique and actually happens to be perhaps less effectively pro-US than Mao and Deng.
Definitely true, and yet he was also a genuine communist. And don’t forget that he also opposed Vietnamese ~imperialism. So the choices are to become a Vietnamese satellite or to attempt to assert national independence and in so doing support the US’s goal of containing Vietnam (and the USSR) (although if successful DK would become its own problem), and the result is that the second option ends up at the first. “The Pol Pot group” (Furr) really had no choice.