Rob Gowland
The Guardian
Communist Party of Australia
Last week, the former commander of a torture and execution centre under Pol Pot’s Cambodian regime was given a 30-year prison sentence. He had been responsible for the cruel deaths, with dreadful torment and suffering, of hundreds – probably thousands – of people during the reign of terror unleashed by Pol Pot on the Cambodian people.
The TV news report of the sentencing that I saw referred to the huge extermination of Cambodian people that took place during “the Communist regime’s rule”. Virtually a quarter of the population was wiped out by Pol Pot’s young fanatics. Most of the dead were killed by a blow with a mattock or a hoe to the back of the head as they knelt on the ground.
It’s true, Pol Pot (pictured) presented himself as a Communist. But then Hitler called himself a national socialist don’t forget.
When Pol Pot returned to Cambodia from Paris during the early stages of the Vietnam War, he was filled with revolutionary zeal, but he was never a Marxist-Leninist. He was, and remained, a petty-bourgeois revolutionist. He was strongly influenced by the ideas espoused by Mao in China, especially Mao’s dictum “the village shall surround the city”, and Mao’s antipathy towards the idea of the leading role of the working class.
Mao Zedong led the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.
Mao advanced the idea of the peasantry as the main revolutionary class rather than the workers and this was also adopted by Pol Pot. Those Cambodian Communists who followed Marxism-Leninism were sent to fight against the US in the War, while Pol Pot’s inner circle consolidated their position as the “theorists” of the Cambodian revolution.
When the US was finally defeated by Vietnam and forced to withdraw from Indo-China, Pol Pot was firmly entrenched in Pnom Pen. He used his position to eliminate all opposition. Using a tactic that Mao used during the Cultural Revolution, when he instructed the young people who made up the Red Guards to “bombard the Party headquarters”, Pol Pot made up a revolutionary cadre of young people and instructed them to treat as the class enemy not only people from the old ruling class but anyone who owned any kind of property (including personal property), intellectuals, government employees, even peasant leaders and party members.
Then, in his masterstroke, he emptied the city, sending all the inhabitants to “learn from the peasants” by working in the fields with hand tools only. His aim was clearly to destroy any possibility of an opposition to his rule forming among the people.
However, although he claimed to have emptied the city, in fact a section of it was still fully functioning: the interrogation centre in the former high school was very busy. Every person sent there was photographed when they arrived, the more important prisoners were also photographed after they had died. The others just died.
The other busy area was nearby: it was the compound occupied by the Chinese representatives. To their eternal shame, Mao’s regime was fully aware of everything that was done in the capital and elsewhere in the country at this time, and they did nothing to stop it.
When escaping Cambodian Communists were able to reach the Vietnamese and tell of what was being done to the Cambodian people and Party, and sought assistance for the rebel army they had set up in the jungle to fight against Pol Pot, the Vietnamese armed forces invaded their former Ally and overthrew Pol Pot’s genocidal regime.
China promptly invaded Vietnam in support of the Maoist clique in Pnom Pen, but received a very bloody nose in response and had to retreat.
The spectacle of countries with socialist governments going to war was the apotheosis of Maoism and signified the end of that particular petty-bourgeois trend.
The Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists, acting together, rescued Cambodia from Pol Pot, but incredible damage had been done to the cause of socialism by his group, not just in Cambodia but around the world. Capitalism, of course, pounced on the Pol Pot experience to demonstrate how bloodthirsty, brutal and just plain dangerous Marxism supposedly was.
When we were collecting signatures for the registration of the Communist Alliance in NSW for Federal elections, I approached a former colleague, a long-time left-winger. She would not sign to support Communist candidates standing, “not after Pol Pot”.
But Pol Pot was not a Communist, and his regime was not a Communist regime. Sure, he emblazoned the hammer and sickle on his banner, but he never supported what it stood for: the unity of the workers (the hammer) and the peasants (the sickle). He ousted the hammer from the combination in practice, and replaced it with his own warped version of Maoism.
His regime was marked by constant attacks against the people, in an atmosphere of suspicion, killing, denunciations, torture and ultimately genocide. Its anti-popular character made it the very antithesis of a genuine Communist regime.
The actions of Pol Pot and his associates, just like the actions of Ceaucescu in Romania, smeared and besmirched the name of Communism, a fact capitalism is constantly keen to exploit. We must remember that it was the Communists who ousted Pol Pot, just as it was the real Communists who ousted Ceaucescu. But not before both of them did great harm to the cause of socialism.
However much Pol Pot purported to be a Communist, his actions and his policies belied that: he was never a Communist. Instead of helping the people of Cambodia to improve their lives, he tried to wipe them out. Instead of rescuing and saving the culture of the Cambodian people, he tried to destroy it. He reduced the bulk of the population to extreme poverty and misery.
Until the day when the last traces of bourgeois ideology have been eradicated, there will always be those who will try to hide their own petty, selfish aims under a cloak of Marxism-Leninism, with its lofty aims and its inspiring confidence in humanity.
We must be prepared and able to expose such deviations from Marxism-Leninism for what they are and root them out before the class enemy can utilise them to destabilise, smear or hold back the great cause of socialism and human liberation.
Communist Party of Australia
Last week, the former commander of a torture and execution centre under Pol Pot’s Cambodian regime was given a 30-year prison sentence. He had been responsible for the cruel deaths, with dreadful torment and suffering, of hundreds – probably thousands – of people during the reign of terror unleashed by Pol Pot on the Cambodian people.
The TV news report of the sentencing that I saw referred to the huge extermination of Cambodian people that took place during “the Communist regime’s rule”. Virtually a quarter of the population was wiped out by Pol Pot’s young fanatics. Most of the dead were killed by a blow with a mattock or a hoe to the back of the head as they knelt on the ground.
It’s true, Pol Pot (pictured) presented himself as a Communist. But then Hitler called himself a national socialist don’t forget.
When Pol Pot returned to Cambodia from Paris during the early stages of the Vietnam War, he was filled with revolutionary zeal, but he was never a Marxist-Leninist. He was, and remained, a petty-bourgeois revolutionist. He was strongly influenced by the ideas espoused by Mao in China, especially Mao’s dictum “the village shall surround the city”, and Mao’s antipathy towards the idea of the leading role of the working class.
Mao Zedong led the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.
Mao advanced the idea of the peasantry as the main revolutionary class rather than the workers and this was also adopted by Pol Pot. Those Cambodian Communists who followed Marxism-Leninism were sent to fight against the US in the War, while Pol Pot’s inner circle consolidated their position as the “theorists” of the Cambodian revolution.
When the US was finally defeated by Vietnam and forced to withdraw from Indo-China, Pol Pot was firmly entrenched in Pnom Pen. He used his position to eliminate all opposition. Using a tactic that Mao used during the Cultural Revolution, when he instructed the young people who made up the Red Guards to “bombard the Party headquarters”, Pol Pot made up a revolutionary cadre of young people and instructed them to treat as the class enemy not only people from the old ruling class but anyone who owned any kind of property (including personal property), intellectuals, government employees, even peasant leaders and party members.
Then, in his masterstroke, he emptied the city, sending all the inhabitants to “learn from the peasants” by working in the fields with hand tools only. His aim was clearly to destroy any possibility of an opposition to his rule forming among the people.
However, although he claimed to have emptied the city, in fact a section of it was still fully functioning: the interrogation centre in the former high school was very busy. Every person sent there was photographed when they arrived, the more important prisoners were also photographed after they had died. The others just died.
The other busy area was nearby: it was the compound occupied by the Chinese representatives. To their eternal shame, Mao’s regime was fully aware of everything that was done in the capital and elsewhere in the country at this time, and they did nothing to stop it.
When escaping Cambodian Communists were able to reach the Vietnamese and tell of what was being done to the Cambodian people and Party, and sought assistance for the rebel army they had set up in the jungle to fight against Pol Pot, the Vietnamese armed forces invaded their former Ally and overthrew Pol Pot’s genocidal regime.
China promptly invaded Vietnam in support of the Maoist clique in Pnom Pen, but received a very bloody nose in response and had to retreat.
The spectacle of countries with socialist governments going to war was the apotheosis of Maoism and signified the end of that particular petty-bourgeois trend.
The Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists, acting together, rescued Cambodia from Pol Pot, but incredible damage had been done to the cause of socialism by his group, not just in Cambodia but around the world. Capitalism, of course, pounced on the Pol Pot experience to demonstrate how bloodthirsty, brutal and just plain dangerous Marxism supposedly was.
When we were collecting signatures for the registration of the Communist Alliance in NSW for Federal elections, I approached a former colleague, a long-time left-winger. She would not sign to support Communist candidates standing, “not after Pol Pot”.
But Pol Pot was not a Communist, and his regime was not a Communist regime. Sure, he emblazoned the hammer and sickle on his banner, but he never supported what it stood for: the unity of the workers (the hammer) and the peasants (the sickle). He ousted the hammer from the combination in practice, and replaced it with his own warped version of Maoism.
His regime was marked by constant attacks against the people, in an atmosphere of suspicion, killing, denunciations, torture and ultimately genocide. Its anti-popular character made it the very antithesis of a genuine Communist regime.
The actions of Pol Pot and his associates, just like the actions of Ceaucescu in Romania, smeared and besmirched the name of Communism, a fact capitalism is constantly keen to exploit. We must remember that it was the Communists who ousted Pol Pot, just as it was the real Communists who ousted Ceaucescu. But not before both of them did great harm to the cause of socialism.
However much Pol Pot purported to be a Communist, his actions and his policies belied that: he was never a Communist. Instead of helping the people of Cambodia to improve their lives, he tried to wipe them out. Instead of rescuing and saving the culture of the Cambodian people, he tried to destroy it. He reduced the bulk of the population to extreme poverty and misery.
Until the day when the last traces of bourgeois ideology have been eradicated, there will always be those who will try to hide their own petty, selfish aims under a cloak of Marxism-Leninism, with its lofty aims and its inspiring confidence in humanity.
We must be prepared and able to expose such deviations from Marxism-Leninism for what they are and root them out before the class enemy can utilise them to destabilise, smear or hold back the great cause of socialism and human liberation.
4 comments:
No, it is communist. the style of dictatorship that China brainwashed Pol Pot to do experiment on Cambodian people.
They wanted to apply this style of dictatorship to their own people (China), but it was fail. Pol Pot took this and hoped that he could make absolute communism.
In the end, he and his allies fail.
Yes, Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge are communists, so it means Communists killed Khmers.
Wow, did you guys even read the article? For some reason, I think all three anonymous posts were typed by the same person...
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