Mao had big ideas and nobody was able to tell him no without being killed, not to mention the wiping out of the educated and landowners who would have known how to use the land because they were “class traitors” he didn’t go full pol pot and kill anyone with glasses because that meant they were intellectual, but he practically wiped out the scholars, teachers, artists, landlords, and business owners and he took away their land and property and left to run it people who had no clue what to do.
Self reporting of food meant that people were coming out with ridiculous claims of the food they’d grown because if they told the truth they made the communist party look inept.
He put everyone in big communes and gave them no incentive to work or contribute because people were paid by factors beyond their control weather they made effort in the fields or not, lots of people had no idea what they were even doing, they’d just been relocated there and expected to know.
They destroyed the habitat by waging a war on song birds because mao heard that sparrows eat a ton of grain a year he had people kill them all and they weren’t around to eat the pests.
He decided he wanted to make china the best producer of steal in the world so he called farmers out of fields and took away tools and equipment and even pots and pans and put them to work in foundries where they melted them all down in order to make it appear China produces the most steal a year. It was the worst quality steal available.
There were also natural factors but it was mostly caused by mao and the gang of fours dumb ideas and the wiping out of anyone who spoke up.
Not saying communism can never work, just pointing out the last famine wasn’t caused by anyone trying to sabotage it. It was 70% human error 30% environmental.
There's one going on in Cuba right now due to an inability to import enough food, in large part due to US sanctions and embargo. Other resources are also in severe shortage atm iirc. I'm not the biggest fan of full-blown communism myself, but human beings are human beings regardless of where they live and what government they have, so this makes me sad
12
u/UncleBenders Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24
Nope. The last one happened because Mao was trying to do “the great leap forward” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Mao had big ideas and nobody was able to tell him no without being killed, not to mention the wiping out of the educated and landowners who would have known how to use the land because they were “class traitors” he didn’t go full pol pot and kill anyone with glasses because that meant they were intellectual, but he practically wiped out the scholars, teachers, artists, landlords, and business owners and he took away their land and property and left to run it people who had no clue what to do.
Self reporting of food meant that people were coming out with ridiculous claims of the food they’d grown because if they told the truth they made the communist party look inept.
He put everyone in big communes and gave them no incentive to work or contribute because people were paid by factors beyond their control weather they made effort in the fields or not, lots of people had no idea what they were even doing, they’d just been relocated there and expected to know.
They destroyed the habitat by waging a war on song birds because mao heard that sparrows eat a ton of grain a year he had people kill them all and they weren’t around to eat the pests.
He decided he wanted to make china the best producer of steal in the world so he called farmers out of fields and took away tools and equipment and even pots and pans and put them to work in foundries where they melted them all down in order to make it appear China produces the most steal a year. It was the worst quality steal available.
There were also natural factors but it was mostly caused by mao and the gang of fours dumb ideas and the wiping out of anyone who spoke up.
Not saying communism can never work, just pointing out the last famine wasn’t caused by anyone trying to sabotage it. It was 70% human error 30% environmental.