Mao Quotes on the Professional Managerial Class | Hacker News Reader

Mao Quotes on the Professional Managerial Class

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20 pointsqualudeheart25 comments

Taking management lessons from Mao? It’s important to keep in mind his track record. Just one example, the time he ordered all the sparrows in China killed[1] which greatly contributed to a famine that killed around 30 million people[2].

1. https://gizmodo.com/china-s-worst-self-inflicted-environment...

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

Yes. This happened, profoundly dumb. The leadership which used propaganda to the masses to destroy nature in this way, the very nature which we are intimately part of and no technology can replace.

On the contrary. Farmers have killed pests for thousands of years, with good results. This is merely a natural elaboration of that. It's a reasonable plan.

Which goes to show you that even what "makes sense" can be dumb.

Which is a strong argument for personal autonomy and against totalitarian measures.

To avoid putting all of your eggs in one basket and such.

Total War on nature in the name of short term increase in ANNUAL production is the definition of insanity. Our subsistence comes from nature not technology.

I laud Mao`s attempts, as hard as they may have failed. War and agriculture are the foundations of all successful states.

Once both have been rectified higher forms of progress are made possible and industry can be established.

War on nature is in the name of short term increase in ANNUAL production is the definition of insanity. Our subsistence comes from nature not technology.

> On the advice of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mao declared full-stop to the Great Sparrow Campaign, replacing the birds with bed bugs on the Four Pests naughty list.

Sadly, we're grading on a curve these days and this sounds almost unbelievably reasonable by modern standards.

He led one of the most successful political movements in history and created what is now the second most powerful country on the planet.

Surely his wisdom can benefit proletariat and bourgeois alike?

He broke a few extra eggs to make the omelette, ergo 30% bad and 70% good, but the alternative is no omelette. Mao's track record is fine for someone who decided to pivot hard to tackle extremely challenging problems to setup country on path for development. The alternative is stagnation from not making those decisions which could magnify into existential risks. It's national restructuring. Stagnation, to stay on topic is what too many in managerial class are content with. People fixate over deaths and human costs, I'm sure there's crass observation on nature of human capita somewhere. Don't get me wrong, GLP was clearly excessive, preventable since it was an human problem (bad communication, logitistics). Mao was a bad manager / statesman who pursued right high level goals with enough charisma to propel PRC to next level. All while pitting employees with managers against each other and playing power games to cover his ass and protect his status. Which is probably as close reflection to modern corporate house of cards as one can get.

Much of what Mao did was murderously stupid - because he was a superb exemplar of the flaws he is describing here.

Not a good man to follow if you want to get useful things done.

So he was a hypocrite, but that is an insult we reserve for people who we can't say are wrong.

If you have Truth on your side, and the power to impose your will, it only makes sense to do so.

Some may disagree, but they're wrong. Some may suffer, but it's for Truth, so it's ok

I think that this is the vastly popular attitude. And that's a tragic fact.

Wow! Some of those are dead on describing the upper middle class in modern American society. You can see from the comments here how people can't stand the look in the mirror.

Which comments? The only comments here either agree, find nothing new (possibly due to the age of this knowledge), or argue that Mao should be no role model. Seems like you are looking to start an argument based on something that isn't happening.

> 50% of the top level comments at this time are ad hominems against Mao.

These aren't ad hominem fallacies, attacking the merit of authority figures is warranted when they are used as authority figures.

Ad hominem means against the person, so even if this weren't an example of a fallacy it would be an ad hominem attack.

As has been pointed out, people are taking issue with Mao, the person, instead of dealing with his accusations. And that is an example of an ad hominem fallacy.

As to merit, fallacies have no bearing on actual truth value, only on soundness of argument. I think that's what you were getting at.

For whatever it's worth, I'm no Mao fan.

This looks scarily similar to modern blog spam. Funny how little the internet really changed us, we just share more information but the basis is the same.

There's plenty of good socialist critique of bureaucracy and the managerial class done by thinkers who weren't mass murderers and dictators. Mao is one of the last places I would look for a critique of Stalinist bureaucracy.

Let's just start with, say, Milovan Djilas, Leon Trotsky, Hal Draper, Raya Dunayevskaya, Tony Cliff, Ernest Mandel, I could go on...

Would Hitler's thoughts on bureaucracy make it to HN? Mao killed more people.

> Would Hitler's thoughts on bureaucracy make it to HN?

Maybe? Would reading Hitler's thoughts on bureaucracy magically turn me into a fascist? Seems like interesting history. Would Genghis Khan's thoughts on strategy make it to HN?

I would argue "Tweets" shouldn't make it to HN though to be honest, but whatever, if that's what people want to discuss...

You’re using the word “magically,” so obviously you think the answer’s “no.” But, then, what does turn people into fascists if not fascist rhetoric?

Whatever it is, I’m definitely not interested in “dictating” what other people read or share.

Instead you can argue against it (like another post pointing out Mao’s hypocrisy) or promote alternatives. I’m willing to risk a few converted fascists.

May the tens of millions who died from the biggest mass murderer in history, RIP. And let there memory always serve as a reminder of what the path of socialism looks like.

https://fee.org/articles/who-was-the-biggest-mass-murderer-i...

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