What did communism promise before Mao took power? Lily Tang Williams, who was two years old when the Cultural Revolution began, gives Jenny Beth Martin the pitch in one word: free. Communism is wonderful, take whatever you need, and the peasants will own their own farms. Seventy percent of China was peasants. They bought it.
Then she explains what came next. Land reform took the land from private owners and never gave it to the peasants; the Chinese constitution said the land belonged to "the people," and the people meant the state. Peasants were sent to work on communes and turn the food over to the government. Productivity collapsed, and when Mao told farmers how to grow food so he could outproduce the Soviet Union, the result was a famine she puts at 40 to 60 million people. It reached her home province of Sichuan, the richest farmland in China, which had never had a famine before. Jenny Beth Martin asks her to explain, one more time, what starving villagers did to survive.
Williams then describes the tool that made it all work: identity politics. Mao divided China into ten classes, five black and five red. Landlords, rich farmers and "rightists" went to labor camps, and children changed their last names and turned on their own parents to be counted red. She was lucky; her parents were poor. Her grandmother, whose first husband had been killed as an outlaw, still spent a year in public struggle sessions writing self-criticism letters before she was cleared as red class. Had she not been, Williams says, she could never have joined the Young Pioneers, never have gone to school, and never have made it to the United States.
In this segment:
• The promise: everything free, and land for the peasants
• Land reform, "the people," and who actually owned the land
• People's communes, community kitchens, and collapsing harvests
• A famine of 40 to 60 million that reached Sichuan for the first time
• What starving villagers traded to survive
• Ten classes, five black and five red, and families turned against each other
• Her grandmother's year of struggle sessions
Subscribe for daily analysis from Tea Party Patriots Action, and watch the full episode on The Jenny Beth Show channel.
jennybethshow.com
teapartypatriots.org
00:00 — What did communism promise before Mao took over?
00:16 — Everything free, land for the peasants; chasing the Nationalists to Taiwan
00:47 — Land reform: "promise not kept"
01:14 — "The land belongs to the people": who the people are
01:28 — People's communes, community kitchens, and starving when the harvest failed
01:58 — The famine: central planning, blamed on the weather
02:26 — 40 to 60 million; Sichuan had never had a famine before
03:06 — Jenny Beth Martin: explain what parents were doing
03:49 — Mao's identity politics: oppressor and oppressed
04:09 — Five black classes and the labor camps
04:41 — Families turning on parents to be counted red
04:58 — Her grandmother's year of struggle sessions
05:56 — Cleared as red class: "otherwise, my life could be totally changed"
#JennyBethShow #LilyTangWilliams #Communism #Mao #CulturalRevolution #China #Socialism #SurvivingCommunism #Famine #TeaPartyPatriotsAction