[...] Western analysis commonly attributes all violence that occurred between 1966-76 to Mao.
Although there were only a handful of Western observers in China during the Cultural Revolution, most Western observers are willing to attribute hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths to the Cultural Revolution. Usually there are no specifics, as there are few first-hand accounts by Westerners. No Westerner can claim a comprehensive study. While it is possible that there were millions of deaths during the Cultural Revolution, they were not ordered by Mao. Mao explicitly ordered that the Cultural Revolution be non-violent. Central Committee directives of the communist party stated that "When there is a debate, it should be conducted by reasoning, not by coercion or force."(8) Furthermore, the violence which occurred during civil war was largely the responsibility of factions opposed to Mao.
Mao's enemies in China were more realistic than the Western propagandists. They directly blamed Mao and his followers, the so-called Gang of Four, for a total of 34,000 executions or deaths caused by other means of repression during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. If Mao's enemies are correct, should the 34,000 have been executed? MIM does not know the facts. Nor does anyone except Mao's imprisoned followers, Mao's high-ranking enemies in the party and the masses at large, who have not been asked in any systematic way by outside critics.
Mao, in the form of self-criticism, stated that there had been too many executions during the Cultural Revolution. In this writing, Mao expressed his philosophy, which is also MIM's. According the Mao, it may be justified to execute a murderer or someone who blows up a factory, however, in most cases, including all cases in the schools, government and army, Mao believed:" What harm is there in not executing people? Those amenable to labour reform should go and do labour reform, so that rubbish can be transformed into something useful. Besides, people's heads are not like leeks. When you cut them off, they will not grow again. If you cut off a head wrongly, there is no way of rectifying the mistake even if you want to."(9) If people calling themselves Maoists did not carry this philosophy out, MIM does not defend them. MIM does know for sure, and the statistics are available even in the United States for all to see, that Mao accomplished the most of any political leader this century and probably ever in history in reducing all kinds of violence combined.
Even many of Mao's own enemies who were purged (expelled) from the party survived. Deng Xiaoping, current leader of China [he died in 1997--mc5], survived being purged as the number two ranking revisionist and was sent to re-education camp. On June 3-4, 1989, Deng ordered the army to fire on hundreds of demonstrators in the Beijing rebellion. This violence is of course a small portion of the violence caused by capitalist restoration in China.
Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, with little outside help, brought about major changes in a developing country while carrying out a revolution and civil war. It is a mistake to hold the Chinese Communist Party, or particularly Mao, an individual, responsible for everything that occurred under their leadership. In the United States, a developed country which is not functioning in conditions anywhere near as difficult as those of the People's Republic of China (1949-1976), annually there are 20,000 murders, 75,000 deaths of Blacks because of systematic national oppression, the death of a worker from work-related causes every five minutes, and the death of a child every 50 minutes for lack of food or money.(10) Yet we almost never hear that the victims of capitalist violence were "killed" by presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton etc. as we are apt to hear with regard to famine deaths under Mao.
