• Gorn [they/them,he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I'll admit to not understanding Tibet. But the weird thing is that the Dalai Lama (in exile) is a self-identified marxist. I just don't get the whole thing

    • Ectrayn [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      if that can help, there is this text from Parenti http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

      edit: I am sure it's not perfect, so if anybody has more resources/criticism of that text, please share

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese “were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived.” They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants--all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.

        Hell yeah

        Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that “more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.”36 The official 1953 census--six years before the Chinese crackdown--recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.37 Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves--of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and exterminated that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.

        Sounds familiar...

        In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China’s immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and “patriotic education.” During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in “political subversion.” Some were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.

        Also familiar.

        Into the twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable sounding than the CIA, the U.S. Congress continued to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for “democracy activities” within the Tibetan exile community. In addition to these funds, the Dalai Lama received money from financier George Soros.

        Hey, the Dali Lama is one of us!

        In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an unsettling effect on the exile community. It read in part: “Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability.” Marxism fosters “the equitable utilization of the means of production” and cares about “the fate of the working classes” and “the victims of . . . exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and . . . I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.49

        But he also sent a reassuring message to “those who live in abundance”: “It is a good thing to be rich... Those are the fruits for deserving actions, the proof that they have been generous in the past.” And to the poor he offers this admonition: “There is no good reason to become bitter and rebel against those who have property and fortune... It is better to develop a positive attitude.”

        Bernie, is that you?

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      The Dalai Lama seems to be an ok chap trying to be buddhist and also not get murdered by the bloody failsons of the Tibetan aristocracy.

  • ami [they/them,he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Gonna ask it in here instead of making a new thread: how do y'all feel about Maoism? I've been reading a lot of Mao's writings lately and it's way easier to digest than Engels/Marx/Lenin. Is Maoism just not as popular nowadays because of Mao's legacy or the khmer rogue or what

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Probably because of his mismanagement of agricultural reform in China, and also because maoism is the banner of pro market Leninists. Leninists who are pro market use the banner of Maoism. That said, Maoism is incredibly influential, just not by name. It had a huge impact on the new left (including the anarcho leaning situatuonists!), and on the Black Panther Party. As a result, Maoist ideas like insertion into social movements, organizing smallholders and agricultural workers, and organizing the permanently unemployed are common sense in the modern american left.

      • FUCKTHEPAINTUP [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        maoism is the banner of pro market Leninists

        I’m in a Maoist org where we actually wear the real red bandanas and identify each other by pseudonyms.

        I straight up don’t know what this means. Which Maoists are “Pro-Market Leninists”?

        I’d consider the Indian Maoists (CPI Maoist) and the RCP-PCR (Canadian Maoists) to be a good sample of “what Maoists think”, for reference. If you know of any revisionism please bring it forward

        • Nagarjuna [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I'm not saying Maoists are pro market, to be clear, I'm saying that when Lenninists are pro market they usually do it under the banner of Mao, probably because CCP is the most relevant Leninist organization in the world today.

  • claz [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    To those who don't know: https://historicly.substack.com/p/tibet-china-and-the-violent-reaction