Paris Peace Accords 23 Oct. 1991

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Pol Pot's proletarian consciousness

Seen and heard on Ms. Theary C. Seng's Facebook accounts: 
www.facebook.com/theary.c.seng



Authors Conference hosted by CSD and Adhoc, Jan. 2007

Pol Pot biographer Philip Short, historian Milton Osborne, J Margolin, Theary Seng, Ministry of Justice Secretary of State Chan Huon, Stephen Morris, Pin Yathay, Father Francois Ponchaud, Matthias Witzel...


Philip Short's excellent biography -- Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare:

To Marx, the industrial proletariat represented progress; the peasantry represented backwardness and petit-bourgeois extremism. For the peasantry to develop proletarian characteristics, its role in society would have to change in ways that, to an orthodox Marxist, could come only from the transformation of its economic base.

To Sar [Pol Pot], the way out of this difficulty was provided by Buddhism.... To 'proletarianise' the peasantry, all that was needed, in this Buddhist-inspired scheme of things, was 'proletarian consciousness'...

Theravada Buddhism is intensely introspective. The goal is not to improve society or redeem one's fellow men; it is self-cultivation, in the nihilistic sense of the demolition of the individual.

[p. 149-50]


No comments:

Post a Comment