There's a popular subreddit called r/AskReddit, in which questions are posed to the larger Reddit community for them to answer. One of those questions, posed nearly six years ago, asks, "what was the worst decision ever in history?"

As it so happens, one of the most popular posts in answering that question was Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, a massive industrialization campaign by the communist dictator in the 1950s, not long after he had taken control of China. Given the significance of his other worst decisions to modern history and their effects on China, I figured that the Great Leap Forward, as well as Mao's broader rule of mainland China upon the conclusion of the Civil War, was worthy of discussion.

Part of the reason why Mao Zedong's Reds won the Civil War was because of their ability to curry the peasants to their side by actually doing good things for them. The Nationalists, as much as their victory would have made China a lot better (both politically and economically) and were well-suited to win in terms of military materiel, were corrupt and nefarious for stealing much-needed foodstuffs from the peasants. The Communists, on the other hand, were instructed to not do so, and even work with individual peasants to restore/compensate for property that had been damaged or taken. This approach earned the favor of China's peasants, who at this time, comprised a substantial portion of the population, contributing to the Communist victory despite a disadvantage in equipment.

With the backing of the rural Chinese peasantry, Mao Zedong, upon coming to power in 1949, set out to industrialize his country to become the next Soviet Union. However, given the largely agricultural state of Red China, he first needed to make "land reforms" first.

From 1949 to 1958, agricultural collectivization was enforced, abolishing private ownership and pushing peasants into state-run collectives, which Mao demanded increase grain production, which would be purchased at fixed prices by the state, so as to generate capital necessary for industrialization. However, not only was collectivization unpopular with the peasantry, but up to a third of grain produced was taken through taxation and state purchase, leaving very little grain left for peasants to consume. While moderates in the Communist Party argued for a reversal as a result, Mao, undeterred, increased the proportion of grain production allocated to the state.

In 1958, as part of the 2nd Five-Year Plan for industrialization, Mao officially introduced the Great Leap Forward, which would take the existing, already struggling collectives and turn them into People's Communes that replaced wages and money with work points. While things weren't all bright and rosy, as established, free food was originally provided to the workers in these communes, though this changed as supply decreased. Additionally, to please overseers and meet established quotas(already too high to be realistic goals), production reporters inflated the number of crops by ten-fold sometimes, resulting in a cycle of even higher and even more unrealistic demand. To ensure compliance with Party rules, struggle sessions, in which subjects were publicly humiliated, attacked, and berated by the community order to get them to admit to their "crimes", were organized.

Perhaps the most disastrous project of the Great Leap Forward were the backyard furnaces established in these Communes. Mao encouraged peasants to tend to small furnaces in which metals were melted to create steel. Seizing on any steel object that they could find(including pots, pans, bicycles, spoons), peasants were coerced into contributing to these furnaces in the hope of industrializing China with steel - only to find out that what they were producing was pig iron, practically useless unless it were to be smelted and underwent additional refining practices to become steel(which it did in some regions, thanks to the expertise of surviving steelmakers). Otherwise, the objects that were melted and wasted as pig iron were simply too brittle to be used. Mao, however, only quietly abandoned the program, initially choosing to keep it alive as evidence of the revolutionary spirit of the masses.

The lack of attention to farming as a result of the furnaces, as well as the lack of supply despite what was written on paper, the Chinese nation went into a massive famine after the end of the Great Leap Forward. Other factors, such as the removal of wood from forests and doors to use as firewood for furnaces, contributed to the famine by causing landslides and exacerbating floods. Seeing his political clout and power weakened after the disaster that was the Great Leap Forward, and despite his efforts to cover up the ever-worsening humanitarian disaster unfolding within his country, Mao judged the growing resistance within the Party as dangerous, and would later embark on an even more disastrous attempt to consolidate his political power - the Cultural Revolution.

If there is anything that the Great Leap Forward teaches, it is that the ideology known as Marxism-Leninism, and all its derivatives/offshoots, is inherently flawed. The collectivization of land and the removal of private property destroys one's privacy, and if undertaken without sufficient industrialization(as even emphasized by Friedrich Engels) can lead to disastrous results, and the political repression that individuals suffer causes them to abandon any semblance or desire to produce what is necessary. There's also the additional side lesson to not try to do things you're definitely not an expert in.

So it is really disappointing, and perhaps disheartening, to see defenders of the Marxist-Leninist system proliferate on YouTube. Channels such as "Phuong North Korea Daily" are advocates and mouthpieces of a broken ideology with broken results. If those that defend fascism and the horrific consequences of it can be removed from YouTube, so can those who defend communism as well. Those that continue to benefit in a capitalist manner from these channels should stop what they are doing and face the truth of what they continue to support - countries with no hope of advancing. Countries that, regardless of sanctions and embargoes, simply cannot even muster the might to industrialize and come up on par with capitalist countries. Countries where there are no hope, no freedom, no supermarkets, no computers, no phones, no internet, no nothing.