Violence, Surplus Production, and the Transformation of Nature during the Cambodian Genocide

Abstract

The Cambodian genocide continues to be framed as a “communist” revolution, which leads to incomplete and inaccurate conclusions. This paper applies a Marxist critique to the Khmer Rouge's so-called “communist revolution” through the twin tasks of (1) retheorizing Democratic Kampuchea's economy as an exploitative system of production for exchange and (2) articulating the Khmer Rouge's conception of nature as manifest in this mode of production, thus highlighting how the unity of production for exchange and the production of nature more accurately accounts for the mass death that occurred. The paper broadly sketches a Marxist conception of nature followed by a detailed discussion of the generation of surplus production under the Khmer Rouge and, last, a Marxist analysis of the Khmer Rouge's conception of nature. This addresses specifically how the Khmer Rouge's attempt to transform nature was necessary—and necessarily wrong—in its greater objective of building a socialist consciousness.

Key Words:

• Cambodia
• Genocide
• Nature
• Khmer Rouge
• Marxism

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Drue Barker, Blair Sandler, Noel Castree, and Bradley Gardener for insightful comments and criticism on previous drafts of this manuscript. An earlier version was presented at the Center for Humanities at Temple University. This research was supported by a grant (#1262736) from the National Science Foundation. Omissions and shortcomings are entirely my own.

Notes

1. Even scientific attempts to reconstruct a “prehuman” nature, such as that which existed 500 million years ago, are still apprehended only by entering into a specific relationship with that nature. We use human-developed scientific instruments and concepts; our measurements, our understandings, our attempts to comprehend that past reality are always and necessarily conditioned by human awareness. Science may claim to approach a prehuman reality, but such an attempt is by definition impossible, for humans can never perceive reality not as humans.

2. This of course is not to suggest that “things” simply exist; it is not possible to talk about “things” without simultaneously representing those “things.”

3. In this and subsequent passages, “man” for Marx referred to humanity in general.

4. This comes from document number D23948 on file at the Documentation Center of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.

5. This translates into approximately 0.85 kilograms per day.

6. The “cans” used for measurement were most often Nestlé's condensed milk cans; each can could contain approximately 200 grams of rice.

7. While it certainly holds that a person's consciousness is constituted by all of his or her social relationships and practices—and not just “economic” ones—I maintain that economic relations, as defined by agricultural work, were preeminent for the CPK.

8. In an earlier draft of this manuscript, a reviewer astutely questioned: “If collective production would overcome individuality, where did the consciousness come from that would enable ‘traitors’ to sabotage the production process?” This is a key point, one worth pursuing at greater length. Here, suffice it to say that the CPK was paranoid about foreign subversives who might introduce such consciousness into society: Vietnamese infiltrators, CIA-trained operatives, and so on. It was for this reason the CPK periodically purged its members.

9. At a certain level, Democratic Kampuchea functioned as a massive “slave” plantation. This is an argument worth pursuing. At this point, however, I find comparisons with the state capitalism of the Soviet Union more promising.