Smart people make all sorts of mistakes. Some mistakes only PhDs can make.
Mao's chief problem was his single-minded craving for power, and then for more power. Well, it may not have been a problem for him personally, but it sure was one for everyone else.Honestly, Mao's problems probably stem more from a combination of mental inflexibility and a belief that poetry would serve as a decent means of policy making.
Mao was the ultimate out of the box thinker. He was self taught, and I disagree that he wasn't intellectually curious. Actually he was always asking big questions. Robert Kennedy's saying, "some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?", perfectly captures Mao. He was not in the habit of questioning himself however, nor did he allow others to question him.Also, don't think Mao was an academic or anything. He did get some university education, but he remained a country bumpkin at heart, with little intellectual curiosity. Unlike, say, Zhou Enlai, he never went abroad before 1949, nor did he learn any foreign language. And he never shed that thick Hunan accent that is the Chinese equivalent of a Deep South drawl.
Exactly. I'd guess that Mao had an IQ approaching 160 or so, and applied it in the manner most beneficial to himself. Now, I would take issue with part of your statement - Hitler and to a lesser extent Mao were "true believers" in their respective ideologies, while Stalin merely saw in Communism an ideology with the potential for vast populist appeal that he could exploit to grant himself the unlimited power he craved.Mao, like Stalin and Hitler before he became a stoner, knew exactly what he was doing. His goal was lots and lots of power, and he knew exactly how to get it and he did.
Now if you want to change Mao's objectives, that's different.
What if Mao was more intelligent than in OTL? To the point of him being able to avoid the mistakes he made?
As far as I am concerned, Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all insane. Maybe not raving lunatics [although Hitler was close to this at the end] but if there was an insanity test based on average people, all 3 would fail miserably. I could come up with examples for all, but since this is a thread about Mao, let's just say that the cultural revolution was not the work of a sane man. How did it help China in any way? How did it make Mao more powerful?
Revolutions tend to facilitate the rise to power of that kind of person--one reason I'm wary of them. Revolutions put the less principled, more power-hungry contenders at an advantage against their competitors, and generally speaking, the less restrained one has been in one's conquest of power, the less restrained one will be in the exercize thereof.Just because he didn't value human life doesn't mean he was insane. IMO what's really scary is the ability of completely sane people to commit horrific atrocities in the sincere belief that it's worth it.
As far as I am concerned, Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all insane. Maybe not raving lunatics [although Hitler was close to this at the end] but if there was an insanity test based on average people, all 3 would fail miserably. I could come up with examples for all, but since this is a thread about Mao, let's just say that the cultural revolution was not the work of a sane man. How did it help China in any way? How did it make Mao more powerful?
let's just say that the cultural revolution was not the work of a sane man. How did it help China in any way? How did it make Mao more powerful?