CPUSA's statement on North Korean nuclear test

[KurtFF8]

Source (http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/1048/1/123/)


First published 05/27/2009 13:29 by {article_topic_desc} The Communist Party USA is shocked and appalled at North Korea's recent nuclear test, as well as its subsequent test firing of at least two missiles.

We see these acts as incredibly provocative and irresponsible. Unfortunately, they are not a surprising departure from the way the DPRK leadership has handled itself in recent years. Even North Korea's most important ally, China, was horrified by, and condemned, the tests. Of course, North Korea is right to say that it has been, and still is, the victim of imperialist aggression, specifically from the U.S. It is true that the United States has never made reparations for the destruction of the Korean War, has repeatedly threatened North Korea, and encroached upon its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to peacefully use nuclear power. In addition, the United States has helped to isolate North Korea from the rest of the world, encroaching upon its sovereign rights and hindering its economic development, and therefore providing the basis for the problems afflicting the region. It was the United States that fought the Korean War, and partitioned the nation into two separate states. The line of demarcation between north and south is one of the most militarized in the world. Currently, tens of thousands of U.S. troops remain in South Korea, and the U.S. routinely practices joint military drills with south Korea, simulating a ground invasion of the North. Nonetheless, we are resolutely opposed to the use or development of any nuclear weapons by any nation.

Nuclear weapons threaten the very existence of humanity itself. The tests heighten tensions in the region: The sections of Japan's leadership that want to see Japan change its “peace constitution” so that Japan can maintain a standing army have seized upon these provocative tests to push forward the changes they want.

Further, the results of the tests are in direct contradiction to the stated aims of battling imperialism. The general direction of the Obama administration's foreign policy is at odds with that of any administration in the past 30 years, if not longer. While Obama has to navigate the political realities of the U.S., his administration has sought to reduce the nuclear threat, as well as the threat that the U.S. poses to other, oppressed nations. Consequently, powerful sections of the U.S. ruling class have made their aim to derail the Obama administration altogether.

The fight for progressive forces is to make sure that Obama, and the social strata that are part of the Obama movement—the working class, women and the racially and nationally oppressed especially—meets success.

The ultra-right has already seized upon North Korea's nuclear tests to attack Obama, Obama has been forced to respond sharply, and the movement for peace and against imperialism is that much more difficult. We believe peace is possible in today’s world, but this nuclear test, on the contrary, strengthens the ultra-right and imperialism, not the cause of peace.

The Communist Party USA, along with North Korea's neighbors, including socialist China and Vietnam, and many other progressive forces around the world, condemn these tests and urge the North Korean leadership to abandon its policy of brinkmanship. Further, we urge all parties, including the United States and Japan, to exercise restraint in response. As we have always said, the main way to solve the nuclear issue, as well as the problems of Northeast Asia more generally, is through good-faith dialogue, through the six-party talks or some other mechanism, and not through military saber-rattling and brinkmanship from any quarters.


While they certainly jump on the attack on the DPRK as the rest of the world has, at least they acknowledge that the DPRK has been a victim of imperialism for some time now and that the attack on them that continues is a part of that. Although by joining in the same line as the Democratic Party, they don't seem to know the best way to help counter the imperialist policies of the USA.

[Revy]

Further, the results of the tests are in direct contradiction to the stated aims of battling imperialism. The general direction of the Obama administration's foreign policy is at odds with that of any administration in the past 30 years, if not longer. While Obama has to navigate the political realities of the U.S., his administration has sought to reduce the nuclear threat, as well as the threat that the U.S. poses to other, oppressed nations. Consequently, powerful sections of the U.S. ruling class have made their aim to derail the Obama administration altogether.

The fight for progressive forces is to make sure that Obama, and the social strata that are part of the Obama movement—the working class, women and the racially and nationally oppressed especially—meets success.

The ultra-right has already seized upon North Korea's nuclear tests to attack Obama, Obama has been forced to respond sharply, and the movement for peace and against imperialism is that much more difficult. We believe peace is possible in today’s world, but this nuclear test, on the contrary, strengthens the ultra-right and imperialism, not the cause of peace.

The Communist Party USA, along with North Korea's neighbors, including socialist China and Vietnam, and many other progressive forces around the world, condemn these tests and urge the North Korean leadership to abandon its policy of brinkmanship. Further, we urge all parties, including the United States and Japan, to exercise restraint in response. As we have always said, the main way to solve the nuclear issue, as well as the problems of Northeast Asia more generally, is through good-faith dialogue, through the six-party talks or some other mechanism, and not through military saber-rattling and brinkmanship from any quarters.THIS. IS. FUCKING. HILARIOUS.
Ugh, I'm so sick of the CPUSA. They're mindless Democrat drones.

[Lolshevik]

Wow. Just... wow.

I knew the Communist Party was engaged in some serious revisionism, but I had no idea they had abandoned even the most fundamental concept of Leninism, the right of nations to self-determination...

Sam Webb: WTF?!?!

[Revy]

Wow. Just... wow.

I knew the Communist Party was engaged in some serious revisionism, but I had no idea they had abandoned even the most fundamental concept of Leninism, the right of nations to self-determination...

Sam Webb: WTF?!?!

They have readings of Lenin's Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder to interpret it as supportive of the Democratic Party.

I'm not kidding. They're still trying to think of themselves as communist even though they have long abandoned it for Democratic party politics.

I did some research, on the People's Weekly World site, the archives of which go back to '95.

They were Democrats back in 2004 too, and 2000 (Sam Webb took it over in 2000). In 1996 they supported "Democratic, independent and Communist candidates -- whatever candidates and tactics fit into the overall goal of undoing the Republicans." So it's nothing new.

The rhetoric in the '90s during the last Democratic administration was that "ultra-right Republicans" were trying to derail Clinton's "progressive" agenda.

[Prairie Fire]

Further illustrating the need for a party of a new type in the USA (PM me, or Lenin II).

Marlon



Wow. Just... wow.

I knew the Communist Party was engaged in some serious revisionism, but I had no idea they had abandoned even the most fundamental concept of Leninism, the right of nations to self-determination...

Sam Webb: WTF?!?!


This started before Webb. Webb was perhaps the final nail in the coffin, but a lot of this problem started with Earl Browder, decades ago. From advocating the "New deal", to being an advocate of "peaceful co-existance" even before Nikita Kruschev, the CP-USA started their downwards spiral from that point, approximately (and the later rise of the Kruschev clique in the USSR didn't hurt either).

[Yehuda Stern]

Too bad that back when the CPUSA backed Roosevelt and the new deal and helped break strikes, under Browder, they did it with Stalin's full support. But why let history interfere with one's delusions of revisionism beginning with Khrushchev.

[Revy]

Too bad that back when the CPUSA backed Roosevelt and the new deal and helped break strikes, under Browder, they did it with Stalin's full support. But why let history interfere with one's delusions of revisionism beginning with Khrushchev.

Yeah, their popular frontism in the Progressive Party (predecessor to the Green Party) and electoral support for ex-Roosevelt admin alum Henry Wallace.

And what basis in their history does this come from: "[the Communist Party supports] whatever candidates and tactics fit into the overall goal of undoing the Republicans."

Sounds like popular frontism to me, how interesting is it application in the 21st century! ;)

[Wanted Man]

Poor show from the CP-USA. I guess they will just follow Obama's policies, or, alternatively, that of the CP of China.

Here's the PSL:


North Korea has the right to self-defense!

Friday, May 29, 2009



Washington's aggression is the real threat


The following is a statement issued by the Party for Socialism and Liberation.



http://www.pslweb.org/images/content/pagebuilder/55171.jpeg
The North Korean people have endured
Washington's aggression for decades—but
they are ready to fight back.


"It is the view of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the necessary air, naval, and ground operations, including the extensive strategic and tactical use of atomic bombs, be undertaken, so as to obtain maximum surprise and maximum impact on the enemy, both militarily and psychologically." The chilling decision, as communicated in the above words by Gen. Omar Bradley, was made on May 19, 1953.

It was only North Korea’s signing of the truce in July of that year that averted the nuclear destruction of the country by the Pentagon.
All people in North Korea know the history of U.S. nuclear threats, massive carpet bombing, invasion and massacres against their country.


According to the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1967, more than 5 million Korean people died during the war between June 25, 1950, and the conclusion of military hostilities in July 1953.


Today, Korea is threatened with a new war and the government of North Korea is preparing for military conflict.


An official communiqué of the government of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea, explained that "The DPRK will deal a decisive and merciless retaliatory blow, no matter from which place, at any attempt to stop, check and inspect its vessels, regarding it as a violation of its inviolable sovereignty and territory and a grave provocation to it."


On May 27, the North Korean government nullified the 1953 truce between Korea and the United States that ended open military hostilities.


This is a highly significant decision and an indication that the Korean Peninsula has become hypertense with the prospect of a new, major war. For years, North Korea has called for a replacement of the truce with a peace treaty that would allow for normalization of its relations with the United States. Washington has refused to sign such a peace treaty, and thus remains technically at war with North Korea, as it has now for the past 59 years.


What triggered the new conflict?
The rapidly escalating march toward a new war is the result of the new economic sanctions and political demonization of North Korea by the U.S. government. When North Korea launched a communications satellite in April, the United States and Japan scrambled land, air and sea power, and rallied for sanctions even harsher than those already in place.


The hysteria directed against North Korea reached a frenzied crescendo when the Korean government announced on May 25 that it had successfully carried out an underground nuclear test. The United States and its allies in the Security Council in the United Nations passed a harsh resolution condemning North Korea.


The Pentagon maintains 9,962 nuclear warheads and performs an unknown number of test launches with the most advanced military weaponry in the world. But these are not mere tests. With this military might, the United States has launched war of aggression after war of aggression, illegal covert action after illegal covert action. Yet somehow, hypocritically, Washington retains the title of the "responsible" military power while North Korea is portrayed as an aggressor nation for taking such threats seriously—for having dared to even test their comparatively small arsenal.


Washington’s aggression has given North Korea a simple choice: Arm yourselves, or be annihilated. That was the lesson of the Iraq war. By means of genocidal sanctions, Washington pushed Baghdad to disarm. While presented by U.S. officials as a condition to end the sanctions, the disarmament only paved the way for the 2003 invasion. The goal is the same in North Korea as it was in Iraq: regime change.



U.S. and South Korean ships have threatened to seize and search any North Korean vessel under the pretext that they may be transporting weapons of mass destruction or related technology. A North Korean military spokesperson responded: "Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels, including search and seizure, will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty." The North Korean government will rightly consider it an act of war.


The North Korean government has adopted a military strategy of deterrence with the goal of maintaining its independence and sovereignty. Its standing military and arsenal serve to protect its right to self-determination, to defend the gains of its socialist revolution, and to hold off the capitalist plunder that would follow its overthrow by Washington. Having defended its country from a near-genocidal assault between 1950 and 1953, the North Korean government has made it clear to all that, while it seeks peace and the normalization of relations with the United States, it has readied all weapons in its arsenal to defend itself against its nuclear-armed foe.


Hands off North Korea!http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12137&news_iv_ctrl=1261

[scarletghoul]

Fuck yeah, PSL seems pretty cool. All you americans- join the PSL.

[Lolshevik]

Yeah, I read the PSL's statement last night, and it just reaffirms my opinion that they're the most principled M-L party in the United States.

But with regards to the CPUSA, I had always thought that they just passively followed the line of the CPSU, whatever it was at the time, until the Gorbachev era when they stopped tailing the CPSU in favor of tailing the Democratic Party full-time. But I haven't done any in-depth research on that.

[ZeroNowhere]

Hey, leave them alone, originality's never been among their strengths.

Edit: Though apparently some people can come up with a load of crap while opposing the Dems.

[Random Precision]

Here is Socialist Worker:


Is North Korea the real threat?

Alan Maass looks at the role of the U.S. government in setting the stage for escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula.

May 29, 2009

THE U.S. government has nuclear weapons pointed at North Korea, a fleet of Navy vessels permanently positioned off its coast, and close to 100,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea and Japan. Successive U.S. administrations have reneged on promises made over two decades to provide humanitarian aid to the North's impoverished population.

But you wouldn't know any of that from the international response when the North Korean regime carried out a nuclear bomb test May 25.

Instead, U.S. and international political leaders, cheered on by the media, all heaped blame on North Korea alone for the escalating threat of war.

The nuclear test was North Korea's second. This bomb, set off underground, was far more powerful, estimated at between 10 and 20 kilotons--approximately the same destructive power of each of the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War.

The North Korean military announced the same day that it had test-fired three short-range missiles, and the government reportedly restarted a nuclear reactor it had promised to dismantle as part of an aid-for-disarmament agreement reached two years ago at so-called "six-party talks" involving China, Russia, Japan, the U.S. and the two Koreas.

The U.S. and ally South Korea, in turn, put their military forces on a state of high alert--and American officials were pressing the United Nations Security Council for sanctions. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton promised North Korea would face "consequences" for what she called "provocative and belligerent actions."

The idea that North Korea represents a military threat to the U.S. is absurd. The country is desperately poor, with a per capita income of less than $2 a day. Its military is years away from developing a long-range missile that could reliably reach the continental U.S., much less a nuclear device that could be carried on such a missile.

But on the Korean peninsula, the threat of horrific carnage is far more immediate. North Korea has an estimated 750 missiles and 13,000 artillery tubes pointed toward South Korea. Some 21 million people live in metropolitan Seoul, which is just 35 miles from the border with the North. And, of course, U.S. and South Korean forces have a far more destructive arsenal at their command. A war could cause leave 1 million civilians dead in a matter of days.

The North Korean regime's militaristic rhetoric--and, even more so, its police-state methods for repressing dissent--makes it easy for the media to dismiss its leaders as crazed fanatics. But when North Korean officials say their attempts to develop nuclear weapons have been a deterrent against U.S. attack, they're right.

When the Bush administration launched its "war on terror," North Korea was included among the "axis of evil" list of possible targets after Afghanistan was conquered. But it never faced even preparations for a U.S. war. "The Iraqi war taught the lesson that...the security of the nation can be protected only when a country has a physical deterrent force," a North Korean official said a few weeks after the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BEHIND THE conflict between the U.S. and North Korea lies more than a century of colonial occupation and imperialist domination.

Before the 20th century, rulers of China and Japan had fought over who would control the Korean peninsula. After defeating Russia in a 1905 war, Japan made Korea into its colony, which it ruthlessly exploited, with help from U.S. investors.

After Japan's defeat in the Second World War, the U.S. and the former USSR--previously wartime allies--began their Cold War rivalry, with Korea serving as an early battleground. The peninsula was "temporarily" partitioned.

Communist forces in the North backed by the USSR launched an offensive with the aim of reuniting Korea in 1950. The U.S. responded with a wholesale slaughter. With the authority of the United Nations as a cover, the U.S. used napalm to firebomb every Northern city, reducing them to ruins.

Four years of war ended in a stalemate, at a cost of some 3 million dead; the previous partition line was reconfirmed in a 1953 armistice agreement.

Following the war, South Korea was run by its military, backed up by the U.S. Only after more than three decades of dictatorship did this regime finally crack, in the face of a mass democracy movement fueled by workers' struggles.

North Korea adopted the repressive Stalinist system of its patrons in Russia and China. Though its leaders still claim to be presiding over "communism," North Korea is the polar opposite of a socialist society of workers' power and democracy. The state apparatus directs the economy and society with an iron hand, and the regime promotes a cult of personality, first around Kim Il-sung, and now his son Kim Jong-il.

But if North Korea has always been highly militarized, it has also faced half a century of military threats from the U.S. and its clients in the South. The U.S. introduced nuclear weapons to the peninsula in the late 1950s, in violation of the armistice that ended the war. It also maintains, to this day, a huge military force stationed in both South Korea and nearby Japan as a constant threat against the North.

North Korea was economically ahead of the South until the mid-1970s. But its increasing impoverishment intensified after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration stoked tensions by restarting war games on the peninsula and retargeting nuclear weapons once aimed at the USSR toward North Korea. According to a South Korean government official, the U.S. had drawn up plans for the overthrow of the North and its takeover by the South.

In 1994, the Clinton White House agreed to a deal in which the North Korean government promised to halt its nuclear weapons program, and the U.S. would lift its embargo on trade and credit, and also help with the building of a civilian nuclear power program, with shipments of fuel oil as a stopgap measure for producing electricity.

Clinton broke all these promises, except for the delivery of fuel oil and some food aid. The economic crisis grew worse. Severe flooding in the 1990s led to a famine that killed as many as one in 10 people in the country. In other words, in spite of the agreement, the Clinton administration was continuing to up the pressure on the regime, in the hopes that it would break.

When George W. Bush came to power, he made matters worse by rejecting further direct negotiations. The state of relations between the two countries was symbolized by Bush's racist rants about Kim Jong-il being a "pygmy."

Now the Obama administration is in charge, and its top foreign policy officials show no sign of wanting to pursue a different path. Thus, Obama's UN Ambassador Susan Rice said she wanted to be sure North Korea would "pay a price" for its nuclear test.

No sane person wants to see the spread of nuclear weapons. But when it comes to the arms race and war threats in East Asia, the driving force is the U.S. government. Real disarmament would start with the American soldiers and weapons that have been pointed at North Korea for more than half a century.

http://socialistworker.org/2009/05/29/is-north-korea-the-real-threat

[ZeroNowhere]

This reminds me of the main reason I have any respect for the SWP at all. Not for what they are, but for what they aren't.

[Marx22]

The US has always wanted to invade North Korea, they always have wanted to go in there, take over, and install a capitalist, "democratic" puppet government; the US can give a shit about the conditions of the people there, it is because North Korea is "communist" and the US has a hard-on for trying to topple communist governments. Regime change is in the playbook for their foreign policy.

Great statement from the PSL and great article from Socialistworker.

[KurtFF8]

I was just about to post the PSL statement as well (obviously since it's much better) but I'm glad it's been posted already.

[PRC-UTE]

looks like comments can be left here http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8571/

[Charles Xavier]

I find it disgusting these capitalist roaders have taken the helm of the CPUSA.

[hugsandmarxism]

...Further, the results of the tests are in direct contradiction to the stated aims of battling imperialism. The general direction of the Obama administration's foreign policy is at odds with that of any administration in the past 30 years, if not longer. While Obama has to navigate the political realities of the U.S., his administration has sought to reduce the nuclear threat, as well as the threat that the U.S. poses to other, oppressed nations. Consequently, powerful sections of the U.S. ruling class have made their aim to derail the Obama administration altogether.

The fight for progressive forces is to make sure that Obama, and the social strata that are part of the Obama movement—the working class, women and the racially and nationally oppressed especially—meets success.

The ultra-right has already seized upon North Korea's nuclear tests to attack Obama, Obama has been forced to respond sharply, and the movement for peace and against imperialism is that much more difficult. We believe peace is possible in today’s world, but this nuclear test, on the contrary, strengthens the ultra-right and imperialism, not the cause of peace...

Ugh.


What is now happening to Marx's theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don't laugh!).

This.

[Kassad]

Wow. I actually almost agree with International Socialist Organization on something. Kind of scary. Thanks, Random Precision, for the article. I actually just attended one of your meetings yesterday. I don't agree with anything I was told, but it was still interesting.

Also, thanks This Charming Man. The Party for Socialism and Liberation continues to defend Korea's socialist gains and construction and their right to self-determination away from American corporate and bourgeois interests. Communist Party USA's revisionist description of the situation, however absurd, is not surprising. This shows the lack of sanity remaining in the upper tiers of the party, thus I advise anyone serious about Marxism and revolution to join the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

[Monkey Riding Dragon]

I'd like to add my commentary on this topic.

(My fuller view on North Korea itself can be found here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/political-profile-t61179/index12.html).)

WARNING, WARNING, INCOMING MAOIST PERSPECTIVE!

Let's look at a few highlights:


The Communist Party USA is shocked and appalled at North Korea's recent nuclear test, as well as its subsequent test firing of at least two missiles.

...

Nuclear weapons threaten the very existence of humanity itself.Does the CP honestly believe that North Korea is a threat to "the very existence of humanity itself"? Surely we can only conclude that this is a laughable basis for condemnation. But they supply more:


Further, the results of the tests are in direct contradiction to the stated aims of battling imperialism.You don't say? Not in more than 50 years has North Korea actually aimed to combat imperialism. Rather, it has, since 1953, arranged its foreign and domestic policies such as to align with "fraternal nations" -- any country, that is, that will invest in North Korea's economy. Ever since the 1953 adoption of this policy, it has meant chaining itself ever more closely to imperialism, not combating it. These recent tests are, again, aimed at pressuring imperialist nations (and especially the U.S.) to invest qualitatively inside North Korea and have been motivated by factors like America's December cutoff of crucial fuel shipments and U.S.-puppet South Korea's recent cutoff of much-needed food aid. We should all know that this pressure campaign has nothing to do with revolutionism. But let's now take a look and see what the CP does consider "battling imperialism" to be:


The fight for progressive forces is to make sure that Obama, and the social strata that are part of the Obama movement—the working class, women and the racially and nationally oppressed especially—meets success.The small problem with this brilliant formulation is that Barack Obama is heading up the world's more powerful empire. The CP is thus proposing a unity with American super-imperialism and everything that goes along with that. This is apparently what qualifies as "battling imperialism". As much sense as that makes, let's continue.


We believe peace is possible in today’s world, but this nuclear test, on the contrary, strengthens the ultra-right and imperialism, not the cause of peace.

And here we see the revisionist foundation of their commentary. Peace is not "possible in today's world" of capitalist imperialism and all the brutal violence and aggression inherently associated with it. Marx put it this way: "The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism." This comes only upon the attainment of a classless society and world. Only revolution can bring socialism into being and push it forward into communism. Revolution and the stubborn struggle of socialist states against the capitalist world is what combating imperialism means. The formulation that "peace is possible in today's world", by contrast, for the CP's part, stems from Nikita Krushchev's policies of "peaceful transition" into socialism and "peaceful co-existence" with (other) imperialists (however illusory the latter might have been at a given point). These were always reflective of an imperialist, social-democratic worldview. Their imperialist character shows through again in this above usage. Krushchev used this logic to defend Soviet social-imperialism. The CPUSA uses it to defend American imperialism. An unconditional peace policy is expected of Kim Jong Il, but Barack Obama can manifestly pursue any course, no matter how clearly aggressive, with the CP's more or less full support.


The Communist Party USA, along with North Korea's neighbors, including socialist China and Vietnam, and many other progressive forces around the world, condemn these tests and urge the North Korean leadership to abandon its policy of brinkmanship. Further, we urge all parties, including the United States and Japan, to exercise restraint in response. As we have always said, the main way to solve the nuclear issue, as well as the problems of Northeast Asia more generally, is through good-faith dialogue, through the six-party talks or some other mechanism, and not through military saber-rattling and brinkmanship from any quarters.Aside from the painfully obvious reality that neither of the "socialist" countries described are actually socialist, but rather are "sweatshops of the world", as the expression goes, we can see other fundamental problems here. Namely, the formulation of 'urging' imperialists and other oppressive ruling classes to take up certain political positions. This comes as, above all else, imperialist strategizing on how best to exploit the largest numbers of people and as to what sorts of conditions are ideal for that. This is a truly disgusting way of thinking and just one reason why I in no way associate myself with the so-called Communist Party USA.

[Asoka89]

This reminds me of the main reason I have any respect for the SWP at all. Not for what they are, but for what they aren't.

That's from the ISO, not the SWP ....

And North Korea is a fucking diaster. They have literally tens of thousands of people dying every year of starvation, they have an elite privilleged group of bueacrats, an unstable leader not accountable to the people.

I dare you to go travel in the region, compare Seoul to the capital of North Korea. Are you guys crazy or something? They don't even profess to be Marxist anymore, their only guiding ideology is Juche.

The state accumulation in North Korea has been an utter disaster, the use of state developmentalist policies in South Korea has industrialized and built productive forces, it has created a more humane and stable society.

Since when did Marxism devolve into knee jerk "anti-imperialism". I suppose you got this in the same book of Marx that I haven't discovered yet that explained how the Iraqi resistance and the Taliban are progressive forces because they are attacking imperialism.

[pbond123]

Also, thanks This Charming Man. The Party for Socialism and Liberation continues to defend Korea's socialist gains and construction and their right to self-determination away from American corporate and bourgeois interests. Communist Party USA's revisionist description of the situation, however absurd, is not surprising. This shows the lack of sanity remaining in the upper tiers of the party, thus I advise anyone serious about Marxism and revolution to join the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Just what socialist gains of North Korea are you referring to? A dynastic line of succession? A manifest occurrence of 1984? A defense of DPRK amounts to a betrayal of all your self-proclaimed humanism. If you choose to defend the DPRK, where do you get the balls to criticize Israel? Your devotion to revolutionary movements is a sham if you can see anything in DPRK as remotely revolutionary.

The fact that socialists feel inclined to take sides in the quasi-conflict between the United States and the DPRK is ridiculous. I don't think a starving and ignorant mass of people, under the direct and complete control of demi-gods constitutes self-determination nor socialism.

The DPRK is an excellent example of "socialism" turned religion. It's a lot easier to control populations when everything the regime does is in the name of the people!

Which PSL leader will we see great statues of? Which PSL leader will we call "Great Leader"? With whom, after our revolution, will we replace God?

It's as if anti-imperialism has been fetishized. Save your humanity; defend neither the United States nor the DPRK!

Here lies Marxism, the revolutionary philosophy twisted to support counterrevolutionary regimes..

[Red Rebel]

I am embarassed that this statement comes from the CP in my country. I can understand people not liking Juche but attacking the DRPK for defending itself? Revisionism is disgusting.

[KurtFF8]

Although in the CPUSA's defense, they do explain how the DPRK has been a victim of imperialism up until now and the current US efforts are part of that imperialism. They are simply opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons themselves. The problem of course is that they are also coming out against the DPRK's defense and opening themselves up to continue to support the US's efforts against them.

[Martin Blank]

For the record, here's the WPA's statement:...


Obama’s Provocations Threaten to Restart Korean War
Nuclear Powderkeg

THE TENSIONS THAT have been building on the Korean peninsula in recent months have now reached the point of a crisis. But this crisis, far from being the result of a series of missile launches and an underground nuclear test, is the result of provocations orchestrated by the White House.

The North Korean government had repeatedly notified the United Nations that it intended to continue testing its missiles and nuclear weapons as a show of defiance to the UN and its condemnation of Pyongyang’s April 5 launch of a medium-range missile.

The underground nuclear test, only the second such carried out by North Korea in the last few years, was of a relatively low yield (up to 20 kilotons) and is no match for most of the nuclear arsenal of the Great Power imperialists.

In the days since this series of tests, the tensions in the region have sharpened.

Recently, the “liberal” president of Washington’s client state in South Korea was forced out of office and “committed suicide,” replaced by an ultra-conservative. This new president has ended the “sunshine” policy that was reconciling the two Korean states, and has signed the regime in Seoul on to a “Proliferation Security Initiative” that would forcibly stop and search ships going to and from North Korea, ostensibly to look for “weapons of mass destruction.”

The North Koreans have correctly interpreted this action as a sign of increased belligerence against their state. The PSI is a naval blockade, and such movements (even when they are called “quarantines,” as in the case of Cuba) are the same as a declaration of war.

This is why Pyongyang, in response to the Seoul regime signing on to the blockade, has declared that “the Korean People’s Army will not be bound to the Armistice Agreement [signed in 1953, which ended the Korean War — C.C.] any longer” and has declared that any attempt by the U.S. or South Korea to stop or board a North Korean ship will be countered with “prompt and strong military strikes.”

THERE IS LITTLE doubt that the North Koreans are serious about their statements. For 56 years, North Korean troops have had to face off against the U.S. across the peninsula’s demilitarized zone.

The three-year war in Korea resulted in more than 5 million Koreans killed, most of them as a result of Washington’s decision to attempt to “roll back Communism” in Asia through militarily blocking Korean unification.

Since 1953, the North Koreans have sought a final peace in the region, but the U.S. has refused all attempts to bring the conflict to an end. Both sides tie their reasons to attempts to unify Korea: the North wants peace and a path to peaceful unification; the U.S. wants the North Koreans to submit à la East Germany.

But Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons threw a monkey wrench into Washington’s plans. At the same time, it has allowed the U.S. to paint North Korea as the “aggressor” — even though the U.S. has the most nuclear warheads of any country in the world, regularly tests them, is the only country to ever use nuclear weapons in a conflict and currently has over 100,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea.

Inside the U.S. in particular, media bobbleheads, both “liberal” and “conservative,” have used North Korea’s tests as a basis for beating on the war drums. While they attempt to downplay the relatively low yields of the nuclear blasts, they point to Pyongyang’s Taepodong II missile and talk of a “threat” to the U.S.

North Korea’s missiles are designed for use in a conflict that is local — i.e., in Korea, to repel an attack by U.S.-led forces. In this context, the low yields of North Korea’s nuclear devices also make sense. The range of blasts seen so far, from half-kiloton to 20 kilotons, is standard for battlefield, or tactical, nuclear weapons. Such weapons are designed for use against massed invasions and formations in movement.

Or, to put it another way, the North Koreans know that if they get into another conflict with the U.S., they will once again obliterate their cities and slaughter their people in the skies, just as they did in the 1950-53 war. Thus, in order to stop the accompanying invasion, Pyongyang is building what they see as a formidable deterrent to give Washington and Seoul pause.

FOR MORE THAN five decades, the U.S. has forced the North Koreans to develop as a militarized society, with the threat of a renewed war hanging over their heads.

Ever since the 1953 armistice was signed, Washington has systematically violated it. In the late 1950s, the U.S. introduced nuclear weapons to the peninsula, which was an explicit breach. It has maintained a trade and credit embargo on the country, which, after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, pushed the country into a severe economic and humanitarian crisis.

In the 1990s, then-President Clinton proposed to end this blockade if North Korea stopped its nuclear program. Washington never delivered, choosing instead to draw up plans for “regime change” and a takeover of the North by the South. Bush and his corporatists only made matters worse by calling North Korea a part of the “axis of evil” ... and referring to the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il, as a “pygmy.”

Now, Obama’s “liberal” corporatists are looking to finish the job, wanting to make Pyongyang “pay a price” for daring to defend itself against an aggressive nuclear-armed power (the United States) that has orchestrated repeated provocations and seeks “regime change.”

While we communists offer no support to the dynastic mystics that run North Korea (and have the nerve to call themselves “Communists”), we recognize that it is in the interests of all working people to organize against Obama’s provocations, to use a class-struggle strategy to stop any attack on North Korea — an attack that will end in a nuclear horror.

[Communist]

A recent Workers World Party article found at
http://www.workers.org/2009/editorials/korea_0604/
=============================>

http://www.workers.org/graphics/workersworldsm.gif (http://www.workers.org/)
EDITORIAL
Korea’s defense & U.S. belligerence

Published May 27, 2009 1:15 PM
Anyone in the United States who pays attention to the corporate news media must think that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea just violated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Right?
Except that no such treaty exists.
Some 180 countries have signed it, but only 148 have ratified it. According to the Web site of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, “All 44 States specifically listed in the Treaty—those with nuclear technology capabilities at the time of the final Treaty negotiations in 1996—must sign and ratify before the CTBT can enter into force.” (ctbto.org)
Nine out of those 44 nuclear states have not ratified the treaty, despite having signed it some 13 years ago. Therefore, the treaty is not and has never been in force.
The government that seems to protest the most when a country like the DPRK conducts tests sits in Washington. But guess what? The U.S. Senate has not ratified the treaty. In fact, it is Washington’s refusal that is the main obstacle to the CTBT treaty taking effect.
The U.S. tested the world’s first atomic bombs in 1945 and almost immediately dropped two of them on Japanese cities, killing 220,000 people on the spot and leaving another 200,000 so poisoned by radiation that they died soon after. From that time until it signed the treaty in 1996, the U.S. had tested 1,032 nuclear weapons.
That is more nuke tests than have been carried out by all the rest of the countries in the world combined, right up to the present.
So how can the world have any confidence in a nuclear test ban treaty if the country that has tested such a hugely disproportionate number of weapons won’t ratify it?
The DPRK has successfully conducted two underground tests of nuclear devices, one in 2006 and another on May 25. It has not dropped any bombs on anyone. In fact, its troops have never fought anywhere except in Korea, and then it was to expel foreign invaders.
The DPRK’s determination to devote substantial resources to building a nuclear deterrent reflects Korea’s tragic history. First invaded and annexed by colonial Japan, then occupied by U.S. troops at the end of World War II, Korea suffered enormously from the rise of imperialism in the 20th century.
The U.S. created a puppet military dictatorship in the south, which in 1948 declared itself the Republic of Korea. It was only then that the revolutionary forces, who had liberated the northern part of Korea from Japan’s iron grip, responded by declaring the establishment of the DPRK, not as a permanent state that would ratify the division of Korea, but as a recognition of reality. The goal of the DPRK, and of the Korean people as a whole, has always been to reunite the country. Within two years, however, the DPRK was fighting a new war against imperialist invaders—this time hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops.
Several million Koreans, civilians and soldiers, were killed in the 1950-53 war. Some 53,000 U.S. soldiers died. Though the war ended in a ceasefire with the two sides roughly where they had been at the start, the U.S. occupiers of southern Korea refused to sign a peace treaty with the DPRK. And that’s where things have stood ever since, with between 30,000 and 40,000 U.S. troops occupying the south at any one time.
Many countries—first among them the United States—have declared they had to have nuclear weapons for self-defense. None has a stronger claim to a nuclear deterrent than the DPRK, which for more than half a century has faced the constant threat of new aggression from the world’s most heavily armed imperialist superpower.
If Washington were sincere about wanting to move toward a nuclear-free world, it would start by signing a peace treaty with the DPRK, ratifying the CTBT and removing its occupation troops from Korea.
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Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

[Kassad]

Well, I hate to have to attack an organization I have a lot of respect for, but here goes. Let's look at Workers World's article and where is shows it inherent reformism and appeasement of American imperialism.


If Washington were sincere about wanting to move toward a nuclear-free world, it would start by signing a peace treaty with the DPRK,

Do you honestly think Washington would ever consider an nuclear armistice or any kind of nuclear-free policy? So, instead of ending the article with exploring how Korea has the right to self-defense, Workers World Party likes to think that a peace treaty, despite the consistent colonial threats and sanctions, would end imperialism's opposition to Korean self-determination? No word of ending the sanctions on Korea. No word of removing all troops from Korea to allow the nations to possibly re-unify and practice self-rule. A peace treaty would suffice for Workers World. This shows how Workers World is not interested in actually looking at this situation from a Marxist, materialist perspective. This is totally submissive stance to take; ignoring the real colonial aspect of the Korean issue and instead, taking the road to appeasement; assuming that a treaty will solve Korea's woes. First endorsing a capitalist candidate, then praising the victory of Obama. Now we have more capitalist reformism and appeasement. What's next?

[ZeroNowhere]

That's from the ISO, not the SWP ....Well, shit. Same applies, though.

[Stark]

The CPUSA is today nothing more than a gathering of a bunch of senile, nostalgic elderly people whose political activity seems to be limited to marking anniversaries of events. They have committed right-opportunist errors to such an extent that they should just dissolve their party and join the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

They have literally tens of thousands of people dying every year of starvation
The country's economic difficulties are largely attributable to the Yeltsin regime's betrayel of DPRK; DPRK's energy imports were basically cut off. The U.S. imperialists committed unprecedented sabotage against the country in the 1990s by trying to deny the Korean people's right to a nuclear program, resulting in direct losses amount to tens of billions of dollars. Had the DPRK been able to build their nuclear power base as planned, there would have been no energy shortage, and the country's economy would have been strong. DPRK faced hardships comparable to Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s.

[Communist Theory]

The CPUSA is a joke and so is Sam Webb.
Webb could have at least tried in his "debate" with Glenn Beck but whenever Beck started shouting Webb shut up.

[Comrade Bender]

The CPUSA is a joke and so is Sam Webb.
Webb could have at least tried in his "debate" with Glenn Beck but whenever Beck started shouting Webb shut up.

I didn't pay attention to the show. :p I find Glenn to be idiotic in every respect, but a good Communist would have smacked him down, and not just in an intellectual sense, but the physical sense. O_o

[Asoka89]

Most of you guys have a poor understanding of the nature of global imperialism in the 21st century, the conditions under which North Korea has developed since the late 1970s and the objective factors that contributed to the decay and collapse of "actual existing socialism".

The PSL reactionary, knee-jerk anti-imperialism is a hardly characteristic of real Marxist analysis and its simple a symptom of the intellectual decay of the left during the past quarter century.

Say what you want about the CPUSA, their statement on this issue was closer to the truth than the reactionary spoutings of those Stalinoid outfits.

[Stark]

Are you calling PSL Stalinist? PSL is actually a former faction of the semi-Trotskyist World Workers Party. Charges of Stalinism in 2009 are bizarre considering that Stalinism basically died out in Russia in 1953-56.

[Asoka89]

Stalinoid, and state socialism from 1924-1991 in the Soviet Union has been broadly described as Stalinism.

WWP and the PSL completely abandoned Trotskyism. Sam Marcy completely left the Trotskyist movement in the 1950s and stood with the Stalinists over Czechoslovkia, the WWP was basically a solidarity group for any and all governments around the world, which they didn't called deformed worker's states, state capitalist, beucratic collectivist, etc, but they called "SOCIALIST STATES"

Thus they are Stalinoids. I was kind enough to not use the term Stalinist to describe them.

[Stark]

Stalinoid, and state socialism from 1924-1991 in the Soviet Union has been broadly described as Stalinism.


There was nothing Stalinist about Russia from 1956-91. In 1956, the Party exposed and corrected violations of socialist legality and discredited the personality cult. Stalinism was abandoned.

Concerning Marcy, he had always been a Trotskyist in one form or another. While he defended the revolutionary gains of the socialist states, he still regularly criticized the policies of the parties in power.

[AlanMaki]

Pathetic.