North Korea?

[Max]

What do you guys think about North Korea?

[RedWorker]

It's a very authoritarian and reactionary dictatorship which has literally nothing to do with communism or socialism (other than nominally), but acts as a good device for the media to insult these ideas.

[OGLemon]

nothing good, I'll tell you that

[consuming negativity]

Here are two 100+ post threads from earlier this year on the subject:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/support-north-korea-t187644/index.html?t=187644

http://www.revleft.com/vb/north-korea-being-t187070/index.html?t=187070

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

It's just another bourgeois state that needs smashed.

[PeoplesRepublics]

An authoritarian state capitalist dicatorship, with a cool flag.

[Alexios]

It's a very authoritarian and reactionary dictatorship which has literally nothing to do with communism or socialism (other than nominally), but acts as a good device for the media to insult these ideas.
It's actually not even nominally communist anymore. They took out all references to communism in the constitution.

[RedAnarchist]

Whatever it is, it isn't communist and it certainly isn't a state we should defend or support.

[Hrafn]

I loved it. Beautiful nature and architecture, lots of fascinating history, good food, good people, etc. A recommended location for anyone to cross off their bucket list. Can't say I care much for the regime, though.

[Sinred]

A socialist but buerocratic state. Not even close to state capitalism. There are some real positive aspects of north korea and the propaganda against it is at best half-truths.
Its wierd how antiimperialist leftist knows how bised capitalist media is but when it comes DPRK its alright to jump on the "bash north korea"-train. I personally think its a question of comfort.
However, it got some real weaknesses as well. The leader cult is anything else than progressive and the official ideology of DPRK, the Juche-idea, is both despotic and idealistic.

I recommend this site for a somewhat fair and balanced view of North Korea:
http://www.nknews.org/

[BolshevikBabe]

Basically what Sinred said - a socialist state distorted by bureaucracy + ideological revisionism. I'd strongly recommend Socialist Korea by Ellen Brun, which is a good political econ analysis of the DPRK in the 1970s and indicates to what extent it's socialist in that sense. Bruce Cumings is also a good and balanced source to read on the subject.

[CaptainCool309]

North Korea is BEST Korea! :thumbup:

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

It's a very authoritarian and reactionary dictatorship which has literally nothing to do with communism or socialism (other than nominally), but acts as a good device for the media to insult these ideas.

Yep, couldn't have put it better.

Frankly, whatever nominally 'socialist' things they have accomplished are tainted by the crimes they've committed against the North Korean proletariat. Fuck the Kims, and fuck Juche.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

It's not a socialist state. It's not a state run by the workers but by the bureaucracy and military.

Of course, our disdain for their government shouldn't translate to disdain for their people.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

A socialist but buerocratic state. Not even close to state capitalism. There are some real positive aspects of north korea and the propaganda against it is at best half-truths.
Its wierd how antiimperialist leftist knows how bised capitalist media is but when it comes DPRK its alright to jump on the "bash north korea"-train. I personally think its a question of comfort.
However, it got some real weaknesses as well. The leader cult is anything else than progressive and the official ideology of DPRK, the Juche-idea, is both despotic and idealistic.

I recommend this site for a somewhat fair and balanced view of North Korea:
http://www.nknews.org/

So, in what way is it not "close to state capitalism"? Please do elaborate.

Are you sure you are using the term "anti-imperialist left" right? 'cause that's usually the sort of type that will apologise for Cuba and DPRK (and then also go on to pour heap of love on Libya, Syria and Iran -- mm delicious dinner, delicious Press TV neckbeard).

And then you link NK News, which is basically a rumour site (which is occasionally reasonable, but you also have amateur imbeciles like that guy from NK Economy Watch, who is a daft shitface who just sits around looking on Google Earth all day (just like me, woo!) and then starts making up things about what everything he can see is.

Then again - the so-called "Kommunistiska Partiet" is a bloody mess. It's like if you put a big horde of Maoists in a huge grinder, cut them all up, and mixed in some Left Party liberals. How's the council position in Lysekil? Let's be more Brezhnevite.

[Hrafn]

Hey, someone mentioned Lysekil online! I almost feel famous by regional association.

[Sinred]

So, in what way is it not "close to state capitalism"? Please do elaborate.

There is no private capital accumilation and everything is basically socialized.


Are you sure you are using the term "anti-imperialist left" right? 'cause that's usually the sort of type that will apologise for Cuba and DPRK (and then also go on to pour heap of love on Libya, Syria and Iran -- mm delicious dinner, delicious Press TV neckbeard).

Well in retrospect we have always turned out to be right, havent we? That is, if you dont view the situation in syria, lybia and iran as humane and progressive after the imperialist intervention.
The bomb left never sieze tyo supprise....

What apolagize are you talking about? It is straight up facts and debunking myths. Either you have a very naiv look at capitalist media/politics or you just like to bash these state out of leftist comfort.
KP have in Proletären and its website several article that critize both cuba, DPRK and venezuela so your argument is not valid.

Sure. Maybe it is not that tactical to focus on defending these states.
Given the indoctrinated propagande that has basically has done any claim (no matter how low) about north korea "true" in the eyes of the public.
That is however not related to whats actually true about the socialist state.



And then you link NK News, which is basically a rumour site (which is occasionally reasonable, but you also have amateur imbeciles like that guy from NK Economy Watch, who is a daft shitface who just sits around looking on Google Earth all day (just like me, woo!) and then starts making up things about what everything he can see is.

First off, do you have any real wsource for your claim or are you guessing? Second of, dprk-news have conduct several trips to North Korea and been in contact with many koreans (both living there and in exile). In the time of blatant, and many times obvious, propaganda against north korea, the DPRKnews-sticks out as someone who can both critizise and praise north korea.


Then again - the so-called "Kommunistiska Partiet" is a bloody mess. It's like if you put a big horde of Maoists in a huge grinder, cut them all up, and mixed in some Left Party liberals. How's the council position in Lysekil? Let's be more Brezhnevite.

I do have some critiqe against my old party. Im not a member anymore btw. But it does evolve and gets better and modern everyday. Even though IMO it goes to slow.
You can critisize the party for being old fashioned and dogmatic.
But liberals and maoists? are you kidding me??
I start to question if you have ever meet a member of KP.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

There is no private capital accumilation and everything is basically socialized.

But there is accumulation, and "socialised" is not the same as "state-owned", at least not in terms of socialism. The industry is hardly operational for a multitude of reasons, some of which the DPRK cannot help, but nevertheless - the DPRK is still capitalist. There are private markets, and people have savings, there is currency and there is commerce, goods and services are exchanged for profits, both internally and externally. Black markets were a few years ago permitted and legalised, now selling scraps of food for extortion prices as before. Scarcity is extreme.

Now there are a number of concrete reasons for why the DPRK is so notoriously deformed, how it became a paranoid military state, which have its origins in its formation and how it's leadership adapted to the challenges they faced (and the extent to which they were ever communists is dubious - more than anything an attempt to please the Soviet Union which was in charge of managing the region of Korea after the Japanese military had been driven out - as they were from the get-go nationalistic and tolerant of the local bourgeois.

State-ownership does not negate capitalism, or Mussolini's Italy was socialist.


Well in retrospect we have always turned out to be right, havent we? That is, if you dont view the situation in syria, lybia and iran as humane and progressive after the imperialist intervention.
The bomb left never sieze tyo supprise....

What apolagize are you talking about? It is straight up facts and debunking myths. Either you have a very naiv look at capitalist media/politics or you just like to bash these state out of leftist comfort.
KP have in Proletären and its website several article that critize both cuba, DPRK and venezuela so your argument is not valid.

What are you even raving about? Did I suggest that military intervention would be good? (It would - but only if said intervention was done by a state having had a socialist revolution - the DPRK never had a revolution, you know?)


Sure. Maybe it is not that tactical to focus on defending these states.
Given the indoctrinated propagande that has basically has done any claim (no matter how low) about north korea "true" in the eyes of the public.
That is however not related to whats actually true about the socialist state.

I don't care about the propaganda. I don't believe in Human Rights, I don't care what "violations of human rights" are required in achieving the socialist revolution. I don't care what transgressions and abuses happen in the DPRK, I do not judge it based on that; I judge it based on the lack of socialist character of its system, I judge it based on its deranged ethnocentric nationalism, etc.

There's a difference between saying that they ought not to be bombed and sanctioned into dark medieval abyss and defending what they do, however, but the distinction is often lost on WWP:ers and their ilk, or PSL types who dine with Iranian officials like the useful idiots they are, stooges to a bourgeois state.


First off, do you have any real wsource for your claim or are you guessing? Second of, dprk-news have conduct several trips to North Korea and been in contact with many koreans (both living there and in exile). In the time of blatant, and many times obvious, propaganda against north korea, the DPRKnews-sticks out as someone who can both critizise and praise north korea.

I never trust an exile. Exiles always lie. Ever seen the Cuban exiles? They're all bonkers. The same goes for the Korean exiles. Never trust an exile of any sort. When has that shit ever praised the DPRK, besides? It's a fucking pay-walled rumour website, most of whose posts are by amateur researchers and brain-dead pol-sci majors who think the DPRK is so fucking funnily exotic.


I do have some critiqe against my old party. Im not a member anymore btw. But it does evolve and gets better and modern everyday. Even though IMO it goes to slow.
You can critisize the party for being old fashioned and dogmatic.
But liberals and maoists? are you kidding me??
I start to question if you have ever meet a member of KP.

Gets shittier, you mean, surely? Worse than in the days of the KPML(r). Praises democracy, praises elections, moans about the Soviet Union as "lacking democracy", such clichéd shite. If that's not liberal shit, how far does one have to go to be one according to you? The only thing good to be said in the KP's favour is that they are somewhat more professional than SKP, whose blog is run by a conspiracy nut who moved out into the woods, but they are dreadfully bland.

What does a member have to do with it? I have no interest in meeting people. I don't care for individual's position. I care about the organisation's official stances.

[Orange Juche]

It's a pseudo-monarchy absolute tyranny unrelated to anything Marx, socialist, or communist - and the go to prop-strawman example of a "communist country" for all western media.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

What do you guys think about North Korea?

I want to move there and I like Juche, the kims, Psy, kimchi, anything Korean. It's the Best Korea.

[Црвена]

Somehow, the North Koreans managed to reverse historical materialism and plunge straight into feudalism...and I think they're on their way to pre-feudal slave society, judging by the conditions there. They're accepting a natural hierarchy and worshipping Kim Il-Sung as a god with obvious parallels to Christianity (of the evil institutional sort), just like in Medieval England. They should just rip out all of their declarations of communism and monuments to communists and declare themselves a monarchy.

[RedWorker]

Somehow, the North Koreans managed to reverse historical materialism and plunge straight into feudalism...

Really?

I see no difference between the economic systems of North Korea and that of any standard capitalist country other than a) the state owns everything (or not? is there some private ownership in North Korea?) and b) the absence of the free market.

Already Friedrich Engels explained in 1880 that just state ownership by itself does not do away with capitalism.

Edit:


It is estimated that in the early 2000s, the average North Korean family drew some 80% of its income from small businesses that were technically illegal (though unenforced) in North Korea. In 2002, and in 2010, private markets were progressively legalized.

[Hrafn]

There is private ownership, more or less, yes.

[Tim Cornelis]

Anyone who claims that North Korea is in any way socialist is an idiot and entirely ignorant of the Marxist method. They have no clue what socialism is, or what private property is. They are clueless, and uphold a bastardised form of socialism of bourgeois character that poses a threat to any social revolution as it risks hijacking by bourgeois socialists and diverting efforts away from social ownership and socialised production and toward state and bureaucratic management of capital.

First, these fools define socialism negatively: there is no this, there is no that. Rather than positively, for instance social ownership, social control, associated labour -- none of which exist. Because if the absence of private accumulation, or whatever misunderstood social process or relation these bourgeois socialists think of, is the definition of socialism then the Roman empire might as well have been socialist, or the congo free state, or the post office.


when it comes DPRK its alright to jump on the "bash north korea"-train. I personally think its a question of comfort.

It is the opposite. Bourgeois socialists of the Stalinist persuasion jump on the 'red-flagged-regime'-train and knee-jerkingly assume that the regime's propaganda is quite accurate. For instance, in the 1970s some Maoists and Stalinists defended 'Democratic Kampuchea' saying that workers and peasants held power and that the atrocities were only bourgeois propaganda. They had no basis to think this whatsoever, yet they assumed it, knee-jerking, because it was a regime with a red flag claiming socialism and to be democratic versus regimes more honest about their capitalism.


There is no private capital accumilation and everything is basically socialized.

Of course there is. But as the bourgeois socialist you have a non-understanding of Marxism. Private property and private accumulation are not defined judicially. They are defined by how they are posited in social relations. There is private property when dispossessed direct producers confront the objective conditions of their labour as alien property. That is, there is private property when producers exercise no control or (social) ownership over economic conduct. In other words, state ownership through a bureaucracy is private property. And you essentially admit there is bureaucratic control, and therefore implicitly that there is private property of the means of production.

From this we can reason step by step how the existence of private property in North Korea means that every category of the capitalist mode of production exists in their country, and I have done that before in discussions with bourgeois socialists, but instead I advice you to familiarise yourself with Marxism.


There is private ownership, more or less, yes.

Not "more or less", but definately. Not just the gray markets, but state control as well. Producers, or workers, exercise no social control, are disempowered, and there is no social ownership.

[Left Voice]

'Socialism' would imply a social ownership resources and control over the means of production. I think most people would agree that the Korean proletariat certainly do not have such ownership, and arguably have never had. There's no point in a nominally 'worker's party' owning and maintaining resources and the means of production if the workers have absolutely nothing to do with it. I'm not against vanguard parties, but vanguardism only really makes sense to the extent that it is firmly rooted in the working class.

It's almost like an extreme case of private ownership - not in a capitalistic sense, but in the sense than a small, elite body of people have ultimate ownership of the resources. Everything else in the country operates for the benefit of Pyongyang, and the proletariat are expected to work and toil for the sake of the 'revolutionary capital' rather than for the good of society. That's not my idea of socialism.

[GodOfEvil]

one of the most interesting nation on earth for all the wrong reasons:lol:

[Tim Cornelis]

It's almost like an extreme case of private ownership - not in a capitalistic sense, but in the sense than a small, elite body of people have ultimate ownership of the resources.

How is that "not in a capitalistic sense"?

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

@Tim

If no one goes in or out how do you or anyone know anything at all about BK?

[Tim Cornelis]

@Tim

If no one goes in or out how do you or anyone know anything at all about BK?

Because...... People do go in and out....?

[RedWorker]

It's almost like an extreme case of private ownership - not in a capitalistic sense, but in the sense than a small, elite body of people have ultimate ownership of the resources. Everything else in the country operates for the benefit of Pyongyang, and the proletariat are expected to work and toil for the sake of the 'revolutionary capital' rather than for the good of society. That's not my idea of socialism.

Basically capitalism... in a capitalist sense, in a bourgeois sense...
Capitalism by another name, with a red flag.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Because...... People do go in and out....?

When? How often? In what capacity? For what reasons? How reliable?

[RedWorker]

Some people who left North Korea and entered South Korea later went back to North Korea (seriously, look it up) because it turns out that free-market capitalism is not much better than state capitalism. Even if everyone lives like shit and there are massive human right abuses in North Korea.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Some people who left North Korea and entered South Korea later went back to North Korea (seriously, look it up) because it turns out that free-market capitalism is not much better than state capitalism. Even if everyone lives like shit and there are massive human right abuses in North Korea.

How do you know that?

[RedWorker]

By looking at the videos even North Korea releases of itself. It is a society which is not healthy, obviously the result of authoritarianism. Only the worship is already a human rights abuse.

[GodOfEvil]

By looking at the videos even North Korea releases of itself. It is a society which is not healthy, obviously the result of authoritarianism. Only the worship is already a human rights abuse.
military first policy has more to do with it then authoritarianism. north Korea could have been a cult worshiping Cuba

[Tim Cornelis]

When? How often? In what capacity? For what reasons? How reliable?

Thousands of North Korean refugees from different social layers of society (high ranking public officials, ordinary citizens, military staff, camp guards) to escape (potential) persecution or hunger, who provide accounts of their lives in North Korea independently of each other, yet are consistent (internal consistency), which lends credibility to their accounts. This enables various organisations to sketch accurate pictures of the chronology of events in North Korea. For instance, hundreds and hundreds of refugees have been interviewed about when food rations ceased to be delivered, and the accounts provided independently are consistent, so we know which provinces were hit when and roughly the severity per region -- while lacking specific data.

The same with 'human rights' abuses. These are well-known through refugees on both sides, camp guards and prisoners who fled North Korea.

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

Ok, people are wondering where the bourgeoisie is in North Korea.

The country is ruled by a military cabal of elites. They actually own and profit from the means of production. They haven't "secured" the means of production for the workers to share. They are not the chairmen of some central community council. They are shareholders who also happen to run a state to protect their holdings.

They DO profit from the workers' labor. They have private bank accounts and have teams dedicated to securing them hard currency. They live in luxury. Oh but you know, they have a flag with a star on it and lots of red stuff.

Oh, and has anyone mentioned the extreme racism? A black Cuban diplomat was once attacked while driving his family through the city. Race mixing is severely discouraged.

Oh and we know it isn't just Western propaganda because of the overwhelming amount of evidence. But you know, I guess every single defector is lying and those cameras smuggled in are lying and all the people in concentration camps don't exist and they don't sell their camp labor to China and Russia. Oh wait, they fucking do and it's well-documented.

Honestly it is absurd how many people actually fall for the North Korean propagandists. It IS possible for both the West and us to condemn the regime. I promise you, it is possible.

[Left Voice]

How is that "not in a capitalistic sense"?
I was trying to avoid getting drawn into a theoretical debate over it. I actually don't think there is much of a difference, aside from the lack of surplus value extracted.

My overall point is that far from being socialist, North Korea represents an extreme case of psudo-private property.

[RedWorker]

How is there no surplus value in North Korea?

[Hrafn]

How do you know that?

I've seen people digging for roots in roadside glades to feed themselves. I’d call that living like shit.