ashtonh

Very true. A lot of the scariest things about Marxism is how it came to restrict freedom of thought and freedom of religion and asserted the state had a right to define what people believed. Marxism most definitely needs to evolve with the times, but it is in such a lull that it is really hard to tell where, or even if, it is going anywhere in the long-run.

yeah. Marxism has similar problems to a 'religion' (though the comparison has it's limits because Marxism is atheist obviously). The scope for re-interpreting and 'revising' Marxism as a political ideology is limited before you run away into something completely different, if not hostile to Marxism. So it's hard to tell where the line is drawn between national conditions and historical necessary aspects of socialism in N. Korea's case.
So far, the only way I've found of trying to draw a line between what is and isn't consistently revolutionary is through dialectics. I'm not outright for dialectical materialism, but certianly I can see how accepting the dialectic of class struggle makes Marxism-Leninism much more likely to be consistently revolutionary. What's your opinion on the use of Dialectical materialism? is it helpful?

have you heard of Hwang Jang-yop. He's a defector to the South, Wikipedia credits him with "crafting" Juche. Just reading through it and he accused Kim Jong-il of "building feudalism not socialism"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Jang-yop
thought it might be of interest.

Do you accept the idea of Juche as self-reliance or is it part of the revisionist personality cult around the Kim 'dynasty' (for lack of a better way of putting it)?

That makes sense. A very high portion of North Korea's economy is dedicated to the Military, so the external threat is a good reason and the paranoia is quite genuine. (I used to represent North Korea in a Model United Nations at uni). You said it "fell", do you think of it has 'degenerated' like Trotsky (most probably not), or is their a more specifically anti-revisionist way of putting it?

yeah. it's very intense. I read in your blog, that as a Marxist-Leninist you defend North Korea; is that because you it's a workers state or is socialist? I haven't met many Marxist-Leninists to be honest, even if some of the best books on Marxism I've got are from that tendency.

hey ashtonh, thanks for the friend request. You picked some amazing and vivd colours for customizing your profile. I don't quite know how, but it definitely works and looks really good.