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So a once legitimate socialist state led by a war hero turned-monarchy begins to develop capitalism. so what?
Now why would the glorious CCP and WPK act this way to open up markets for the chinese private industry?
PSL, oh revolutionary working class party, please explain this to me. And while you're at it explain why China is also doing the same thing in china itself, as well as Africa and S. America. If this isn't economic imperialism, then what is it?
"I want to say sweet, silly things." - V.I Lenin
However, I'd say this is more of a case of the PRC exploiting North Korea rather than the collaboration of the two countries on an equal basis.
[FONT=System]Long Live Proletarian Democracy!
Down with All Imperialisms!
[/FONT]
Come to Australia and tell the Chinese here that.
You're trying to say that he isn't even politically committed, that's he's nothing but a government employee...that's uncalled for.
I think it has something to do with the fact that posters here put up a picture of PSL members who were opposing imperialist aggression in the streets, and promptly tried to poke fun at them for it. The PSL was brought into the discussion purely because some wanted to gratuitously criticize and slander it...perhaps you can understand why a PSL member would want to call that out and reiterate that the revolutionary course of action is supporting our comrades from imperialist belligerence.Anyway, it's not the fact that he disagrees with anyone, it's the fact that he's resorting to juvenile ad hominem arguments while arrogantly claiming that he's the only real hardcore revolutionary here.I'm not ridiculing you and you seem to disagree with me, because you're responding with reason and not petty ad hominem nonsense and red herrings. I don't have any problems rationally arguing the PSL line on China with reasonable members of your organization, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let some shrill individual claim that everyone else on the forum isn't as leftist as him because he has a party card.
In other words, posters started bashing the PSL for almost no concievable reason within the first three posts. It's very natural that PSL members would be a bit defensive from then on.
Worker's self management is through the KWP. Such measures, not being new, are really a response to the siege against the DPRK. You can't have an economy 100% isolated...that goes for socialist ones as much as capitalist ones. The DPRK has done a simply incredible job of increasing self-reliance over the past decade, but these measures are designed to bolster that. Are they ideal? Of course not, but they may yet be a helpful retreat in order to defend socialism in Korea.
I get where you're coming from but I'm not getting into the matter itself...the issue, however, was brought up by a PRC-detractor earlier, who compared the Dalai Lama favorably to the PRC. That is absurd, and furthermore it's not at all from a progressive standpoint.
Imperialism isn't just that. I disagree with your conceptualization of the policy, but nevertheless the real point is if the PRC is an imperialist power in the Marxist understanding. I don't think it does, because what you outlined is far from what makes a country imperialist. Could we by the same token say that whenever a country does something for efficiency, it's an imperialist power?
I hear that. We can't know the future, but even in spite of that I trust the communists of Korea to do what is best by their class. The path of socialism isn't a straight one...we all take zigs and zags here and there, because even if we can make our own history we cannot choose the circumstances we face. Time will tell on this...being that as it may I do not demand that you support it fully, but I do thank you for discussing it honestly.
So if this isolated incident is for 'efficiency' as you put it, can the same be said for China's recent attempts to monopolize the seas and islands in South East Asia, that are closer to Vietnam, Malaysia and other countries, that has led to protests in Vietnam, too? What about China's plundering of Africa that has led the US to speak out, is this a battle for efficiency? Or a battle between two imperialist nations with African land, resources and of course labour as the prize?
China is a country that is openly advocating market economics, is moving across the world for resources and labour, that has capitalistic labour relations within its own borders and is doing dirty dealings all over South East Asia for oil and whatever else, that is capitalism and of course that is imperialism. Would it help if the party of China's ruling class changed its name from the Communist Party to the Capitalist Party? Would you guys then get the message? Revleft is a crazy place.
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I don't necessarily disagree with you, but it is important to realise that quantitatively China is still far behind the United States. China's GDP per capita is 10 times lower than the EU average, and frankly most of the people the Chinese ruling class currently oppresses are Chinese workers rather than anyone outside the Chinese border.
I would say that China itself is a semi-comprador regime that is partly under the domination of Western imperialism (somewhat like many Latin American countries but to a lesser extent), rather than an independent imperialist power in its own right.
China is a petit-imperialist or sub-imperialist power like the other BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia and India, rather than a fully independent imperialist state like the US.
This is not to deny the reactionary nature of the Chinese ruling bloc, but it is important to realise that China today is not just "another America".
[FONT=System]Long Live Proletarian Democracy!
Down with All Imperialisms!
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I wouldn't disagree with that and I think it was a fair enough point to make, but my only point was that one doesn't have to look far to find imperialistic traits at the hands of China. I used the examples I posted (for which sources are on revleft) to illustrate this fact and contradict a poster's claim that China's dealings with North Korea are about efficiency. With that in mind, I would reccommend to certain comrades that a rethink with regards to the Chinese economy and its ruling class are in order - one will find that they are not the anti-imperialists some people would have us believe, but are in fact engaged in imperialism. Also noteworthy is the fact that China's economy is growing and will continue to do so, whilst it is not on the same quantitative level of the US economy, it certainly has the US worried, given that they have been the dominant economy for such a long time. China will move more and more that way, however it wont matter to some here, aslong as there's a red flag waving.
I'm the Laird of the land, I'm hot like Pol Pot.'A true white liberal.' - Sword and Shield (on me)
'i am a communism fer a long years.' - twenty percent tip
FKA Mahmoud Ahmerdinnerjacket
SWAG
Nothing makes you respect the KWP more than reading the opinions of these 'leftists' on the internet, almost exclusively from Western countries. The DPRK stays isolated from international market forces, and its critics charge that the regime is both state capitalist and negligent in the famines that take place because of insufficient resources. As soon as the DPRK opens up trade with another socialist country to try and alleviate their material disadvantages and improve the standard of living, they're suddenly (and inexplicably) capitalist collaborators.
These people don't just buy the bourgeois media's line on the DPRK; they order it online, pay for same-day delivery, and worship it profusely when it arrives via FedEx.
I'm glad the KWP doesn't give a damn about the views of these Western left-communists and Trotskyites. There's literally nothing they could do right in the eyes of these cultural chauvinists.
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Actually, critics of the DPRK like myself don't criticize the DPRK because it is or was isolated from international market forces (which in any case is not true and is a repetition of the DPRK's own myths about itself - there is a history of economic cooperation between the ROK and the DPRK and the DPRK is an important exporter of certain commodities to other pariah states, such as military hardware) or even because of famines (the very fact that the DPRK experienced such serious famines and shortages during the 1990s and that its economy has still not recovered is further evidence that the DPRK's rhetoric concerning self-reliance was only ever that, rhetoric, and that it was actually heavily dependent on the rest of the Soviet bloc). We criticize it because it exhibits a lack of meaningful democratic control over the means of production and because its social relations are still characterized by exploitation and commodity production.
Concerning whether China is socialist or not, I'm still waiting for your answer to the critique that you demanded and were given: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...9&postcount=24
Yeah, we assume that:
We assume this means private enterprise or state enterprise with private enterprise principles. No fucking thing to do with socialism, clown.
RED DAVE
So china's Special Economic Zones are socialism? I haven't even seen the "Chiana is still socialist"-crowd on here argue that. That these new economic zones in DPRK is going to be "Market oriented" should be telling, but maybe you have your blinders too tightly on.
Oh and note to the "anti-revisonists" on here that will undoubtly rush to this guys defence, check out the link in his signature, he is an out-and-out Dengist.
"I want to say sweet, silly things." - V.I Lenin
Of all the labels ever thrown on me, I've never heard 'Dengist'. That's a good one.
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For me, it was that big picture of Deng and the article writing appprovably of Deng ("Long live the universal contributions of Deng Xiaoping to Marxism-Leninism!" comes to mind) and later market liberalization in China that did it actually. Those from the maoist tradition would probably use it more casually. You avoid the question though. Although having read your article it's obvious your oblivious to the difference between socialism and capitalism.
"I want to say sweet, silly things." - V.I Lenin
I agree with this, but considering the state of the North Korean economy it was a matter of time. It is just a shame that the only alternative to paranoid autarky is capitalist exploitation. This seems an awful lot like the American model of "aid through investment" where Yank companies go in and build a factory to "bring jobs" and "Grow the economy" etc.
True, but he's out of place to accuse anyone else of being an "armchair leftist"
I can't buy the idea that the KWP is really a legitimate vanguard movement. They have a familial line of succession and a level of personality cult which is totally counter to the socialist ideal of progress towards egalitarianism. At least Vietnam, China, Laos and Cuba have more open political systems, even if they are still quite hierarchical and elitist. But the political and military culture in North Korea is simply too much for me to take.
It's not the fact that they are seeking efficiency, it's the fact that they are seeking to grow their surplus value at the expense of people living outside their nation. And it is because they are seeking to do so by exploiting the contradictions of those external societies. They are doing similar things in Sudan, Ethiopia, Cambodia, and other countries which lack stable or ethical political classes to gain resources to feed their growing economy. Sure, their methods are still better than those of the US or UK, but at least those two are openly Capitalist.
Its certainly true that the path to socialism can take weird paths, but when you open up your party and economic power structure to Capital, it's surprisingly hard to remove it. I see no reason why worker's parties will be any less corruptible than any other institution in history which has claimed to work on behalf of the poor and downtrodden.
Anyway, thanks for not taking my ideological differences personally. I don't agree with the PSL ideology, but sectarian bickering has never done the left any good.
OK wise guy tell me why would a real Communist country want to exploit the labor of another Communist country to gain surplus value? What function does that serve other than to accumulate capital?
Also, what's with the reverse racism? What, are all people from "Western" countries automatically wrong? On the other hand, I have never met anyone in "non-Western" countries ever told me "Boy, I like the DPRK, I don't understand why you Western people don't." Where do you get the idea that the criticisms that people have of the North Korean state apparatus are exclusive to people from the "Western" world?
Another thing that some people forget to mention is that the NK government is totally allowing this to happen. They're allowing their people to be exploited while calling themselves socialists.
Gentlemen, I present to you the result of the past 90 years of what capitalists and Marxist Leninists call Socialism! Isn't it pretty? Two countries claiming to be workers states, both filled with Slave labor. One of the countries wants more slave labor, so they get it from their fellow workers state! Isn't it pretty Marxist Leninists?
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
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Defend one imperialist, party-state regime from another imperialist regime.
Wow, how did communists end up with such pearls of wisdom?
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“The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties – this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here.” Friedrich Engels
"The proletariat is its struggle; and its struggles have to this day not led it beyond class society, but deeper into it." Friends of the Classless Society
"Your life is survived by your deeds" - Steve von Till
Well, like I said, when your party gets slandered for absolutely no reason like it has been here, emotions will run high.
Different vanguards do things differently. The KWP saw it best to make Kim Jong-Il leader, so they did so. I don't think that automatically disqualifies them from being a revolutionary vanguard. The so-called "personality cult" might seem whimsical for those outside of DPRK society, but considering what they're up against I'm not against anything to raise morale and outline good role models for working-class militants. On a certain level, what the DPRK does in their "personality cult" is no different from what most societies do (Statue of Liberty, tombs of the unknown soldier, etc.).
The media propaganda against the DPRK also obfuscates the fact that the KWP isn't the only party around. There's also a Social-Democratic party active in the country. I, too, would like to see some more openness, but we're looking at a country under siege and I think the measures they've taken are certainly reasonable.
The PRC never forced anyone to accept their involvement at the point of a gun (something you alluded to), so it's very different from what we see from imperialist countries. Granted, the PRC isn't doing what Cuba is doing around the world by sending doctors to impoverished areas oftentimes without any compensation...but it's definitely not the Gelbe Gefaehr that the media would have us believe. Just because it's not ideal doesn't mean it's imperialist.
Yes, definitely. It's a slippery slope at best. However, I trust the Korean workers to keep it under control. Plus, had the KWP wanted to privatize, they had ample opportunities to do so long ago.
Likewise.
Two things:
1) China has a great source of cheap labour within its own borders, so due to pragmatic reasons will exploit its own people more than anyone outside China. Usually very overt imperialist states aggressively dominate and colonise other countries because their own nation does not have a large enough population to provide the ruling class with slave labour. China is not in this category, so while I do not ignore the imperialist actions of China, even in the future they are unlikely to be primary. Most of China's exploitation is directed at its own people. (As was the case throughout Chinese history)
2) China may be engaging in imperialist actions to some extent, but is China a genuinely independent player on the international scene? I highly doubt it. As I said, the Chinese regime today is semi-comprador. The bureaucratic capitalists ruling China have sold out Chinese national interests to the US. Indeed, many of the family relatives of these corrupt ultra-rich bureaucratic capitalists already live in the US and other Western countries. So rather than just seeing Chinese "imperialism" today as completely opposed to Western imperialism, it's actually better to see it as a sub-set of Western imperialism. (Hence the idea that China is a sub-imperialist country)
[FONT=System]Long Live Proletarian Democracy!
Down with All Imperialisms!
[/FONT]
I'm not really sure how you can argue that it's a "sub-imperialist" country simply based on these facts alone. Foreign investment in China is high, along with its huge export market, but this is not India we're talking about. The CCP is not being dominated by western governments but rather is for the purposes of trade in agreement with it. So I'm not sure how you can argue that China is "sub-imperialist" when it would be more accurate to say that they're tied at the hip, on a level but inescapable relationship.
