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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.
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:
There is private ownership, more or less, yes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
pew pew pew
'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.
one of the most interesting nation on earth for all the wrong reasons
@Tim
If no one goes in or out how do you or anyone know anything at all about BK?
Come little children, I'll take thee away, into a land of enchantment, come little children, the times come to play, here in my garden of magic.
"I'm tired of this "isn't humanity neat," bullshit. We're a virus with shoes."-Bill Hicks.
I feel the Bern and I need penicillin
Basically capitalism... in a capitalist sense, in a bourgeois sense...
Capitalism by another name, with a red flag.
When? How often? In what capacity? For what reasons? How reliable?
Come little children, I'll take thee away, into a land of enchantment, come little children, the times come to play, here in my garden of magic.
"I'm tired of this "isn't humanity neat," bullshit. We're a virus with shoes."-Bill Hicks.
I feel the Bern and I need penicillin
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?
Come little children, I'll take thee away, into a land of enchantment, come little children, the times come to play, here in my garden of magic.
"I'm tired of this "isn't humanity neat," bullshit. We're a virus with shoes."-Bill Hicks.
I feel the Bern and I need penicillin
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
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.
pew pew pew
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.
The artist formerly known as Ace Steel
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.
How is there no surplus value in North Korea?
I've seen people digging for roots in roadside glades to feed themselves. I’d call that living like shit.
