neckwattle posted:I know the horse is dead but is there proof that Otto Warmbier (the horse) was Yung Cia? Aside from being a college republican named Otto
Havent heard a lot of people say that. Ive only heard he was a dumbass privileged fuckboi
And I dont think the dprk was trying to destroy him he just up and went into a coma on them
ilmdge posted:And I dont think the dprk was trying to destroy him he just up and went into a coma on them
his soft pasty ass couldnt handle a prison that involved manual labor and no television. Rip lol
and then a person behind me was like "too many kicks to the head....!!!"
anyway i went home and googled it and found out about this
toutvabien posted:i was at a wrestling panel at an anime convention
catchphrase
at look at Kim Jong-Un’s speech from the beginning of the year (late coverage, i know) showcases the recent achievements of the DPRK
LeftistCritic did a review of it here. i quoted what i considered to be the most interesting parts of the review:
He notes the economic progress of People’s Korea. He argues that there has been “notable headway in carrying out the five-year strategy for national economic development” specifically in establishing the “Juche orientation in the metallurgical industry, an oxygen-blast furnace of our own style was built at the Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex,” a place that will maintain “regular production of pig iron by relying on anthracite.” He adds that “prospects were opened up for consolidating the independent foundations of the chemical industry and attaining the five-year strategy’s goal for the output of chemical products.”
…
Before going forward, it is worth noting that the creation of this blast heat oxygen furnace is a great accomplishment. Such furnaces, also called basic oxygen furnaces, are the “dominant steelmaking technology” in the world, with the method of steelmaking a way by which “both molten pig iron and steel scrap are converted into steel with the oxidizing action of oxygen blown into the melt under a basic slag.” Basically the furnace has a high output for pig iron, so it is relatively efficient. This is evident by the fact that so-called “Heats” of steel,” which range from “30 to 360 tons, can be produced in 30 to 45 minutes.”
Then there’s the agricultural sector. Kim argues that this sector actively introduced “scientific farming methods,” increased the ranks of “high-yield farms and workteams,” along with reaping “an unusually rich fruit harvest in spite of unfavourable climatic conditions.” As they say, you reap what you sow. People’s Korea has only recently, last month, had a ceremony which displayed the “new-type tractors and trucks” such as Chollima-804 tractors, Sungri trucks and Chungsong-122 tractors, in Kim Il Sung Square, showing the “precious fruition of the spirit of self-reliance and self-development” with these vehicles welcomed along the streets by the citizenry. If you don’t believe me, just see the most striking picture, almost beautiful, from the article itself:
33rd Sci-Tech Festival of Kim Il Sung University, which opened on December 19 of last year, there were ten panels on varying topics such as “basic science, elements and devices, electronics and automation, agriculture and bio-engineering and medicine.” Specifically there was “presentation and exhibition of sci-tech successes” along with a “exhibition contest among different units and exchange of new technologies,” with 310 “scientific research achievements” presented at the festival.
It is also worth putting here another photograph, this one of the Amnokgang Tire Factory, helping to fulfill the WPK goal for 2017 for producing more tires, with Kim himself visiting the factory last month:
There were, as Kim noted, cultural influences well. These included the further improvement of the “socialist education system” in People’s Korea, upgrading of the “educational environment” and bettering of “medical service conditions.” In terms of the educational system, apart from the remodeling of “Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism Study Hall in Samjiyon County…as…the base for education in the Party’s monolithic ideology,” there was “an exhibition of educational scientific achievements” on Nov. 25-26 of last year with many textbooks and references featured, and the Third National Conference of Social Scientists at the “April 25 House of Culture” in mid-November, discussing the ways to “make a fresh turn in the development of the social sciences” in the building of the socialist nation. Additionally, in 2017, a museum was built at the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School measuring 3,500 square meters in floor space, displaying historic “relics and data on the activities of the peerlessly great persons who made an immortal history of education for the children of revolutionary martyrs with noble revolutionary sense of obligation and outlook on posterity.” It includes, specifically, the photos of “the great persons and art works on their images, the historic relics and data at the museum are the most valuable treasure of the nation and precious revolutionary asset of Juche Korea.” I could go on with educational achievements, with programs such as agro-meterology popular, but I think what has been mentioned so far is sufficient.
Kim said that all of these successes in 2017 are possible because of the “triumph of the Juche-oriented revolutionary line” of the WPK, and a “precious fruition of the heroic struggle” by the populace, even in the face of “the sanctions-and-blockade moves the United States and its vassal forces perpetrated more viciously.” Hence he said that within this, relies the source of the Korean peoples’ “dignity and their great pride and self-confidence.” He then, again, extended “warm thanks” to the service personnel and populace who “victoriously advanced the cause of building a powerful socialist country, always sharing the destiny with the Party and braving all difficulties and trials on the eventful days of last year.”
it owns that every time the US blocks some form of trade the DPRK says “that’s alright, we’ll just build it ourselves”
First, a universal 12-year compulsory education is now in force in the country…Second, a well-regulated study-while-you-work system is established. The system consists of distance education given by regular institutions of tertiary education and factory, farm and fishermen’s colleges in various parts of the country…Third, social educational establishments are well furnished. All organs including factories and farms have sci-tech learning spaces, and Mirae digital libraries are set up in every province, city and county, so that everyone can learn the latest knowledge of science and technology to their heart’s content…The greatest guarantee for ensuring that all the people are well-versed in science and technology in the DPRK is the policy of prioritizing science and technology enforced by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and the national leader.
plans for the future:
He embodies the strategy he laid out last year by saying that efforts on consolidating the “independence and Juche character of the national economy” and improve “the people’s standard of living” through the following:
1. Maintenance and reinforcement of electric power industry with new “self-supporting power generation bases…new power sources,” increased thermal power generation, make electric power more efficient and self-sufficient
2. Improve the metallurgical industry through iron- and steel-making technologies, increase capacity of iron production, raise the quality of metallic materials, ensure the “preferential, planned and timely supply of electricity,” and other needs for the metallurgical industry
3. Step up the “establishment of the C1 chemical industry” for the chemical industry while pushing forward projects “for catalyst production base and phosphatic fertilizer factory” while perfecting the “sodium carbonate production line”
4. Modernizing the Kumsong Tractor Factory, Sungni Motor Complex and other factories to allow the machine-building industry to “develop and produce world-level machinery” for People’s Korea.
5. Improving the effectiveness of rail transportation, and coal and mineral production
6. The rail transport sector making the best use of “existing transport capacity” by making existing (and new) “transport organization and control” more rational, scientific, and maintain discipline and order on railways in order to “ensure an accident-free, on-schedule rail traffic”
7. Light-industry factories transforming their “equipment and production lines into labour- and electricity-saving ones” while supplying and producing “more diversified and quality consumer goods” with raw materials and other goods from inside the country, with sub-divisions in the country developing “the local economy in a characteristic way by relying on their own raw material resources”
8. Have an upswing in the agricultural and fishing industry by introducing “seeds of superior strains, high-yield farming methods” and have “high-performance farm machines” in order to have scientific and technological farming to fulfill existing production, boost production of “livestock products, fruits, greenhouse vegetables and mushrooms” and enhance “ship building and repair capacities” along with other scientific endeavors
9. Service personnel and people joining in efforts to “complete the construction of the Wonsan-Kalma coastal tourist area in the shortest period of time” while pushing ahead with construction projects such as the “renovation of Samjiyon County…construction of the Tanchon Power Station and the second-stage waterway project of South Hwanghae Province”
10. Managing and properly protecting forests created in the restoration campaign, coupled with improved “technical conditions” on roads, “river improvement on a regular basis,” and work to protect the environment of People’s Korea “in a scientific and responsible manner.”
11. The scientific research sector solving the “scientific and technological problems” arising in establishing “Juche-oriented production lines,” production of materials domestically, and “perfecting the structure of the self-supporting economy”
12. Enduring that every economic sector and unit makes a “contribution to achieving production growth” with the “dissemination of science and technology and waging a brisk technological innovation drive.
Beyond this, in the past year, there have been directed efforts by scientists and technicians into the latest scientific field, “including information technology and nano technology” with great success. This has been coupled with success in “breeding high-yield varieties of crops,” developing new “botanical agrochemicals,” developing new methods for treating cancer and other “nervous diseases.”
nanomachines, son
Following this is, as he argued, a need for a comprehensive development of socialist culture. This includes strengthening ranks of teachers, improving methods and content of education, apply “the people-oriented character in public health service” and boost the production “of medical equipment and appliances and different kinds of medicines.” Kim is already realizing this for this year by visiting a newly-remodeled teachers college, founded in 1968, arguing that “education is a patriotic work of lasting significance” and adding that teachers “should dedicate their ardent patriotism and pure conscience to the educational work” without a doubt.
Finally, in terms of culture, Kim said that “moral discipline throughout society” should be strengthened, as to ensure that “socialist way of life” is established with the elimination of “all kinds of non-socialist practices.” This would, as he argued, ensure that the people “lead a revolutionary and cultured life.” This seems to imply that imperialists are trying to poison the minds of the Korean people with capitalistic propaganda. This would not be a surprise in the slightest. Consider a recent article in Explore DPRK telling the difference between the social system of the murderous empire and People’s Korea:
Good rearing of a child is very important for a family because it is related with the future of the family, and equally important is for a nation to bring up youths because it affects its destiny…while the young people in capitalist countries are pushed to the extremities of the society to become victims of the social evils, those in socialist Korea are held as treasures and pride of the nation enjoying a superb prestige. The typical example is the case of builders of the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station. The young people there waged an indomitable struggle determined to fulfill the order of the respected Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un in the severe cold of -30℃…a change is to be made to the concept, knowing and witnessing the wonderful realities of Korea where the youth problem was successfully solved and the country is pushed forward by the vigor of the youth. Korea renowned as a youth power, it shows a clear-cut difference between socialism and capitalism the international community is realizing acutely through the solution of the youth problem.
From here, he laid out considerations for ideology in the new year:
All Party organizations should never tolerate all shades of heterogeneous ideas and double standards of discipline that run counter to the Party’s ideology…The whole Party should launch an intense struggle to establish a revolutionary climate within the Party with the main emphasis put on rooting out the abuse of Party authority, bureaucratism and other outdated methods and style of work…Party organizations should intensify Party guidance to ensure that the work of their respective sectors and units is always conducted in conformity with the ideas and intentions of the Party and the requirements of its policies…We should rally all the service personnel and people firmly behind the Party ideologically and volitionally so that they…fight with devotion for the victory of the socialist cause. Party and working people’s organizations and government organs should orient and subordinate all their undertakings to strengthening the single-hearted unity….Party and working people’s organizations should ensure that all the working people cherish patriotism in their hearts and bring about collective innovations one after another in the great campaign to create the Mallima speed with the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and science and technology as the dynamic force.
Such improvement of ideology was stressed late last year when Kim gave a speech to the 5th Conference of WPK Cell Chairpersons, summarized by Rodong Sinmun, noting that he called for the WPK to “strengthen the Party cells is a main link in the chain efforts for consolidating the mass foundation of the Party” with an emphasis on the work make “all party members of the cells to be steadfast revolutionaries,” along with strenghen “self-criticism and criticism among the party members” in order to counter “unsound practices.” He also said that when socialist culture and art in People’s Korea “prevails over the corrupt bourgeois reactionary culture” the populace should not “harbor illusions about the enemies’ culture” instead working to “prevent ideological and cultural poisoning by the imperialists.”
i feel like the DPRK is an example of what China could have become if the cultural revolution hadn't ended prematurely.
finishing off with some more achievements:
…the Korean people have made proud achievements in the building of an economic giant…Despite vicious sanctions of the US imperialists and their followers the officials and workers in different units of the national economy fully displayed the might of self-development and made a great success in putting the production processes on a Juche-oriented and modern basis…The officials and workers of the Samchon Catfish Farm have completed a huge modernization project of its compound covering tens of thousands of square metres in a short span of time…Cutting-edge technology has been introduced and the intelligent, IT-based and digitized computer integrated manufacturing system established in conformity with the demand of the era of knowledge-based economy…various efficacious feed additives have been developed and a swelling feed production process built…The Ryuwon Footwear Factory has been wonderfully rebuilt into a model unit and standard factory in the field of footwear industry, making a great contribution to the development of light industry of the country…The factory has manufactured and installed modern equipment including shoemaking line by itself…The Sungni Motor Complex has carried out with success the new-type lorry production task given by the WPK…The Amnokgang Tyre Factory has also played a big role in putting the large vehicle production…The officials and workers of the factory have built a new large tyre production process depending on domestic equipment, not on imported one, in a short period and successfully made new-type large tyres
Workers at the Chollima Steel Complex on January 3rd.
after being in doubt earlier, i think this article really filled me with confidence again in the DPRK’s dedication to self-reliance, anti-imperialism, revolutionary struggle and the building of socialism.
babyhueypnewton posted:That North Korea had limited market reforms in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, based on a Chinese model, isn't really surprising. Though we know almost nothing about it because all the research is pure trash with no basis in reality. What's interesting to me is that they've been able to reverse much of this, particularly in the wake of the 2009 curency reform and subsequent growth. It's basically the academic party line to say the reforms "failed" every though there is no evidence of this and a lot of evidence to the contrary. Anyone with a brain can see the growth in North Korea these days, luckily the idelogy of neoclassical economics, which makes success the result of capitalism by definition, allows these two contradictory ideas to coexist without major problems. In general, the worst is over for socialist countries and the cries of reactionaries about how they will collapse any day now because of the power of the free market sound pathetic more than anything.
rhizzoners all around should take caution of upholding a nation as a socialist state, just because it owns the means of production. im not disparaging drpk, but its easy to fall into the trotskyist trap; some orthodox fourth internationalers calling these nations deformed workers states or w/e and bona fide MLs calling them actually existing socialism. after all, its the class holding the power that makes or creates a budding socialist nation. so on the other hand i think all the bickering about certain nation's (especially of drpk which is shrouded in imperialist straight-out falsifications and contradictory evidence through funded "defectors") status. the class composition hasn't been even touched by academics tbh and even if it were, it would still depend on second-hand sensational knowledge (as the stories about drpk:s labor camps show), as does the info about the extensiveness of the market reforms and their success.
uphold drpk in the face of imperialism. juche though is idealist as hell, modified most likely to fit the circumstances of base and superstructure. having read quite a bit from the kim-family, they're disdain of materialism is quite glaring and it doesn't really hold to scrutiny. its revisionist, like all the modern socialist movements, but as it shows a magnifying lens to a society outside of unipolar imperialistic geopolitics, thus allowing trading of scarce materials throughout a possible shin bloc of socialist nations, it's a revisionism i quite fancy.
i could've just as easily pointed my lazy axioms towards china and come to the same conclusion. someone once mentioned that after deng xiaoping's revisionist coup, china's foreign policy actually got a bit better as the years moved on. some of the actions taken against social-imperialism were infatuated with paranoid thought about an isolated nation taking over the role as the sole arbiter in all foreign affairs. china nowadays looks more like an enemy to western interests, so yeah some might say that it's spreading the joyous gospel, but PRC:s trading with zionist settlers; their exportation of capital to africa; and their utterly revisionist stance that still upholds deng "the mouse" xiaopings legacy of market reforms and blind rightist belief in the productive forces allowing socialist state of affairs to bloom. xi jianping most likely represents as left as it gets of the CCP, but even so, he still sees the utterly transmogrified chinese nation as the natural state, and apart from blustering generally leftist stances, ie. increasing the importance of studying marxism (which should really be seen as a question on how that marxism is going to be taught).
of course i do criticize myself for overly wagging the kruschev corn of revisionism at every actually existing socialist nation, but the over-eagerness of some internet-leftists to take every action from these at their face value, celebrating minor nods towards an actually socialist path, to be quite idealistic. they give these parties and nations an essence of communist movement in a sense. these kinds of socialists are doomed to repeat kominterns mistakes on handling revolutions, since these leftists, much like wang ming and the other puppets of komintern, need a ready-made solution of a socialist society with it's successes, usually disregarding every shortcoming as a trait borne out of neccesary defense of the revolutionary state. we do have to keep in mind that not all faults of these anti-imperialist bulwarks can be hand-waived away as a mistooken step or perversion due to imperialist meddling in their affairs. after all, every new socialist countries would find themselves today surrounded by imperialist offence. these excuses seem to hold the idea of every socialist society being perverted from the get-go, since socialism always finds itself at the weakest links of the imperialism. and ever growing bloc of socialist nations would find themselves still on a constant defense from the interests of capital. socialism, of course needs to take harsh stances on the overflowing opposition of classes, that once held power and now find themselves destitute and unprivileged, but to mistake revolutionary violence, while upholding the correct antirevisionist line, with the clearly revisionist lines of PRC, DRPK, vietnam, laos, cuba etc. is tantamount to giving up building actual dictatorship of the proletariat.
what a silly rant. frankly, it's not even aimed at rhizzoners, but the whole china cargo-culting that can be witnessed on atleast reddit and other leftist groupings, is annoying the hell out of me. goddamn, petro-yuan might be your usual run-of-the-mill empires bickering and cat-fighting about trade and influence, i see nothing communist about it, except it's a big fuck-you to amerikkkan empire's hold on the revenues gathered by liquidation of raw oil with the currency they get to value. i mean, you have to be whacked out to count china's exportation of finance capital as a sign of socialism! i mean the world has been so fukuyama for quite some time now, that for some these intra-imperialist tendencies and blocs might look like progress, and it is in the sense that the leading empire loses its grip on the production and thus on the dictative influence their trade might grant them over a neo-colony. still im not sure even if to call these aggressive moves by competing states as progressive. in fact, it seems a bit like a libertarian argument for true markets, since even international free market spheres have to compete and thus offer advantages, like zero rate interest loans, for primacy in all things concerning foreign trade.
GroverBabyFurr posted:we do have to keep in mind that not all faults of these anti-imperialist bulwarks can be hand-waived away as a mistooken step or perversion due to imperialist meddling in their affairs. after all, every new socialist countries would find themselves today surrounded by imperialist offence. these excuses seem to hold the idea of every socialist society being perverted from the get-go, since socialism always finds itself at the weakest links of the imperialism. and ever growing bloc of socialist nations would find themselves still on a constant defense from the interests of capital. socialism, of course needs to take harsh stances on the overflowing opposition of classes, that once held power and now find themselves destitute and unprivileged, but to mistake revolutionary violence, while upholding the correct antirevisionist line, with the clearly revisionist lines of PRC, DRPK, vietnam, laos, cuba etc. is tantamount to giving up building actual dictatorship of the proletariat.
I think this error is just a recapitulation of the ortho-Trotskyite defeatist thesis that the revolution cannot be defended by socialist development. It's really not a coincidence that this line is associated with the epigones of Marcy, who explicitly framed this issue in terms of the supposed perversion of the October revolution by Stalinist bureaucracy.
blinkandwheeze posted:GroverBabyFurr posted:we do have to keep in mind that not all faults of these anti-imperialist bulwarks can be hand-waived away as a mistooken step or perversion due to imperialist meddling in their affairs. after all, every new socialist countries would find themselves today surrounded by imperialist offence. these excuses seem to hold the idea of every socialist society being perverted from the get-go, since socialism always finds itself at the weakest links of the imperialism. and ever growing bloc of socialist nations would find themselves still on a constant defense from the interests of capital. socialism, of course needs to take harsh stances on the overflowing opposition of classes, that once held power and now find themselves destitute and unprivileged, but to mistake revolutionary violence, while upholding the correct antirevisionist line, with the clearly revisionist lines of PRC, DRPK, vietnam, laos, cuba etc. is tantamount to giving up building actual dictatorship of the proletariat.
I think this error is just a recapitulation of the ortho-Trotskyite defeatist thesis that the revolution cannot be defended by socialist development. It's really not a coincidence that this line is associated with the epigones of Marcy, who explicitly framed this issue in terms of the supposed perversion of the October revolution by Stalinist bureaucracy.
marcy asserts interesting influence on all of the most popular socialist parties. his modus operandi being separation of geopolitics from class warfare, and taken to its logical conclusion, nations themselves representing the opposing classes. it's purely kruschevite position to uphold. frankly this kind of thinking doesn't really exist here in europe.
GroverBabyFurr posted:rhizzoners all around should take caution of upholding a nation as a socialist state, just because it owns the means of production. im not disparaging drpk, but its easy to fall into the trotskyist trap; some orthodox fourth internationalers calling these nations deformed workers states or w/e and bona fide MLs calling them actually existing socialism
These are not Trotskyist theories, Trotskyism is parasitic on Marxism-Leninism and is incapable of original theory. The concept of deformed worker's states is merely a rightist version of ML theory for a time when the progress of the USSR and the power of the communist parties in the working class was undeniable. As soon as first world communism was weakened after the second world war, the theory was abandoned and "state capitalism", a rightist version of anti-revisionism, became the Trotskyist theory of choice.
You've taken the false separation of economics and politics which allows Trotskyism to exist and reversed it. It's not that a socialized economy could exist without proletarian power. A socialized economy is proletarian power because politics is the concentrated expression of economics. The ML theory of revisionism remember asserts that capitalist roaders come out of the capitalist vestiges of the economy, not some new bureaucracy as a class independent of the mode of production or some vague concept of scarcity. Really though, just the idea of a bourgeois dictatorship overseeing a mode of production not subject to the law of value, the condition for the existence of the bourgeoise in the first place, is bizarre.
But even if politics is what you care about rather than a concept of power rooted in the real relations of production, North Korea has everything Marx and Lenin called for as socialism. Concepts like "authoritarianism" or "totalitarianism" are not coherent and eventually rely on the conspiracy theory this thread was founded on: that everything in North Korea is a facade for the purpose of tricking your mind into believing in their politics (a trick that hasn't worked very well which makes me wonder why they persist in facade organs of worker's power).
For us, calling China and the USSR and North Korea "revisionist" doesn't explain very much since all three revisionisms went in opposite directions. What value is a theory that can't distinguish Chinese growth and Russia collapse and Soviet stagnation?
1. China remains socialist and the economic accomplishments of the post-Mao era are the result of socialism (this is the most theoretically coherent but is I think the most empirically problematic)
https://return2source.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/china-market-socialism-a-question-of-state-revolution/
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/which-way-for-china-part-two/
2. China is capitalist and the economic accomplishments of the post-Mao era are the result of capitalism (this is the most theoretically problematic since it fundamentally challenges the theory of imperialism, underdevelopment, and socialism as a superior mode of production)
http://isj.org.uk/chinas-century/
3. China is capitalist and the economic accomplishments of the post-Mao era are a fraud - either they are a mere robbery of the potential profit that had been suppressed under Mao for long term growth or they are a statistical illusion (this is theoretically coherent, although the theory of how China became capitalist through a peaceful counterrevolution is massively underdeveloped, but is becoming more difficult to sustain empirically each passing year)
https://monthlyreview.org/2004/07/01/introduction-china-and-socialism/
http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/TGR90.html
4. China is socialist and the economic accomplishments of the post-Mao era are a fraud (this is a theoretical elaboration on the former since the empirical doesn't change, merely an explanation of the problem with peaceful counterrevolution that I mentioned; unfortunately this merely delays the problems since in this conception China is clearly moving away from socialism and will face the previous problem once the wealth of the Mao era dries up)
http://www.politicalavenue.com/languageschool/Chinese%20Language%20Learning%20Pack/09.Society,%20Culture,%20History,%20Tourism/Chinese%20Economic%20Development.pdf
5. Revisionism represents something new like a "deformed worker's state" or "state capitalism" which is neither socialist nor capitalist (this theory is junk since it avoids the question entirely and has no empirical content whatsoever)
6. There is a good capitalism and a bad capitalism with Soviet "shock therapy" the bad kind while Chinese "bottom up" marketization the good kind (bad/good can be replaced with uncontrolled/controlled or neoliberal/nationalistic if you prefer - it should be clear this is not a theory at all but a PPT summary for American businessmen and unfortunately Chinese businessmen as well - a disturbing sign of a deeper rot)
7. Socialism doesn't refer to the economy at all but politics and a socialist economy is "transitional" and thus has no definition, presumably as opposed to the clear economic logic of capitalism and communism (despite the obvious nonsense of this position since Marxism is interested in political economy and not the neoliberal atomization of the different realms of society into semi-autonomy, you can see by my word usage that this position is quite popular on the left - I myself once advocated it on this very forum - but it doesn't answer the basic question of what a socialist mode of production actually is)
Obviously I am skeptical of this claim, at least in its crude form by western "maoists." But I am very interested in this document from last year
http://www.bannedthought.net/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/Misc/ChinaSocialImperialism-CPI(Maoist)-2017-Tel-View-Final.pdf
which has yet to be translated into English, one of many signs of the seriousness of Western "maoists" on the internet
I am interested in how these theories can be defended, how they can be applied to North Korea and our understanding of revisionism more generally. I am not interested in political investigation into Chinese democracy and statecraft because these are superficial IR politics-as-game theorizing in order to avoid the fundamental questions of political economy.
Edited by babyhueypnewton ()
https://lonelyhourreflections.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/chinese-socialism-and-the-legacy-of-maoism/
https://monthlyreview.org/2013/03/01/china-2013/
I'm interested in the bizarre arguments of Losurdo and Amin which is a kind of post-socialist anti-imperialism more than that shitty blog
and a return to the longee duree of the second international and the primacy of the productive forces. This position is somewhat popular with Xi's use of Marxist language (which is neither a "facede" nor a restoration of Maoism but must be read as a kind of political unconscious of the class struggles in China) but falls apart when followed to its logical conclusion. Reject Maoism and collectivization as ultra-left and you have to reject Stalin for Bukharin (and recover the Chinese equivalent which wanted a NEP for decades) and eventually Lenin, the adventurist and "barracks communist" for Kautsky and Bernstein, the orthodox Marxists who understood the stages of history that make socialism possible. Bringing up the second international and then the comintern shows that this has always been present, the Althusserian-Maoist critique was precisely that Stalin and the comintern were repeating the second international against Lenin/Mao and the primacy of the political. But our historical position is very different than theirs, upholding this thesis has its own problems (the political economy of the cultural revolution was not only never made clear compared to Soviet "revisionism" it was unimportant since the political peak was 1970, before any changes in the mode of production were really possible, and now serves as an anarchistic fantasy for western Maoists who criticize Mao for not being Maoist enough), and I'm much more interested in real analysis of the cultural revolution like this upcoming book
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/red-chinas-green-revolution/9780231186674
than 100 polemics about the cultural revolution from Badiou and Zizek.
Edited by babyhueypnewton ()
babyhueypnewton posted:3. China is capitalist and the economic accomplishments of the post-Mao era are a fraud - either they are a mere robbery of the potential profit that had been suppressed under Mao for long term growth or they are a statistical illusion (this is theoretically coherent, although the theory of how China became capitalist through a peaceful counterrevolution is massively underdeveloped, but is becoming more difficult to sustain empirically each passing year)
this is a bit of a digression from your main point but was it really a peaceful counterrevolution? im sure i read something about there being basically violent suppression of leftwing elements so that deng could carry out his reforms. however i cant recall where i actually read this so possibly im misremembering
babyhueypnewton posted:(this is the most theoretically coherent but is I think the most empirically problematic)
the rural economy is, if anything, even more collectivized. village committees still own rural property and manage it directly, and this makes up half the chinese economy. these are basic facts, essential to any discussion of china as a socialist country, yet the first time i even heard about any of this was after i got here. there's academic work on these topics but if you don't know to look for them you will of course never find it.
just as it's possible to treat these countries with too light a touch, due to reverence or fear over tarnishing the "five that survived," it's possible to overlook the ways in which they haven't backslided, the systems that have remained unchanged. especially when it comes to china, the ease with which people wave their hands and say "revisionism" indicates a callousness that treats the very real progress i'm seeing as just another dog and pony show for foreign eyes, and suggests the efforts of the chinese people to build socialism are only as valuable as what people outside the country make of them.
edit: that amin link actually does list some of the things i mentioned. this was sitting as a draft long enough i missed the last few posts in the thread.
Edited by Guyovich ()
Guyovich posted:it's frankly ridiculous to see wholesale dismissal of china so widely accepted here.
it seems to flip depending on the weather. just the other day we had folks poorly Defending China by refusing to believe in Weibo censorship getting clowned on by someone who actually spoke (or at least read) the language.
lo posted:babyhueypnewton posted:3. China is capitalist and the economic accomplishments of the post-Mao era are a fraud - either they are a mere robbery of the potential profit that had been suppressed under Mao for long term growth or they are a statistical illusion (this is theoretically coherent, although the theory of how China became capitalist through a peaceful counterrevolution is massively underdeveloped, but is becoming more difficult to sustain empirically each passing year)
this is a bit of a digression from your main point but was it really a peaceful counterrevolution? im sure i read something about there being basically violent suppression of leftwing elements so that deng could carry out his reforms. however i cant recall where i actually read this so possibly im misremembering
I think that relies on arguing the 1989 protests were for socialism which I think it's very wrong. Regardless of what you think about China or the nature of the USSR, no one can see what happened in Poland and Yugoslavia (and even Libya/Syria/Ukraine) and think the CCP was wrong to suppress them. And the reforms were still in flux until the 1992 tour of Southern China by Deng, even now it's a mistake to think there isn't line struggle in the CCP and real Marxist-Leninists in the party.
Regardless, it's more of a theoretical argument. We take revolutionary violence as the only way to overthrow capitalism for granted but think an inter-party struggle or a few legal changes can overthrow socialism. It's never been clear why socialism is so fragile and the argument usually boils down to liberal assumptions about the authoritarian nature of the state, as if the masses were mere spectators to first the cultural revolution and then the counter coup.
it's frankly ridiculous to see wholesale dismissal of china so widely accepted here. the praise that can be leveled at the taean work system can also be extended to the system of management here — state-owned enterprises, joint ventures and some privately owned companies all have councils of workers and staff that operate in a similar fashion. after the 18th and 19th national congresses more party committees are being established at firms than ever before, even foreign ones, causing new york times columnists to wail and gnash their teeth about the evil dictatorship.
the rural economy is, if anything, even more collectivized. village committees still own rural property and manage it directly, and this makes up half the chinese economy. these are basic facts, essential to any discussion of china as a socialist country, yet the first time i even heard about any of this was after i got here. there's academic work on these topics but if you don't know to look for them you will of course never find it.
just as it's possible to treat these countries with too light a touch, due to reverence or fear over tarnishing the "five that survived," it's possible to overlook the ways in which they haven't backslided, the systems that have remained unchanged. especially when it comes to china, the ease with which people wave their hands and say "revisionism" indicates a callousness that treats the very real progress i'm seeing as just another dog and pony show for foreign eyes, and suggests the efforts of the chinese people to build socialism are only as valuable as what people outside the country make of them
You're right in some ways, the laws about foreign investment in North Korea are identical to the Chinese laws for example. But I think there's a difference between the Maoist era rural communes and the market oriented plots today. They don't give out work points anymore and the massive flood of labor to the cities was the result of the breakup of the communes. But it's not yet capitalist and there's a lot of line struggle over privatization
"Land in China is divided into urban and rural land. While urban land is state owned, rural land is owned by neither the central state nor China's farmers, but rather by rural collectives—administrative villages with leaders selected through open, albeit often flawed, elections. Within rural China, the land system has been based for nearly three decades on a dual-track system that divides ownership from usage. Usage rights, meaning the right to use and derive income from—but not individually own—the land, were allocated to each rural household on a relatively equitable basis, starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Under this dual system of collective land ownership and individualized use rights—known as the Household Responsibility System (HRS)—Chinese farmers’ access to collectively owned land became an entitlement based on their membership in rural villages. This entitlement was economically inalienable—farmers would not be stripped of their land rights no matter how poor they were or how much debt they had. Subsequently, the state devolved to farmers decisions that it had previously made, such as what to plant and when"
"In our fieldwork in Yunnan, Shandong and other provinces, in light of media reports on illegal land grabs, we were surprised to have found that the norms of collective land ownership remained strong. On this basis, farmers have been able to bargain with more powerful actors, including agribusiness and local leaders. This is consistent with the surveys that find rural commitment to egalitarianism, particularly as a basis for land allocation, to be strong in the countryside, with only a small minority of respondents advocating household ownership of land"
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10670564.2012.734081?src=recsys&
Guyovich posted:village committees still own rural property and manage it directly, and this makes up half the chinese economy.
The problem with these arguments relying on formal legal ownership is that it doesn't tell you anything about how land is actually practically owned and managed. While village committees formally own agricultural land, they are free to either distribute parcels of land to individuals, lease to outside enterprises or hold land for rent. Despite the preponderance of legal communal ownership, it absolutely isn't largely (or even significantly) managed directly by the village committees. As of 2003, 93.77% of livestock farms were managed by private households. The intensive farms which comprise a minority of agricultural production but the most significant yields are largely located in suburban areas and directly owned & managed by the state
Edited by blinkandwheeze ()
babyhueypnewton posted:I think that relies on arguing the 1989 protests were for socialism which I think it's very wrong. Regardless of what you think about China or the nature of the USSR, no one can see what happened in Poland and Yugoslavia (and even Libya/Syria/Ukraine) and think the CCP was wrong to suppress them. And the reforms were still in flux until the 1992 tour of Southern China by Deng, even now it's a mistake to think there isn't line struggle in the CCP and real Marxist-Leninists in the party.
the stuff i was thinking off was much earlier, around when deng became leader and the gang of four were removed, but i don't really remember it clearly and may have gotten my wires crossed with something else.
babyhueypnewton posted:You're right in some ways, the laws about foreign investment in North Korea are identical to the Chinese laws for example. But I think there's a difference between the Maoist era rural communes and the market oriented plots today. They don't give out work points anymore and the massive flood of labor to the cities was the result of the breakup of the communes. But it's not yet capitalist and there's a lot of line struggle over privatization
"Land in China is divided into urban and rural land. While urban land is state owned, rural land is owned by neither the central state nor China's farmers, but rather by rural collectives—administrative villages with leaders selected through open, albeit often flawed, elections. Within rural China, the land system has been based for nearly three decades on a dual-track system that divides ownership from usage. Usage rights, meaning the right to use and derive income from—but not individually own—the land, were allocated to each rural household on a relatively equitable basis, starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Under this dual system of collective land ownership and individualized use rights—known as the Household Responsibility System (HRS)—Chinese farmers’ access to collectively owned land became an entitlement based on their membership in rural villages. This entitlement was economically inalienable—farmers would not be stripped of their land rights no matter how poor they were or how much debt they had. Subsequently, the state devolved to farmers decisions that it had previously made, such as what to plant and when"
"In our fieldwork in Yunnan, Shandong and other provinces, in light of media reports on illegal land grabs, we were surprised to have found that the norms of collective land ownership remained strong. On this basis, farmers have been able to bargain with more powerful actors, including agribusiness and local leaders. This is consistent with the surveys that find rural commitment to egalitarianism, particularly as a basis for land allocation, to be strong in the countryside, with only a small minority of respondents advocating household ownership of land"
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10670564.2012.734081?src=recsys&
right, it isn't exactly the same, just as the political system isn't exactly the same. point being, people can go too far in their condemnations or dismissals and it's important to keep the actual state of things in mind.
in the coming decades china's urban population will continue to grow and fully outstrip the rural sector. we are going to see a whole new cadre of city workers and the party is going to have to accommodate the political consequences of such a massive demographic shift. the building of new urban areas like xiong'an shows this planning is in the embryonic stage, but that covers only basic things like dwellings — the party's reaction to a huge influx of proletarianized people, for lack of a better word, will show us the country's course for the rest of the 21st century.
babyhueypnewton posted:GroverBabyFurr posted:
rhizzoners all around should take caution of upholding a nation as a socialist state, just because it owns the means of production. im not disparaging drpk, but its easy to fall into the trotskyist trap; some orthodox fourth internationalers calling these nations deformed workers states or w/e and bona fide MLs calling them actually existing socialism
These are not Trotskyist theories, Trotskyism is parasitic on Marxism-Leninism and is incapable of original theory. The concept of deformed worker's states is merely a rightist version of ML theory for a time when the progress of the USSR and the power of the communist parties in the working class was undeniable. As soon as first world communism was weakened after the second world war, the theory was abandoned and "state capitalism", a rightist version of anti-revisionism, became the Trotskyist theory of choice.
You've taken the false separation of economics and politics which allows Trotskyism to exist and reversed it. It's not that a socialized economy could exist without proletarian power. A socialized economy is proletarian power because politics is the concentrated expression of economics. The ML theory of revisionism remember asserts that capitalist roaders come out of the capitalist vestiges of the economy, not some new bureaucracy as a class independent of the mode of production or some vague concept of scarcity. Really though, just the idea of a bourgeois dictatorship overseeing a mode of production not subject to the law of value, the condition for the existence of the bourgeoise in the first place, is bizarre.
But even if politics is what you care about rather than a concept of power rooted in the real relations of production, North Korea has everything Marx and Lenin called for as socialism. Concepts like "authoritarianism" or "totalitarianism" are not coherent and eventually rely on the conspiracy theory this thread was founded on: that everything in North Korea is a facade for the purpose of tricking your mind into believing in their politics (a trick that hasn't worked very well which makes me wonder why they persist in facade organs of worker's power).
i'm not adhering to any such liberal conceptions as authoritarianism nor totalitarianism. my point rather would be something like the lack of coherent information, due to imperialist media warfare waged against anything outside their sphere of influence, going both ways. no communist should take claims about ownership of the means of production or the economic structure for granted just because it represents the excact opposite view of the usual media vilification. rather until we'd have a socialist state capable of exchanging information and other relations on equal terms can we start to build a vision of the society under siege. atleast for me as a maoist it has been pretty clear that cultural revolution, atleast in terms brought up by chairman gonzalo, is something that has been missing from drpk and due to theoretical infancy, not brought to its ultimate continuing conclusion in prc. but i digress.
Caesura109 posted:Is he just saying that its not capitalism if the state (which he takes as a true representative of the people) acts as the capitalist, extracting surplus value, using profit to increase production, buying and selling on the market etc. E
That's not what he's saying because the state cannot "act as a capitalist" nor can it do any of the things you mention. You should read the rest of the blog since the whole point of it is to show how the logic of the capitalist mode of production is internal to the relations between capital and labor themselves. Since his blog is about the falling rate of profit as the ultimate limit of the capitalist mode of production, which comes out of the rising organic composition of capital through competition over profit, he is forced to conclude that actually existing socialism cannot be capitalism by definition. This is the sign of an honest scientist since it's clear he is not politically inclined towards that opinion and gets a lot of shit for it.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1969/08/statecapitalism.htm
Mandel had some sketchy politics but he was a fine economist.
Edited by Constantignoble ()
babyhueypnewton posted:Since his blog is about the falling rate of profit as the ultimate limit of the capitalist mode of production, which comes out of the rising organic composition of capital through competition over profit, he is forced to conclude that actually existing socialism cannot be capitalism by definition.
Roberts outright admits to jettisoning any marxist definition of socialism in order to make this argument. i don't see how this is not just another retreat to the terms of bourgeois-legalist social democracy
blinkandwheeze posted:babyhueypnewton posted:Since his blog is about the falling rate of profit as the ultimate limit of the capitalist mode of production, which comes out of the rising organic composition of capital through competition over profit, he is forced to conclude that actually existing socialism cannot be capitalism by definition.
Roberts outright admits to jettisoning any marxist definition of socialism in order to make this argument. i don't see how this is not just another retreat to the terms of bourgeois-legalist social democracy
He's interested in crisis as immanent to capitalism. Any society without cyclical crises of overproduction, like the USSR in the 30s, is socialist if that's your focus. It's not that the proletarian dictatorship isn't important, that's just not his focus, especially since he's interested in where crises appear in the Chinese economy and what that tells us about the uneven nature of capitalist restoration. It's also not really mine since the debate about proletarian power in North Korea or China is usually just regurgitated liberalism.
blinkandwheeze posted:i mean this isn't a question of focus, these are outright distinct conceptual categories. this point seems entirely trivial to me, obviously there will be more examples of socialism if you retreat from the marxist delineation and resort to a more expansive one.
I'm not sure if you think North Korea is socialist or not so it's tough to tell what your concrete application of the Marxist deliniation is. China is a separate question but not as separate as many think.
i don't know nearly enough about the DPRK to come to any reasonable conclusion, my guess is that they are further away from the capitalist road by comparison but that's largely a gut feeling
Edited by blinkandwheeze ()
GroverBabyFurr posted:uphold drpk in the face of imperialism. juche though is idealist as hell, modified most likely to fit the circumstances of base and superstructure. having read quite a bit from the kim-family, they're disdain of materialism is quite glaring and it doesn't really hold to scrutiny. its revisionist, like all the modern socialist movements, but as it shows a magnifying lens to a society outside of unipolar imperialistic geopolitics, thus allowing trading of scarce materials throughout a possible shin bloc of socialist nations, it's a revisionism i quite fancy.
yeah, after that positive post i made earlier i started reading another article about Juche and it's left me feeling a bit uncomfortable/uncertain about the nature of their ideology once again. N. Steinmayr seems to know the history pretty well and doesn't just focus on the revisionist aspects but i think he jumps to conclusions a little too quick. he straight up doesn't consider North Korea to be a socialist country (which i think it probably is but maybe in a unusual way) and he just assumes the Kims have party members purged in order to stay in power. the following is a section on the cult of personality aspect which for a while i thought was overblown by western media but now consider to be concerning again:
KOREAN REVISIONISM
UNDER THE AUSPICES OF ALLIANCE MARXIST-LENINIST (NORTH AMERICA), COMMUNIST LEAGUE (BRITAIN), INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE – MARXIST-LENINIST; January 1999
by N. Steinmayr
...
The leader is said to love the people “unfailingly” and “boundlessly”, while the people reciprocate with love and trust. Just as the party represents the mother, the leader represents the father: as caring parents, they both look after their enlarged North Korean family. In the current political literature of the DPRK, endless references can be found to this distorted role played by the leader as the people’s father. In this regard, particularly revealing are the following remarks made by Kim Jong Il:
“We must realise that the greatest value and worth of life exist in faithfully implementing the revolutionary tasks set by the leader by trusting in him as a strong moral support at all times, and we must prove ourselves unfailingly loyal to the leader through our revolutionary activities to implement his ideology and will. . . .
Party leadership implies guidance by the leader, and the concept of and attitude towards the party are, in essence, identical to the concept of and attitude towards the leader. . . .
We must value and respect the party organisation as the parent body of our integrity. We refer to the leader as the fatherly leader and to the Party as the motherly Party because the Party organisation with the leader at its centre is the parent body of our socio-political integrity. . . .
To hold the fatherly leader in high esteem and to be loyal to him is a moral obligation for all Koreans. . . .
We call loyalty to the leader the highest expression of communist morality.”
Kim Jong Il, “On Establishing the Juche Outlook on the Revolution: Talk to the Senior Officials of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea”, 10-10-1987, in Kim Jong Il, On the Juche Idea, Pyongyang, 1989, pp. 160-2, 170 My emphasis.
“The unity and cohesion of our Party developed into the unity of the entire Party in ideology and purpose, reinforced by morality and loyalty, based on the leader’s idea and centring on the leader.”
Kim Jong Il, The Workers’ Party of Korea is the Party of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, Pyongyang, 2-10-1995, p.7.
“Loyalty and dutifulness to the leader are the highest expression of the good qualities of Kim Il Sung’s nation.”
Kim Jong Il, On Preserving the Juche Character and National Character of the Revolution and Construction, Pyongyang, 19-6-1997, p. 26.
“The leader is the centre of unity and cohesion . . . He is the great revolutionary leader who defends the independent demands and interests of the popular masses; he has an unusual gift of foresight, is all-powerful in the leadership art and noble in personal virtue, and leads the people wisely in their struggle.”
Kim Jong Il, Our Socialism Centred on the Masses Shall not Perish,Pyongyang, 5-5-1991, p. 34.
“The essence of ideological and spiritual qualities of communist, revolutionary workers is the true loyalty and devotion to the leader, which never change no matter what the circumstances.”
Kim Jong Il, Let Us Further Enhance the Role of Intellectuals in the Revolution and Construction: A Speech Delivered to the Senior Officials of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Pyongyang, 20-9-1990, p. 39.
“Loyalty to the leader is the highest expression of the sense of revolutionary obligation. . . .
Carrying forward the cause of independence of the popular masses, the cause of socialism, means none other than the continuation of the cause of the leader. . . .
The communist morality of our people finds its highest expression in their unqualified respect for and absolute allegiance to the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.”
Kim Jong Il, Respecting the Forerunners of the Revolution is a Noble Moral Obligation of the Revolutionaries: Discourse Published in Rodong Sinmun, the Organ of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Pyongyang, 25-12-1995, pp.5-6, 9. My emphases.
But clearly, all these preachings have nothing to do with communist morality. As Lenin pointed out,
“Our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat’s class struggle. Our morality stems from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.”
V. I. Lenin, “The Tasks of the Youth Leagues: Speech Delivered at the Third All-Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League”, 2-10-1920, in Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 31, Moscow, 1966, p. 291.
Marxist-Leninists possess a specific programme and specific aims in order to overcome the old exploiting society. The cult of the leader in the DPRK runs contrary to these aims and – as such – cannot contribute to the workers’ emancipation and liberation. The undue emphasis on the absolute loyalty to the leader contravenes the very essence of socialism, which should be built by the popular masses under the collective leadership of the revolutionary party of the working class. The extent to which Kim Il Sung had been, and still is, adulated as a god inside his country is well-known. Worship has replaced politics with Juche – something inadmissible from a Marxist-Leninist viewpoint. Such an excessive personality cult of both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il cannot but discredit and ridicule the DPRK’s reputation in the world and among progressive forces.
Through unconditional loyalty to the leader and his personality cult, Juche’s revisionist paradox becomes obvious: all people possess independence and freedom to master everything in the world (including nature), provided only that they achieve their oneness behind the leader. This is the philosophical device for the revisionist clique in North Korea to cling to power and to wind the clock of history back to the reactionary, feudal socialism.
Not only has the personality cult played a reactionary and unhealthy role in the history of the communist movement, but – as Soviet history could prove – it also provided the revisionists with an additional weapon in order to liquidate socialism. Indeed, it has now become clear that the personality cult around Stalin had been deliberately built up by concealed revisionists and its practice had been contrary to the expressed wishes of Stalin himself. In fact, the Krushchevite revisionists created the “cult of the individual” around Stalin in order:
1. to attack him from the mid-fifties onwards under the guise of carrying out a programme of liberalization, that was in fact a programme of dismantling socialism; and
2. to lay the blame on him for breaches of socialist legality and for deviations from Marxist-Leninist principles on their part.
It was Stalin himself that on numerous occasions denounced and ridiculed the personality cult as a distortion of Marxism-Leninism. For example,
“You speak of your ‘devotion’ to me. Perhaps it was just a chance phrase. Perhaps. . . . But if the phrase was not accidental I would advise you to discard the “principle” of devotion to persons. It is not the Bolshevik way. Be devoted to the working class, its Party, its state. That is a fine and useful thing. But do not confuse it with devotion to persons, this vain and useless bauble of weak-minded intellectuals.”
J.V. Stalin, “Letter to Comrade Shatunovsky”, August 1930, in Stalin, Works, vol. 13, Moscow, 1955, p. 20.
“Marxism does not at all deny the role played by outstanding individuals or that history is made by people. . . . Every new generation encounters definite conditions already existing, ready-made when that generation was born. And great people are worth anything at all only to the extent that they are able correctly to understand these conditions, to understand how to change them. If they fail to understand these conditions and want to alter them according to the promptings of their imagination, they will land themselves in the situation of Don Quixote. . . .
Individual persons cannot decide. Decisions of individuals are always, or nearly always, one-sided decisions. . . .
Never under any circumstances would our workers now tolerate power in the hands of one person. With us personages of the greatest authority are reduced to nonentities, become mere ciphers, as soon as the masses of the workers lose confidence in them, as soon as they lose contact with the masses of the workers.”
J.V. Stalin, “Talk with the German Author Emil Ludwig”, 13-12-1931, in Stalin, Works, vol. 13, Moscow, 1955, p. 107-9, 113.
As for the DPRK, reservations and doubts can also be raised about the way in which the son, Kim Jong Il, could succeed – as a leader – to his father, Kim Il Sung. It was in October 1997, for example, that Kim Jong Il was inaugurated as WPK general secretary, simply by means of a statement jointly produced by the WPK Central Committee and the Central Military Commission. But the procedure employed for the appointment violated the party charter, which calls for the election of the top party position in a full session of the WPK Central Committee. Nonetheless, legal considerations are supposed to remain subordinated to the personal desires of Kim Il Sung, who once had the following to say:
“‘Comrade Kim Jong Il carries out at all costs what he regards as necessary for the sake of the country and the people. Particularly, he makes every possible effort to please me by implementing what I wish and am worried about.’”
Kim Kyong Hui, “A Model of Loyalty and Filial Devotion”, The Pyongyang Times, 27-9-97.
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since this was written in 99 i'm curious to see if Kim Jong Un has backed away from this kind of hero worship or embraced it