Peaceful coexistence reconsidered (was e: North Korea in context)

["Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

En relación a North Korea in context,
el 23 Apr 00, a las 19:21, Louis Proyect dijo, citando a
> Martin Hart-Landsberg, "Korea: Divison, Unification and US Foreign
> Policy," Monthly Review Press, 1998:

> [...] Kim believed that "peaceful coexistence"
> reflected a racist attitude on the part of the Soviet Union toward
> Asia. As he saw it, détente was a policy that was developed strictly
> within, and had meaning only in, a European context. It could have no
> meaning for Vietnamese, Chinese, or Koreans, people whose countries
> were divided, with the socialist halves under threat of attack from
> the United States.

This is one of the usual criticisms made to the "coexistence"
strategy. There is little doubt that it was a correct criticism, but
I would extend it further.

In fact, coexistence implied that the whole population of the Soviet
Union was compelled to permanently compare their fate with that of
the populations in the imperialist Western countries. Thus, they were
duped into believing that capitalism was "better" than socialism and
not only because the very idea of economic competition was a stupid
idea. They lost the perspective that should have saved them, that is
to confront their situation with that of the colonial and
semicolonial world. The present of those countries was their future,
unless they clung to socialism.

But coexistence, the targetting of Western imperialist countries (of
course, I am including Japan) as the counterpart of the Soviet Union,
was a strong push towards the destruction of the Soviet Union. I do
not know if it was one of the main pushes, but it must have certainly
had a weight.





Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx