Re: Reply to comrade Mac

["Macdonald Stainsby" <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>  "Liberal freedoms"? What is this talk of "liberal freedoms"? I am not a
> proponent of bourgeois liberalism here; for one "liberal freedom" includes
> the right of a bourgeois to exploit the labour of the working class.
Indeed,
> bourgeois-liberalism packages this "liberal freedom" as the market. And
> indeed under Titoism, there existed a small bourgeoisie in Yugoslavia,
> though much smaller than that present in China at present, although it
> crucially was not organised as the ruling class. Yugoslavia allowed the
> greatest concession to the private ownership of the means of production of
> all the Stalinist states - which could be defined as a "liberal freedom" -
> and thus when the counterrevolutionary sections of the Yugoslav
bureaucracy
> came along, they had a base other than a petty-bourgeoisie to rip apart
the
> remaining shackles of the workers' state and fully stabilise the
bourgeoisie
> as the ruling class.

Yu seem to drink too much coffee. Might I suggest decaf. All of this has
nothing at all to do with my pointthat Yugoslavia was less restrictive than
modern north Korea. You then follow this with:

>
>  The fact is, North Korea is ruled by a tyrannous but nonetheless
completely
> absurd privilege caste of bureaucrats, who enjoy the finest wines and
foods
> whilst the peasants starve to death, who maintain their political
> dictatorship by totalitarian means over the working class. Its broad
masses,
> workers and peasants, have no influence in any level of administration,
and
> enjoy no political power. They have no say in the running of the means of
> production in which they labour, which are run by a particular managerial
> stratum of the bureaucracy who will one day form the basis for the North
> Korean bourgeoisie. Indeed, often they are worked half to death. The
> totalitarian rule of the bureaucracy possibly reaches the closest to the
> Orwellian prophecy of "1984" than any Stalinist state has ever reached,
> including the USSR under Stalin; not just with one of the most obscene and
> repugnant cults of personality to ever graze the earth, but one of the
most
> disturbing pieces of footage I have ever seen is when the South Korean
> despot went to the north and millions of people had been lined up on the
> streets of Pyongyang waving pink flowers in perfect synchrony. Ugh. North
> Korea did not become any form of workers' states by the conscious
overthrow
> of the old ruling class by the proletariat; it was a revolution that
> occurred bureaucratically by the rulers of Moscow, who created this
> caricature of Stalinism, without any involvement of the workers.
>

Which is a hysterical rant, again nothing to do with my point. I believe,
perhaps as a result of the bourgeois media, that north Korea is a very
repressive place. However, I don't know what you think you are accomplishing
by making this tirade against the DPRK (which was founded with the help of
the USSR, but did indeed have a hell of a lot of local involvement. To
simply call it an imposed revolution is to discount the anti-Japanese
resistance, one that I personally admire and honor). The DPRK has many
problems, no kidding. But I would like some substantiation for most of your
accusations against it. Little anecdotes about how the BBC broadcast the
Kims first meeting doesn't cut it. It really isn't the slightest bit helpful
to attack the DPRK in this vicious manner. With many of  the same
reservations you are on about, I personally find it absolutely pointless to
shout from the rooftops about how much better "I" could do if they would
just get with my Bolshevik program. Their state is currently under assault
more than any other in the world that the US isn't intermittently bombing.
Work to get US Imperialism to get the hell out of there; that is the best
way you can help the (n) Korean people.


>  I became a revolutionary socialist because I stood for the overthrow of
the
> bourgeoisie and its replacement by the rule of the working class, until
the
> liberation of all humanity with the dissolution of all classes and with
them
> the state into communism. I did not stand for the working class to be
> enslaved by a tyrannous bureaucracy, or to shout the praises of such scum.
>

Show me the praises. I made none. I spoke of what *real* hurdles the DPRK
has endured to survive. If pointing out that their survival as a
("deformed", if you really must) socialist state has gone through the most
trying circumstances of the five remaining (The US is more hostile to them
than any other) makes me an apologist for "Stalinist tyranny" then I plead
guilty. I plead guilty every single time. Proudly so. That doesn't make me a
Stalinist, it makes me someone who refuses the screwed up notion that only
by heaping scorn on all states that nationalise the means of production and
do not simulataneously build the perfect workers democracy am I living out
my revolutionary role. My job, as a first world Red, is to try and make the
best possible conditions for these states to develop by stopping my own
bourgeoisie. My job is to educate people (when it comes up, it rarely does)
that the DPRK could be paradise on earth, the Imperialists wouldn't care.
The reason they are on the hit list is the independance of their state and
the economic levers are nationalised. That is the most illuminating
information about them. I am not going to play revolutionary theatre critic
as a substitute for my irrelevance. Sorry about that.


>  However if what you are driving at by "liberal freedoms" is the fact that
I
> am slightly concerned about working class Koreans being in danger of
> imprisonment if their friend's aunt's cousin's brother's
> cousin-twice-removed passed somebody in the centre of town whose vet's
> sister spoke to a shopkeeper about the price of tomatoes who sometime in
> 1988 was rumoured to have said something against Our Great Leader, then I
> suppose we better add this.
>

Again, true or not, this rant is only here to show your purity. It's
pointless and doesn't explain a damn thing about north Korea, other than I
gather you aren't willing to go visit and are probably glad you don't live
there. Wow.

>  This is not what I meant about the cultural level of North Korea. I am
not
> criticising what Korea has contributed to the world (!) If you look at the
> works of Lenin and Trotsky, they are forever talking about about the low
> cultural level of the Russian proletariat, which Lenin himself gave as a
> reason for the degeneration of the Revolution. Tolstoy had nothing to do
> with it.
>
Well, Lenin and Trotsky vs. Kim Jong-Il! I concede they aren't
Bolshevik-Leninist-Trotskyists. They must be the worst scum. The word you
need to use here is education. "Poor and blank", perhaps. But not culturally
deficient.

>  But you miss the point - there was an actual revolution in Yugoslavia by
> its workers and peasants which overturned capitalist property relations
and
> put in place a workers' state (of a deformed sort), instead of it being
> bureaucratically carried out by the troops of the Soviet bureaucracy.
> Yugoslavia was not subservient like the rest of Eastern Europe for this
very
> reason to the USSR. The benevolence of the bureaucracy was indeed partly
due
> to the higher cultural level of the Yugoslav masses, but also because a
> workers' revolution occurred in Yugoslavia; similarly to Cuba, in fact. So
> the same material reasons are behind the split with Moscow as the
> benevolence of the Yugoslav bureaucracy.
>

Actually, the dynamic of Red Army *help* to a revolutionary army was roughly
the same. Both were valiant in their struggles against the occupier, both
finished off the enemy with a little help from Stalins corps. Funny how that
works, eh? Or do you not believe that the Korean people resisted Japan?

>  Ugh. Nasty hyperbole. You've been reading too many of those freaky North
> Korean news agency emails. What happened today - no, don't tell me, pig
iron
> production was up by 657% and Our Dear Leader turned water into wine.
>

Alright- if  I am so off the mark, then tell me when the DPRK surrendered
the economy or the state to Imperialism. Do that, and I will recant.
Otherwise, you are just so Stalinophobic you can't see the forest for the
trees. It is good politics to be realistic about the fact that north Korea
is not even close to a paradise. It is bad politics to stop there, which is
precisely what you are doing.


> > When Deng
> > and the CPC initiated "Market Socialism", Kim was critical and
condemnatory.
>
>  Good old Kim. What a devout and dedicated communist. The fact he lives a
> life of luxury that some members of the imperialist bourgeoisie would
water
> at the mouth at whilst half the peasantry is starving to death even when
> half the economy is being spent on militarisation barely dents such
shining
> socialist credentials.
>
Wrong Kim. Kim Jong-Il runs the country now. Kim Il-Sung died in 94. but you
need to be willing to read about north Korean history to know that, so I
forgive you.

You really believe that the entire socialist history exists in Black and
White, don't you? Kim Il Sung was a Stalinist (which I will certainly agree
to, if the term means anything), ergo nothing his state has ever done is
worth critical analysis... if you attempt to look at the economy, how the
DPRK played out its history during the Sino Soviet split, how it survives
today, or what measures it takes anywhere, then you are a Stalinist. Face
it, this kind of Trotskyism is an insult to LD. He would not simply resort
to attacks for an excuse not to look beyond the surface. I would be willing
to bet that much of what you say above is true, but dear comrade, what the
hell does that have to say about how Kim and the WPK reacted to the 11th
congress of the CPC? Surely this *IS* VERY relevant. It goes a long way to
explaining why the Chinese are engaging directly with the US, what direction
their economy has gone, and why the DPRK is still so far on the outs. If
this is irrelevant to you, then you aren't doing a Marxist analysis. You are
running a left commentary.


>  As should all peace-loving fraternal nations. Is this a direct quote from
> one of those DPRK news agency emails?
>
No. It is from the CBC. Comrade, because I want to be well rounded, I read
every official news agency out there on the net. Your stupid attacks on me
because I read the DPRK stuff is as useless as someone saying that about the
NYTimes. I can read critically, and I would venture that for every 20 news
stories from the KCNA that lands in my box, I read one or two. They have
headlines, and some are relevant to me, most are not.

Reading the news from all sides with a heavy dollup of criticism is an
indispensible tool. I suggest you try it: Claiming I am a Kim Jong-Il fan
club leader because I read the KCNA amounts to McCarthyism. "Don't listen to
him, brothers and sisters, he reads the Daily Worker!"

You are capable of a lot more when you get rid of this litmus test crap.
Personally, I would jump at the chance to see north Korea myself. I'm funny
that way.

>  So the excuse North Korea's leadership has for subjecting its workers to
> dictatorship under a tyrannous caste of bureaucrats for over a half a
> century is because of a war which ended forty-five years ago. But your
> argument is completely absurd anyway because Yugoslavia HAD been
flattened -
> not by the American Army, but by German Blitzkrieg! The country was
rubble.
> Whilst being savaged by Nazi invaders, it also was being ripped apart by
> civil war. I would suggest it had to completely reconstruct itself too.
>

I am not making excuses for the north Koreans. Again, you want to see things
without the shades of grey that real life situations provide. I am
describing a state that was under far more seige. The war didn't end 45
years ago, it is still going, and just saw a bit play in it inside Germany
with the stripsearch incident (let me guess: the clothes they were wearing
were acquired through the forced labour of the Korean people under their
terror regime, so I am supposed to think this incident doesn't matter
either?). What needs to be understood about north Korea vis-avis the
Yugoslavians is that Yugoslavia was destroyed by an enemy that was gone when
socialism was being built. The US is the main enemy of the DPRK, the one
that did the destroying, and the one that still patrols the entire South
Pacific. The DPRK is subjected to worse conditions than even Cuba. In that
situation, it is understandable that they would be a paranoid state (Now,
sit back and watch "understandable" be used as a synonym for "acceptable" by
our comrade here).

>  The elevation of individuals and their roles in history like this should
> always be avoided by Marxists. I do not particularly respect Tito, there
was
> nothing particularly striking about him. I reject the absurd notion that a
> country was held together by one person. History picks names from hats. If
> it hadn't been Tito, it would have been a different name.

Except Trotsky, right? You put absolutely everything up to his blinkers, and
then tell others not to elevate individuals. There were many things striking
about Tito, actually, but I'm not interested in discussing that. You are
right, Tito wasn't the only factor in gelling the country. But to deny he
was a part is equally absurd as giving him all the credit.


> > conservative social policies.
>
>  What does this mean? Banning abortion? Constraints on divorce? These are
> all "conservative social policies". Or do you mean the fact the North
Korean
> working class are enslaved by the ruling bureaucracy.

*yawn*... let's go with that enslavement thingy. It has a real zing to it.
Tell me, did you just make that up?

>
>  Comrade, the Workers' Aid comrades I know who work with Serbian trade
> unions and working class organisations explained to me the reality behind
> workers' self-management. Where are your sources for this glorification of
> what was really a fraud that sounds nice on paper?

Books written by professors (in American universities, for the most part:
One was called
"Tito & Titoism") that I studied just before the war, they exist in our
local public library. Not someone in a sect or other forms of knowledge
through word of mouth. Sorry, next time I'll just ask people on the street.
Unless I get the wrong answer, of course.

Macdonald