[PEN-L:27356] RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: TV and income dispa rity

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27351] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: TV and income disparity

> Jim, it is too much trouble to reply to your posts. When I
> select "reply"
> from my Eudora mail, I am presented with a glob of text that
> is too much
> trouble to sort out. I urge you to contact a computer
> programmer at your
> university to help you sort things out.

I am sorry about this. The Microsquat "Exchange" server seems to be misbehaving (and has done so for weeks). I have called the tech support people and will do so again. Maybe it has something to do with the University contracting out information services to "CollegisEduprise."

Here's what I wrote:
>Louis' answer (see below) isn't really an answer. He seemed to be
>blaming _all_ of North Korea's plight on imperialism, on external events
>and systems. I would say that imperialism has been a major or even _the_
>major cause of NK's problems, especially after the fall of the old Soviet
>Union and the drying up of aid & protection from them. 
> I asked if it's possible that the self-appointed and self-perpetuating
>elite (or ruling stratum) of NK helped to create those problems.   His
>response is to quote some fine stuff by Marty Hart-Landsburg that I've read
>before, that says up to 1965 or so, NK was doing really well (at least
>according to the standards of industrialization, ignoring issues of
>democracy and the like). That doesn't say anything about how NK did after
>1965 or so. It also doesn't deal with the relative role (or non-role) of
>internal and external forces.  

>It's important to remember that by the
>standards of industrialization, the old SU did pretty well until 1965 -- or
>even later (1980?). So it would be a mistake to generalize from events
>before 1965. The old SU didn't collapse simply due to external factors (US
>imperialism). (If one believes that only external forces are crucial, then
>it's one step away from the bogus Reaganite claim that US militarism under
>their hero forced the SU to spend a lot of resources on the military,
>causing its collapse.) No, there were internal problems: the planning
>system didn't work very well, while the top-down nature of political,
>social, and economic rule squelched the flow of information and
>instructions from the rank and file workers and consumers that might have
>made the planning system work better. When the old SU ran out of a surplus
>of labor-power and when raw materials became less abundant, suddenly the
>limits of the system became more severe. It's these internal problems that
>allowed and encouraged the self-appointed internal elite to decide to bring
>in capitalism... 

>(Among other things, the old SU was pretty good at
>producing the same item in large quantity, but never good at producing
>high-quality goods. I remember when I was discussing the import of a Soviet
>nuclear power plant into Cuba with some Cubans in the late 1970s
>(pre-Chernobyl), the argument of mine that hit the hardest was that I
>doubted the quality of the Soviet product.)  

> By analogy, if we want to
>understand NK's problems, it's a mistake to simply look at external causes,
>especially when the people there don't seem to have any control over their
>government: remember that power corrupts unless those who wield it are held
>responsible democratically. (How else could the leadership of the country
>be passed to Kim il Sung's son, in imitation of a feudal lord?)  

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine