DPRK are the good guys. I have legit heard it all now.

He also seems to be completely rewriting history there

1) Korea was split into north/south BEFORE the war
2) The "US brutal genocide" started by the north invading the south, all of KIS, Stalin and Mao were on board with it.

And ask the 50 million people in the south what they think of that genocide.

What the hell is wrong with you? You have really completely lost your mind. Seek professional help.

Some spicy takes going on ITT.

NK has good reason to hate us:
None of this means they're good guys. Compared to the US, probably, but that's hardly saying anything.

Einbert, I thought anyone who has studied communism knows that the USSR wasn't actual communism; that's just what US propaganda wanted us to think so that we equated communism with fascism. But here you are pointing to brutal dictatorships as success stories of communism? If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if you were a capitalist in disguise.

I'm with microbet, you can't have a (communist) utopia without eliminating the vast (and always unjustified) power imbalance. The chance of a dictator or a group of super-powerfuls being benevolent is ~0.

But educate me: why should I want to live under Mao or Stalin?

Even though nearly the entire population speaks fluent English, it would be impossible for me to integrate into the community without some kind of personal connection. The aloofness towards strangers is very real and very unpleasant based on my own experience there. It must be a million times harder for refugees and non-English speaking immigrants to fit in if it's possible at all.

Maybe it’s time to take a break from posting.

Christ einbert.

lol hit the showers einbert

Communism containment thread por favor.

I'm not advocating all or nothing. With a handful of completely democratic constitutional policy changes the US could probably have 50% true worker cooperatives, which is anarcho-syndicalism. We could have the foreign policy and criminal policies of decent countries with a quarter the military and police and be more safe, not less. And in today's world Macondos and Qamishlis may not last, perhaps that will be more feasible at some point, but Marinaledas are secure enough. In fact, it kinda seems like the US is headed towards an increasing degree of Municipalism.

einbert,

Are you in Bob Avakian's group?

I don't remember which Nordic country it was, but I heard a little piece on the radio one time about life in a village where one family was regarded as weird/criminal/outsiders because of something that happened like 150 years prior - maybe just that their family was the "immigrant" family only going back 4 or so generations.

Korea was brutalized by the Japanese before and during WW2, the North was set up by Stalin, and not long after the US devastated it. Out of such inauspicious origins came a nightmarish, paranoid, isolationist, totalitarian society.

There is some degree of propaganda here in the US about it though. NK is not quite as closed off as is virtually universally shown in US media.

Lol. There really is no graceful exit from thinking socialism hasn’t been a massive failure.

No socialism huh? Not that surprising that you're an ACist.

Every single first world country, including the US, is orders of magnitude more "socialist" and orders of magnitude better for average citizens than they were 100 years ago.

"Socialism" is just an ephemeral label assigned by one side or the other to a state slightly more socialistic than the status quo.

Uhh.. we were talking about a dude with a hammer and sickle avatar singing the praises of North Korea. Not market based economies that have grown so rich over the past century that they can provide large safety nets. That part seemed to have been left out of Das Kapital and would be unrecognizable to Marx. Any country that has had anything close to a Marxist Revolution has been a massive failure.

That's communism - and you can get into the debate of no true scotsman or whatever. You said socialism - which is 99.99% of the time used to refer to the concept I mentioned. If you actually meant communism then never mind my post.

It was funny hearing the two young guys I helped get out of Nicaragua argue about "socialism". One is Swiss, the other Danish. Of course the Swiss guy was all "pull up by your own bootstraps" and "I believe people are smart enough to decide for themselves" whereas the Dane was like "nah, people need to be nudged, and basic needs should be met".

But the funny part is both sides of the policies they were arguing about would be considered massively "socialist" from a US perspective. The whole socialism debate is really more about rhetoric and perceived attitude than anything else. Actual policies are a very short-lived part of the argument.

No it isn’t. Non market socialism is usually what people mean and I would bet that’s what the North Korea is awesome dude means.

Yeah, it's usually about staking out a position relative to those around you. It's how Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon's policies can be left of where some mainstream Dems are now or heroes of the Libertarians like Hayek or Adam Smith are comparatively big government libruls. Some people want to steer the ship left, some straight and some to the right, mostly irrespective of where it's heading.

What a troll. You're totally misrepresenting yourself here. Keeeeeeedism.

I'm feeling guilty about lumping Max and Keeed together. Keeed is alright.

Right, the whole socialism debate is really using socialism to mean things that would have flabbergasted the creators and early theorists who invented the term. Capitalism has won so completely that socialism apparently just means taxes now.