All that being said: FUCK Kim Jong-il. I am not sad that he is dead;
<blockquote>
"No more deluded by reaction,
On tyrants only we'll make war!"</blockquote>

My take on the DPRK:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/10/14/north-korea-as-a-religious-state/

"Neither is much concerned about the "real happiness" of people. Both ought to be changed—by those they oppress, demanding an end to conditions requiring illusions."

Given the fact that currently, there is no real radical alternative movement for the North Korean masses, amidst threats of US imperialist occupation and terror, how will you translate this "wishful thinking," Mr. Leupp into concrete, political action?

I agree, Demiurge, that there is no "radical alternative movement" for the people of North Korea. At least none I know of, and the DPRK is generally hard to read. There are sporadic reports of image-defacing, anti-Kim grafitti, some violent actions. But there doesn't appear to be, for example, what we might consider a genuinely Marxist-Leninist faction within the ruling party (which is pretty much the same as the military apparatus). The political landscape looks bleak now, but sometimes radical alternative movements appear suddenly and surprisingly.

Odd that you'd ask how I "will translate" what you call "wishful thinking" into concrete action. Am I supposed to outline a strategy? That's surely not my role, observing from afar. Are you saying that my observations about the religiosity and oppressiveness of the DPRK regime require me to suggest an alternative. Or that in the absence of a strategy for change, one should just shut up and embrace Kim Il-songism as the only alternative for Korea to US imperialist occupation and terror?

<blockquote>"Are you saying that my observations about the religiosity and oppressiveness of the DPRK regime require me to suggest an alternative."</blockquote>



Of course, critique (Kritik) is not simply a term that exists in the negative. A critique is always-already informed with a vision of an alternative to the present.

But more than a question of an alternative, I would like to explore the implications of that kind of politics that refuses to discriminate the primary and secondary aspects of the contradiction on the present historical struggle against imperialism and for socialism. Our stand, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist stand (if that term still holds any weight and value to the administrators of this page -- I've been told that it is no longer fashionable to adopt a clear-cut ideologico-politcal stance, lest one exposes oneself to vehement accusations of (gasp!) "dogmatism") requires us to think and relate our tactics and strategies in terms of the present global balance of political forces.

When Mao forged a tactical alliance with Chiang's Nationalist forces, Mao wasn't necessarily adapting Chiang's politics. Rather, Mao was relating the common points that Mao shared with Chiang as an anti-imperialist, while at the same time maintaining the identity of his communist politics.

In the same manner, cognizant of the fact that the number one enemy here is US Imperialism [a taboo subject in this site, I have observed), and that while the emergence of a radical alternative movement is not yet in the offing, we should support North Korean people's valiant anti-imperialist struggle, and yes, lend critical support to the ruling party leaders, while we await (sorry my American leftist friends, you cannot impose your revolutionary ideas from the outside) for the balance of forces to shift.

That "valiant anti-imperialist struggle" had nothing to do with communism though.

What the hell does your critical support even amount to concretely other than cheerleading bureaucrats who've got their bootheel on the working class? A statement of solidarity that nobody reads drafted by a half a dozen delusional shitrags dressed in soviet kitch and che shirts stroking their goatees?

well u could use workers world as birdcage lining so there u go

Of course, anti-imperialism doesn't automatically mean communism, but any communist worth her/his salt should be an anti-imperialist.

"What the hell does your critical support even amount to concretely other than cheerleading bureaucrats who’ve got their bootheel on the working class? A statement of solidarity that nobody reads drafted by a half a dozen delusional shitrags dressed in soviet kitch and che shirts stroking their goatees?"

I could throw the same question to you too. What does your anti-DPRK posts even amount to concretely other than lending intellectual credence to the imperialist discourses churned by Western imperialist media to justify US and UK's Big Power chauvinism against recalcitrant nation-states?


"well u could use workers world as birdcage lining so there u go"

I don't know, I live here in the Philippines, so there's no "Third World branch" of Workers' World Party here.

These are my thoughts. I love reading your analyses and articles, and I applaud all your collective's efforts to deepen the discourse about communist ideology, practice, and history. "black magick hustla" this is my position, but then again as a dialectical materialist, I am always ready to reconfigure and modify it while ensuring that I remain faithful to the basics of my intellectual and political tradition. And honestly, your arrogant comment isn't just helping at all.

"I could throw the same question to you too. What does your anti-DPRK posts even amount to concretely other than lending intellectual credence to the imperialist discourses churned by Western imperialist media to justify US and UK’s Big Power chauvinism against recalcitrant nation-states?"

To be honest, it doesn't really matter much either way. However, part of me wonders why the hell would someone do the PR work of a capitalist state like DPRK without any payment of sorts. "Anti-imperialism" is the deformed leftovers of politics based on the cold war, where "revolutionaries" either aligned themselves to chinese or soviet interests. I can't think of any historical scenario where "anti-imperialism" was favorable to communists and didn't end up with them up against the wall.

"well u could use workers world as birdcage lining so there u go" Mike, why is this guy still allowed to post on Kasama? All he ever does is engage in sectarian sniping and ad hominem attacks.

I think a lot of kids my age are nostalgic for an era they never lived through. Imagine if the communists of the late sixties acted like they were living in the late 20s! Think of how different the geo-political situation was at that time. Think about how much had changed in those 40 years. Since the late 60s, we have seen the complete neo-liberalization of not only the (former) USSR, but the PRC as well, and we have seen both states rise to a place of prominence in the global imperialist system, in a way that has totally reshaped the face of imperialism. We have seen India rise from a backwards western neo-colony to a major geo-political power with nuclear capabilities. We have seen Brazil rise from a fascist third world banana republic to the state with the 7th largest GDP in the world and an (ostensibly) left-populist ruling ideology. We have seen the dismantling of the OAU and the birth of the AU. In the Arabic-speaking world we have seen the communist anti-imperialist movement crushed by jihadists and Ba'athists. We have seen the rise and fall of the Eurozone. We have seen a gradual but as of yet incomplete decline in the economic and geo-political prominence of the US, and within the US, the "War on Drugs", waged by multicultural cops against inter-racial gangs, has replaced a schematic vision of impending race war in the US. Yet I seriously think many of the latter-day "anti-imperialists" are stuck in a 21st century Cold War alternate history going on in their own heads, because they can't bring themselves to admit that the era of the Red Guards, the FLQ, the Tupamaros, the Black Panthers, the NLF, and the PFLP is over.

We are living in a changed imperialism, where the most advanced anti-imperialist guerrilla struggle is not being fought directly against the US but against India, where the main enemy of the US abroad is not communism but right-wing Islam, where a totally liberalized Russia and China sell arms to social-fascist Venezuela (a major ally of Brazil) to arrest prostitutes and anarchists and brutalize indigenous peasants, where Italy and the UK supported Gaddafi's Libya until it became untenable, and the US and NATO now supports their Islamist "enemies" in trying to create a new Libya, where Jewish-fascist settlers are as much of a threat to the state of Israel as Palestinians, and yes, a world where, over twenty years ago, North Korea (which thoroughly jettisoned even a pretense of Marxist-Leninist ideology in 1979) helped trained Mugabe's soldiers to commit genocide against ethnic Ndebele in 1980, in a perverted act of neo-colonial imperialism, the same North Korea that recently re-opened joint textile manufacturing enterprises with the South.

And this phoney, Dungeons and Dragons armchair "anti-imperialism" (mostly the vicarious past-time of US and European leftists) is as convoluted as the millennial hyper-neo-colonial global imperialist system it desperately tries and fails to make sense of. It goes something like this: In Gaza, Hamas (comprised of right-wing Sunnis) is anti-imperialist, and in the West Bank, Hezbollah (comprised of right-wing Shi'ites) is anti-imperialist. So are all radical right-wing Muslims anti-imperialists? It's not that simple. Right-wing Sunnis are anti-imperialist in Afghanistan and Pakistan,(even though a couple of decades ago the Mujahideen were imperialist and Brezhnev was anti-imperialist) but not in Libya or Syria. In Syria, where the anti-imperialists are the ruling right-wing Shi'ites, the radical right-wing Sunnis are the imperialists. Same in Iran, which is thoroughly anti-imperialist, despite its close economic relationship with China and Russia, the second and sixth largest state economies in the world, going off purchasing power parity. In Iraq during the height of the war, the radical Sunnis, the radical Shi'ites, and the Ba'ath loyalists were all somehow anti-imperialist because they all had a score to settle with the US. Saddam, like Gaddafi, was an anti-imperialist, but somehow the Ikhwans, Wahabis, and Salafis in Iraq were also anti-imperialist, unlike the Ikhwans, Wahabis, and Salafis who recently fought against Gaddafi with reluctant assistance from NATO. The Ikwans in Egypt, on the other hand, who also had NATO's reluctant moral support in outing Mubarak, are still completely anti-imperialist. Still following me?

Ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghur who are struggling against the PRC are somehow imperialist, even though in the case of the latter many are in fact radical Sunnis, some of whom were even trained by anti-imperialists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. China, despite being the 2nd largest capitalist super-power behind the US, is still somehow anti-imperialist, at least vestigially, (maybe because they're getting played by the sincerely anti-imperialist Naxals in a cold war with China's economic rival India) but the ex-Maoist Dalai Lama, China's loyal lapdog who quickly condemns young Tibetans when they commit acts of violence against Chinese police, is actually an agent of US imperialism, even though the US is China's number 1 trading partner. Meanwhile, Bhattari, who both asserts a "one China policy" in regards to Tibet and throws the Naxals under the bus by compelling them to "objectively assess their reality" by "talk[ing] unconditionally, without pre-conditions, [to] try to resolve the problem" with the Indian state, still has anti-imperialist potential. Confused yet?

Let's not forget Venezuela, which is the most anti-imperialist of all, so anti-imperialist that it is in OPEC with Suadi Arabia, (imperialist) has made thousand million dollar oil deals with ChevronTexaco, (remember, the USA is still imperialist) and helped spear-head the ecocidal and genocidal IIRSA development, which has the backing of every single state in the USAN, an intergovernmental bloc whose secretary general is the former minister of foreign affairs and national education for Colombia. Colombia isn't anti-imperialist; far from it, the FARC are anti-imperialist even though they are in the nose-candy business with Fernandinho Beiramar, one of Brazil's most powerful narco-capitalists. (And presumably an anti-imperialist himself) Of course I need not point out to anyone that the CIA also has its hand in the Columbian nose-candy business, they view FARC more as economic competition than political threat, as they candidly admitted in a July 29 1992 report: "Indeed, many traffickers would probably welcome, and even assist, increased operations against [FARC] insurgents". Hell, in the eyes of Romanian LLCO supporter R Florian, even the Zetas are anti-imperialist; "I think Mexican Drug Cartels are in fact better revolutionaries since they keep many US bourgeoise and petty bourgeoise people dependent on the Third World". Have you lost track of who is imperialist and who is anti-imperialist yet? That's the point. None of the bastards are anti-imperialist, they're all just fighting for their own tiny slice of the crumbling imperialist pie.

In summation, we live in 2012, not 1968. Grow up and get a new battle plan, folks!

Just to clarify, when I say "none of the bastards are anti-imperialist", I'm not including the Naxals, who I genuinely admire, but giving genuine communist revolutionaries guns in the hopes of destabilizing a rival imperialist power does not make the PRC anti-imperialist.

I agree with demiurge:

"When Mao forged a tactical alliance with Chiang’s Nationalist forces, Mao wasn’t necessarily adapting Chiang’s politics. Rather, Mao was relating the common points that Mao shared with Chiang as an anti-imperialist, while at the same time maintaining the identity of his communist politics.

In the same manner, cognizant of the fact that the number one enemy here is US Imperialism [a taboo subject in this site, I have observed), and that while the emergence of a radical alternative movement is not yet in the offing, we should support North Korean people’s valiant anti-imperialist struggle, and yes, lend critical support to the ruling party leaders, while we await (sorry my American leftist friends, you cannot impose your revolutionary ideas from the outside) for the balance of forces to shift."

I do disagree that the site has a taboo on anti-imperialism. The new leadership in the North already has decided the military will co-rule the country, from what I read in the news. It is unlikely this country will stay exactly the same for the next hundred years. It certainly has more potential than Iran, which already has a strong Maoist opposition. The Kim's could fall as Gaddaffy did, if that happens we can deal with it then.

I don't agree with demiurge. Only socialism can transform the relations in the oppressed nation's economy, politics and culture. That is the only way they will be free. We shouldn't be waving the flag of reactionaries, we should be fighting on the ground here, in this country, for them.

The most genuine expression of internationalism would be putting our asses on the line. Of course we can't 'force' a new order on them. We can't tip the balance of political power on the ground either. But we can cut the transport hubs off for a day or two, stand outside munitions and weapon plants, mic check the war industrial one percenters and keep recruitment centers out of our communities. We have a word with our imperialists first, before lickity-splitting to saying Quadaffi is the biggest, baddest, gold-AK-47-havin' Bawse of Africa as soon as Worker's World Party and Party for Socialism and Liberation folks did. That was weak. Besides, what the fuck do they do besides starting fan clubs around certain bourgeois dictators?