(Just to make sure no one mistakes Proyect for a principled defender of deformed workers states: his political tradition cheered the pro-capitalist, clerical nationalists of Polish "Solidarnosc" during the 1980s just as heartily as the people he is criticising.)
Defend North Korea's Right to Nuclear Weapons!
My political tradition? Boy, are you dealing with the wrong guy.
Red Cloud could better be called cloud cuckoo.
Mr. Proyect, Weren't you a supporter of the US SWP?
This is tendency is what I was referring to. During the 1980s this group, like the British International Socialsts couldn't seem to find an anti-Soviet 'opposition' movement, no matter how reactionary, that it didn't love.
I've clarified my position in the comments at Lenin's Tomb on your quote from me at the top of this post. I'd appreciate it if you could change your post to reflect this.
Just to make this absolutely clear: in my opinion it would be perverse to claim that Rhee helped the progress of democracy when he was an anti-democratic dictator who put to death even a moderate populist opposition politician like Cho Pong-am.
Just as the Soviets were ticked at Kim Il Sung, the Chinese denounced him as a "fat revisionist."
After allowing some private markets in 2002, the DPRK has recently cracked down on all that. However, scuttlebutt has it that this will probably just move the whole thing underground into corruption. The major impetus to the private market is the international food aid. The military pulls it aside and sells it on the black market.
Most accounts suggest that it is the military that is in charge in the DPRK now, not the party.
Zizek.I have to admit I am quit taken by the guy.I would love to get your take on the man.
I find my self more in agreement with you than not.So I was surprised concerning your comment about Zizek.
For sure I also have some disagreements with Zizek,but overall the guy is definitly an Intellect of the first order.
Louis,Zizek,and Lenins Tomb now there would be an interesing debate....
Thanks for noting my objection to the way that you quoted from my blog. I would not like to have my views misprepresented on the internet on such an important issue. Please check my post again and note that I say that I agree with most of the simplified propositions from the supposedly right wing history book (ie that the Korean War was not primarily a civil war, or that remnants of the Japanese colonial system continued to exist in both South and North Korea after liberation), not all of them. And particularly not the statement about Rhee.
I have never read any of Zizek's books and only know him from his incidental journalism, which I am not impressed with to say the least. I do appreciate the fact that he has not given an inch to the "decent left" but I am afraid that it takes more than that to win my respect. Here's my take on an NLR article he wrote some time ago:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/my...rnism/
Zizek.htm
The DPRK is a failed state, and was pre-programmed for failure right from the start. Marxism in whatever guise, is after, synonomous with failure. What we are witnessing now are the death throes of an evil quasi-religious Marxist regime that has imprisoned, tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. Kim Il-Sung was a monster, much in the same way that Lenin, Stalin, Ceaucescu, Hoxha and all the other Marxist ratbag murderers were. The DPRK, is on its last legs, staggering on the ridiculous platform shoes of Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il. It survives by counterfitting American cuurency, trafficking in narcotics and other criminal activities, as well as by blackmailing the international community. How ironic that it relies so heavily on the USA for food aid.
No amount of windy Marxist pseudo-intellectual claptrap can escape from the fact that North Korea is a failed state because it is Marxist tyranny and South Korea is a prosperous and successful state because it is now a capitalist democracy. And yes, I should also mention that South Korea was saved from the same dire fate as the North largely because of the efforts of the United States and other capitalist states in standing up to the communist aggression instigated by the great Marxist beast, Joseph Stalin. Yes, it really is as simple as that.
You filthy apologist for genocide.
Draw a map of the Soviet Union before & after WWII and explain how that equates to "circling the wagons."
The only thing more revolting than a marxist is an American marxist.
Fuck you, and fuck the international proletariat you rode in on.
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