The protestors in Tian’anmen were a mix of Gang of Four hardliners upset at Reform and Opening Up, and student protestors backed by the CIA that wanted to liberalize the economy. They didn’t have a consistent goal. Decades later, over 90% of the public in China support their government:

The SPD are social chauvanists, not socialists.

Peek of chauvanism. Purely ignoring class, the fact that the US Empire is a settler-colonial dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and looking at models alone, as though they supercede the class character of the state. Utter nonsense.

There is only so much room on the canvas, but Chongsanri and Taean seem to be based on similar principles as the rest of the government.

Sure, the DPRK’s system of democracy applies to much more than administration alone.

I don’t mean to be only negative. There are great things about places like the USSR, China, Cuba, and probably North Korea too. However, I think that is due to the benefits of Platonic Aristocracy, not Socialism.

This is phrasemongering. Again, sterile and negative, endless gesturing and no clear points. Socialism is not some holy state of being, it’s a concrete form of society where the working classes control the state and public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy. All of that applies to the listed states, while aristocracy applies to none.

You keep saying that I can’t expect non-western countries to have “western” democracy. It sounds like you’re saying only white people can have democracy. While there are plenty of non-western liberal democracies, I agree with the criticism that they aren’t that democratic. I would look to more radical forms, like DAANES, and urge the continued research into possible undiscovered strategies.

I don’t keep saying that, actually. I have explained the difference between socialist democracy and liberal democracy, and the importance of consultative democracy. You picking DAANES as an example of what you would support just furthers this chauvanist viewpoint, treating structures that arise from socialists organizing in their own conditions and thinking you can just copy and paste to wildly different conditions. Again, you let the fact that the DPRK’s democracy doesn’t fit your individual preferences stand in the way of supporting the right of the DPRK to determine its own democratic structures based on their own conditions.

I didn’t realize Lemmy was so anti-left.

This is a cheap retort, not a real point. Marxists have attacked ultraleft dogmatists since Marx, it’s not the leftism that’s the problem, it’s the anti-communism using “left” sounding arguments, your habit of letting your fantasy socialism stand in the way of those concretely building real socialism.

I’d never read Bordiga’s writings before, but I find his critique insightful:

This is not the point that was discussed, you dodged the point to talk about something irrelevant. Nobody is saying that absolutely everything Bordiga ever wrote was wrong, but instead that he was more of a metaphysician and an idealist, and as such his analysis was closer to that of a liberal, against real progressive movements and arresting the movement of socialists in the west.

The pro-DPRK memes aren’t anti-slavery, they are pro-slavery.

This is both a non-sequitor and is bullshit. I used the slavery point as an analogy to prove why “balance” is unnecessary, and as I explained the DPRK has no slavery. Universal conscription is not slavery.

Challenge accepted, I will try to make a meme that offers solutions, and I expect no negativity in response, as that isn’t comradely.

The merit of whatever you post will be judged on its own merits, the fact that this post is highly flawed for one set of reasons does not mean a different post would not have other flaws.

Pro-socialist, or pro-DPRK? If a group is critical of the DPRK do you consider it to be not socialist?

Depends, really, but I have found the DPRK to be a great litmus test for judging how serious a socialist org is.

Making a democratic state is hard. All the (limited, biased) evidence points toward an oppressive state in North Korea. Forgive me if I suspect there might be some grain of truth in it.

This isn’t true, though. All of the legitimate evidence points towards a state governed by the working classes working in their collective interests.

It is such a great tragedy that Marx never finished “The State”. So many Marxists’ understanding of political power is skin-deep.

Vagueposting is worthless. Make a real point, don’t try to justify your anti-Marxist position on class and the state by invoking Marx. You didn’t even quotefarm Marx for this one, you just implied that what he may have written may have disagreed with his own positions and agreed with yours. This isn’t an argument.

They aren’t opposed terms, Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism is the term they use in the DPRK for juche socialism, ie Marxism-Leninism with the juche idea implemented.

Candidates can be selected from non-party members, but they are absolutely selected by the party members, and after nomination are assigned a party.

Somewhat, and you’re not even factoring in the taean system at the factory level.

The reason is humor. That, and I feel negatively.

I don’t really think taking a permanently negative, endlessly “skeptical” stance towards some of the most propagandized against countries in the world is a good thing. It reeks of chauvanism and “left” anti-communism.

You can join any political party you want in the same sense that you can work for any company you want in a Bourgeois society. That is, you can join if they want you to.

Sure? That’s a good thing, parties should be able to expel corrupt or poorly-performing members. You can’t have your cake and eat it here too, either parties have to be open and thus vulnerable to the corruption you keep hinting that they may have, or they need mechanisms for preventing such problems and dealing with them as they arise. Again, “left” anti-communism.

My deal is that I’m interested in how a bunch of Communists convinced themselves to support undemocratic political structures. I have read some Lenin and Mao, but its not the same as engaging with people who really believe in it. We’re all people, and ones with ostensibly similar political aims, and yet we came to such different conclusions.

The political structures are democratic, though. The reason you and I have come to different conclusions is that you let a fantasy of “pure socialism” in your head, free of hierarchy, problems, and class struggle, be the enemy of existing socialist systems. This is why you kept getting quoted Gramsci’s teardown of Bordiga:

Comrade Bordiga limits himself to upholding a cautious position on all the questions raised by the Left. He doesn’t say: the International poses and resolves such and such a question in this way, but the Left will instead pose and resolve it this other way. He instead says: the way the International poses and resolves problems doesn’t convince me; I fear they might slip into opportunism; there are insufficient guarantees against this; etc. His position, then, is one of permanent suspicion and doubt. In this way the position of the “Left” is purely negative: they express reservations without specifying them in a concrete form, and above all without indicating in concrete form their own point of view and their solutions. They end up spreading doubt and distrust without offering anything constructive.

The article begins with a characteristic metaphysical hypothesis: Comrade Bordiga asks whether we can 100% exclude the possibility that the Communist International will slip into opportunism. But we could also ask whether it’s possible to exclude the possibility that even Comrade Bordiga would become an opportunist, that the Pope will become an atheist, that Henry Ford will become a communist, etc. In the realm of metaphysical possibilities one can muse indefinitely, but a Marxist should pose the question differently: Is there a real possibility that the Communist International is no longer the vanguard of the proletariat, but is rather en route to becoming the expression of the workers’ aristocracy, corrupted by the bourgeoisie? When the question is posed Marxistically it becomes easy for any comrade to resolve it.

This all applies perfectly to your use of skepticism as a weapon to avoid actually grappling with the complexities of building socialism in real life. You take the possibility of problems with a system as evidence for failure.

there have recently been so many pro-DPRK memes, will you not begrudge me a few critical memes?

Why should the fact that there are pro-DPRK memes justify anti-DPRK memes? If there were a bunch of anti-slavery memes, would having a pro-slavery meme be justified in the name of “balance?” No. This argument doesn’t hold any water. My issue with your “criticism” is the same as that of Gramsci’s towards Bordiga: your critique is “sterile and negative,” it offers no solutions and only spreads doubt and division. This isn’t comradely critique, it’s just doomerism.

From where am I to learn about “reality”? Not personal testimony, not by reading legal documents, not by thinking about the consequences of consolidated political power? Am I to assume that a state doesn’t oppress its citizens and is democratic merely because it purports to be inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx?

You begin by reading and studying. Read the news, laws, and what pro-socialist groups are saying. You aren’t to “assume” anything, we must find the truth from facts. The problem here is that you are assuming the opposite, that a socialist state is anti-democratic and is oppressing its citizens for no reason.

Either you do not understand what control is, or you refuse to acknowledge a class not mentioned in the writings of Friedrich Engels.

I understand what control is, I have yet to see you make a compelling argument for why we should abandon the Marxist understanding of class. You kept trying to invent the idea of an administrator class, but experience shows that the Marxist understanding of class is correct, that the state is representative of the ruling class in society, and not outside of that.

Yes, I read the book. Thank you. It was a little out of date, but overall informative.

It was published in 2023. It isn’t as up-to-date as it would be if it were written today, but in terms of scholarly texts on socialist democracy in english it’s one of the latest.

Overall, the problems with your “critique” is that you offer no solutions, feel entirely too comfortable speaking your mind as though factual without doing due dilligence beforehand, and that this contributes towards anti-revolutionary doomerism rather than constructive, comradely criticism from a sympathetic and knowledgeable point of view.

Yea, candidates are generally chosen from a broader group than this implies, and your meme puts a negative twist on literally every aspect for no reason whatsoever. Further, membership of political parties isn’t private and locked down, you can join political parties. I don’t know what your deal is, you keep making vaguely targeted memes after getting called out for the same error of taking your personal fears of mishandling and turning them into percieved reality. Same with your repeated idea of a “political class,” where you erase the concept of class as it relates to ownership of the means of production and twist it into meaning “type of job.”

Copying over a comment I gave for you:

The DPRK has a form of socialist democracy largely similar to the USSR and PRC, but adapted to the unique conditions of the DPRK’s existence and history. From Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance:

The DPRK’s electoral democracy relates primarily to the people’s assemblies, along with local state organs, assemblies, and committees. Every eligible citizen may stand for election, so much so that independent candidates are regularly elected to the people’s assemblies and may even be elected to be the speaker or chair. The history of the DPRK has many such examples. I think here of Ryu Mi Yong (1921–2016), who moved from south to north in 1986 so as to take up her role as chair of the Chondoist Chongu Party (The Party of the Young Friends of the Heavenly Way, formed in 1946). She was elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly and became a member of the Standing Committee (then called the Presidium). Other examples include Gang Ryang Uk, a Presbyterian minister who was a leader of the Korean Christian Federation (a Protestant organisation) and served as vice president of the DPRK from 1972 until his death in 1982, as well as Kim Chang Jun, who was an ordained Methodist minister and became vice-chair of the Supreme People’s Assembly (Ryu 2006, 673). Both Gang and Kim were buried at the Patriots’ Cemetery.

How do elections to all of the various bodies of governance work? Elections are universal and use secret ballots, and are—notably—direct. To my knowledge, the DPRK is the only socialist country that has implemented direct elections at all levels. Neither the Soviet Union (in its time) nor China have embraced a complete system of direct elections, preferring—and here I speak of China—to have direct elections at the lower levels of the people’s congresses, and indirect elections to the higher levels. As for candidates, it may initially seem as though the DPRK follows the Soviet Union’s approach in having a single candidate for each elected position. This is indeed the case for the final process of voting, but there is also a distinct difference: candidates are selected through a robust process in the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. As mentioned earlier, the struggle against Japanese imperialism and liberation of the whole peninsula drew together many organisations, and it is these that came to form the later Democratic Front. The Front was formed on 25 July, 1949 (Kim Il Sung 1949), and today includes the three political parties, and a range of mass organisations from the unions, youth, women, children, agricultural workers, journalism, literature and arts, and Koreans in Japan (Chongryon). Notably, it also includes representation from the Korean Christian Federation (Protestant), Korean Catholic Federation, and the Korean Buddhist Federation. All of these mass organisations make up the Democratic Front, and it is this organisation that proposes candidates. In many respects, this is where the multi-candidate dimension of elections comes to the fore. Here candidates are nominated for consideration from all of the mass organisations represented. Their suitability and merit for the potential nomination is debated and discussed at many mass meetings, and only then is the final candidate nominated for elections to the SPA. Now we can see why candidates from the Chondoist movement, as well as from the Christian churches, have been and can be elected to the SPA and indeed the local assemblies.

To sum up the electoral process, we may see it in terms of a dialectical both-and: multi-candidate elections take place in the Democratic Front, which engages in extensive consideration of suitable candidates; single candidate elections take place for the people’s assemblies. It goes without saying that in a non-antagonistic system of class and group interaction, the criterion for election is merit and political suitability

As for the bodies of governance, there is a similar continuity and discontinuity compared with other socialist countries. Unlike the Soviet Union, there is a unicameral Supreme People’s Assembly, which is the highest authority in terms of laws, regulations, the constitution, and all leadership roles. The SPA is also responsible for the national economic plan, the country’s budget, and foreign policy directions (Han 2016, 47–48). At the same time, the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland has an analogous function to a second organ of governance. This is a uniquely Korean approach to the question of a second organ of governance. While not an organ of governance as such, it plays a direct role in electoral democracy (see above), as well as the all-important manifestation of consultative democracy (see below). A further reason for this unique role of the Democratic Front may be adduced: while the Soviet Union and China see the second body or organ as representative of all minority nationalities and relevant groups, the absence of minority nationalities in a much smaller Korea means that such a form of representation is not needed.

I highly recommend the book, it helps shed light on some often misunderstood mechanisms in socialist democracy, including the directly addressed fact that the DPRK’s voting process includes single candidate approval voting.

It isn’t illegal to be queer, but gay marriage isn’t really legal either. It’s an upbill battle ironically held back by the fact that the PRC is a democratic country, and the older generations are still more socially conservative. As time goes on it has been getting better.

I read 2! Just haven’t started 3 yet.

Lil guy’s on volume 3, he means business!

Both. The state is controlled by the working classes, and the administrators themselves are the same class. The DPRK has a form of consultative democracy outlined in the book I showed you.

I’ve explained class and how there isn’t some separate class in the DPRK. The landlords were appropriated from, same as the bourgeoisie. The working classes control the state, and have the same class interests as the people outside of the state apparatus. So far your only point against it is an unsupported “potential,” which is the same metaphysical error made by Bordiga and the “Left” communists.

The government does not exist outside of class society, but within it. The classes in power in the DPRK are the working classes, there is extremely minimal private property and that private property is largely foreign owned. The structures in place were put there by the organized working classes. When you erase class analysis, or diverge from it by inventing new classes that don’t actually fit how we understand class, you run into problems.

As for actions you’ve taken that are upsetting, I already explained in earlier comments the regular strawmanning and misframing you’ve done of my position, and the positions of others.

See, this is the problem again. The form of socialist society that exists in Korea is one that was formed through direct practice and based on Korea’s existing situation. It’s what works for them, regardless of whether or not you approve of the “model.” You’re saying it isn’t “promising,” more gesturing to potentials of misconduct that you percieve based on your own comparison to the ideal, perfect, impossible version of socialism that exists purely in imagination.

The problem rests on your belief that you know better than the millions of people in the DPRK over the last century how to run their country, without doing the study to see how and why their structures were formed. For example, the Democratic Front is an integral part to their socialist democracy, and this has heritage in liberation from colonialism by Japan. The various councils and committees have heritage in the culture formed in Korea and were solidified into a state.

Then, you go and strawman people and misrepresent them. Though you maintain a polite tone, your actual actions speak against that, and thus you aren’t acting in a comradely way like you first seemed to be. It’s frustrating.

I’ve already explained what class is, the nature of socialist society, and given you ample resources on how the DPRK was formed, its democratic processes, and the context of the Korean War and liberation from Japan. I’ve also summarized a good deal of this for you in the thread linked, and you’re now acting like I didn’t at all do that and that my points are based purely on “pinky-swears.” Again, it’s dishonest framing, the third time in a row. From the meme to your response to my comment and this response, you’ve been misframing my point over and over again.

As for your support for decolonization and an end to sanctions, that’s good! Just not sure what you actually mean by not supporting someone but actually you do support them. I suppose simply saying the words “I support X” doesn’t mean anything by itself, it matters how you organize and what you do in concrete terms, but you made it clear that you don’t support the DPRK and are happy strawmanning those who do.

You specifically used “seeking asylum in South Korea” as an example, a country at war with the DPRK. Your dogmatic opposition to the measures a country victim to genocide by the US Empire decided on out of necessity is plain chauvanism at work. Do you think the DPRK wants to be at war? Do you believe the people wouldn’t rather be at peace, in a unified and decolonized Korea? Universal conscription, and the prevention of treason, are both decisions not imposed on the people from above, but are rational decisions made due to the extreme circumstances the DPRK is in.

The way you treat existing socialism seems to be looking for potential for wrongdoing, or trying to find an excuse to not support them in their struggles. This is just classic western leftism, letting your perfect, imaginary socialism exist in your head as an enemy of existing countries. You quite literally likened conscription to slavery in that thread, ignoring the fact that there is no class exploiting the people in this equation, and that these measures were a matter of survival.

It’s thanks to the millitarization of the DPRK that they are still a country to begin with, and not attacked by the US Empire like Iran. You letting survival measures give you an excuse to not support their struggles against imperialism is just idealism. The path to ending universal conscription is to support decolonization of Korea and an end to sanctions, not finger wagging them for deciding what they need to do to survive.

Sure, you can take those out of context, I still stand by them. You kept talking about the potential for mistreatment, and about the idea of a “political class” as distinct from the working classes, and not a subset of them. Even here, you never really gave an example of real mistreatment beyond universal conscription in a time of war.

This thread here that you take this from had hundreds of replies from different people, and despite all of this you kept talking about potentials for misconduct, not pointing at concrete reality. That’s why I’m saying the meme makes no sense, nobody is saying a state attacking the working classes is necessary for communism, and you never gave an actual example of it beyond the potential you feared.

By quote-mining and erasing the dozens of comments between this specific back and forth, you make it seem like I didn’t give you many well-sourced comments, like this one:

It comes across as dishonest vagueposting on your part, and because you didn’t link the comments, you give the impression that we just had a one-off comment back and forth where I’m entirely unreasonable. I detest this dishonest framing.

I don’t get it, I’ve never seen this argument made

Hell yea, as much as I wish I could live on the Red Planet I’ll have to settle for centrism.

Based on my extremely limited Korean skills, your translation seems to be correct in conveying intention, though there may be context or subtext I don’t understand.