this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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Korea / 조선
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A community about anything related to Korea, such as news about the countries (DPRK and south), discussion, photos and videos, the language, etc.
See also: [email protected], which is intended for memes rather than serious discussion of these topics.
The picture of this Lemmy community is magnolia (목란), the national flower of the DPRK. The background picture is a scenery of Pyongyang.
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No imperialist apologia. The DPRK didn't start the war. US imperialist invasion was not justified. Neither are their army bases in south Korea. The sanctions were and are not justified.
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Be respectful. The imperialist media likes to describe the DPRK people as completely brainwashed, and that it'd be fine to completely destroy that country in an invasion. Don't act like the imperialist media.
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Be skeptical of your sources. Don't trust the media that has been known to report many falsehoods about Korea already. (You may still link to them if they write something interesting / worth reading, just be careful.)
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For all the crowing about authority, developed* socialist states would appear to be far more democratic than anything liberal capitalism can muster up. The primary difference is that communists are not generally dishonest about power, nor want to obfuscate it because doing so would make it difficult to actually carry out a project of transitioning away from capitalism -> building socialism -> building communism. So they don't act demure about it and pretend that power is this uwu hard to understand thing that has vexed humans for millennia until something something ancient greece I guess and now we figured out ruling (yeah I know this is a simplified take on liberal views of ruling, but people really do talk about it like it's this incredibly hard thing to understand, while ignoring the specter of the capitalist class staring down on them with police and military pointed in their direction). Anyway, it's not that socialist states are exercising power or force any more than the liberal capitalist regimes; it's that they're using it differently and in the interests of, and by the direction of, the working class. A certain amount of liberal capitalist power is obfuscated through the NDA-ridden mechanics of private entities whereas the processes are made much more transparent in socialist states.
Or to put it another way, the capitalist class hides much of its "authoritarian" practice behind a corporate process and claims individual causes and plausible deniability. Socialist states force corporate processes to be on something of a leash, at the behest of the working class. And to the anti-communist, this somehow makes socialism "authoritarian" and blackbox corporations with little to no accountability "free". It's a lot of mental gymnastics.
*side note: when I say developed above, I'm referring essentially to establishing the revolution firmly enough that a process of working class representation has been constructed, something that won't necessarily be immediate right after taking power, since you have to build the mechanisms for it where they didn't formerly exist in a way that is protected by a vanguard party.
It seems like you assume I am a capitalist, I am not. Being pro democracy does not mean one is pro capitalist.
you do automatically assume countries that aren't capitalist are authoritarian, though. democracy isn't just voting between two major parties at election time.
No, the system to distribute goods and services ex capitalism, socialism, communism. Are not the same things as who's in charge and why. Ex Democracy authoritarian.
A state will usually pick one from column a and one from column b. And you can mix it up however you like.
I guess I don't know what you're trying to say then. Based on your other comment, it sounds like you're saying you think governance and economy are separate? But in practice, this is absolutely not the case. They are intertwined.
You are correct they are entwined, but you can have a democratic communistic system. Or a Democratic Socialist system. Voting does not create capital inherently.
Have you read State and Revolution by Lenin? I hate to do the "go read something" type of message, but I strongly recommend it if you haven't. He goes into the concept of a socialist state and what the point of it is. If you have no familiarity with that context, we might just be talking past each other.
I have not, so in this socialist state proposed by Lenin. Is it a Democracy? If not, then it could be improved by Democracy.
It is a dictatorship of the proletariat (working class), which sounds less democratic than it is if you go only by the word "dictatorship" and don't read it in the context of the monopoly on violence that every state has. It essentially (at risk of oversimplifying) means that the working class has democratic power and doesn't allow the capitalist class to have it. So in a word, is it a form of democracy? I would say so. But if one's view of democracy is something more akin to a populist free-for-all, they might not agree; though I'm not sure there is such a thing as a free-for-all democracy in any state or community in history. Whose interests are being represented is a critical question, especially as class and/or caste stratified societies and global systems are concerned.
I'm good with the dictatorship of the proletariat. As long as you can become one through non-violent means like getting rid of your Capital and if the proletariat can vote.
It's pretty much impossible to change a system of power without some violence because the existing state power has a monopoly on violence. But if it makes you feel any better about it, historically, it's not like communists tend to like or desire violence and sometimes the technical beginning of a revolution (where power changes hands) may have minimal violence overall. As it is meant to be a cause sympathetic to most people in the society, you would not expect that regular people will be fighting it massively, provided it does a successful job of working for their needs. But like, the newly formed Soviet Union was attacked by western powers very quickly. Or like, Fidel Castro was targeted by multiple assassination attempts and Cuba has suffered from economic embargo for decades, in the US's attempt to squeeze it out and force the conditions for an overthrow of the communists. Point being, it's not like the capitalist class hands over power willingly and historically, they can get very brutal toward those who stand against them.
Hell, we're currently seeing an example of the brutality in how the US acts with its desperate tariffs toward China and other countries. Even though the US empire sits on mounds of gold (figuratively speaking... well maybe literally too if Fort Knox still has a lot of gold), it will not be satisfied until every country bends the knee and becomes a vessel to extract from, and even then, the exploitation and extraction is not sustainable. And China refuses to and is powerful enough now to shift the balance of global power away from the US. In their case, they are doing it without even firing a shot, which is some impressively complex geopolitical organizing. The interdependent ties they have built, the manufacturing they have at home, and so on. Hopefully any actual shots fired needed in dismantling the empire will be minimal, but we have to expect and prepare for the idea that it will not all go peacefully. And some protracted fights are in progress right now, like the cause of Palestinian liberation, with the Houthis playing a pivotal part in defending them in the region.
So in summary, would love it if it was all bloodless and world liberation could be achieved without firing a shot. History, as well as the inherent problem in trying to non-violently achieve liberation out of a system that is rabidly violent, shows that's not how things happen in practice, but it's a nice sentiment.