If you're response to my above comment is that I can only assume you cant read for comprehension.

Practise reading for a comprehension. Its an important skill.

It's called object oriented appraisal. You don't have to see something in black/white or good/bad.

That's simplistic.

You can say "there's some good things and some bad".

There were many things good about really existing socialist systems. The books were excellent. 3 out of 5 books were produced in the Soviet Union when it existed. They were the first country into space. First satellite into space. There were also many problems.

That's hardly me saying it was glorious. But then american leftist, after decades of anti communist propaganda poured over their heads, can't say anything positive about any existing socialist countries without dismissing them as stalinist monstrosities despite the siege their capitalist nation put on those countries to push them toward authoritarianism.

By the way authoritarianism wasn't something any of those people wanted. Not in 1917 Russia and not 1980 Nicaragua.

Where they came in democratically they were just murdered and deposed with a puppet put in that was friendly to US interests.

Oh wow ad hominems already?

I'm not a stalinist and don't care for Stalin. So check your assumptions and privilege.

Wow jeez no need to get upset. Just making an observation

I have literally seen one comment from you not bitching about sudo

Yeah words are hard.

Well now thats something I can get on board with.

At the same time I cant begrudge people that lived through the horror of the 50s in NK and who have a orange faced gimp threatening to destroy them who turn to their state for security.

Yes right down to 1993 when 3000 communists were shot trying to stop Yeltsin illegally dissolving the Supreme Soviet when people started crossing over to capitalism.

Nobody could earn great wealth off the labour of another human being in the Soviet union Sure some leaders had great holiday dachas, big inauspicious houses outside the Kremlin and party members were privileged with consumer goods being first in line etc.

But they didn't have the capitalist mode of production that sought imperialism in the way the west does: To invest capital to accumulate more to capture more markets to invest more etc.

The spread of wealth was more like 4/1 compared to capitalisms (if you compare bill gates or forbes or koch brothers) 10000000/1 to average wage earner.

The soviet union typically made trade agreements that were outright charity or at least heavily in favour of the third world. Global capitalism does not do this but rather treats debtor nations like war spoils and colonies.

I think they were broadly considered socialist though both suffered from revisionism, the lure of the west etc.

Theres a reason China doesn't have a military base outside China and why the US has over 900 worldwide.

You think any nation under the threat of US imperialism should dissolve their states, their standing armies, their methods of hierarchy and what?

Open the gates of their coumtry so the US can fuck them five ways from Sunday, murder 20 percent of their population, steal their resources and then not report it in their newspapers like the did in the 50s and like they refuse to report on the US inflicted famine in Yemen?

I mean sure you could do that and be a principled leftist. You'd also be a dead leftist.

Its not for me to say ultimately how people under the bootheel of US imperialism should organise to protect themselves.

But if i were asked for advice I would say dissolving your state whilst under the threat of the Great Satan would be the stupidest thing you can do.

Again, That doesnt mean I support the organisation of human society into states.

Thats exactly what I said. States eh, cant get enough of them. Yummy yummy states /s

Whilst your putting words in my mouth ill put some in yours: Thanks for saying how good I look today. Its probably the shampoo and a good nights sleep

Socialism is way, way more vague and means different things to different socialists.

Most socialists see it as an intermediary stage before communism.

Some see it as an end game of itself IE. Worker owned production and decision making.

Etc.

Actually you could be murdering people on the street (much like the RAF in Germany or the Red Brigades in Italy) and I doubt many people would say those people weren't socialists.

A lot of nations call themselves democracies but by my definition they certainly aren't.

The US calls itself such a democracy it thinks it can export democracy via the gun and the bomb and wholesale murder of millions of people.

Now I dont doubt that americans think their country is a democracy.

But its a far cry from Platos definition 2000 years ago being representatives by lotto and no man can earn 6 times the wage of another.

You would have to go back to the ancient pharoahs to get the wage disparity the US now has been a minimum wage worker and say Bill Gates, Walmart family, the average politician in congress.

FYI Chomsky already compared the way the black book of communism counted deaths and applied that methodology to capitalist India alone between 1945-1979 and all the communist nations since 1917

There tens of millions more deaths in india alone

http://spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.htm

State capitalism is a useless phrase.

In Towards a New socialism Paul Cockshot makes the point that attempting to build society off an idea can be socialist merely by being called socialist by its creators because its an idea you're attempting to implement.

Now a lot of the 20th century states said they were working towards communism whilst also describing themselves as communist.

(Kruschevs famous "we'll reach communism by the 1980s")

And to be fair thats how it would happen. After generations of sweeping away capitalist rule and people forgetting capitalist relations and commodity production social relations at which point people no longer even remember the materialist conditions of capital accumulation and commodity production

I don't know. Seems quite easy to say such a thing when safely ensconced within a virulently anti communist and anti leftist society and say you "reject all states" when it comes to imperialism.

Thats just simply a false equivilence. And ignores how the entire world is divided under global capitalism(IE. Into states).

So when it comes to anti imperialism struggles and not wanting disgusting western boots on the ground of iraq, Syria, yemen, somalia, north korea you can simply go:

Yeah but fuck those guys i reject all states.

Must be a very comforting position to take.

Its convenient when anarchists and socialists of various stripes and "left intellectuals" reject tyrants rather than stand against all imperialism, it means and stands for nothing less than the status quo and a war against a peoples that already suffered the devastating atrocity of having 20 percent of their population murdered by the super power of the world.

Which is what the US did to the dprk in the 50s

And continues to do by blockading their shipping ports.

We're at nazi germany already?

Nazi germany systematically exterminated 11 million people in one year.

North korea has been barraged by propaganda since the korean war.

The defectors with the most outlandish tales sold their stories to south korean tabloids and became celebrities/rich off them. As that money dried up and for those that didn't share similar tales they (as the article indicates) just ended up in bedsits living a meagre existence and discriminated against in SK society.

Why are so many bootlickers on this website?

The US has killed far more people than anyone else on the planet in 70 years. They imprison as percent of their population, more people than Iran, russia, china or north korea or any civilisation that has ever existed.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738

Why do people beat the "humanitarian intervention" against a nation that hasn't invaded anyone since SK in the 50s?

I dread the answer given my question about PK but here we go:

What are incels?

Edit: Nevermind I just read a guardian article. That'll be the "thing I wish didn't learn today".

Broadly agree with all of what your saying.

It does question whether North Korea is the hell the US likes to portray it though. These people afterall left NK for a better life. And South korea cant provide that?

We already know a lot of news out of NK is horseshit: The uncle ripped apart by a pack of dogs, the man strapped to an AA gun for execution...

Both turning up in government posts 6 months later and instead of being plastered across front page news if makes itself for page 16 in a small box under a bigger article.

The west fabricates such news often and has to retract it when those claims are demonstratably false (IE. Claimed an execution of a man still alive).

Nks real sin is they resist global capitalism in the same way Saddam, Ghaddafi and 75 other governments have since 1945

And in that I mean they use their labor, their land and natural resources for themselve and don't open their countries up for western extraction. To become a cheap source of labor for global capital, to sell their natural resources for pennies on the pound.

I'm sure NK isn't a great place. Is it likely the worst news about NK is true though? That they imprison generations at a time? I highly doubt it if 1/4 defectors want to leave the incredibly wealthy ROK and receive punishment upon returning.

That propaganda is probably about as true as Saddams 45 minutes to launch wmd, as true as the gulf of tonkin incident etc.

And the only real reason Trump wants a wa ris because it does to every US president that goes to war: Shores up their approval ratings.

you mean Rojava that did a deal with the US for a military base?

Spitshine those boots with your tongue cos you missed a bit

Let me clarify. I don't like the DPRK either but it is point blank not my place to say anything other about the place than to say "no war with DPRK".

The DPRK became a batshit enclosed society off the back of the US wiping out 20 percent of their population.

Imagine (if you're american) what that would do to your society if 1 in 5 people you know was murdered by, say, Iranian bombs in the 1950s. Do you think the psychological trauma would still be deeply embedded in your country?

My assumption would be: it would for any country .

But if comrades in NK were asking for your help would you not? No sense of international solidarity? Why do borders matter?

It matters because the americans think they have the right to invade whereever they like under the pretext of "humanitarian intervention" and those that would normally be inclined to protest against a war with another nation are cowed into a corner of being labelled a "Saddam hussein/Assad/DPRK sympathiser/supporter!"

No society is better off where the US has invaded since 1945.

It is point blank not your place to say anything else other than "No war with dprk". Anything else, quite frankly, is just shoring up the status quo for the resident Dotard in office to go to war with the DPRK under the pretext of "weapons of mass destruction" so they can encircle China (and Russia who also shares a border) for geopolitical looting.

No sense of international solidarity?

I protest to ensure my country doesn't get on the invade and destroy train the US is drumming up. I've no intention of engaging in politics of a country I know nothing about and is a closed society (unsurprisingly) because of what the Jackboots in the US did to it in the 1950s.

Every leftist shoudl be an anti-imperialist before they're a communist/anarchist etc.

However bad capitalism is imperialism is much, much worse.

I'm not a tankie.

I just assert its up to the people of the dprk to depose their government not you or some other bootlicking yankee