SpookyBogMonster

forcing many users to consider the unthinkable … Death???

There are a couple different ways we could look at this.

Institutionally, there has been a general trend towards diffusion of power. Kim Il Sung was President, which like in the US, meant he was head of state, head of government, and commander in chief of the armed forces. After his death, those positions were split between multiple people.

From Wikipedia:

The functions and powers previously belonging to the president were divided between numerous officials:

The premier of North Korea;

the chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly;

and the head of the military, the chairman of the National Defence Commission (replaced by State Affairs Commission of North Korea) and supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army.

These positions are currently held by Pak Thae-song, Choe Ryong-hae, and Kim Jong Un respectively.

[Reformatted for better legibility on Lemmy]

On the other hand, I would definitely consider the personality cult around the Kims to be a troublesome aspect of the DPRK’s political culture, and I don’t think there’s really any way around that.

The reason it developed historically, however, is worth exploring. Prior to the Korean war, the Fatherland Front which made up the Revolution post WW2, was incredibly vibrant, with lots of parties and social cleavages outside of the Workers party being represented. After the Korean war, however, election results show a major rallying around the Workers Party, and the sidelining of other parties and organizations in the Fatherland Front.

The Korean war never truly ended, the US bombed the Korean peninsula so much that pilots complained there were no more targets, and people took to living in caves. So it’s understandable why, despite ostensible attempts at diffusing power, that it’s managed to centralize regardless. There’s a historic desire for stability in the face of incredible adversity.

If we want to get really in the weeds about political economy, the DPRK’s economic base is made up primarily of extractive industries, like mining, because the Korean peninsula’s bread basket is in the south, and countries with primarily extractive industries tend to develop noted centralized power structures, compared to countries with more diverse productive industries.

So a Socialist country like Cuba, which has a more agricultural economy, allowed it to develop a more diverse economy, and thus it has a healthier political culture, by contrast.

All of that said, whatever qualms of critiques of the DPRK I may have, they had a Socialist Revolution, and have kept it going, which is more than I can say as a Socialist in the US.

And I think, if we care about the people of the Korean peninsula, we should want a formal end to the Korean war, a dismantling of the DMZ, an end to the US military presence and sanctions, and an internationally mediated set of talks between north and south, about what their future together might look like.

Those things would, I suspect, go a long way in helping establishing a healthier political culture in the DPRK, as well as dignified material benefits to its people, free from arbitrary restrictions

Ehh, I know we’re in the shitpost community, but if I can be serious for a moment, this “Homophobes are actually secretly gay” schtick always rubs me the wrong way. It’s not actually that common of a phenomenon, and the idea absolves straight people of their own culpability in the oppression of queer people, by pinning it on an imagined “Gay on Gay violence”, as opposed to actual systemic factors

"The DPRK is a more normal country than tabloids, in the country that bombed it to dust, suggest" is hardly what I'd call "having a boner" for it.

Please learn a different ethical framework. Utilitarianism isn't the only one

Delete this shitty fucking post. Dems put up a garbage candidate, and they lost the easiest race imaginable, for a second time. The Democratic Party actively courted right wing voters. The left obviously didn't want that, and the right was never going to vote for you anyway. You lost. Get over it. Start doing something actually useful instead of *removed* and whining. Anyone with any institutional fealty to the Democratic Party should be so embarrased, they never show their face in public again. But instead, they just punch left, and smugly act like their own failures were someone else's fault. Anyway, I'm off to go do real activism in my local community, with organizations that actually give a shit about me and my neighbors.

There wasn’t a single American slave revolt that contributed substantially to the end of slavery.

Except I literally gave you an example of one…The massive general strike of slaves which crippled the southern economy

Fellow white transfem here, I definitely agree that there's a time and place for unaffected people to advocate for a minority. That said, if I'm being charitable to OP, there are absolutely times when minorities get talked over in ways that really suck. I once attended a listening circle/support group that came together as a piece of transphobic legislation was likely to pass in my state. I went, expecting a good mix of trans folks and allies, and that we'd be coming together to vent our frustrations and figure out a way forward. But what I got instead was a room full of mostly cis people, talking over the trans people in the room, and being all sad and morose, like the bill in question was already a foregone conclusion. Like the trans people in the room were a lost cause to mourn, rather than worth helping. And that... Sucked! That bill didn't pass, but it wasn't because any of the cis people in that room did anything to help.

Slavery didn’t end because the slaves revolted. It ended because white people fought to abolish it.

Holy revisionist history!!

White abolitionists absolutely played a role in ending chattel slavery in the United States, not the least of which were John Brown, the 48ers, and others who were doing what they did for the goal of Abolition primarily.

The vast majority of northern politicians, generals, and soldiers, were engaged in the Civil war to preserve the Union, first and foremost. Abolition was a distant secondary concern for most of them.

Furthermore, Slaves weren’t just sitting on their asses waiting to be freed by the benevolence of white people, they were agents of history all on their own. W.E.B. DuBois argued in Black Reconstruction in America that an underdiscussed turning point in the Civil War was when slaves engaged in one of the largest general strikes in American history. A strike which crippled the southern economy and thus its ability to sustain the war.

So yes, Slavery did end in very large part because the slaves revolted.

Pretty sure this is fetish content...

:)

Art can be hot fucking garbage in ways that are interesting and worth exploring

Its called Livemarks

Its called Livemarks

Not “enemies” in any ontological sense, but there’s plenty of casual transphobia on Lemmy… Like in this thread, and I have no interest in letting that shit slide

The government already has access to every phone number in existence

They used to publish them in big books, even

Did someone say Blowback? It’s a good podcast

I look 10 years younger, after having been on Estrogen for a couple years. This guy’s attempts to look younger have culminated in him getting on some Picture of Dorian Gray shit

And then there’s Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia

I can’t believe you lick the boots of the Paw Patrol

had to escape Venezuela after Maduro took power they’d become rich under the old system … They didn’t flee from Chavez? What’s the timeline here?

Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication I think this really needs to be stressed. Venezuela is a country building Socialism. Maduro and the PSUV is in power because of a genuinely incredible mass movement of communes, neighborhood committees, and other organs of grassroots democracy. This is qualitatively different from say, any of the Gulf oil monarchies I highly recommend the books Building The Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela, and Commune or Nothing: Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project, for a look at these aspects of Venezuelan politics, because it’s often papered over in discussions about the country.

Marxist does not get to exclusively define what imperialism is Marxism isn’t the only analytical lens out there, no. But the people you’re arguing with are working with that definition, which is why I took the time to clarify. Thank you for appreciating my effort post though lol

The Marxist definition of imperialism is more specific than just “big country invade small country”. In, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin lays out five aspects of what makes Imperialism: the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. The question of “Is Russia Imperialist” isn’t a moral one, it’s a technical one. So if Russia were do to something that we all agree is morally reprehensible, that’s a separate concern from whether Russia is imperialist. The technicality revolves around whether Russia has developed an oligarchy of Financial Capital, such that its invasion of Ukraine or other flexes of its influence, perpetuates the export of Russian finance capital around the world. As it stands now, I don’t think that’s currently the case, but with Marxism being a dialectal philosophy, I do wonder if this war will accelerate that merging of Bank and industrial capital that Lenin discusses. It’s a Bourgeois states, and there’s financial capital in there somewhere that absolutely has an interest in forming a Russian imperialism. So when people say “Russia isn’t Imperialist”, this is what’s being referred to. You can take it or leave it, but it’s worth getting into the weeds a bit, so we aren’t all talking passed each other

I saw the title, and hoped someone was summoning Demons from the Key of Solomon or some shit. Like they were worried about their dog getting possessed. But yeah, “am I hurting my dog’s brain with a card trick” is pretty funny too

The only Libertarians I fuck with are Libertarian Socialists. Otherwise, Ayn Rand types are cringe as hell