[Hong Wu]

As a well traveled and (if I must say so myself) a well educated person, I've had the privilege of learning a lot of things. Some of these things include what communism in actual communist countries is really like, as distinct from what western liberals believe communism is like.

tl;dr -- all of the socially liberal stuff that could be found in early communist philosophy, and which is still found in western communist musings, has been abandoned by literally every communist country that exists.

China
In China you need to apply for a permit before you have a child. In some prefectures, such as Beijing prefecture, having a child outside of marriage is illegal. If you have such a child they will either try to make you have an abortion, or if they can't make the woman have an abortion they will put the child up for adoption and sterilize the woman. In other prefectures it is not technically illegal to have a child outside of marriage but good luck getting a permit as a single mother; it won't happen.

Gay marriage is of course illegal and pro-gay dialogue faces government censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_righ ... censorship

North Korea
North Korea is harder to quantify since information about the country largely comes from defectors whose stories don't always add up. This is not as strange as it might sound if you have lived in east Asia; far more things are handled unofficially or under the table than are in the west. Here is a recent article on the subject: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... traception

Growing up in Pyongyang I never heard the word condom. I didn’t know what one was.

Even in the early days after my defection to South Korea I didn’t know why they existed, how to use one or where to buy them.

I was shocked that sex education was taught in schools across the country, and to see female students being taught how to use a condom in the classroom. Is this what happens in a capitalist society?

Vietnam
Same sex marriages are technically legal in Vietnam, in the sense that you can have one, it just won't receive any form of government recognition or support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_righ ... ationships

Cuba
Same sex marriage is illegal in Cuba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_righ ... sex_unions

Venezuela
Not legally recognized in Venezuela: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_righ ... nezuela#Re

It should probably go without saying that things like transvestite rights and whatever else people might come up with are not even considered issues in these countries.

One response to this might be that they will liberalize over time, but if communism and social liberalism go together, why are all of the non-communist countries socially liberal and all of the communist countries are socially conservative?

[JohnRawls]

As a well traveled and (if I must say so myself) a well educated person, I've had the privilege of learning a lot of things. Some of these things include what communism in actual communist countries is really like, as distinct from what western liberals believe communism is like.

tl;dr -- all of the socially liberal stuff that could be found in early communist philosophy, and which is still found in western communist musings, has been abandoned by literally every communist country that exists.

China
In China you need to apply for a permit before you have a child. In some prefectures, such as Beijing prefecture, having a child outside of marriage is illegal. If you have such a child they will either try to make you have an abortion, or if they can't make the woman have an abortion they will put the child up for adoption and sterilize the woman. In other prefectures it is not technically illegal to have a child outside of marriage but good luck getting a permit as a single mother; it won't happen.

Gay marriage is of course illegal and pro-gay dialogue faces government censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_righ ... censorship

North Korea
North Korea is harder to quantify since information about the country largely comes from defectors whose stories don't always add up. This is not as strange as it might sound if you have lived in east Asia; far more things are handled unofficially or under the table than are in the west. Here is a recent article on the subject: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... traception



Vietnam
Same sex marriages are technically legal in Vietnam, in the sense that you can have one, it just won't receive any form of government recognition or support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_righ ... ationships

Cuba
Same sex marriage is illegal in Cuba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_righ ... sex_unions

Venezuela
Not legally recognized in Venezuela: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_righ ... nezuela#Re

It should probably go without saying that things like transvestite rights and whatever else people might come up with are not even considered issues in these countries.

One response to this might be that they will liberalize over time, but if communism and social liberalism go together, why are all of the non-communist countries socially liberal and all of the communist countries are socially conservative?

Because communism died with the death of the Soviet Union basically. There are several "spots" that still remain but , in general, communism is dead. Some of the countries are communist in name only on your list.

If you compare 60-70s etc between communist world and capitalist world at that given time, you will see though, that communism was more open on social issues and class issues compared to capitalism while capitalism was more open on cultural and environmental issues.

[The Immortal Goon]

North Korea is Juche, not communist. It is explicitly not Marxist.

If you're legitimately curious about this, it goes back to the beginning of the 20th century with the Connolly/DeLeon controversy.

Basically, DeLeon (a "pope of Marxism") thought that the socialists should begin acting like we lived in communist society even though they didn't. Since nobody knew what communism would look like, they had to try and predict what they imagined it would be like, and they decided that Babel's works would provide a blueprint for it. For DeLeon, it basically meant hippy free love.

Connolly thought this was incredibly stupid as material conditions provide the base for society that dictate the superstructure on things like marital relations. That is to say, since we don't live in communism it is impossible to say what it will look like, and since we don't live in communism there's no reason to live like you feel it will be like.

Lenin ended up agreeing with Connolly.

I am an old man, and I do not like it. I may be a morose ascetic, but quite often this so-called ‘new sex life’ of young people and frequently of the adults too seems to me purely bourgeois and simply an extension of the good old bourgeois brothel. All this has nothing in common with free love as we Communists understand it. No doubt you have heard about the famous theory that in communist society satisfying sexual desire and the craving for love is as simple and trivial as ‘drinking a glass of water’.

...“As a Communist I have no liking at all for the ‘glass-of water’ theory, despite its attractive label: ‘emancipation of love.’ Besides, emancipation of love is neither a novel nor a communistic idea. You will recall that it was advanced in fine literature around the middle of the past century as ‘emancipation of the heart’. In bourgeois practice it materialized into emancipation of the flesh. It was preached with greater talent than now, though I cannot judge how it was practiced. Not that I want my criticism to breed asceticism. That is farthest from my thoughts. Communism should not bring asceticism, but joy and strength, stemming, among other things, from a consummate love life. Whereas today, in my opinion, the obtaining plethora of sex life yields neither joy nor strength. On the contrary, it impairs them. This is bad, very bad, indeed, in the epoch of revolution.

You'll note that, like Connolly, he was rather conservative in his outlook but (like Connolly) he recognized that this was a personal decision on his part. Communism should not bring his asceticism that he has as "an old man" but something vital. During the revolution it was pointless, and these things are all very consistent with Lenin's actions in decriminalizing homosexuality and largely putting Kollontai in charge of dealing with any such questions.

The society she saw during the revolution, she described:

History has never seen such a variety of personal relationships – indissoluble marriage with its “stable family”, “free unions”, secret adultery; a girl living quite openly with her lover in so-called “wild marriage”; pair marriage, marriage in threes and even the complicated marriage of four people – not to talk of the various forms of commercial prostitution. You get the same two moral codes existing side by side in the peasantry as well – a mixture of the old tribal way of life and the developing bourgeois family. Thus you get the permissiveness of the girls’ house, side by side with the attitude that fornication, or men sleeping with their daughters-in-law, is a disgrace. It’s surprising that. in the face of the contradictory and tangled forms of present-day personal relationships, people are able to preserve a faith in moral authority, and are able to make sense of these contradictions and thread their way through these mutually destructive and incompatible moral codes. Even the usual justification – “I live by the new morality” – doesn’t help anyone, since the new morality is still only in the process of being formed. Our task is to draw out from the chaos of present-day contradictory sexual norms the shape, and make clear the principles, of a morality that answers the spirit of the progressive and revolutionary class.

Personally she thought that everyone should live in a state of serial-monogamy. But, again, like Connolly and Lenin, knew that this was something that was going to shake out along with the revolution instead of something to be established. Homosexuality legitimized, abortion legalized, all of that stuff. Of the latter:

It is just for this reason that the revolutionary power gave women the right to abortion, which in conditions of want and family distress, whatever may be said upon this subject by the eunuchs and old maids of both sexes, is one of her most important civil, political and cultural rights. However, this right of women too, gloomy enough in itself, is under the existing social inequality being converted into a privilege.

Regardless, Stalin took over next and he used the theory of Socialism in One Country. This was, counter to Lenin's thought that: "is a workers’ state with a bureacratic twist to it. We have had to mark it with this dismal, shall I say, tag."

Now that Stalin had decided they had not only built a workers' state, but that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were wrong in their definition of socialism being worldwide and now the USSR was fully socialist, they were to realize what a socialist society looked like.

Like DeLeon, then, it was up to them to decide what sex in a communist society looked like and dictate it from there.

So all the cautious evolution of the old era goes out the window and now, explicitly counter to Lenin, the job of the "old man" was "criticism to breed asceticism".

Since the other states you mentioned were post SIOC, they received the same un-Leninist slant to it. I want to make a note here to point out that this alone does not make them anti-Leninist necessarily, just that in this aspect (if even alone) it was not what Lenin preached or practiced. Nor was it what Connolly explaining earlier when frustrated with DeLeon's attempt to build a policy.

The issue is, in part, whether the revolution is a breathing process with an end goal, or the revolution is dead with no advancement left to be made. It is not the rank hypocracy you try to make from it, but a fundamental, vital, and old question in Marxist circles.

[Victoribus Spolia]

@The Immortal Goon,

Didn't they try the free-love method in Soviet Russia for a time that resulted in it not working out and having to reverse public policy? (even going as far as rewarding women for their levels of child birth)? I'm pretty sure it wasn't purely theoretical at the start and they actually made some unsuccessful social engineering experiments on the general public....Correct me if i'm wrong as I know you are the resident expert of Marxism and would likely have the full low-down...Thanks.

[The Immortal Goon]

@The Immortal Goon,

Didn't they try the free-love method in Soviet Russia for a time that resulted in it not working out and having to reverse public policy? (even going as far as rewarding women for their levels of child birth)? I'm pretty sure it wasn't purely theoretical at the start and they actually made some unsuccessful social engineering experiments on the general public....Correct me if i'm wrong as I know you are the resident expert of Marxism and would likely have the full low-down...Thanks.

That's more or less what I was saying. Under Lenin it wasn't the government's business as the government was still working on becoming a workers' state. The theoretic underpinnings were that the society itself, if it became socialist, would work it out from the bottom up (essentially).

Stalin reversed Lenin's view of that and declared that not only was the USSR socialist, but this policy needed to be worked top-down.

It wasn't because one system worked better than another. These are both Marxist views that go back to the 19th century, so I'm not trying to throw shade on either side.

But this wasn't a moral victory for either way, nor is it some kind of contradiction on either side.

[Victoribus Spolia]

@The Immortal Goon,

How familiar are you with the sociological work of Pitirim Sorokin?

[The Immortal Goon]

Sort of a reactionary traditionalist, yeah? Like, society never changes and we just keep folding over on the same three types of social interactions, if I recall after glancing at the internet for a moment to job my memory. I seem to remember him in some class or another many years ago.

What of him?

[Victoribus Spolia]

Sort of a reactionary traditionalist, yeah? Like, society never changes and we just keep folding over on the same three types of social interactions, if I recall after glancing at the internet for a moment to job my memory. I seem to remember him in some class or another many years ago.

What of him?

Well, he was sort of well known in American academia in the mid twentieth century for his accounts of the rise of the revolutionary government in Russia (he kept extensive diaries of early policies and actions in Soviet Russia). I would put him in a class of thought with Carle Zimmerman of Harvard, and J.D. Unwin of Oxford, in discussing the significance of sexual conduct and familial relations on broader society (I would almost consider myself an Unwinite).

He wrote extensively about the early program of the revolutionary government in Russia, and since he was a prominent anti-communist russian who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States and was a prominent contributor to theories in Sociology at Harvard, I just assumed you would have likely heard of him or his accounts of the Soviet program regarding sexuality and familial relations.

For instance,

During the first stage of the Revolution, its leaders deliberately attempted to destroy marriage and the family. Free love was glorified by the official "Glass of Water Theory. If a person is thirsty, so went the party line, it is immaterial what glass he used when satisfying his thirst. It is equally unimportant how he satisfies his sex hunger. The legal distinction between marriage and casual sexual intercourse was abolished. The communist law only spoke of contracts between males and females for the satisfaction of their desires either for an indefinite or a definite period, a year, a month, a week, or even for a single night. One could marry and divorce as many times as he desired. Husband and wife could obtain a divorce without the other being notified. It was not even necessary that marriage be registered. bigamy and polygamy were even permissible under the new provisions...premarital relations were praised and extramarital relations were considered normal. Within a few years, hordes of wild, homeless children became a menace to the Soviet Union. Millions of lives, especially of young girls, were wrecked.; divorces sky-rocketed, as did abortions. the hatreds and conflicts of polygamous and polyandrous mates mounted rapidly, and so did psychoneurosis....The results were so appalling that the government was forced to reverse its policy. the propaganda of the glass of water theory was declared to be counterrevolutionary, and its place was taken by the official glorification of pre-marital chastity and of the sanctity of marriage. Considering that the whole cycle occurred under a single regime is highly informative. It clearly shows the destructive consequences of unlimited sexual freedom."

- Pitirim Sorokin, The American Sex Revolution, 1956.

This is a well known quote, and is included on this online slideshow here: https://www.slideshare.net/jegonzal/fam ... iondecline

It seems to me, that what @Hong Wu, has observed about communist regimes regarding their policies pertaining to human sexuality and marriage may be better explained by the combining of socialist and nationalist conceptions of society. You mentioned the North Korean Juche philosophy, which essentially combines and morphs a spiritual korean racialist-nationalism with marxism to create a unique system of thought. Like all nationalisms tend to do, marriage and childbearing for the nation is glorified, and it seems that this strain of thought better explains, especially in patriarchal and racialist Asian societies, the emphasis on conservative sexual and familial morality and structures.

Even in Russia, you take a border-line medieval people of a very different social structure to what was proposed in Marxism, you cannot expect the overthrow of normal and historic sexual relations to bode well. It therefore seems to me, that rather than speculating as to which branch of an internal Leninist debate these nations took, it would be more productive to assume that nationalist thought was allowed to permeate their varieties of Marxism, and that the regimes in question, felt that it was in their interests to do so.

More broadly, it seems, pragmatically speaking, that none of these regimes could have survived otherwise; especially, if Sorokin is to be believed.

[The Immortal Goon]

Well, he was sort of well known in American academia in the mid twentieth century for his accounts of the rise of the revolutionary government in Russia (he kept extensive diaries of early policies and actions in Soviet Russia). I would put him in a class of thought with Carle Zimmerman of Harvard, and J.D. Unwin of Oxford, in discussing the significance of sexual conduct and familial relations on broader society (I would almost consider myself an Unwinite).

He wrote extensively about the early program of the revolutionary government in Russia, and since he was a prominent anti-communist russian who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States and was a prominent contributor to theories in Sociology at Harvard, I just assumed you would have likely heard of him or his accounts of the Soviet program regarding sexuality and familial relations.

Maybe a little. Like I said, he sounds vaguely familiar. His view of Lenin seems to be directly contradicted by Lenin (which may be fair, it's more than likely he was looking at what was on the ground and applying that to Lenin).

From everything I know the Soviets, even under Lenin, hardly pushed any kind of "glass of water" theory. Even Kollontai, as mentioned, was into serial monogamy. Though it was far more free than the West was at the time. Except for prostitution and children female sexual partners, the Soviets were much harder on those two things than they were in the West.

Regardless, even if we are to take his account as completely accurate and true, it only undermines the whining cry for hypocrisy in the OP.

It seems to me, that what @Hong Wu, has observed about communist regimes regarding their policies pertaining to human sexuality and marriage may be better explained by the combining of socialist and nationalist conceptions of society.

North Korea does not claim to want socialism, let alone communism.

The North Korean Worker's Party (not named a Communist Party) has not been an effective organization since the 70s, when the military superseded it—a process started in 1961.

In their own words, this is what the North Korean state says about Marxism:

The Korean revolution which opened the age of Juche could not advance even a step forward unless it was conducted in an independent and creative way from the start. It was a difficult and complex revolution which had to deal with the tasks of the anti-imperialist, national-liberation revolution, with formidable Japanese imperialism as the target, and those of the anti-feudal, democratic revolution simultaneously. It was an arduous revolution which had to hew out an untrodden path.

What is worse, a strong tendency towards flunkeyism appeared in those days within our anti-Japanese national-liberation movement and communist movement to hamper the advance of the revolution. The nationalists and self-styled Marxists followed the evil practices of flunkeyism and factional strife which had resulted in the country's ruin in the past. They did not try to carry out the revolution by their own initiative but dreamed of achieving independence by depending on foreign forces. At that time, those who were allegedly engaged in the communist movement formed their own party groups and called frequently at the Comintern to gain its recognition. And they endeavored to imitate mechanically established theories and experience of others, without taking into consideration the historical conditions and specific realities in our country where a colonial and semi-feudal society was in existence. In this way, flunkeyism and dogmatism were very serious obstacles in the way of revolution.

Drawing on serious lessons derived from such flunkeyism and dogmatism, the leader clarified the truth that a revolution should be carried out not by anyone's approval or instruction but by one's own conviction and on one's own responsibility and that all problems arising in the revolution should be solved in an independent and creative way. This is another starting point of the Juche idea.

As stated previously, the leader advanced the Juche idea, a new revolutionary idea, on the basis of practical experience and lessons gained in the revolutionary struggle.

The leader has conducted ideological and theoretical activities invariably based on the revolutionary practice, and developed and enriched the revolutionary idea and theories in the course of giving answers to problems arising in the revolutionary practice. Only on the basis of revolutionary practice can one apply existing theories in accordance with the interests of the revolution and actual conditions in one's own country and search for new truths and create new ideas and theories.

In his early years of revolutionary activities, the leader was well versed in Marxism-Leninism. But he did not confine himself to applying Marxism-Leninism to the Korean revolution but pioneered a new phase of revolutionary theory from a steadfast Juche-based standpoint and resolved the problems arising in the revolutionary practice from a unique angle. The leader discovered the truth of Juche idea in the course of the struggle against bigoted nationalists and bogus Marxists, flunkeyists and dogmatists, while hewing out a new path for the revolution.

So the wonderful Juche system they used came about, in part, from fighting against Marxists.

What is this Juche ideal?

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is guided in its activities by the Juche idea and the Songun idea, a world outlook centred on people, a revolutionary ideology for achieving the independence of the masses of the people.

First let's look and Songun:

Songun politics is rooted in the military-priority ideology that embodies the Juche idea. President Kim Il Sung is a founder of Songun ideology and an outstanding leader of the Songun revolution. He inherited a revolutionary heritage of two pistols from his father and made a determination to restore the lost country with an armed struggle...

...For almost 70 years starting from the mid-1920s when he embarked on the road of revolution with a high ambition for national liberation, he held fast to the line of giving priority to arms and the military and carried out the military-priority principle through. President Kim Il Sung, in the early 1960s, saw the inheritance of the Songun revolutionary leadership as the fundamental in the inherited revolutionary cause and assigned General Kim Jong Il with the task to be in charge of the army work together with the party work.

This is how the Songun' revolutionary leadership of General Kim Jong Il started with his on-spot guidance to the Guard Seoul Ryu Gyong Su 105 tank division of the Korean People's Army in August Juche 49 (1960). It is since then he gave his on-spot guidance to over hundreds of army units for nearly 10 years by the end of 1960.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he determined as a general task of army building to make the Korean People's Army as the army of Leader and as the army of the Party, and he worked hard to lead the efforts to strengthen the army both politically and ideologically, and militarily and technically. In the 1990s, there came to be a great change in political composition of the world and the balance of forces. The US and the imperialist reactionary forces intensified imprecedent military aggressive manoeuvres to stifle the country, thus laying obstacles in the way of Korean revolution.

General Kim Jong Il, based on a scientific analysis of the changed situation, declared at home and abroad that the politics of DPR Korea is Songun politics and established full the mode of Songun politics. At the first session of the 10th Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK in September Juche 87 (1998), a new system of state mechanism was made with the National Defence Commission as in the focus.

So it's making the military mechanism of revolution. This is the opposite of Marxism which maintains that the working class is the mechanism of revolution. Even in the worst possible example of Marxists in charge, the military is at least theoretically an arm of the working class. In North Korea, this is explicitly the opposite. And this completely anti-Marxist stance is the central philosophy of the state.

Let's look at the Juche:

The Juche idea is based on the philosophical principle that man is the master of everything and decides everything. It is the man-centred world outlook and also a political philosophy to materialize the independence of the popular masses, namely, a philosophy which elucidates the theoretical basis of politics that leads the development of society along the right path.

The Government of the DPRK steadfastly maintains Juche in all realms of the revolution and construction.

Which is explicitly against Marxism, which hinges on the opposite idea:

Man is a species-being, not only because in practice and in theory he adopts the species (his own as well as those of other things) as his object, but – and this is only another way of expressing it – also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being.

The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists physically in the fact that man (like the animal) lives on organic nature; and the more universal man (or the animal) is, the more universal is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives. Just as plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc., constitute theoretically a part of human consciousness, partly as objects of natural science, partly as objects of art – his spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment which he must first prepare to make palatable and digestible – so also in the realm of practice they constitute a part of human life and human activity. Physically man lives only on these products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, etc. The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body – both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.

And this is important, because the false alienation of this comes from capitalism and the rest of Marx's thoughts come from here. Again, explicitly the opposite philosophy of Marxists. In the Juche world, "People can do anything!" For the Marxists, material conditions of which man is part and dependent upon is what matters.

The purges of the communists was one of the main functions of the Juche (as the North Koreans themselves say), and the author even goes on to completely verify and vindicate Juche is the opposite of Marx and Lenin. The awesome thing is that it adds another element for it not being Marxist at all in pointing out that it's an old Korean application of Confucianism. Which, again, could only be considered not Marxist.

...Kim’s unstable power during and immediately following the Korean War caused him to deploy ideological purges in order to consolidate his political position, using the juche principle of national solidarity as a domestic instrument of personal cult-building.

To this end, Kim Il Sung forbade any other ideology from being discussed or taught in North Korea. Since the content and application of the juche ideology were very ambiguous until the late 1960s, Kim Il Sung was the only one who could successfully wield and implement the philosophy. Thus, implementing and executing policies based on juche effectively consolidated Kim Il Sung’s absolute political power and indirectly provided ideological justification for his dictatorship in North Korea.

Perhaps more saliently, juche as the guiding principle of foreign policy was utilized as a means of balancing power between the
Soviet Union and China, and as a means to curb the Soviet and Chinese influence in the country. Kim’s wariness of Sino-Soviet involvement in North Korean domestic affairs was exacerbated by his personal dislike of the Soviets and the country’s national inferiority complex towards major powers.

...The juche ideology that is trumpeted by North Korea as Kim Il Sung’s ingenious and original contribution to the body of political philosophy is really drawn from a centuries-old tradition of Korean political thought. Kim himself has acknowledged that he drew the term and idea of juche from Korean scholars in the early twentieth century, who in turn drew inspiration from Confucian ideas dating back to the original state philosophy of independence espoused by Korean rulers. The tradition of strong nationalism among the Korean people coexisted with another tradition called sadaechuii, in which the Confucian palace officials and educated elite groups jockeyed for foreign support through sycophancy. Kim’s juche ideology may represent his reaction to the slave mentality of sadaechuii as well as an indebtedness to the original nationalistic strain of Korean political culture. Aside from its tremendous appeal to the deep traditional Korean antipathy towards foreign influence, juche serves to intensify the nationalism of the North Korean people, who are told that world civilization originated from the Korean peninsula.

...First, the fundamental tenets of juche—that man is the master of all things and decides everything, and that an ideological consciousness determines human behavior in historical development—contradict Karl Marx's proposition of economic determinism. Marx believed that individual figures had no control over the general trend of predetermined human development, and he did not give man an exalted position in the hierarchy of historical factors of importance. Kim Il Sung, in contrast, saw himself as an absolutely essential figure in the struggle of the working masses against the oppressive middle class.

Juche also diverges from Lenin's focus on the educating and organizing functions of the elite revolutionary vanguard. Authoritarianism is inherent in the juche ideology because the guidance of an "exceptionally brilliant and outstanding leader" is considered essential to the mobilization of the masses of the working class. Unlike Lenin, Kim Il Sung's regime advocated a single leader-headed revolutionary hierarchy rather than a core of outstanding and committed leaders to lead the revolutionary struggle.

...Internationally, Kim Il Sung used the juche ideology as a justification for the elimination of the influence of the USSR and PRC. Political independence from its bigger neighbors has always been a quest of key importance in Korean history.

North Korea, itself, says that it developed itself and its organization in fighting against the Marxists.

North Korea, itself, says that it is not Marxist and opposes Marxism.

North Korea, itself, says that it follows the Songun ideal which is explicitly not Marxist. Again, we know that North Korea had Marxists there, and that their leadership would know Marxism. Since they already said they opposed Marxism, and they came up with a system that is the opposite of Marxism, it seems reasonable to conclude their philosophy is not Marxist.

North Korea, itself, says that it follows the Juche ideal which is explicitly not Marxist. Again, we know that North Korea had Marxists there, and that their leadership would know Marxism. Since they already said they opposed Marxism, and they came up with a system that is the opposite of Marxism, it seems reasonable to conclude their philosophy is not Marxist.

It is not communist, socialist, or Marxist. Explicitly so.

It seems to me, that what @Hong Wu, has observed about communist regimes regarding their policies pertaining to human sexuality and marriage may be better explained by the combining of socialist and nationalist conceptions of society. You mentioned the North Korean Juche philosophy, which essentially combines and morphs a spiritual korean racialist-nationalism with marxism to create a unique system of thought. Like all nationalisms tend to do, marriage and childbearing for the nation is glorified, and it seems that this strain of thought better explains, especially in patriarchal and racialist Asian societies, the emphasis on conservative sexual and familial morality and structures.

Communism is not nationalistic. Explicitly so. It is internationalist.

This said, it does not change the fact that this is a hundred-and-fifty-year-old conversation in Marxist circles. And communists having a debate about communism and using conclusions from that debate about communism probably has something to do with communism. Even if not completely so.



It's possible, and probable, that some of this seeped in after Stalin. Stalin was, for instance, considered by the Orthodox Church to be "the divinely anointed leader of our armed and cultural forces."

But if we are to accept this, we are ultimately saying that Lenin was a Marxist while Stalin was a nationalist in the way they ran things. The disconnect is still there. And it's not something I'd necessarily disagree with. But, again, this is part of a century-and-a-half old debate around Marxists and hardly seems to me to mean any kind of hypocrisy.

Even in Russia, you take a border-line medieval people of a very different social structure to what was proposed in Marxism, you cannot expect the overthrow of normal and historic sexual relations to bode well. It therefore seems to me, that rather than speculating as to which branch of an internal Leninist debate these nations took, it would be more productive to assume that nationalist thought was allowed to permeate their varieties of Marxism, and that the regimes in question, felt that it was in their interests to do so.

More broadly, it seems, pragmatically speaking, that none of these regimes could have survived otherwise; especially, if Sorokin is to be believed.

Perhaps not. Though I might invert this. It's possible that the regimes did not last because the revolutionary fervor came to an end and the old ways snuck in:

A revolution is a mighty devourer of human energy, both individual and collective. The nerves give way. Consciousness is shaken and characters are worn out. Events unfold too swiftly for the flow of fresh forces to replace the loss.

...Counting over the causes of the degeneration of the Jacobins when in power – the chase after wealth, participation in government contracts, supplies, etc., Rakovsky cites a curious remark of Babeuf to the effect that the degeneration of the new ruling stratum was helped along not a little by the former young ladies of the aristocracy toward whom the Jacobins were very friendly. “What are you doing, small-hearted plebians?” cries Babeuf. “Today they are embracing you and tomorrow they will strangle you.” A census of the wives of the ruling stratum in the Soviet Union would show a similar picture. The well-known Soviet journalist, Sosnovsky, pointed out the special role played by the “automobile-harem factor” in forming the morals of the Soviet bureaucracy. It is true that Sosnovsky, too, following Rakovsky, recanted and was returned from Siberia. But that did not improve the morals of the bureaucracy. On the contrary, that very recantation is proof of a progressing demoralization.

I made my peace. This is an old argument from Marxists, and whatever side they land on will be the side they land on. It is not hypocrisy in either case.

[SolarCross]

@The Immortal Goon
On NK, I get that communism might not be the best descriptor of what NK is now but Kim Il Sung the founder and patriarch of what is NK today started his career as a commie and was closely allied with commies including the USSR and China. The invasion of South Korea by North Korean commies was done with Stalin's approval.

Juche was a nationalistic spin off from communism, in that way comparable to Stalin's socialism in one country or Hitler's National Socialism or Mao's Communism with Chinese characteristics. If you are an ardent internationalist then all that innovation probably looks like heresy, becoming the enemy, but if you are neither fascist nor communist it all looks like totalitarianism and pretty much the same thing and so no great change.

I'd say NK is basically fascist in all but name at this point but its roots were commie.

[The Immortal Goon]

@The Immortal Goon
On NK, I get that communism might not be the best descriptor of what NK is now but Kim Il Sung the founder and patriarch of what is NK today started his career as a commie and was closely allied with commies including the USSR and China.

The invasion of South Korea by North Korean commies was done with Stalin's approval.

As a means to an end. This would be like presuming that the US and UK must be backward peasant ex-industrial societies because they supported Pol Pot against the Vietnamese communists.

In the case of North Korea, the Marxists were hunted down and kicked out when their use was over.

Juche was a nationalistic spin off from communism,

It was, as mentioned, a modernization of Korean Confucianism. Which has nothing to do with communism in any way whatsoever. Even if we go back to Marx's doctoral thesis on Epicurus, it's in profound conflict with anything Confucius stood for. Trying to reconcile the two is attempting to say that a stone is water because it is politically convenient for you.

in that way comparable to Stalin's socialism in one country or Hitler's National Socialism or Mao's Communism with Chinese characteristics.

Stalin's SIOC was born from his Third Period Theory, which was supposed to basically be a protection of the USSR and consolidation of commies into other countries to protect it until the Final Judgement when there would be a big fight and the proletariat would win and there'd be an international socialism. To his credit, Stalin threw this away when it was obviously not working out. Though the damage was done. As much as this led to so many backward fails that the international movement was crippled, and as much as this was like watching a retarded team captain lead his team to score in the wrong goal over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, again, even Trotsky thought that there was something worth salvaging there:

We must not lose sight for a single moment of the fact that the question of overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy is for us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means of production of the USSR: that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is subordinate for us to the question of the world proletarian revolution.

This is to say, even though he kinda sucked at it, Stalin was still a Marxist in virtually ever sense.

Hitler was an anti-communist. It's why [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HbQ1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=“rendered+a+service+to+the+whole+world”+churchill+fascism&source=bl&ots=Pgx74EfCDG&sig=LubDxXDwK2VAroiT4j2_lYea4ns&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqzLS33-bXAhWF0FQKHRrRBssQ6AEIRjAH#v=onepage&q=“rendered%20a%20service%20to%20the%20whole%20world”%20churchill%20fascism&f=false]Churchill initially thought fascism was a great idea[/url], and Churchill proclaimed that fascism was "an antidote to Russian poison." And not just Italian fascism, Churchill wrote about Jews in the same way Hitler did, agents of Moscow bent on spreading Marxism everywhere. Hitler thought that Jews had to be systematically killed, Churchill was content with breaking their back and forcing them to be nationalists via British Imperialism and colonialism.

But they both saw the same problems from the same sources and counted as each other as allies against the Communist-Jew menace from Moscow.

Why now do reactionaries pretend that history has never happened, and that only their feels about Hitler and communism being bad count as anything?

To buy into this stupid argument that Hitler was some kind of socialist is to refuse to remotely acknowledge the conservative elements the Nazis brought in with them. The ending of Red Berlin and everything. There is an argument that could be made that Hitler and Stalin were on the same page so far as the personal conservatism front went, but this would be the same argument as saying that since you're not having interracial gay sex at this moment, you must be a Nazi.

Most socialists were in the streets of Berlin fighting against Nazis in Germany, and preparing to fight them in the Soviet Union. For all Trotsky and Stalin disagreed about (and it was a lot) they both agreed that fascism was a horrible poison that needed to be irradiated.

Hitler publicly and adamantly demanded Marxism be rooted out:

Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production.... Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society....

After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage....

...Fascism denies, in democracy, the absur[d] conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress....

...given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority...a century of Fascism.

...Fascism is opposed to Socialism, which confines the movement of history within the class struggle and ignores the unity of classes established in one economic and moral reality in the State; and analogously it is opposed to class syndicalism. . . .

...And it is the greatest source of pride to us that we have been able to carry through this revolution, which is certainly the greatest revolution ever experienced in the history of our people, with a minimum of loss and sacrifice. Only in those cases where the murderous lust of the Bolsheviks, even after the 30th of January, 1933, led them to think that by the use of brute force they could prevent the success and realization of the National Socialist ideal—only then did we answer violence with violence, and naturally we did it promptly...

...I mean here that if Europe does not awaken to the danger of the Bolshevic infection, then I fear that international commerce will not increase but decrease, despite all the good intentions of individual statesmen. For this commerce is based not only on the undisturbed and guaranteed stability of production in one individual nation but also on the production of all the nations together. One of the first things which is clear in this matter is that every Bolshevic disturbance must necessarily lead to a more or less permanent destruction of orderly production. Therefore my opinion about the future of Europe is, I am sorry to say, not so optimistic as Mr. Eden’s. I am the responsible leader of the German people and must safeguard its interests in this world as well as I can. And therefore I am bound to judge things objectively as I see them.

I should not be acquitted before the bar of our history if I neglected something—no matter on what grounds—which is necessary to maintain the existence of this people. I am pleased, and we are all pleased, at every increase that takes place in our foreign trade. But in view of the obscure political situation I shall not neglect anything that is necessary to guarantee the existence of the German people, although other nations may become the victims of the Bolshevic infection.

...But I believe that nobody will question the sincerity of our opinions on this matter, for they are not based merely on abstract theory. For Mr. Eden Bolshevism is perhaps a thing which has its seat in Moscow, but for us in Germany this Bolshevism is a pestilence against which we have had to struggle at the cost of much bloodshed. It is a pestilence which tried to turn our country into the same kind of desert as is now the case in Spain; for the habit of murdering hostages began here, in the form in which we now see it in Spain. National Socialism did not try to come to grips with Bolshevism in Russia, but the Jewish international Bolshevics in Moscow have tried to introduce their system into Germany and are still trying to do so. Against this attempt we have waged a bitter struggle, not only in defence of our own civilization but in defence of European civilization as a whole.

In January and February of the year 1933, when the last decisive struggle against this barbarism was being fought out in Germany, had Germany been defeated in that struggle and had the Bolshevic field of destruction and death extended over Central Europe, then perhaps a different opinion would have arisen on the banks of the Thames as to the nature of this terrible menace to humanity. For since it is said that England must be defended on the frontier of the Rhine she would then have found herself in close contact with that harmless democratic world of Moscow, whose innocence they are always trying to impress upon us. Here I should like to state the following once again: —

The teaching of Bolshevism is that there must be a world revolution, which would mean world-destruction. If such a doctrine were accepted and given equal rights with other teachings in Europe, this would mean that Europe would be delivered over to it. If other nations want to be on good terms with this peril, that does not affect Germany’s position. As far as Germany itself is concerned, let there be no doubts on the following points: —

(1) We look on Bolshevism as a world peril for which there must be no toleration.

(2) We use every means in our power to keep this peril away from our people.

(3) And we are trying to make the German people immune to this peril as far as possible.

It is in accordance with this attitude of ours that we should avoid close contact with the carriers of these poisonous bacilli. And that is also the reason why we do not want to have any closer relations with them beyond the necessary political and commercial relations; for if we went beyond these we might thereby run the risk of closing the eyes of our people to the danger itself.

I consider Bolshevism the most malignant poison that can be given to a people. And therefore I do not want my own people to come into contact with this teaching. As a citizen of this nation I myself shall not do what I should have to condemn my fellow-citizens for doing. I demand from every German workman that he shall not have any relations with these international mischief-makers and he shall never see me clinking glasses or rubbing shoulders with them. Moreover, any further treaty connections with the present Bolshevic Russia would be completely worthless for us. It is out of the question to think that National Socialist Germany should ever be bound to protect Bolshevism or that we, on our side, should ever agree to accept the assistance of a Bolshevic State. For I fear that the moment any nation should agree to accept such assistance, it would thereby seal its own doom.

I aimed from the first at something a thousand times higher than being a minister. I wanted to become the destroyer of Marxism. I am going to achieve this task and, if I do, the title of minister will be an absurdity as far as I am concerned. . .

At one time I believed that perhaps this battle against Marxism could be carried on with the help of the government. In January, 1923, I learned that that was just not possible. The hypothesis for the victory of Marxism is not that Germany must be free, but rather Germany will only be free when Marxism is broken. At that time I did not dream that our movement would become great and cover Germany like a flood.]Hitler[/url]"]I aimed from the first at something a thousand times higher than being a minister. I wanted to become the destroyer of Marxism. I am going to achieve this task and, if I do, the title of minister will be an absurdity as far as I am concerned. . . .

At one time I believed that perhaps this battle against Marxism could be carried on with the help of the government. In January, 1923, I learned that that was just not possible. The hypothesis for the victory of Marxism is not that Germany must be free, but rather Germany will only be free when Marxism is broken. At that time I did not dream that our movement would become great and cover Germany like a flood.

IN NOVEMBER, 1918, Marxist organizations seized the executive power by means of a revolution. The monarchs were dethroned, the authorities of the Reich and of the States removed from office, and thereby a breach of the Constitution was committed. The success of the revolution in a material sense protected the guilty parties from the hands of the law. They sought to justify it morally by asserting that Germany or its Government bore the guilt for the outbreak of the War.

This assertion was deliberately and actually untrue. In consequence, however, these untrue accusations in the interest of our former enemies led to the severest oppression of the entire German nation and to the breach of the assurances given to us in Wilson's fourteen points, and so for Germany, that is to say the working classes of the German people, to a time of infinite misfortune....

The splitting up of the nation into groups with irreconcilable views, systematically brought about by the false doctrines of Marxism, means the destruction of the basis of a possible communal life.... It is only the creation of a real national community, rising above the interests and differences of rank and class, that can permanently remove the source of nourishment of these aberrations of the human mind.

Finally, this was something brought up in the lifetime of these people. And, like back then, the argument only works if you completely ignore the mechanics for how each of these ideologies positioned themselves.

A moralizing Philistine’s favorite method is the lumping of reaction’s conduct with that of revolution. He achieves success in this device through recourse to formal analogies. To him czarism and Bolshevism are twins. Twins are likewise discovered in fascism and communism. An inventory is compiled of the common features in Catholicism – or more specifically, Jesuitism – and Bolshevism. Hitler and Mussolini, utilizing from their side exactly the same method, disclose that liberalism, democracy, and Bolshevism represent merely different manifestations of one and the same evil. The conception that Stalinism and Trotskyism are “essentially” one and the same now enjoys the joint approval of liberals, democrats, devout Catholics, idealists, pragmatists, and anarchists. If the Stalinists are unable to adhere to this “People’s Front”, then it is only because they are accidentally occupied with the extermination of Trotskyists.

The fundamental feature of these approchements and similitudes lies in their completely ignoring the material foundation of the various currents, that is, their class nature and by that token their objective historical role. Instead they evaluate and classify different currents according to some external and secondary manifestation, most often according to their relation to one or another abstract principle which for the given classifier has a special professional value. Thus to the Roman pope Freemasons and Darwinists, Marxists and anarchists are twins because all of them sacrilegiously deny the immaculate conception. To Hitler, liberalism and Marxism are twins because they ignore “blood and honor”. To a democrat, fascism and Bolshevism are twins because they do not bow before universal suffrage. And so forth.

As for Chinese communism with a capitalist twist, without getting too deeply into it, as I'm getting tired of writing out these basics, it's an adaptation of Bolshevism within the framework of the NEP. It's still Marxist, even if it's a little Menshevik in its outlook.

If you are an ardent internationalist then all that innovation probably looks like heresy, becoming the enemy, but if you are neither fascist nor communist it all looks like totalitarianism and pretty much the same thing and so no great change.

It's not so much that I'm an ardent internationalist but that I have a basic understanding of how and why these ideologies were constructed. You say that "if you're neither a fascist nor communist it all looks like totalitarianism" and it's all the same thing. But as pointed out, Churchill (and the West in general) saw nothing wrong with fascism at first because they were anti-communist. They were liberating forces.

This is also to accept some arbitrary definition to totalitarianism that fits your ideological agenda on one side but isn't acknowledged on the other. For instance, EH Carr wrote about how the Soviets were totalitarian, but also pointed out that the British and Americans were totalitarian. In his breakdown of each, he hoped there could be a reconciliation of the good parts of both while throwing out the bad parts.

Perhaps utopian, but from an honest premise. The United States has a higher proportion of its population imprisoned than North Korea, China, or Vietnam. The British have a terribly draconian reputation from anyone they've ruled off of the island--and yet both nations are the people singing the most loudly in church about their commitments against totalitarianism.

Is it not possible that both are totalitarian, and you've just been taught to excuse some kind of totalitarian tendencies while condeming others? Is it not possible there are historical and material reasons why the fascists see liberal-capitalist-democracies and the soviets as twins; the communists see capitalists and fascists as twins; and the capitalists see fascists and soviets as twins?

Should not we use history and knowledge to untangle this instead of arbitrarily saying that it just sort of seems like your country is always right?

I'd say NK is basically fascist in all but name at this point but its roots were commie.

It is more complicated than this, I hope I have helped to show.

[Victoribus Spolia]

@The Immortal Goon
On NK, I get that communism might not be the best descriptor of what NK is now but Kim Il Sung the founder and patriarch of what is NK today started his career as a commie and was closely allied with commies including the USSR and China. The invasion of South Korea by North Korean commies was done with Stalin's approval.

Juche was a nationalistic spin off from communism, in that way comparable to Stalin's socialism in one country or Hitler's National Socialism or Mao's Communism with Chinese characteristics. If you are an ardent internationalist then all that innovation probably looks like heresy, becoming the enemy, but if you are neither fascist nor communist it all looks like totalitarianism and pretty much the same thing and so no great change.

I'd say NK is basically fascist in all but name at this point but its roots were commie.

I generally agree with this, but I would probably not call it fascist either, too anti-religion and too centralized. Once you get to a certain point of centralization the system no longer can be called corporatism (of which fascism is a hard-form).

Likewise, both National Socialism and Italian Fascism were far-right and traditionalist in origin, and I agree with you that the thought behind North Korea's political philosophy came from the germ of internationalist communism as spread by the Soviet Union, but that it morphed as the racialized North Koreans sought to remove the internationalist and progressive elements.

Nonetheless, as with China and these other nations, it seems undeniable that the motivation between these nations moving towards the policies they have is based on an internal nationalist strain added to previously more communist base-of-thought and not because the Chinese or the North Koreans, or the Vietnamese, or the Cubans sat down to decide which old Russian guy they agreed with more when it came to the ideal social mores of the proletariat.

North Korea, itself, says that it developed itself and its organization in fighting against the Marxists.

With all due respect, I think there is a flaw in this reasoning. Let me explain:

Technically the tri-cameral system of federal government was inspired greatly by England. Indeed, the democratic principle (House of Commons =House of Representatives), Aristocratic principle (House of Lord=Senate), and Monarchal principle (King=President) were all elements seen in the English System (not including the Christian and Natural Law and Common Law and Constitutional Elements that could also be mentioned).

Why do I bring this up? Because, the United States ultimately created their government and its organization in fighting against the English. It does not therefore follow though, that they did not acquire great inspiration for their own system from their opponents (in fact quite the opposite). This goes towards my point, which I will further clarify below.

Communism is not nationalistic. Explicitly so. It is internationalist.

Agreed, but in that case, it would be hard to call nearly any "communist" regime currently in practice, communist; especially in Asia.

Likewise,

I never argued, nor would I argue, that communism is nationalist, or even compatible with nationalism. Neither were my claim. My claim was that the social policies that were discussed in the OP could be explained by said regimes attempting to combine communism and nationalism. This is a very specific claim about what they are doing and has nothing to do with the respective philosophies of communism or nationalism per se. My point is only that elements of communism and nationalism have been, by implicit or explicit attempt, combined in those regimes and that such explains their policies.

Perhaps not. Though I might invert this. It's possible that the regimes did not last because the revolutionary fervor came to an end and the old ways snuck in:

This sounds oddly like an admission that boredom and nostalgia brought down the Soviet Empire.

[The Immortal Goon]

I generally agree with this, but I would probably not call it fascist either, too anti-religion and too centralized. Once you get to a certain point of centralization the system no longer can be called corporatism (of which fascism is a hard-form).

But it is not Marxist in any sense is the point.

Likewise, both National Socialism and Italian Fascism were far-right and traditionalist in origin, and I agree with you that the thought behind North Korea's political philosophy came from the germ of internationalist communism as spread by the Soviet Union, but that it morphed as the racialized North Koreans sought to remove the internationalist and progressive elements.

Again, I'm not sure it was ever as communistic in relation to the USSR; Khmer Rouge was not a constitutional democracy because it relied on support from the US and UK.

Nonetheless, as with China and these other nations, it seems undeniable that the motivation between these nations moving towards the policies they have is based on an internal nationalist strain added to previously more communist base-of-thought and not because the Chinese or the North Koreans, or the Vietnamese, or the Cubans sat down to decide which old Russian guy they agreed with more when it came to the ideal social mores of the proletariat.

The North Koreans are an explicitly different case than the Chinese, Russians, and Cubans, who all had a revolution. North Korea did not. Even at that fundamental level, it is historically and contextually different.

The nationalist strains in each have been discussed and can be addressed in each case specifically.

With all due respect, I think there is a flaw in this reasoning. Let me explain:

Technically the tri-cameral system of federal government was inspired greatly by England. Indeed, the democratic principle (House of Commons =House of Representatives), Aristocratic principle (House of Lord=Senate), and Monarchal principle (King=President) were all elements seen in the English System (not including the Christian and Natural Law and Common Law and Constitutional Elements that could also be mentioned).

Why do I bring this up? Because, the United States ultimately created their government and its organization in fighting against the English. It does not therefore follow though, that they did not acquire great inspiration for their own system from their opponents (in fact quite the opposite). This goes towards my point, which I will further clarify below.

And the many other examples cited, sourced, and brought up?

And the Soviets and an elected Supreme Soviet with parliamentary procedure. Does that mean that they are ultimately capitalists? What about Ancient Athens? Are they British too?

Equating parliamentary procedure (and a parliament) to being a strictly Liberal capitalist system is faulty reasoning indeed.

Agreed, but in that case, it would be hard to call nearly any "communist" regime currently in practice, communist; especially in Asia.

I already wrote about this above in some length, but there are various tendencies for how to move a revolution internationally. Just because it is not in perpetual Bukarin-style warfare does not mean that it ceases to be communist in ideology.

Likewise,

I never argued, nor would I argue, that communism is nationalist, or even compatible with nationalism. Neither were my claim. My claim was that the social policies that were discussed in the OP could be explained by said regimes attempting to combine communism and nationalism. This is a very specific claim about what they are doing and has nothing to do with the respective philosophies of communism or nationalism per se. My point is only that elements of communism and nationalism have been, by implicit or explicit attempt, combined in those regimes and that such explains their policies.

But, again, even long before there was a state run by a communist ideology this was an old discussion in Marxist circles.

This sounds oddly like an admission that boredom and nostalgia brought down the Soviet Empire.

Less boredom and nostalgia than a Thermidorian Reaction characteristic of even the bourgeois revolutions for which it's named. Or, you could go before.

It's class dynamics at work reflecting the material world, not people's feelings manifesting into a magical reality.

[SolarCross]

As a means to an end. This would be like presuming that the US and UK must be backward peasant ex-industrial societies because they supported Pol Pot against the Vietnamese communists.

In the case of North Korea, the Marxists were hunted down and kicked out when their use was over.

Isn't that always the case with ideologies? They aren't purely decorative and if they don't function as well as they are required to do then they will be changed. Protestants changed Christianity to better suit their purposes, kicking to the curb those that stubbornly persisted with the old way and so Juchists, maoists, dengists, stalinists and leninists have also done with marxism.

Ideologies like marxism are mostly focused on riding into power on the backs of the ignorant, getting them to fight for you but without getting paid for it. They particularly suit those who are good at talking but don't have land or gold. Once in power though you can raid / tax for cash to pay your soldiers and you have land to defend and so nationalism rather than marxism will be more useful. Different circumstances require different lies.

Hitler was an anti-communist. It's why [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HbQ1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=“rendered+a+service+to+the+whole+world”+churchill+fascism&source=bl&ots=Pgx74EfCDG&sig=LubDxXDwK2VAroiT4j2_lYea4ns&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqzLS33-bXAhWF0FQKHRrRBssQ6AEIRjAH#v=onepage&q=“rendered%20a%20service%20to%20the%20whole%20world”%20churchill%20fascism&f=false]Churchill initially thought fascism was a great idea[/url], and Churchill proclaimed that fascism was "an antidote to Russian poison." And not just Italian fascism, Churchill wrote about Jews in the same way Hitler did, agents of Moscow bent on spreading Marxism everywhere. Hitler thought that Jews had to be systematically killed, Churchill was content with breaking their back and forcing them to be nationalists via British Imperialism and colonialism.

Hitler was just as he said he was: a national socialist. Ideologically he is fusing socialism and nationalism. Jews are a red herring, they became his enemy when he associated them with bolshevism and thus the leadership of the Russian Empire Germany's nearest great strategic rival. Germany would have had another war with Russia regardless of who was at the helm though and whoever was at the helm of that empire would be mortal enemy. Moreover there was a racial element to his national socialism. Stalin found time to purge the fuck out of jews too, not quite on the same scale perhaps but there it is.

I wasn't aware that Churchill had ever seen National Socialism as an antidote to russian poison presumably meaning communism rather than jews. It didn't stop him declaring war on Hitler's Germany and allying with the Russian poisoners though, I guess you forgot about that. Not that this proves anything very much except that geo-strategics ie: pragmatism, tends to soundly trump ideology for anyone who isn't insane.

Why now do reactionaries pretend that history has never happened, and that only their feels about Hitler and communism being bad count as anything?

The use of the term "reactionary" instantly marks you out as a kook, also no-one is standing in the place of your strawman pretending that history never happened. It happened and it so happened that nationalist leaning communist Kim Ill Sung together with his good buddies in the USSR and the PRC invaded South Korea. Since then KIS and his successors have turned his patch of earth into quite possibly the most and most successful totalitarian society on earth.

On another note I get this impression that for communists and fascists politics is always to basically fall down to a choice between totalitarian fascism enthusiastically embracing nationalism and totalitarian communism enthusiastially embracing nationalism. Then is that even a choice? What happened to everything else? Why is totalitarianism the only thing on the menu?

[Victoribus Spolia]

The nationalist strains in each have been discussed and can be addressed in each case specifically.

I think this is fair.

And the many other examples cited, sourced, and brought up?

And the Soviets and an elected Supreme Soviet with parliamentary procedure. Does that mean that they are ultimately capitalists? What about Ancient Athens? Are they British too?

Equating parliamentary procedure (and a parliament) to being a strictly Liberal capitalist system is faulty reasoning indeed.

I only brought up the dynamics of Anglo-American government to point out that just because someone fights against a regime, that does not mean they did not or could not adopt the ideas of that regime in which they fought. I used America as an example of such which developed its system from its opponent as a counter-example to one of your points of evidence that North Korea was not communist because it had fought against a Marxist regime. Whatever merits to your other points, this one is flawed as the counter-example demonstrates. Just because you fight against a Marxist regime, does not mean your own system is not Marxist or influenced by Marxism. That does not follow.

Thats all.

But, again, even long before there was a state run by a communist ideology this was an old discussion in Marxist circles.

But are these discussions relevant to the internal motivations of the governments under discussion, implementing the policies that they have regarding the family and sexuality? OR, is a nationalistic self-conception in places like China, a more reasonable explanation for their policies than their subscribing to an in-house academic debate in Marxist theory? It seems the former would be more reasonable to assume. Especially among a highly ethno-centric, traditional, and patriachal population like the Chinese.

[The Immortal Goon]

Isn't that always the case with ideologies? They aren't purely decorative and if they don't function as well as they are required to do then they will be changed. Protestants changed Christianity to better suit their purposes, kicking to the curb those that stubbornly persisted with the old way and so Juchists, maoists, dengists, stalinists and leninists have also done with marxism.

This fails to account for why they "don't function as well as they are required to do so." Which is, of course, the important factor here.

Protestants didn't just arbitrarily change Christianity to better suit their needs for no reason at all, they did so to better suit their needs. These needs raised for various reasons that the ideologies take into account. In the case of Protestantism, literacy, nationalism, photo-industrialization (all these things that were part of, and culminated into capitalism) conspired to overthrow a medieval ideology that was no longer consistent with the material reality in the world in which they lived.

Also, you're failing to get the copious citations, primary, and secondary sourced that demonstrate that Juche is not a Marxist ideology.

Maoists, Dengists, Stalinists, and Leninists are. They are applying a dialectic-materialist conception onto history. Sometimes they're not correct, and they adjust. Unlike, say Protestantism or Juche, it is (at least supposed to be) scientific in that it is repeatable and when not shown to be accurate replaced with another theory (hence, scientific-socialism).

Ideologies like marxism are mostly focused on riding into power on the backs of the ignorant, getting them to fight for you but without getting paid for it. They particularly suit those who are good at talking but don't have land or gold. Once in power though you can raid / tax for cash to pay your soldiers and you have land to defend and so nationalism rather than marxism will be more useful. Different circumstances require different lies.

I've cited many sources, explained things out, and had references. Do you expect your unjustified feelings separated from even the faintest example to be persuasive?

Hitler was just as he said he was: a national socialist. Ideologically he is fusing socialism and nationalism. Jews are a red herring, they became his enemy when he associated them with bolshevism and thus the leadership of the Russian Empire Germany's nearest great strategic rival. Germany would have had another war with Russia regardless of who was at the helm though and whoever was at the helm of that empire would be mortal enemy. Moreover there was a racial element to his national socialism. Stalin found time to purge the fuck out of jews too, not quite on the same scale perhaps but there it is.

Please check the citations above and argue with Hitler and Churchill themselves about this. They both adamantly disagree with you (from this thread alone!) and since you have provided no examples, citations, or anything else, I think we can leave the issue here.

I wasn't aware that Churchill had ever seen National Socialism as an antidote to russian poison presumably meaning communism rather than jews. It didn't stop him declaring war on Hitler's Germany and allying with the Russian poisoners though, I guess you forgot about that. Not that this proves anything very much except that geo-strategics ie: pragmatism, tends to soundly trump ideology for anyone who isn't insane.

The lesson to be gleamed from this is that the instincts that your masters have tried to install in you are not necessarily valid. The fact that you did not know that Churchill went around Europe explaining what a plague the Jews were, or that fascism was a great development speaks to this.

You are basing everything you're arguing not on logic, citation, and history, but upon knee-jerk instinct and feeling. These can be clouded (as was your perception on Churchill).

The use of the term "reactionary" instantly marks you out as a kook, also no-one is standing in the place of your strawman pretending that history never happened.

...And yet you seem unable to use history to back up your positions.

It happened and it so happened that nationalist leaning communist Kim Ill Sung together with his good buddies in the USSR and the PRC invaded South Korea. Since then KIS and his successors have turned his patch of earth into quite possibly the most and most successful totalitarian society on earth.

Again, so much of your feelings that have already been debunked. Please at least study the issue so you can provide a relevant citation.

On another note I get this impression that for communists and fascists politics is always to basically fall down to a choice between totalitarian fascism enthusiastically embracing nationalism and totalitarian communism enthusiastially embracing nationalism. Then is that even a choice? What happened to everything else? Why is totalitarianism the only thing on the menu?

This fails to address any point brought up, most relevantly how your failure to define or address the nature of totalitarianism. My points still stand, and whining about how you don't understand the concept you're pushing won't help that in the least.

@Victoribus Spolia
I'll attempt to address you momentarily. Sadly I must work. And on that front, I am sorry if I were short with the last replies, but if SolarCross isn't going to bother to acknowledge, let alone refute, citations and the like, this is going to simply evolve into a postmodern-feelings-fit. Which I suppose the right feels more comfortable with, but with which I have no interest in participating.

[SolarCross]

@The Immortal Goon
Now now dear there is no need to upset yourself. Try to remember I am just an ordinary prole without no high falutin book larnin and not one of your fancy ivory tower academics.

Let's cut to the chase or at least agree on terms. Totalitarianism = ?

I am going to reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism

Are you in any profound disagreement with the wiki article?

[Victoribus Spolia]

but if SolarCross isn't going to bother to acknowledge, let alone refute, citations and the like, this is going to simply evolve into a postmodern-feelings-fit.

I appreciate it, but its hard to blame PoFo users for getting frustrated when you drop a citation bomb on a thread....I mean, it does kinda border on Ad Verbosium.

Not that its not interesting or relevant, but some of us don't have the time to read 15 pages from Das Kapital to get the context of three sentences that you wrote yourself. It seems to hamper efficient debate a bit.

I also appreciate your critique of snowflakey feel-feels and your commitment to learning and logic. I really do.

But the constant beating of that dead-horse spectre of the "triggered snowflake," on both sides, is really tired. It is SO overdone. Its beneath your powers of intellect, which I respect, to harp on that as much as you do. I say that as someone who enjoys reading your posts, so don't take it personally, and I am likewise guilty of it, so don't take me as being preachy. Its something we all need to work on...

[The Immortal Goon]

@The Immortal Goon
Now now dear there is no need to upset yourself. Try to remember I am just an ordinary prole without no high falutin book larnin and not one of your fancy ivory tower academics.

I had no education to speak of when I picked up Marx for the first time. However, I also knew enough to know that books (and now the internet at least!) was available to confirm or deny any biases I may have and to help smooth out some of the inconsistencies of my thought. I do not think that it is you personally, but a systematic spread of postmodernism that posits that you can simply apply feelings to counter verifiable facts into a debate and get a response more than eye-rolling. This use to be a childish plague on the liberal-left, but it seems now to be endemic among the right at all levels. You'll excuse me if I find it frustrating and sometimes lash out, but finding, organizing, and using facts via citations and rational verifiable means has been part of ideological discussion since at least the Ancient Greeks or Chinese. It seems an absurdity that we are expected to throw that away now that we have more information, more citations, more knowledge in our hands than ever before.

Let's cut to the chase or at least agree on terms. Totalitarianism = ?

I am going to reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism

Are you in any profound disagreement with the wiki article?

There are many definitions in that article. It cites, for instance, Orwell—who claimed that capitalism was totalitarian:

If the heavy handed symbolism of the pigs becoming bad guys because they acted like capitalists (something the government sponsored cartoon movies have conveniently cut out), then there's also his views of things in the general:

I became pro-Socialist more out of disgust with the way the poorer section of the industrial workers were oppressed and negrlected than out of any theoretical admiration for a planned society.

The notion that industrialism must end in monopoly, and that monopoly must imply tyrany, is not a startling one

Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industiral society...[D]uring the final phase of capitalism roughly between 1920 and 1940[,] [t]he economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity...the probnlem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real welath of the world. Goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed.

As mentioned, he simply wasn't a Stalinists—most socialists aren't.

[N]othing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russian is a Socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated.

Thus it's no mystery he fought with the POUM in Spain and worked for Trotsky's secretary, Andres Nin. While this would be a puzzling crazy thing to explain if you said that Orwell loved capitalism, it makes perfect sense and is logical if you accept that Orwell was correct when he described himself as a socialist.

He seems to have liked the idea of a more primitive capitalism, but saw it as something that would inherently become more corrupt and totalitarian. The cure was, indeed, to crush private property.

What were Orwell's political opinions? Orwell was a revolutionary Socialist. That is, he hoped that there would be a Socialist revolution in England, and, as he said more than once, if violence was necessary, violence there should be. "I dare say the London gutters will have to run with blood," he wrote in "My Country Right or Left," in 1940. And a year later, in "The Lion and the Unicorn," "It is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people can be set free. . . . Whether it happens with or without bloodshed is largely an accident of time and place." Orwell had concluded long before that capitalism had failed unambiguously, and he never changed his opinion. He thought that Hitler's military success on the Continent proved once and for all the superiority of a planned economy. "It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption," he wrote. "The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them."

A Socialist England, as Orwell described it, would be a classless society with virtually no private property. The State would own everything, and would require "that nobody shall live without working." Orwell thought that perhaps fifteen acres of land, "at the very most," might be permitted, presumably to allow subsistence farming, but that there would be no ownership of land in town areas. Incomes would be equalized, so that the highest income would never be greater than ten times the lowest. Above that, the tax rate should be a hundred per cent. The House of Lords would be abolished, though Orwell thought that the monarchy might be preserved. (Everybody would drink at the same pub, presumably, but one of the blokes would get to wear a crown.) As for its foreign policy: a Socialist state "will not have the smallest scruple about attacking hostile neutrals or stirring up native rebellions in enemy colonies."

It also (like I did) cites Carr, who found Western society totalitarianism:

Western democratic tradition admit two widely different conceptions of democracy deriving respectively from the English and French revolutions. In their origin the two revolutions exhibit a striking parallel Both the English civil war and the French revolution were revolts by a nascent bourgeoisie against a legitimate monarchy based on an established church.

The aim of both was to destroy the remnants of feudalism and establish the rule of the middle class. Cromwell was the true precursor of Robespierre, and both had marked traits which would in current terminology be called totalitarian. In both countries, revolutionary dictatorship was the instrument used to bring bourgeois democracy to birth a striking historical precedent for the theories of Marx and Lenin.

As this is what I was arguing, yes, I would find these acceptable uses of the term.

I appreciate it, but its hard to blame PoFo users for getting frustrated when you drop a citation bomb on a thread....I mean, it does kinda border on Ad Verbosium.

In an ideal world, rather than rattling off meaningless texts in an attempt to affect an opponent's feelings, we'd pour ourselves a tumbler of whiskey and ponder books by academics, poets, and anything else we pleased while we constructed a well-researched single argument that was consistent in content and allowed the opponent to sort through a line of thought.

It is perhaps too much to ask, but I can keep the fire burning.

Not that its not interesting or relevant, but some of us don't have the time to read 15 pages from Das Kapital to get the context of three sentences that you wrote yourself. It seems to hamper efficient debate a bit.

I may be a relic, but there are older posts where I'd debate a socialist I disagreed with or a libertarian that disliked in an exchange of ideas for pages of pages. In one of these debates with a libertarian I was forced to read virtually all of The Wealth of Nations in order to keep up with him. I hope he (Eran) had the similar experience of being frustrated through the entire debate but walking away far better informed and thankful for it.

Just because you fight against a Marxist regime, does not mean your own system is not Marxist or influenced by Marxism. That does not follow.

Thats all.

While this is fair, and I do admit that there was some cultural contamination in North Korea (the art and rhetoric are clearly inspired by Socialist Realism), I do think that it is truly difficult to paint it as in any way legitimately influenced by Marx. Which puts us in roughly the same place, or at least close enough I think we can see each other from here.

But are these discussions relevant to the internal motivations of the governments under discussion, implementing the policies that they have regarding the family and sexuality? OR, is a nationalistic self-conception in places like China, a more reasonable explanation for their policies than their subscribing to an in-house academic debate in Marxist theory?

We have the actual texts of Kollontai, Lenin, to a lesser extent Connolly, and others having the debates about implementing the policies in question.

For China, I have a difficult time squaring the one-child policy (for instance) with Confucianism or any other Chinese nationalist incentive. The communists went out and ruthlessly suppressed things like foot-binding.

There was a propaganda video I'm having trouble finding now, back from the 1960s or 1970s, where the CCP was encouraging everyone to enter into love-marriages. This was counter to most of the Chinese experience. I have heard it argued that this was partially a Europeanization of Chinese culture, but I still see it as part of a construction of a bourgeois state consistent with their adaptation of the NEP in certain places.

[SolarCross]

@The Immortal Goon
So everyone is totalitarian? "Capitalism" and "liberal democracy" are also totalitarian? Maybe the former is a kind of fascism or fascism is a kind of capitalism whichever suits your narrative. And maybe liberal democracy is a kind of communism and therefore also totalitarian. Is this what you are saying?

If so then isn't that kind of answering my earlier question? That when talking with communists and fascists (on pofo for example) it always seems to devolve into the assumption that the only choice is between communism and fascism both of which are totalitarian by anyone's definition. So you are essentially affirming my speculation that totalitarianism is the only thing on the menu.

From the wiki article it is clear the concept was first used by nazis or fascists to describe fascism. Then later your mate Carr is using it to describe the Soviet system.

During a 1945 lecture series entitled The Soviet Impact on the Western World (published as a book in 1946), the pro-Soviet British historian E. H. Carr claimed that "The trend away from individualism and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable", and that Marxism–Leninism was by far the most successful type of totalitarianism, as proved by Soviet industrial growth and the Red Army's role in defeating Germany. Only the "blind and incurable" could ignore the trend towards totalitarianism, said Carr.

It seems Carr is exulting in the triumph of one kind of totalitarianism over another kind of totalitarianism. I guess if he were alive today he would be exulting in the success of Juche which is still pluckily defying "western imperialism" while the Soviets are dead and buried?

What do you think of the 6 point anatomy of totalitarianism as given by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski?

Elaborate guiding ideology.

Single mass party, typically led by a dictator.

System of terror, using such instruments as violence and secret police.

Monopoly on weapons.

Monopoly on the means of communication.

Central direction and control of the economy through state planning.

Does this more detailed and specific breakdown not at least create the possibility of non-totalitarian societies existing at least in theory?