You’re treating fascism like it’s champagne vs. sparkling wine. Fascism as a concept is broader than Mussolini, just like socialism is broader than Marx.

As for Belt and Road, the global south increasing in south-south trade facilitates their development, and when they develop unequal exchange is undermined, as is imperialism in general. This is why the US Empire is more desparate to re-assert dominance, because it is losing its hegemony.

Fascism is a large and well-studied subject. It has manifested in numerous ways, but has specific material causes. What gives rise to it is capitalist decay, it’s an immune system to protect the system, and arises from petty bourgeois consciousness as it trends towards proletarianization. This often involves insular groups and rises in ethnonationalism.

As for countries shifting away from the US, this is already happening in the global south, which is where the US Empire gets its superprofits from. That’s why Belt and Road is so dangerous to the US, it builds up infrastructure for south-south trade, which in turn results in development and independence.

Which was part of the reason behind the whole Greenland ordeal. A problem which they’ve now seemed to be able to circumvent.

Not exactly. The rare earths aren’t the biggest problem themselves, it’s the tech to refine and utilize them, which China has a near global monopoly on.

That’s because the fancier tools are higher quality and therefore more expensive to produce. Furthermore, since the cold war ended, thousands of small suppliers have been closing up by the decade because there’s no more business. This lead to consolidation in the hands of a few big players e.g., Lockheed Martin. The US could build back up to Cold War levels of preparedness if it wanted, but it’d take at least 5 years. That’s the real historical materialism here.

Not quite. These are more expensive because the US is far more financialized. They are marginally better, but far more expensive. A big mac in Switzerland isn’t over three times as good as a big mac in Taiwan. Further, the US cannot re-industrialize in 5 years, if the US wanted to re-industrialize they’d need to cut the cost of labor, implement strong central planning, and sacrifice profits for re-industrializing.

In modern warfare, Iran is holding its own with drones that cost them a few thousand to make against multi-million dollar patriot missiles. The patriots are not hundreds of times more effective. Historical materialism requires recognizing the different circumstances of today.

Ideology has a material basis, but do you know that that same ideology acts upon the material base as well? This is why i mentioned Althusser because he goes into this stuff. Also, i never said the ongoing problems of the US Empire are solely due to Trump, i only said that he’s accelerating its demise and acting as a baseboard from which other Western powers start to chart their own course. I am fully aware that real material conditions gave rise to Trump’s reign. The next step is realising how the material realities that DO come out of Trump’s presidency affect the US’s downfall and i assess them to be more than substantial.

The reason why I said you put too much of an emphasis on Trump is because you listed him as the reason, and not the symptom. Trump has an impact, of course, so as long as you aren’t putting him as primary then we’re fine.

And its defense somehow necessitates an ethnonationalist character? Are we talking about the same fascism?

Ethnonationalism is a symptom of fascism, not necessarily how you categorize it. Ethnonationalism usually rises in fascism, but isn’t definitional to it.

Once again, quickly approaching is a stretch. It will most certainly happen within our lifetimes, but not in 10 or 20 years.

I think 10-50 years is a pretty reasonable window, and soon enough to call where we are at the “death throes.” You can disagree with that if you wish, but that’s where I think we are at right now.

I did not do this. I only pointed out how Trump’s actions will serve as an anchor point in the future for Western powers. World leaders themselves aren’t sitting around contemplating material contradictions and dialectical movement. All they see is Trump’s actions and how it’s harmful to their own interests. In a sense this is dialectical as Trump’s actions represent a qualitative change resulting from the accumulation of multiple quantitative factors.

If we can agree that Trump is not the cause, but instead a symptom, then we are more in agreement than not. Symptoms have material impact, but they aren’t the primary reason. Putting it in Marxist terms, Imperialism is principal and Trump is secondary to that, but that doesn’t mean Trump isn’t impacting it.

That’s just regular capitalism? Labour is cheaper in Asia. Even then the US still maintains a tight hold on the aerospace, armaments and tech industries and still reversed some off-shoring; most notably the semiconductor industry.

You’ve almost got it, as capitalism progresses it turns into imperialism, which itself is self-defeating. The US Empire is also short on what it needs to keep producing arms, due to tight controls on rare Earths and other raw materials from China. This is why Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is useful, we see how imperialism causes de-industrialization and undermines itself.

The US also redeployed forces stationed in Europe deterring the USSR during the Gulf War, and yet it’s still standing strong 35 years later. They also did this during the Iraq war and Vietnam war. The real question is, “Are the US going to be overextended if China, Russia or the DPRK start escalating tensions elsewhere?” Even at that point nukes enter the conversation and it stops being predictable.

Yes, the US of 35 years ago had a stronger millitary. The US Empire has fancier tools, but cannot produce them at the same scale they once could. Quantitative buildup results in qualitative changes, this is why dialectics are necessary, not just metaphysical materialism. Materialism must be dialectical.

That’s not how dialectics works. You’re going too far and into economic determinism. Austerity policies aren’t always pursued for economic ends; they can also be done in pursuit of ideological ends.

It is how dialectics works. History is not a series of snapshots, but something that unfolds and changes over time as internal contradictions result in development and change. I’m not going into economic determinism, ideology itself has a material basis. You’re trying to hide idealist analysis behind materialist phrasing, but by treating the ongoing problems with the US Empire as a result of Trump alone you’re literally ascribing to Great Man Theory.

It changes it, but not damningly so. At best this shows contempt towards the current administration and not to the US Empire as a whole.

Sure, my point here is that the US Empire’s ability to wage war is hindered. Iran will not fall no matter how much the US bombs it, they need boots on the ground to do so and the Statesian public has no appetite for this.

If you haven’t already, I suggest you look into Louis Althusser’s idea of “Relative Autonomy” in texts like For Marx and Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Trump is not the cause yes, but his actions still have real world effects that are not immediately tied to economic considerations. Similarly, fascism is a very specific thing. You can at best argue for general authoritarian outcomes due to the class conflict, but not fascism, as it is a specific ideology that can exist somewhat autonomously from the contradiction between capitalists and workers.

Fascism is simply capitalism defending itself from decay. It has material conditions that drive it forward. I’m aware that actions have real effects, but you need to connect it to historical trends. Development happens in spirals, not just because of the actions. Actions create new conditions, but the material conditions impact what ideas are had and what actions people take. As people shape the material conditions around them, their ideas are re-shaped, in an endless process.

Your own argument just proved why the US Empire is not in its dying stages. Europe is completely dependent on the US and their influence geopolitically has only seemed to increase since their increased alliance and integration with Israel in attempts to tie down the Middle East as well. Ask yourself this question: If the US was well and truly close to its end, why didn’t EU members end up selling US bonds when Trump threatened Greenland? That’s because they’d end up tanking their own economies in the process. US debt is the backbone of the entire global financial system.

Europe is imperialist too, and utterly subservient to the US. However, the imperislist system both depend on is weakening. Europe has practically no hard power, and the US Empire’s hard power is a shadow of its former self. Both are going down in a sinking ship.

I can concede to you that the US isn’t as dominant as it once was since the fall of the USSR and that things are more multipolar now, but the current argument is about whether the US is close to its fall, and i just don’t see enough evidence supporting this claim. Don’t get me wrong, the US empire will fall at some point, but you make it sound like it’s imminent.

The US Empire isn’t falling tomorrow, but it isn’t going to take a century either. In the grand scheme of things, the fall of the world’s largest empire is quickly approaching and will likely happen within our lifetimes.

I think you should probably brush up on dialectics, I recently read through Materialism and the Dialectical Method by Maurice Cornforth, and if you ignore the Lysenkoist views of genetics (taken out once the gene was proven, but this is based on an earlier edition), it’s really a fantastic overview. The four basic principles of dialectical materialism are as follows:

1. Dialectics does not regard nature as a collection of static, isolated objects, but as connected, dependent, and determined by each other.

2. Dialectics considers everything as in a state of continuous movement and change, of renewal and development, where something is always rising and something is always dying away.

3. Dialectics is not a simple process of growth, but where quantitative buildup results in qualitative change, and qualitative change result in quantitative outcomes, as a leap in state from one to the other, the lower to the higher, the simple to the complex.

4. Dialectics holds that the process of development from lower to higher takes place as a struggle of opposite tendencies that forms the basis of their contradictions.

When you pin the current downfall of the US Empire on Trump’s actions, you miss the context of why those actions came to be, and why Trump’s strategy isn’t nearly as effective at securing imperialist gains as Reagan’s was. The US Empire of today is not the same as the US Empire of 30-50 years ago, and the biggest changes between then and now are that the US Empire has offshored most of its production, and the global south now has far more south-south trade and can escape the exploitative north-south trade by which unequal exchange functions. This results in development, and decreased superprofits.

From when to when? And in what industries?

Over the last few decades it has accelerated, impacting most production areas. Lots of it is shipped over to China, Vietnam, and other countries, in favor of an increasingly financialized service economy domestically.

What forces? The US is obligated to keep roughly 28,500 troops station in the ROK under a long-standing treaty.

THAAD units are being shifted over to the Middle East, which are critical for defense.

Austerity is not always an immediate indication that imperialism is declining. Neoliberalism always wants austerity, that doesn’t mean imperialism is in a constant state of decline. In this particular instance, it is most due to Trump giving outlandish budget increases to the Pentagon and the DHS whilst providing many of his billionaire buddies with massive tax cuts.

Why did the US Empire shift to massive tax cuts and increased millitary spending? Because the global south is developing, increasing south-south trade, and the US Empire is trying to re-assert its dominance in the area. You’re identifying a partial link, but you need to take this further, that’s how dialectics works.

When has domestic support ever been necessary to continue war?

Without domestic support, war efforts are undermined domestically. The Vietnam war, for example, became increasingly difficult as soldiers fragged their COs. It’s easier to wage war when your public supports it. You’re partially correct in that will alone doesn’t do shit, but active resistance to the war effort does change the war.

I think you’re just overthinking this and what you’re noticing is a temporary (possibly permanent) slump in the US’s dominance because Trump is a colossal fuck up of a president.

This is teetering into Great Man Theory, idealism rather than materialism. Trump is not the cause, but a symptom of the ongoing, gradual, quantitative decay in superprofits. As capitalism decays, fascism increases as the petite bourgeoisie faces proletarianization.

Were there to be any long term consequences to US hegemony, it would most likely be as a result of other Western powers becoming more wary of reliance on the US and seeking slightly more sovereignty from the US. However, i think we’re still a ways away from that outcome.

Europe is toothless, and utterly dependent on the US millitarily. Even now, they are split between needing Russian LNG due to the war in Iran, and their loyalty to the US Empire. No, the biggest threat to the US Empire is the rise in the PRC, which has set up infrastructure accelerating south-south trade, which allows global south countries to escape exploitative north-south unequal exchange.

They’re probably far-right, which is why you find people in Nazi bars like MeanwhileOnGrad using it frequently: (credit to @Diva@lemmy.ml )

In that sense, I’d react similarly to whenever a fascist, Zionist, etc. starts attacking me. None of their points hold any water, so just point that out.

Yes, industrial capacity has decayed massively, and the US Empire is forced to pull its forces out of countries like the ROK in order to support its failing adventurist wars. Profits from imperialism are declining, which is why austerity is being brought home, and why the AI bubble is getting so big. Compare the current assault on Iran with how the Iraq War went, the US Empire just doesn’t have the industrial capacity nor the domestic support required to actually succeed.

More than anything, the drop in superprofits from imperialism is heightening the contradictions in Statesian class society. Hopefully a revolution can happen.

The empire must fall for billions to be free.

The US Empire is thankfully in its death throes.

Pejorative for communist.

Nobody believes what you claim they do, many trans folk are heterosexual. Supporting trans rights is a good thing, and opposing it is bigoted. “Left MAGA” doesn’t exist.

A lot of us are! ☭

The PRC is a socialist country, where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state. Corruption exists, because contradictions exist, but this doesn’t mean it’s an impossible task to keep fighting corruption and purging corrupt officials.

Yes, lmao. To be fair, I do that frequently with other topics. When someone posts something general enough that I’ve already responded to it in-depth before, I usually fall back to previous responses of my own. I don’t have time to actually hand-write in-depth responses for everything, but what I can do is spend effort on something I haven’t seen before, and modify older comments to suit particularities and update the information if I’ve learned anything new or changed my stances.

I have a full-time job, a family, and hobbies, activist work, etc. to balance, so Lemmy is usually something I do when I have a few minutes of nothing else.

As an example, this comment is brand-new, while this comment is a modified version of an earlier effort-post I made.

Haha, fair. I’ve only skimmed it for info. The big takeaway from the soviet chapters is that it was limited by being the first socialist state, and so they tried a lot of brand new things, some of which ended up being mistakes or mishandled. This isn’t anti-soviet messaging though, the point is that existing socialist states have learned from the soviets, and advanced upon them. When we measure the USSR’s democracy contextually, it was very impressive, but socialists have advanced beyond it. This is a good thing, though, as we must always strive for improvement.

(Side note: the physical copy is 130 USD! Piracy-heads stay winning.)

Do you consider the people of the USSR to have worshiped Lenin? What about the PRC, and Mao Zedong? The majority of defectors from the DPRK reported that they truly believed Kim Jong-Il was popularly supported. My question here is where you draw the line between respect and worship, and to ask you the follow-up question: do you believe it’s possible to greatly venerate a leader without counting it as worship, and if-so, how is that fundamentally different to how socialist leaders are venerated?

The problem with reporting on the DPRK is that information is extremely limited on what is actually going on there, at least in the English language (much can be read in Korean, Mandarin, Russian, and even Spanish). Most reports come from defectors, and said defectors are notoriously dubious in their accounts, something the WikiPedia page on Media Coverage of North Korea spells out quite clearly. These defectors are also held in confined cells for around 6 months before being released to the public in the ROK, in… unkind conditions, and pressured into divulging information. Additionally, defectors are paid for giving testemonials, and these testimonials are paid more the more severe they are. From the Wiki page:

Felix Abt, a Swiss businessman who lived in the DPRK, argues that defectors are inherently biased. He says that 70 percent of defectors in South Korea are unemployed, and selling sensationalist stories is a way for them to make a living.

Side note: there is a great documentary on the treatment of DPRK defectors titled Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul, which interviews DPRK defectors and laywers legally defending them, if you’re curious. I also recommend My Brothers and Sisters in the North, a documentary made by a journalist from the Republic of Korea that was stripped of her citizenship for making this documentary humanizing the people in the DPRK.

Because of these issues, there is a long history of what we consider legitimate news sources of reporting and then walking back stories. Even the famous “120 dogs” execution ended up to have been a fabrication originating in a Chinese satirical column, reported entirely seriously and later walked back by some news outlets. The famous “unicorn lair” story ended up being a misunderstanding:

In fact, the report is a propaganda piece likely geared at shoring up the rule of Kim Jong Eun, North Korea’s young and relatively new leader, said Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor of Korean studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Most likely, North Koreans don’t take the report literally, Lee told LiveScience.

“It’s more symbolic,” Lee said, adding, “My take is North Koreans don’t believe all of that, but they bring certain symbolic value to celebrating your own identify, maybe even notions of cultural exceptionalism and superiority. It boosts morale.”

These aren’t tabloids, these are mainstream news sources. NBC News reported the 120 dogs story. Same with USA Today. The frequently reported concept of “state-mandated haircut styles”, as an example, also ended up being bogus sensationalism. People have made entire videos going over this long-running sensationalist misinformation, why it exists, and debunking some of the more absurd articles. As for Radio Free Asia, it is US-government founded and funded. There is good reason to be skeptical of reports sourced entirely from RFA about geopolitical enemies of the US Empire.

Sadly, some people end up using outlandish media stories as an “acceptable outlet” for racism. By accepting uncritically narratives about “barbaric Koreans” pushing trains, eating rats, etc, it serves as a “get out of jail free” card for racists to freely agree with narratives devoid of real evidence.

It’s important to recognize that a large part of why the DPRK appears to be insular is because of UN-imposed sanctions, helmed by the US Empire. It is difficult to get accurate information on the DPRK, but not impossible; Russia, China, and Cuba all have frequent interactions and student exchanges, trade such as in the Rason special economic zone, etc, and there are videos released onto the broader internet from this.

In fact, many citizens who flee the DPRK actually seek to return, and are denied by the ROK. Even BBC is reporting on a high-profile case where a 95 year old veteran wishes to be buried in his homeland, sparking protests by pro-reunification activists in the ROK to help him go home in his final years.

Finally, it’s more unlikely than ever that the DPRK will collapse. The economy was estimated by the Bank of Korea (an ROK bank) to have grown by 3.7% in 2024, thanks to increased trade with Russia. The harshest period for the DPRK, the Arduous March, was in the 90s, and the government did not collapse then. That was the era of mass statvation thanks to the dissolution of the USSR and horrible weather disaster that made the already difficult agricultural climate of northern Korea even worse. Nowadays food is far more stable and the economy is growing, collapse is highly unlikely.

What I think is more likely is that these trends will continue. As the US Empire’s influence wanes, the DPRK will increase trade and interaction with the world, increasing accurate information and helping grow their economy, perhaps even enabling some form of reunification with the ROK. The US Empire leaving the peninsula is the number 1 most important task for reunification, so this is increasingly likely as the US Empire becomes untenable.

Nodutdol, an anti-imperialist group of Korean expats, released a toolkit on better understanding the situation in Korea. This is more like homework, though. I also recommend again the aforementioned Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance for learning about the DPRK’s democratic structure.

Chapter 7.3.1 addresses the soviet model of democracy, and the push for what you describe in the 1936 constitution:

Due to a number of factors, the Soviet Union came to place the greatest emphasis on consultative democracy rather than electoral democracy. To understand why, we need to address the background to this relative lack of emphasis on electoral democracy, especially in light of the campaign of the 1930s to promote multi-candidate, universal elections with secret ballots.

…

It was only after all these hard-won achievements that some stability was at last felt, and electoral democracy could be reconsidered.4 The initial signal came at the Party’s Seventeenth Congress in 1934, which noted not merely the achievements of the last few years, but also directed attention to the political tasks ahead (Stalin 1934a, 347–379, 1934b, 353–388). Proposals concerning socialist democracy were initially debated within the Politburo in January 1935, and articles began appearing in leading journals, addressing directly the topic of Soviet democracy (Zhukov 2003, 116–121; Kokosalakis 2020, 83–84). By June 1935, a constitutional drafting committee was established. The committee produced five drafts—all of them painstakingly checked by Stalin—before a final draft was made available for public discussion in June 1936. The final constitution would stipulate in its eleventh chapter that all levels of soviets, from the supreme to the district, city, and rural, would be “chosen by the electors on the basis of universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot” (Supreme Soviet 1936a, article 134, 1936b, stat’ia 134). The subsequent articles in this chapter spell out what each of these terms meant in practice, including the process of nominating candidates, who would come from “public organisations and societies of the working people: Communist Party organisations, trade unions, cooperatives, youth organisations and cultural societies” (Supreme Soviet 1936a, article 141, 1936b, stat’ia 141).

The idea of direct and multi-candidate elections to all bodies was initially made public in the first months of 1936, especially by Stalin in an interview with Roy Howard in March (see more below) of that year, and was then pressed further at a Central Committee Plenum in June of 1936, where it met with little overt support (Zhukov 2003, 232–236; Kokosalakis 2020, 86). Even more, the public debate around specifically this measure before its final adoption was immense.5 Multiple articles in leading magazines and newspapers were published, and there were countless public meetings around the country. This effort was not a smokescreen for the increasing campaign for Party discipline, which would explode with the purges and trials of 1937–1938; instead, all of the evidence points to the fact that Stalin and those close to him were resiliently dedicated to the electoral reforms (Getty 1991). Stiff resistance there was, especially within the Party from those who stood most to lose (Zhukov 2003, 211), and this was one significant factor that led to restricting non-Party candidates to 20–25% and eventually the practice of having single Party-endorsed candidates for elections. The other major factor was Hitler’s invasion in 1941 and the Soviet Union’s entry into the European theatre of war. Many were the vectors that came together at this time. As the careful study by Kokosalakis (2022, 168–210) shows, there were tensions in the workplace, with PPOs putting increasing pressure on managers in light of drives to greater efficiency and productivity (Stakhanovism); the effort to tighten Party discipline had revealed shocking laxness, especially in regional areas; the campaign for electoral democracy had emboldened anti-communist elements to cause trouble for Soviet power through the elections; the international situation was worsening in light of Hitler’s effort to construct an anti-communist coalition; and the violent storm of trials and purges of 1937–1938 was about to be unleashed against internal and externally-sponsored “wreckers.”

Of most interest here are two principles of electoral democracy that emerged from the maelstrom of events: merit and democratic supervision. These were most clearly expressed in two pieces by Stalin, one in the interview with Roy Howard in March 1936, and the other in his reply to debates at the Central Committee Plenum of February–March 1937. The contexts of these two texts are distinct, one an interview with an international correspondent and the other in reply to the sceptics in the Central Committee concerning elections. But the points are consistent. First, merit, which has two dimensions: the “political principle,” asking whether those workers chosen are “worthy of political confidence”; and the “business principle,” in the sense the people elected should be “fit for such and such a job” (Stalin 1937c, 279, 1937d, 176). In the address to the Central Committee Plenum, Stalin points out that elections based on competence or merit would be a way to break up the corrupt fiefdoms of local Party officials. However, there is a far deeper issue: if elections are based on merit, they are no longer politicised. This measure harks back to Marx’s observation (see Sect. 2.5.2) concerning the need for non-politicised elections in a socialist system. To recall the logic: since a socialist system is not characterised by class struggle and thus antagonistic political parties, elections would not have the antagonistic nature found in capitalist democracy. This is precisely the point Stalin makes in his reply to Howard: “We have no contending parties any more than we have a capitalist class contending against a working class which is exploited by the capitalists.” How then can one have an election contest? To begin with, “candidates will be put forward not only by the Communist Party, but by all sorts of public, non-Party organisations,” of which there hundreds (Stalin 1936a, 111, 1936b, 145). We may add here that elections would be competitive due to the relative merit of the candidates. This is a clearly step further than Marx’s initial suggestions. For Stalin, in competitive elections, the candidate most qualified—in terms of political and administrative merit—should be elected. This is the first major step in defining the nature of elections in a socialist system.

The second concerns democratic supervision. As Stalin observes to Howard, there would be “very lively elections campaigns.” Why? Not a few institutions “work badly,” where a local governing body has failed to provide for the “multifarious and growing requirements of the toilers of town and country.” Stalin looks forward to the types of questions that will be asked: “Have you built a good school or not … improved housing conditions … helped to make our labour more effective and our lives more cultured?” Focused on numerous, acute, and practical problems, elections would “tighten up” the many institutions and organisations so that they would improve their work (Stalin 1936a, 112, 1936b, 146–147). This is not merely seen as an effective anti-corruption mechanism, but is also the democratic role of criticism and self-criticism at work. In his reply to the Central Committee Plenum, Stalin frames the question of democratic supervision in terms of testing workers in responsible positions by assessing and verifying the concrete results of their work. It is one thing for such testing and verification to be undertaken “from above,” by higher levels in the Party. But this is by no means sufficient. What is needed is the “test from below.” When the masses assess the achievements and failures of their leaders, then the masses “draw attention to their mistakes and indicate the way in which these mistakes may be rectified.” For Stalin, this “sort of testing is one of the most effective methods of testing people” (Stalin 1937c, 282, 1937d, 179; see also Zhukov 2003, 211). He compares this process to the practice of democratic centralism in the Party, where the right to nominate candidates and object to them is practised, where secret ballots and the freedom to criticise and indeed self-criticise are the reality. So also with the masses, who have the opportunity at meetings and conferences to hear reports from their leaders in the workplace, trade unions, and other bodies, and openly criticise the work of these leaders and propose ways for improvement. The Party may have the task of teaching the masses, but it must also learn from the masses.

The importance of these two principles should not be under-estimated: the practice of non-politicised elections based on merit, which develops the initial principle proposed by Marx and Engels; and the crucial role of democratic supervision through elections. We should also note here an initial effort to extend the Party’s internal mechanism of democratic centralism to country-wide governance. Stalin speaks of multiple candidates, secret ballots, and public criticism—these too should be practised country-wide in elections to the government bodies through “universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage” (Stalin 1937c, 282, 1937d, 179). It would take far more practice and theoretical elaboration well beyond the time of Soviet Union to find a solution to country-wide democratic centralism, but the two principles of merit as the basis for election to office and democratic supervision would become mainstays of socialist governance.

The drive for electoral democracy did not long live up to its lofty aims, with the most embarrassing retreat being from multi-candidate contested elections to single-candidate elections. At the same time, there was an even greater effort to ensure democratic accountability through elections internal to the Party. These long-lasting moves are reflected in the comprehensive revisions to the Party rules proposed by Zhdanov at the eighteenth congress in 1939.

It’s useful, critical, pro-socialist analysis.

The Kim family does have outsized influence, but the DPRK is not a hereditary monarchy. For example, the position of President, held by Kim Il-Sung, was abolished and split into multiple positions upon his death. This is why he is remembered as the “Eternal President.” As such, both Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un have held different positions. Both have held high positions, for example Kim Jong-Il had the title of General Secretary of the Worker’s Party of Korea, a position held by Kim Jong-Un presently. However, this is not the whole story.

The actual title for a head of state is the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, held presently by Chong Ryong-Hae. The DPRK has a much more distributed level of power, and the Kim family is both widely supported due to its influence, and yet is not the indisputed top-dog, so to speak. What’s more, the Kim family is so venerated precisely because the legacy of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il is lived memory, imagine if Lenin had survived and raised his children as successors. It would be no wonder that the soviets would have elected his children, but it would not be a monarchy either.

Finally, class. Class is not a level of material wealth, but a relation to production and distribution. The DPRK is overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned, administration is not a distinct class in and of itself but a subset of broader classes, same with intellectuals. What determines class is based on that key aspect, the Kim family does not own capital but instead recieves wages from the state. Kim Jong-Un is largely used as a symbol, one that is democratically elected and directly trained by his father for the position.

This is why it’s important to actually study the real systems at play, rather than coast on pre-formed opinions drilled into us about the DPRK from western media. The Black Panther Party maintained good relations with the DPRK, visiting it and teaching Juche to Americans.

Because of the policy of nuclear deterrence, and the socialist system, the DPRK has managed to recover from historic flooding and the dissolution of the USSR into a poor but socially oriented, rising economy. Pyongyang in particular has been booming with massive expansions, and the 20x10 initiative has steadily been patching up the problem of rural underdevelopment.

I encourage you to try to understand the DPRK from a more sympathetic angle, seeing why it has the structures it does, rather than trying to abstract it out of its essential context and analyze it in a vacuum. Such a trap is metaphysics.

Change doesn’t happen smoothly, instead there is quantitative buildup before a qualitative leap. Marxist-Leninists have been correct for a long time, but simply being correct does not mean everyone will agree with you. What’s happening now is a destruction of capitalist cultural hegemony due to the heightened contradiction between socialization of global labor and privatization of profits into the hands of the few.

Historically, the imperial core has been able to bribe a large section of the working classes inside the core with the spoils of imperialism (though ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups are often excluded from this). Social democracy in Europe, and the “American Dream,” both of which are built on the backs of the global south. However, this system is weakening as the global south is escaping underdevelopment. This means increased austerity measures inside the imperial core to protect imperialist profit margins.

Overall, there is a tendency for the rate of profit to fall, which was mathematically proven by Karl Marx. Imperialism answers this by raising absolute profits, creating the spoils of imperialism by which to bribe sections of the working classes into not organizing for revolution. Imperialism aligns the interests of the working classes in the imperial core more with that of imperialists than the global proletariat, which is why revolution happens in the global south. As the rate of profit continues to fall, though, and there are no new markets to enter, imperialists kick off increased war to try to force open foreign markets, like Venezuela, Iran, and soon to be Cuba (most likely).

The silver lining is that the interests of the working classes in the imperial core are now aligning more with the global south, causing a spike in opposition to the brutal status quo. The only way forward for the world is global socialism, and the only future for the US Empire is dissolution and replacement with socialism. Else we end up with barbarism.

Get organized! Read theory! If you want a place to start with theory, I made a basic Marxist-Leninist study guide you can use if you want.