What is considered white. Hell, I’m Sicilian and some of my Hispanic friends are as light or lighter than me. Of course we know with chuds, they will find another group to demonize.
I’m reading a book on immigration by Chomsky’s daughter and the thought just came to me. I’d like for that to be the case, my girlfriend is a Latina and a lot of my friends are as well, I’d rather them eventually be absorbed into the whiteness blob so they aren’t in quite as much danger from bigots.
After that, I’d rather whiteness as a gatekeeping concept go the fuck away entirely.
I wasnt aware land could be produced. Do you think consumption goods like food, cosmetics, toys, vehicles etc. are not produced and sold in NK? Are you aware that production by government, for example, USPS or Statoil are still capitalist institutions despite being owned by the government? Capitalism is not just private ownership. By that logic, just making everything into co-ops would be socialism. Marx defined capitalism as generalized commodity production for a very good reason, it is the essence of capitalism. And his prescience was proven when the "'socialist" countries still maintained commodity production and maintained the old forms of exploitation. YOU WILL NEVER ABOLISH CAPITALISM BY NATIONALIZING EVERYTHING AND MAINTAINING COMMODITY PRODUCTION. THIS WAS PROVEN BY 100 YEARS OF PRACTICE IN "AESCs". Or maybe we should have just given them a 100 years more to Develop Productive Forces™?
Producing goods to be sold for a profit in foreign countries is socialism, yes.
It was a revelation to me when I realized that self-described communists are as dumb as the average chud or liberal. There is almost nothing more to say. You seem to think that even after 60 years of exploitation, North Korea is socialist or moving towards socialism when in reality they have always been capitalist and are moving towards the form of liberalized capitalism dominant in the rest of the world. I explained very clearly what is capitalism, and why it exists in North Korea. There is almost nothing else I can say to convince you. Can you convince a chud to stop hating blacks? Can you convince a liberal that violence against injustice is justified? Maybe you can, but I don't know how. I'm disengaging here, and I'm hoping that the people of North Korea overthrow their oppressive rulers.
Yes, consumer goods are sold. And the black markets are there precisely to work around the sanctions on importing consumer goods. But consumer goods are not the entire economy. They are not even the majority of the economy. And even there, most consumer goods in the DPRK are not produced for profit but rationed and have fictitious prices. Your diatribe about nationalisation and co-ops are more of an argument against demsocs and have nothing to do with my position or the relations of production in past and present AES countries.
How come my question is so easy to answer for South Korea, for example? I could write at length about the chaebols, their origins on the Japanese colonisers, their involvement in the military dictatorship and US imperialist wars, their control of the South Korean government, their organisation, their leaders, even their books are open to inquiry. There's no such information about the primary industry in the DPRK, or the Soviet Union for that matter. Only firms with names like "<place> <commodity> factory", lead by some nobody bureaucrat, subject to a national plan with allocated resources and quotas. If the Soviet economy was a capitalist economy in disguise, how come that when the Union fell most of the production chains got interrupted, and most Soviet factory managers realised that, despite having served their country for decades, their factories would never turn a profit? Perhaps they were producing commodities for use and not for exchange?
What is your evidence that the DPRK produces to sell for a profit in foreign countries? Where is the M-C-M' cycle? Does it work like a giant, country-sized corporation? Do they gear their economy into acquiring ever more hard currency, or do they work towards other goals?
If you want to convince me, you could answer my questions instead of deflecting them or answering to Richard Wolff, who is not a part of this conversation.
Consumer goods are literally the major part of any economy. All producer goods are eventually inputs to consumer goods. The fact that goods have fictitious prices makes it even worse. It means prices no longer have any relation to value, making it impossible to attain the principle of "to each according to his contribution". Nationalized commodity production is literally what happens in AESCs, how is that not relevant? That's why we call it state capitalism. The fact that profits go to the state doesn't mean it is not capitalist. It means the state plays the role of the capitalist.
North Korea sells on the foreign market to get much needed hard currency for importing vital goods. Trade may or may not be profitable depending on the goods, but profitability is a guiding metric for measuring efficiency, even in the USSR it was used to measure efficiency. Given how terribly exploited it's people are, I would say that it is profitable. There is one major problem, since North Korea sets artificial prices on input goods, it is not possible to determine if the profitability reflects efficiency as it does in other countries i.e whether profitability means that the SNLT used in production is less than the average. North Korea can gear their economy whichever way they want, but ultimately reality has shown its a massive failure.
Your understanding of socialism is :
In practice, 70 years of the USSR, 70 years of NK and 60 years of Cuba has shown this is not true.
Russia manages it privatisation terribly, other Eastern European countries managed to transition to capitalism much easier without the level of trauma that Russians suffered.
I asked for evidence that the DPRK produces to sell for profit and all you said was that their people are «terribly exploited». That's not evidence, that's a tautology. Exploited by whom? Since you've read so many books you must know that all surplus value must be realised as surplus product. It's a very large population that's being «terribly exploited», where are the billions of labour hours dedicated to sector IIb? Where are the Korean megayachts, the private planes, the house servants? Where's the Korean capitalist class, how come we only hear about Kim Jong Un going to a University in Switzerland? For China your argument would make sense, because the Chinese billionaires are many and all over the world, buying real state, attending Harvard and giving TED speeches. Surely Kim alone cannot consume all the surplus product produced by the terribly exploited Korean people. Perhaps there is not so much surplus product around because their economy is geared towards defence and self reliance and not towards profit.
I'm not aware of any Eastern European country that managed their transition away from socialism without shutting down the majority of their enterprises and provoking a massive humanitarian disaster, except perhaps for Belarus which kept the planned, unprofitable, distinctly non-capitalist mode of production going for much longer than the others.
Their productivity is too low to be able to make luxury goods. Nor would it be politically expedient to do so, instead the rulers can simply hoard cash and buy luxury goods from other countries. Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia all did very well in transitioning to capitalism. Also jesus christ, now are you saying Belarus is non-capitalist? I give up, you are incorrigible. At least you gave me insight why this world is so terrible. It is because even communists are this braindead.
I'm not saying Belarus isn't capitalist, I'm saying they kept the planned economy going for longer. Like I said I'm not aware of the details of the transition away from socialism for most easter euro countries. From your list I remember in Poland more than 50% of the state-owned enterprises were closed, there were three consecutive years of 300-500% inflation that diluted everyone's life savings, and the real wages of the lowest-paid quintile of the population never recovered to pre-1989 levels.
So now, back to the same question you never answer, if you admit there barely is any sector IIb in the DPRK, for the rulers to hoard cash and buy luxury goods from other countries it'd be necessary that the DPRK has an export-focused economy. Can you prove that? It should be easy, let's see what the CIA says:
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/korea-north/#economy
GDP (official exchange rate): $28 billion (2013 est.)
Exports: $222 million (2018)
:thonk: curious, it seems their exports are less than 1% of their economy… and are not hoarding cash but spending it all… almost like your hypothesis is bullshit…
Planned economy is still capitalist. Belarus was always capitalist, both before the fall of USSR and after. Simply planning the economy doesnt make it non-capitalist. Inflation for 3 years is nothing compared to the 12 million excess deaths suffered by Russians.
https://time.com/5628028/north-korea-sanctions-luxury-goods/ https://www.thefashionlaw.com/as-north-korea-continues-to-boost-its-luxury-imports-a-look-at-the-role-of-luxury-in-the-hermit-kingdom/
I think a planned economy is one of the cornerstones of a socialist economy. It obviously not enough but how can you possibly escape commodity production for exchange without an economy rationally planned for use? Remember I brought up the USSR not because of the 1991 famine but to point out that their factories and logistic networks could not function under a free market economy even though they had been productive for decades.
Your articles talk about 640 million dollars per year of luxury goods imports. That's less than 3% of their economy. Are you saying the DPRK citizens are terribly exploited of 3% of their labour? You must know most capitalist countries have s/v ratios of 30 to 60%.
Edit: I'll check out because nobody seems to be lurking this discussion anymore.
This is just proof that one form of capitalism is incompatible with other forms. It is not proof that USSR was socialist. Once again, not-capitalism =/= socialism. It is not enough to just "abolish" what you think is capitalism. Nationalizing everything, planning commodity production, price controls etc is not socialism.
Is this a parody? First of all, in the US, it's less than 0.5% of their economy https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201117005990/en/Global-Luxury-Goods-Market-Report-2020-Market-to-Reach-403.2-Billion-by-2027---ResearchAndMarkets.com. But this is all splitting hairs, we are talking about how having exploitation, commodity production etc does not make it socialist, and now you are making hairbrained defences saying $700 million dollars of stolen wealth annually diverted to Kim and his cronies is justifiable. We don't even know the s/v ratio of NK because prices dont reflect SNLT there. That is not a good thing btw, because it completely mystifies exploitation whereas at least in private capitalism, you can calculate the rate of exploitation.
I'm disengaging here. This discussion is becoming less and less rational. I think I have achieved my goal, i.e. showing the readers to what extent of irrationality you have to go to defend NK. I will be disengaging here.
keep going, I can still see the goalposts
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