>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 04/21/00 03:29PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>Alexandre Fenelon wrote:
>
>> Speaking of North Korea, I have a question for ya. I was under the
>> impression that the country is a textbook example of squalor.
>
>-------------------
>
>I think you might be thinking of Haiti and other U.S. colonies and
>ghettos. In recent years, Harlem had a higher infant mortality rate
>than most of the world.
That's all true, Charles, but that still doesn't make NK a very admirable model of anything.
___________
CB: The issue is did imperialism cause the squalor in NK and not communist dictatorship ? In other words, is NK not a very admirable model of what imperialism is doing to the world , rather than, as you imply, a "model" of what communism does ? NK is not a very admirable model of what U.S. imperialism does to a country. Notice that Viet Nam has a lot of squalor too, as Brad D loves to point out.
Remember , the U.S. annihilated Korea before Viet Nam even. And the pressure and threat has NEVER been let up. Whatever squalor there is in NK may be wholly attributable to capitalist war and embargo , NOT communism or the Communist Party leaders.
Cuba is a poor country too, but not because of, rather despite, the heroics of the Cuban Communist Party. The bourgeois media keeps telling us the Cuban CP is dictatorial too. They can lie about NK, like they can lie about Cuba, misrepresenting military organization of socialist society due to the gargantuan, unrelenting , military threat from the U.S. evil empire death stars. . The U.S. has had thousands of troops and nuclear weapons pointed at Korea for 50 years, as Yoshie sketched out. Wouldn't you organize militarily too ? In other words, they have true defense.. Ditto Soviet Union, and China , for that matter.
The militarization of socialist societies in the 20th Century is due to the holocaustic miltary attacks and threats of imperialism , and is not due to some inherent dicatatorial tendencies of Communist Party leaders.
By the way, it is capitalism that caused the squalor in Haiti and Harlem too. Capitalism tends to cause squalor at home and abroad.
CB