>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 04/22/00 05:59PM >>>
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>Isn't there a contradiction between the above two responses?
>Reparations are a "fantasy" (tell that to the folks in Jubilee
>2000!), you think, because American leftists would never, ever, be
>able to control the American government.
The question is what should about 4-5 billion people in the world do today and tomorrow, when American socialists - all 100 of us - don't control the U.S. government. Amin's proposals are designed for that world, not the world we'd like to see.
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CB: But you , Doug, don't have much ability to influence North Korean policy either, or the policy of 4-5 billion people's governments anymore than you can change or control the U.S. government. So, why pronouncements about how N. Korea should change it bizarre, exotic , "oriental", "otherdrenched" personality cult, etc. anymore than pronouncements about the U.S. pulling out troops and giving reparations ?
>(2) The North Korean personality cult is quite deplorable, but
>North Korea is less obsessed with the personality cult than the USA
>is, with its cult of the "Founding Fathers," "In God We Trust," love
>of "celebrities" of all kinds, slavish admiration of the rich, the
>powerful, and the beautiful.
You & Charles & others seem to think that when you point to some debased practice of the U.S. it gets a nominally socialist country off the hook for being similarly debased. I don't see it. All the U.S. cults you list are deplorable.
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CB: Oh, if that is what I seem to think, let me correct you for all future reference. I don't think nominally socialist countries are on the hook, in the sense that the facts support your posing as if you are in some superior poltical status, unconnected to the conduct of your country, and you can put them on the hook. I think there is a lot of misrepresentation by Americans, including leftists such as they are, about the facts of what is going on in North Korea, and that their main problems are CAUSED by U.S. military attacks and threats and economic embargoes and undermining. I don't think Cuba or Korea are as debased as the U.S.
Plus, I think that when you say things like "bizarre" personality cult, you are insinuating that N. Korea has a worse personality cult problem ( U.S. has "normal", not bizarre , personality cults), and I say that that is false. In other words, you are subtley implying that the U.S. political system is more democratic than that of N. Korea, like the U.S. ruling class propagandists say, and I say that is false.
Also, you fail to acknowledge that a militarization of North Korean society was necessary to survive independently of imperialism because of the enormous U.S. military attacks and threats visited upon N. Korea for fifty years. The premise for demilitarizing N. Korean society is removal of the U.S. military threat against N. Korea.
To reiterate partly, of course, your being an American means you cannot pose in this discussion as a neutral , sort of abstractly "objective" internationalist or whatever, untainted by the policy and history of genocidal actions against N. Korea, by your country. You don't have equal rights or responsibilities to criticize N. Korea and the U.S.
Zizek's comparison of the N. Korean conception of Kim Il Sung as leader and European courtly love is gross Eurocentrism, ridiculous universalizing of European history and consciousness, and this from an intellectual trend which is so quick to deny universals and essences.
CB