-----Mensagem original----- De: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]Em nome de Brad De Long Enviada em: quarta-feira, 24 de maio de 2000 17:35 Para: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Assunto: Re: Kim Jong Il Thinks He's a God-King: Why Ignore It?
>Brad and Tim, I'm all for discussing the nature of the NK regime,
>but could we do it without epithets?
>
>Yours truly,
>
>ListMom
Waah! Waah! He started it...
On the nature of the NK regimen, I would like to put some questions about the question of one party system and one man government. Brad de Long´s opinions on NK would hardly be taken serioulsy 20 years ago, when the communist regimen had done a good job by achieving a 90-95% litteracy rate, a 70 years life expectancy and less than 30/1000 infant mortality. In comparison, rates on my country were 75%, 60, and 70/1000 (I live in Brazil). However, the NK regimen went throught a process of degeneration since then (maybe this process was happening well before). The main sympton o this process is that the leadership simply loses its ability to worry about people´s standards of life. Altought I doubt that famine in NK costed 3,000,000 lives (based on a stratfor analysis who argues that the NK government exageratted the extent o famine to get foreign help), it seems that the living standards has worsened a loss since 1990. The reason for this is obviously not the USSR fall, because those catastrophic events din´t happen in Vietnam or Cuba (despite the fact Cuban economy suffered a lot from the 1991 events). We can also argue that the severe inundations in 1995-6 made the diference, but I call attention to the fact that NK military spending in 25% of its GNP and it didn´t change since the famine. We must remember that Lenin, in 1922, ordered a dramatic cut in Soviet Navy´s budget to improve the public education system. So, what I think is that there is a terrible thing in communist countries. The habit of keeping a leader in charge until his death coupled with the one party system, seems to distance progressively the leadership from the masses. It´s the system fault. When a leader lives surrounded by running dogs that tells him only what he want, then there is a complete break up with reality. Those examples of degeneration were more evident in Stalin´s USSR, Ceuacescu´s Rumania and Hoxhas´s Albania. In other socialist countries the process is less dramatic, but also happened. The trouble with the one party system is that it becomes very attractive for opportunists in search of social ascension. I remember a broacast interview with a right wing Bulgarian politician who had been member of the CP. When questioned on this he told the reporter that "there is a diference between CP´s in west and in our countries, while the Western parties affiliated are communists, the Eastern Europeans CP´s are the key to social ascension". Well, with such communists, the collapse o communism is no surprise. I can wonder how this is this degeneration process by paying attention to the behavior of my country´s president, a former marxist intelectual, who turned to right wing and was re-elected for a 4 year term. It´s horrible to see that his cynism towards the social question is achieving sttagering levels. Last week, a landless peasant died in a confrontation with the police and the president said that his dead was and advise to those agitator´s...And he´ve remained only 5 years in power. What could happen in a 30 year mandate? We socialists, should pay more attention to those matters of human nature in order to build a better political system.
Alexandre