RES: Kim Jong Il Thinks He's a God-King: Why Ignore It?

Rob Schaap rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au
Wed May 24 18:47:56 PDT 2000


Hear, hear, Alexandre. If it ain't democratic, it not only ain't socialist, it ain't even on the road to socialism. Democracy is the ONLY guard against the gradual consolidation of competing interests into competing classes, I reckon.

I'm taken with old Lord Acton's aphorism about a world in which our individualistic and distorted notions of power rule: 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'.

An oldie, but a goodie.

Cheers, Rob (a 'liberal' because he actually thinks 'all power to the Soviets' would have been a good idea ... )


>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.



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