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by pbhjpbhj 3217 days ago
PRK chose communism but they've got dictatorship now - insane, totalitarian dictatorship.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_Korea...

Excerpt of the aims:

"... guaranteed basic human rights and freedoms, including those of speech, press, assembly, and faith; universal suffrage to adults over the age of eighteen; equality for women; labor law reforms ..."

Sounds pretty good.

Many in the North probably would love communism (or anything!) in preference to what they have.

The communists didn't hold the North, the PRK was killed off quickly, the Kims soon took over as dictators - Wikipedia says the suggestion to have a "trusteeship" was from USA, that then put the Kims in power ...

An ignorant reading of this would be "USA saves communism from spreading by installing evil dictators instead". As a child we got our share of USA propaganda - in UK - the hated commies.

Except now it seems they were hated because they form a challenge to the rich capitalists. If workers demanded the profits from their labour in other countries, and the rich lost their places of power, then why wouldn't US Americans do the same?

Is that why USA has been at war against communism? To protect the positions of the wealthy elite over their own countrymen?

Am I wrong?

2 comments

I will say the obvious. History showed that whoever wanted to implement Communism ended up in a similar situation. Perhaps we should drop the game of empiricism and accept that Communism is very very hard to implement and no matter how much you tune the parameters most likely it will end up a freak Totalitarian setup. It just does not worth it.
Yeah it doesn't matter what the stated intent is.

Let's overthrow the old government.

Now let's say the population is in charge but they don't actually vote... We'll just have to "represent" them, vigorously.

Now let's choose our leader according to who can murder their rivals the best.

...how can that turn out well?

"Choseā€ might not be the right word here. The dmz between the Koreas approximates how far the Soviet tanks got through the Japanese-occupied Korea at the end of world war 2 before acknowledging the Japanese surrender. In this sense, North Korea is analogous to East Germany.