[miked]

North Korea is not communist it is Juche.

No, it's communist. It's just called Juche. Note that nothing about how things are actually done in NK changed when they changed their constitution. Note also that constitutions are essentially meaningless in a dictatorship, since they provide few, if any, real constraints on the dictator. Which, after all, is why we call them dictators.

Looks like the fall of most of the communist states has gotten the regime a bit nervous. Can't have any of the little people thinking they might like to end their Socialist Paradise.

[jhuni]

> No, it's communist.

It isn't anything Marx would call communist. North Korea guarantees protection of private property in its constitution and it is a member of the world intellectual property organization.

A communist society shouldn't have an antithesis between mental and physical labor or intellectual private property. It should be a society where everyone is free to work and collaborate on whatever creative projects they want to.

[frozenport]

If you take the reality of the situation instead of the claims of the officials, then there has never been a communist country in the world and certainly not in NK.

[kevinpet]

The same can be said of a free market, but that shouldn't stop us from comparing mostly free market economies with mostly communist economies.

[jhuni]

There has never been anything close to a communist economy. Communism means there are such advanced productive forces and automation technology that there is no antithesis between mental and physical labor:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! - comrade Karl Marx