Counterpoint : If you dont want counterrevolutionaries to gain power maybe dont place all power with a state that can be easily corrupted and instead arm the entire population so they can defend the revolution on their own? Finding it real hard to reconcile gun control and proletarian democracy here.
No u. Calling people revisionists/idealists/wreckers is not a substitute for intelligent discourse.
Such an insurgency would not be a single event that plays out like an conflict in RISK. It would be continuous and it would cripple the DPRK even further than it had already been crippled. The US would do whatever it needed to to keep recruiting insurgents and keep the DPRK in a state of chaos until the government collapsed.
The stability of the state is dependent on military power being able to crush opposition. This function is not reduced by having an armed population unless the true nature of the state is such that the population is actually opposed to it. If the general population is genuinely supportive of the state, arming them will only increase the power of the military, and therefore the state itself.
You can see this in practice in the USA. Any leftist movement will get crushed not just by the state, but by armed chuds who are opposed to them. Similarly, any counterrevolutionary movement in NK will have to face both the state and armed civilians loyal to the state.
(i) The DPRK wasnt exploitative itself
(ii) The DPRK is perfect and there is no valid internal dissent that would ever arise
The state has no incentive to not just crush dissent since the population is unarmed. NK statistics clearly show their economic growth is stagnating, and they living standards are quite poor. Even Kim Jong Un admits their five year plan failed.
And anyone who actually read Marx would point out that exploitation is not absent from NK, because of the presence of commodity production, inflation, hidden and regressive taxation etc. Unless people in NK are somehow innocent lambs that must never be corrupted, there is also no reason to have restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, restrictions on internet etc.
North Korea is not even good at developing productive forces, so what's the point? They are being outclassed by Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos etc. Clearly the DPRK is doing a terrible job, and unfortunately any dissent is impossible.
A proletarian state is supposed to be oppressive against the bourgeiosie, not against the proletariat. So such a thing surely not self-evident or "goes without saying". Furthermore, exploitation is not a necessary condition of states, it is literally the first things that a proletarian dictatorship should abolish.
The whole point of socialism is that workers must earn the product of their labor. This is not achieved when you have non-objective prices, inflation, regressive taxation, and straight up corruption. You can't pretend that "oh this is all self-evident or this is all necessary to protect the people". I notice defenders of AES state always ignore the obvious exploitation that goes on in these states or pretend as if its not important.
Internet restriction is a dumb thing. It is practically non-existent is China as anyone can use a VPN, and Cuba is too poor to be able to provide free access to the internet anyway. The correctness of a measure is not "China and Cuba do it too so its good".
From a cursory wikipedia overview of the economy and politics, I see that the latest trend is in liberalization of politics in terms of increased cultural exchanges and foreign consumption. Apparently they are changing their industrial and agricultural policies towards liberalization too. If they liberalize and become something like China or Vietnam, that would make the decades of Juche quite pointless
Ok, in this definition, is there anything saying that the monopoly of violence MUST be in the form of a standing army made up of a small percent of people, rather than an army made up of the entire proletariat? Wouldn't the second case also be a state?
State power isn't just an army, it's police, prisons, and secret police, etc. Maybe you could put the whole population in the national guard reserves, but you can't make literally everybody a cop.
Engels/Lenin said that you don't have a state until you have special bodies of armed men (cops), who are separate and distinct from a general armed population.
“The second distinguishing feature [of a state] is the establishment of a public power which no longer directly coincides with the population organizing itself as an armed force. This special, public power is necessary because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become impossible since the split into classes.... This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which gentile [clan] society knew nothing...."
I have a question. In your hypothetical, if the entire population is truly answering to (i.e. controlled by) the state, then how is that not placing all the power with a state, which is what you said you are against?
You can, quite literally, make everyone a cop. I don't see why that's a problem.
You can have a separate and distinct professional army while at the same time, having a general and irregular proletarian army. The very fact that this prole army would be an order of magnitude larger than the professional army would act as a useful balance of power, in case the standing army gets corrupted.
I simply see power as a tool. It is a useful tool that enables us to organize society the way we want. I see no reason to exclude the vast majority of the population from this tool.
I have a question. In your hypothetical, if the entire population is truly answering to (i.e. controlled by) the state, then how is that not placing all the power with a state, which is what you said you are against?
What does "answering to the state" mean? It means the military power of the state is used to coerce people to follow the law. Nowhere in this scenario is there a necessity for this military power to be independent of the entire body of people. To be a proletarian dictatorship in the most exact sense of the term, you would have the entire proletariat be the army - hence the state - hence the direct instrument of class rule.
I'm simply not understanding why you have a problem with militarizing the entire population but would instead restrict military power to the standing army.
I do not trust placing the tool of power in the hands of a vanguard or party, because then you only have trust to rely on, that the state will follow the will of the people. Think about the fall of the USSR, which the majority of Russian people opposed. Would the coup have succeeded if Yeltsin didn't have control of the army(hence the state), but rather the entire population was the army?
Alright, well are you going to read and respond to my post above? Why exactly you think that militarizing the entire population is bad, why it is against ML principles, why the vanguard should be small but not gradually increasing in size until it makes up the entire population?
You can, quite literally, make everyone a cop. I don’t see why that’s a problem.
If you make reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries cops too then you're going to have a bad time.
Why exactly you think that militarizing the entire population is bad
I'm fine with arming everybody. I'm just saying that a state needs additional powers and a hierarchy in order to function.
why it is against ML principles, why the vanguard should be small but not gradually increasing in size until it makes up the entire population?
Because if the entire population were already steeped in ML theory, then we'd already be living under full communism. The vanguard party needs to be small because it needs to be limited to those who understand and want to practice ML theory. Gradually expanding the party is okay as long as it meets those requirements, but you're not going to have the entire population in the party anytime soon.
What does “answering to the state” mean? It means the military power of the state is used to coerce people to follow the law. Nowhere in this scenario is there a necessity for this military power to be independent of the entire body of people. To be a proletarian dictatorship in the most exact sense of the term, you would have the entire proletariat be the army - hence the state - hence the direct instrument of class rule.
Answering to the state means being controlled by the state, because that's what I intended when I wrote that phrase. A proletarian dictatorship is a type of state. What you are describing is not a state, nor a dictatorship. You're describing full communism, which is stateless by definition. A state cannot function without a hierarchy.
Excluding 5% of the population is not the same as excluding 95% of the population
I’m fine with arming everybody. I’m just saying that a state needs additional powers and a hierarchy in order to function.
We're talking about North Korea, Cuba, USSR etc that were definitely not fine with arming people. So either you support these states, their methods, and therefore explicitly reject arming everybody, or you're against what these states did.
Because if the entire population were already steeped in ML theory, then we’d already be living under full communism. The vanguard party needs to be small because it needs to be limited to those who understand and want to practice ML theory. Gradually expanding the party is okay as long as it meets those requirements, but you’re not going to have the entire population in the party anytime soon.
What makes the vanguard party the authority on Marxism? What happens when there are multiple vanguard parties, like in real life with our comical numerous People's Fronts on Judaeas in every single country? Which vanguard gets to win and how do you ensure the winning one has the correct interpretation of strategy and theory? Is it not true that in history, the ruling communist party was the one with the best military strategy, as that is what actually enables one to survive and take power? Since good military strategy does not automatically mean the best economic or political strategies, how do you ensure there's no Great Leap Forwards or Khruschevite Revisionism all over again? These are all rhetorical questions, I don't expect you to answer them.
Answering to the state means being controlled by the state, because that’s what I intended when I wrote that phrase. A proletarian dictatorship is a type of state. What you are describing is not a state, nor a dictatorship. You’re describing full communism, which is stateless by definition. A state cannot function without a hierarchy.
I'm not describing full communism. You are unable to even imagine a society where, instead of the military being 1 million people, it includes 100 million people. If there are 100 million proles and 20 million bourgs/peasants/petit-bourgs/lumpen, the 100 million strong prole army handles the gradual transition to socialism and suppresses the rest of the population.
We’re talking about North Korea, Cuba, USSR etc that were definitely not fine with arming people. So either you support these states, their methods, and therefore explicitly reject arming everybody, or you’re against what these states did.
I do support those states. I'm fine with arming everybody, and I'm fine with not arming everybody.
What makes the vanguard party the authority on Marxism?
There is no God that designates the true Marxist party. You think and decide for yourself.
What happens when there are multiple vanguard parties, like in real life with our comical numerous People’s Fronts on Judaeas in every single country?
They fight, on ideological grounds, or physically. I would also like to point out that simply arming every proletarian will not stop this from occurring.
Which vanguard gets to win and how do you ensure the winning one has the correct interpretation of strategy and theory?
You fight for the side you believe in. The one that wins is the one that wins.
how do you ensure the winning one has the correct interpretation of strategy and theory?
You can't. You just fight for the side you believe in.
Is it not true that in history, the ruling communist party was the one with the best military strategy, as that is what actually enables one to survive and take power?
Yes.
Since good military strategy does not automatically mean the best economic or political strategies, how do you ensure there’s no Great Leap Forwards or Khruschevite Revisionism all over again?
You can't. You try your best. That's no reason not to try. Mao and Lenin did great things, even if their states subsequently made mistakes, the wold is better for what they did.
I’m not describing full communism.
You are describing a society without hierarchy, which is not a state.
You are unable to even imagine a society where, instead of the military being 1 million people, it includes 100 million people. If there are 100 million proles and 20 million bourgs/peasants/petit-bourgs/lumpen, the 100 million strong prole army handles the gradual transition to socialism and suppresses the rest of the population.
Because this won't work. Simply arming everybody will not give you an organized army, it will not give you an organized economic policy, it will not give you a theoretically coherent party, and it will never achieve socialism. You need organization and hierarchy because you will be meeting organized reaction.
Think about it this way. If you simply gave every proletarian in the United States a weapon, would that bring about communism in America? No. You need an organized party willing to bring about their specific vision.
I do support those states. I’m fine with arming everybody, and I’m fine with not arming everybody.
"I'm fine with racism and I'm also fine with anti-racism". This is not a coherent position. No one who wants to disarm the majority would also be fine with arming the majority and vice-versa. The fact that you are fine with this incoherency is evidence of your deeply ideological beliefs.
There is no God that designates the true Marxist party. You think and decide for yourself.
Except whichever vanguard wins is now the state and deciding for yourself means shit if you disagree with them.
They fight, on ideological grounds, or physically. I would also like to point out that simply arming every proletarian will not stop this from occurring.
That's working out great for ML parties in non-communist countries for the past 100 years. After 100 years of debates, we have even more parties. Arming the proletariat doesnt stop this but it doesnt matter because the government now operates as a proletarian dictatorship rather than an ML vangaurd state. The MLs can keep debating and fighting in the corner.
You fight for the side you believe in. The one that wins is the one that wins.
Do you understand the point of a rhetorical question? The point here is that giving all the power to the party that wins is not a good idea as the party can be quite terrible. What happens if the Nazbol Vanguard wins? This is also a rhetorical question.
You can’t. You try your best. That’s no reason not to try. Mao and Lenin did great things, even if their states subsequently made mistakes, the wold is better for what they did.
Disgusting. Get rid of your Great Man of History delusion. Not Mao and Lenin, it is the Soviet people and Chinese people who did great things. The world is better due to the sacrifice of the Soviet and Chinese people. The Soviet people were opposed to the full restoration of capitalism, if only they had the actual power, the USSR would still be standing. But no, all power is with the state, and since the state decided its capitalism time, they just had to suck up and take it.
You are describing a society without hierarchy, which is not a state.
Once again, thinking in idealised terms "hierarchy", "state" etc. Arming the population does not magically abolish hierarchy, and the state is simply now expanded rather than concentrated. You are simply afraid of arming the people for some reason. Why? Do you not trust the validity of your own ideas that you need a state to enforce them? What did Marx say about communism? "It is the real movement of the people". Class struggle happens everyday, all over the world. The role of communist is to guide them, to give them economic knowledge for effective policies, to teach tactics, to engage in direct action etc. Get rid of your messiah complex.
Because this won’t work. Simply arming everybody will not give you an organized army, it will not give you an organized economic policy, it will not give you a theoretically coherent party, and it will never achieve socialism. You need organization and hierarchy because you will be meeting organized reaction.
I agree, we must immediately begin disarming the American proletariat, so that the vanguard party will be able to easily implement its policies without resistance. Great idea comrade.
Think about it this way. If you simply gave every proletarian in the United States a weapon, would that bring about communism in America? No. You need an organized party willing to bring about their specific vision.
And now we are back to square one. I already mentioned many posts ago that having an organized party does not necessarily mean that military power should be excluded to a small percentage of the population.
It is the lack of any real power in people's lives that attracts them to political strategies that promise them power. A little bit of humility and self-reflection would do wonders. When you work to give power to others, you give power to yourself.
If you support gun control you are not a communist. This opportunist vanguardist "giving power to the people has a 2% chance of increasing counterrevolution!!11" has no place in Marxist socialism. I will call out any person who claims to be a Marxist and supports gun control. Just admit you don't believe in Marxism.
Counterpoint : If you dont want counterrevolutionaries to gain power maybe dont place all power with a state that can be easily corrupted and instead arm the entire population so they can defend the revolution on their own? Finding it real hard to reconcile gun control and proletarian democracy here.
They already have 5 million armed militia members who are tied to the WPK.
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Gun ownership is non-negotiable. If USA backs insurgents then the remaining 95% of the population that is armed can stop the insurgents.
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No u. Calling people revisionists/idealists/wreckers is not a substitute for intelligent discourse.
The stability of the state is dependent on military power being able to crush opposition. This function is not reduced by having an armed population unless the true nature of the state is such that the population is actually opposed to it. If the general population is genuinely supportive of the state, arming them will only increase the power of the military, and therefore the state itself.
You can see this in practice in the USA. Any leftist movement will get crushed not just by the state, but by armed chuds who are opposed to them. Similarly, any counterrevolutionary movement in NK will have to face both the state and armed civilians loyal to the state.
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Your argument would be true if
(i) The DPRK wasnt exploitative itself (ii) The DPRK is perfect and there is no valid internal dissent that would ever arise
The state has no incentive to not just crush dissent since the population is unarmed. NK statistics clearly show their economic growth is stagnating, and they living standards are quite poor. Even Kim Jong Un admits their five year plan failed.
And anyone who actually read Marx would point out that exploitation is not absent from NK, because of the presence of commodity production, inflation, hidden and regressive taxation etc. Unless people in NK are somehow innocent lambs that must never be corrupted, there is also no reason to have restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, restrictions on internet etc.
North Korea is not even good at developing productive forces, so what's the point? They are being outclassed by Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos etc. Clearly the DPRK is doing a terrible job, and unfortunately any dissent is impossible.
Sorry for not participating in Juche worship
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A proletarian state is supposed to be oppressive against the bourgeiosie, not against the proletariat. So such a thing surely not self-evident or "goes without saying". Furthermore, exploitation is not a necessary condition of states, it is literally the first things that a proletarian dictatorship should abolish.
The whole point of socialism is that workers must earn the product of their labor. This is not achieved when you have non-objective prices, inflation, regressive taxation, and straight up corruption. You can't pretend that "oh this is all self-evident or this is all necessary to protect the people". I notice defenders of AES state always ignore the obvious exploitation that goes on in these states or pretend as if its not important.
Internet restriction is a dumb thing. It is practically non-existent is China as anyone can use a VPN, and Cuba is too poor to be able to provide free access to the internet anyway. The correctness of a measure is not "China and Cuba do it too so its good".
From a cursory wikipedia overview of the economy and politics, I see that the latest trend is in liberalization of politics in terms of increased cultural exchanges and foreign consumption. Apparently they are changing their industrial and agricultural policies towards liberalization too. If they liberalize and become something like China or Vietnam, that would make the decades of Juche quite pointless
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I take it you're not an ML?
The alternative to "dont place all power with a state" is not "dont have states at all".
MLs support placing all the power with a state though.
What is a state?
A state is a sovereign organization wielding a monopoly on violence that is formed by one class for the purpose of subjugating another.
Ok, in this definition, is there anything saying that the monopoly of violence MUST be in the form of a standing army made up of a small percent of people, rather than an army made up of the entire proletariat? Wouldn't the second case also be a state?
No. If the army doesn't answer to the state, then it isn't an extension of the state's power.
In my definition the army does answer to the state except the army is now the entire population
State power isn't just an army, it's police, prisons, and secret police, etc. Maybe you could put the whole population in the national guard reserves, but you can't make literally everybody a cop.
Engels/Lenin said that you don't have a state until you have special bodies of armed men (cops), who are separate and distinct from a general armed population.
I have a question. In your hypothetical, if the entire population is truly answering to (i.e. controlled by) the state, then how is that not placing all the power with a state, which is what you said you are against?
You can, quite literally, make everyone a cop. I don't see why that's a problem.
You can have a separate and distinct professional army while at the same time, having a general and irregular proletarian army. The very fact that this prole army would be an order of magnitude larger than the professional army would act as a useful balance of power, in case the standing army gets corrupted.
I simply see power as a tool. It is a useful tool that enables us to organize society the way we want. I see no reason to exclude the vast majority of the population from this tool.
What does "answering to the state" mean? It means the military power of the state is used to coerce people to follow the law. Nowhere in this scenario is there a necessity for this military power to be independent of the entire body of people. To be a proletarian dictatorship in the most exact sense of the term, you would have the entire proletariat be the army - hence the state - hence the direct instrument of class rule.
I'm simply not understanding why you have a problem with militarizing the entire population but would instead restrict military power to the standing army.
I do not trust placing the tool of power in the hands of a vanguard or party, because then you only have trust to rely on, that the state will follow the will of the people. Think about the fall of the USSR, which the majority of Russian people opposed. Would the coup have succeeded if Yeltsin didn't have control of the army(hence the state), but rather the entire population was the army?
Then you're not an ML. Plain and simple.
Is this entire discussion about whether or not I'm an ML or not? Wow I guess I wasted my time.
Yes. It was the very first question I asked.
Alright, well are you going to read and respond to my post above? Why exactly you think that militarizing the entire population is bad, why it is against ML principles, why the vanguard should be small but not gradually increasing in size until it makes up the entire population?
If you make reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries cops too then you're going to have a bad time.
I'm fine with arming everybody. I'm just saying that a state needs additional powers and a hierarchy in order to function.
Because if the entire population were already steeped in ML theory, then we'd already be living under full communism. The vanguard party needs to be small because it needs to be limited to those who understand and want to practice ML theory. Gradually expanding the party is okay as long as it meets those requirements, but you're not going to have the entire population in the party anytime soon.
Answering to the state means being controlled by the state, because that's what I intended when I wrote that phrase. A proletarian dictatorship is a type of state. What you are describing is not a state, nor a dictatorship. You're describing full communism, which is stateless by definition. A state cannot function without a hierarchy.
Excluding 5% of the population is not the same as excluding 95% of the population
We're talking about North Korea, Cuba, USSR etc that were definitely not fine with arming people. So either you support these states, their methods, and therefore explicitly reject arming everybody, or you're against what these states did.
What makes the vanguard party the authority on Marxism? What happens when there are multiple vanguard parties, like in real life with our comical numerous People's Fronts on Judaeas in every single country? Which vanguard gets to win and how do you ensure the winning one has the correct interpretation of strategy and theory? Is it not true that in history, the ruling communist party was the one with the best military strategy, as that is what actually enables one to survive and take power? Since good military strategy does not automatically mean the best economic or political strategies, how do you ensure there's no Great Leap Forwards or Khruschevite Revisionism all over again? These are all rhetorical questions, I don't expect you to answer them.
I'm not describing full communism. You are unable to even imagine a society where, instead of the military being 1 million people, it includes 100 million people. If there are 100 million proles and 20 million bourgs/peasants/petit-bourgs/lumpen, the 100 million strong prole army handles the gradual transition to socialism and suppresses the rest of the population.
I do support those states. I'm fine with arming everybody, and I'm fine with not arming everybody.
There is no God that designates the true Marxist party. You think and decide for yourself.
They fight, on ideological grounds, or physically. I would also like to point out that simply arming every proletarian will not stop this from occurring.
You fight for the side you believe in. The one that wins is the one that wins.
You can't. You just fight for the side you believe in.
Yes.
You can't. You try your best. That's no reason not to try. Mao and Lenin did great things, even if their states subsequently made mistakes, the wold is better for what they did.
You are describing a society without hierarchy, which is not a state.
Because this won't work. Simply arming everybody will not give you an organized army, it will not give you an organized economic policy, it will not give you a theoretically coherent party, and it will never achieve socialism. You need organization and hierarchy because you will be meeting organized reaction.
Think about it this way. If you simply gave every proletarian in the United States a weapon, would that bring about communism in America? No. You need an organized party willing to bring about their specific vision.
"I'm fine with racism and I'm also fine with anti-racism". This is not a coherent position. No one who wants to disarm the majority would also be fine with arming the majority and vice-versa. The fact that you are fine with this incoherency is evidence of your deeply ideological beliefs.
Except whichever vanguard wins is now the state and deciding for yourself means shit if you disagree with them.
That's working out great for ML parties in non-communist countries for the past 100 years. After 100 years of debates, we have even more parties. Arming the proletariat doesnt stop this but it doesnt matter because the government now operates as a proletarian dictatorship rather than an ML vangaurd state. The MLs can keep debating and fighting in the corner.
Do you understand the point of a rhetorical question? The point here is that giving all the power to the party that wins is not a good idea as the party can be quite terrible. What happens if the Nazbol Vanguard wins? This is also a rhetorical question.
Disgusting. Get rid of your Great Man of History delusion. Not Mao and Lenin, it is the Soviet people and Chinese people who did great things. The world is better due to the sacrifice of the Soviet and Chinese people. The Soviet people were opposed to the full restoration of capitalism, if only they had the actual power, the USSR would still be standing. But no, all power is with the state, and since the state decided its capitalism time, they just had to suck up and take it.
Once again, thinking in idealised terms "hierarchy", "state" etc. Arming the population does not magically abolish hierarchy, and the state is simply now expanded rather than concentrated. You are simply afraid of arming the people for some reason. Why? Do you not trust the validity of your own ideas that you need a state to enforce them? What did Marx say about communism? "It is the real movement of the people". Class struggle happens everyday, all over the world. The role of communist is to guide them, to give them economic knowledge for effective policies, to teach tactics, to engage in direct action etc. Get rid of your messiah complex.
I agree, we must immediately begin disarming the American proletariat, so that the vanguard party will be able to easily implement its policies without resistance. Great idea comrade.
And now we are back to square one. I already mentioned many posts ago that having an organized party does not necessarily mean that military power should be excluded to a small percentage of the population.
It is the lack of any real power in people's lives that attracts them to political strategies that promise them power. A little bit of humility and self-reflection would do wonders. When you work to give power to others, you give power to yourself.
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If you support gun control you are not a communist. This opportunist vanguardist "giving power to the people has a 2% chance of increasing counterrevolution!!11" has no place in Marxist socialism. I will call out any person who claims to be a Marxist and supports gun control. Just admit you don't believe in Marxism.