What is considered white. Hell, I’m Sicilian and some of my Hispanic friends are as light or lighter than me. Of course we know with chuds, they will find another group to demonize.
I’m reading a book on immigration by Chomsky’s daughter and the thought just came to me. I’d like for that to be the case, my girlfriend is a Latina and a lot of my friends are as well, I’d rather them eventually be absorbed into the whiteness blob so they aren’t in quite as much danger from bigots.
After that, I’d rather whiteness as a gatekeeping concept go the fuck away entirely.
Are those goods produced to be sold? Yes. Does profit exist in this equation? Naturally. If a good has a price on the market, it also has a cost. The difference is profit. This is inbuilt in the system of generalized commodity production. Most of the profit is taken by the state. North Korea has businesses that make profit. They have foreign businesses in Special Economic Zones. They have black markets. Their major source of foreign income is from trade with China and South Korea (both capitalist nations, so the nature of this exchange is obviously capitalist). And the kicker is that they are liberalizing more and more, just like Cuba.
Now I have a question for you. Why bother with the bullshit "socialism" that North Korea is doing when it is obviously not producing good results? Sri Lanka and Kerala have better standard of living, despite being capitalist nations with a social safety net and lower level of industrialization than NK. Why even bother with that method, and all the pain and trouble and sanctions and military regime necessary to maintain it when they can just admit that they are capitalist and become like a Vietnam or Nepal?
North Korea is a supremely fucked up country, there is very little to admire there. It's all just completely unncessary suffering. They are a victim of geopolitics in the 50s, but from there on, it's all their fault. I'm not even going into the obvious massive gulf in standard of living between Pyongyang residents and rural villagers.
Source: your ass. Nobody produces land, CNC machines, or ICBMs to be sold in the DPRK. Where are they even selling it? Is there plutonium in these informal markets? Who's the CEO of the Korean equivalent of Raytheon? Or their RE/MAX? Or their Hermle AG? Absolutely ridiculous. But no less ridiculous than conflating international trade with capitalism.
And you're somehow forgetting that Korea lost their war, and South Korea not only exists but also has the highest suicide rate in the world.
Edit: Here, have some Engels on what happens when you focus to much on reified categories instead of analysing material conditions
We have already had more than one occasion to make ourselves acquainted with Herr Dühring’s method. It consists in dissecting each group of objects of knowledge to what is claimed to be their simplest elements, applying to these elements similarly simple and what are claimed to be self-evident axioms, and then continuing to operate with the aid of the results so obtained. Even a problem in the sphere of social life
And thus the application of the mathematical method to history, morals and law is to give us also in these fields mathematical certainty of the truth of the results obtained, to characterise them as genuine, immutable truths.
This is only giving a new twist to the old favourite ideological method, also known as the a priori method, which consists in ascertaining the properties of an object, by logical deduction from the concept of the object, instead of from the object itself. First the concept of the object is fabricated from the object; then the spit is turned round, and the object is measured by its reflexion, the concept. The object is then to conform to the concept, not the concept to the object. With Herr Dühring the simplest elements, the ultimate abstractions he can reach, do service for the concept, which does not alter matters; these simplest elements are at best of a purely conceptual nature. The philosophy of reality, therefore, proves here again to be pure ideology, the deduction of reality not from itself but from a concept.
And when such an ideologist constructs morality and law from the concept, or the so-called simplest elements of “society”, instead of from the real social relations of the people round him, what material is then available for this construction? Material clearly of two kinds: first, the meagre residue of real content which may possibly survive in the abstractions from which he starts and, secondly, the content which our ideologist once more introduces from his own consciousness. And what does he find in his consciousness? For the most part, moral and juridical notions which are a more or less accurate expression (positive or negative, corroborative or antagonistic) of the social and political relations amidst which he lives; perhaps also ideas drawn from the literature on the subject; and, as a final possibility, some personal idiosyncrasies. Our ideologist may turn and twist as he likes, but the historical reality which he cast out at the door comes in again at the window, and while he thinks he is framing a doctrine of morals and law for all times and for all worlds, he is in fact only fashioning an image of the conservative or revolutionary tendencies of his day — an image which is distorted because it has been torn from its real basis and, like a reflection in a concave mirror, is standing on its head.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch08.htm
I wasnt aware land could be produced. Do you think consumption goods like food, cosmetics, toys, vehicles etc. are not produced and sold in NK? Are you aware that production by government, for example, USPS or Statoil are still capitalist institutions despite being owned by the government? Capitalism is not just private ownership. By that logic, just making everything into co-ops would be socialism. Marx defined capitalism as generalized commodity production for a very good reason, it is the essence of capitalism. And his prescience was proven when the "'socialist" countries still maintained commodity production and maintained the old forms of exploitation. YOU WILL NEVER ABOLISH CAPITALISM BY NATIONALIZING EVERYTHING AND MAINTAINING COMMODITY PRODUCTION. THIS WAS PROVEN BY 100 YEARS OF PRACTICE IN "AESCs". Or maybe we should have just given them a 100 years more to Develop Productive Forces™?
Producing goods to be sold for a profit in foreign countries is socialism, yes.
It was a revelation to me when I realized that self-described communists are as dumb as the average chud or liberal. There is almost nothing more to say. You seem to think that even after 60 years of exploitation, North Korea is socialist or moving towards socialism when in reality they have always been capitalist and are moving towards the form of liberalized capitalism dominant in the rest of the world. I explained very clearly what is capitalism, and why it exists in North Korea. There is almost nothing else I can say to convince you. Can you convince a chud to stop hating blacks? Can you convince a liberal that violence against injustice is justified? Maybe you can, but I don't know how. I'm disengaging here, and I'm hoping that the people of North Korea overthrow their oppressive rulers.
Yes, consumer goods are sold. And the black markets are there precisely to work around the sanctions on importing consumer goods. But consumer goods are not the entire economy. They are not even the majority of the economy. And even there, most consumer goods in the DPRK are not produced for profit but rationed and have fictitious prices. Your diatribe about nationalisation and co-ops are more of an argument against demsocs and have nothing to do with my position or the relations of production in past and present AES countries.
How come my question is so easy to answer for South Korea, for example? I could write at length about the chaebols, their origins on the Japanese colonisers, their involvement in the military dictatorship and US imperialist wars, their control of the South Korean government, their organisation, their leaders, even their books are open to inquiry. There's no such information about the primary industry in the DPRK, or the Soviet Union for that matter. Only firms with names like "<place> <commodity> factory", lead by some nobody bureaucrat, subject to a national plan with allocated resources and quotas. If the Soviet economy was a capitalist economy in disguise, how come that when the Union fell most of the production chains got interrupted, and most Soviet factory managers realised that, despite having served their country for decades, their factories would never turn a profit? Perhaps they were producing commodities for use and not for exchange?
What is your evidence that the DPRK produces to sell for a profit in foreign countries? Where is the M-C-M' cycle? Does it work like a giant, country-sized corporation? Do they gear their economy into acquiring ever more hard currency, or do they work towards other goals?
If you want to convince me, you could answer my questions instead of deflecting them or answering to Richard Wolff, who is not a part of this conversation.
Consumer goods are literally the major part of any economy. All producer goods are eventually inputs to consumer goods. The fact that goods have fictitious prices makes it even worse. It means prices no longer have any relation to value, making it impossible to attain the principle of "to each according to his contribution". Nationalized commodity production is literally what happens in AESCs, how is that not relevant? That's why we call it state capitalism. The fact that profits go to the state doesn't mean it is not capitalist. It means the state plays the role of the capitalist.
North Korea sells on the foreign market to get much needed hard currency for importing vital goods. Trade may or may not be profitable depending on the goods, but profitability is a guiding metric for measuring efficiency, even in the USSR it was used to measure efficiency. Given how terribly exploited it's people are, I would say that it is profitable. There is one major problem, since North Korea sets artificial prices on input goods, it is not possible to determine if the profitability reflects efficiency as it does in other countries i.e whether profitability means that the SNLT used in production is less than the average. North Korea can gear their economy whichever way they want, but ultimately reality has shown its a massive failure.
Your understanding of socialism is :
In practice, 70 years of the USSR, 70 years of NK and 60 years of Cuba has shown this is not true.
Russia manages it privatisation terribly, other Eastern European countries managed to transition to capitalism much easier without the level of trauma that Russians suffered.
I asked for evidence that the DPRK produces to sell for profit and all you said was that their people are «terribly exploited». That's not evidence, that's a tautology. Exploited by whom? Since you've read so many books you must know that all surplus value must be realised as surplus product. It's a very large population that's being «terribly exploited», where are the billions of labour hours dedicated to sector IIb? Where are the Korean megayachts, the private planes, the house servants? Where's the Korean capitalist class, how come we only hear about Kim Jong Un going to a University in Switzerland? For China your argument would make sense, because the Chinese billionaires are many and all over the world, buying real state, attending Harvard and giving TED speeches. Surely Kim alone cannot consume all the surplus product produced by the terribly exploited Korean people. Perhaps there is not so much surplus product around because their economy is geared towards defence and self reliance and not towards profit.
I'm not aware of any Eastern European country that managed their transition away from socialism without shutting down the majority of their enterprises and provoking a massive humanitarian disaster, except perhaps for Belarus which kept the planned, unprofitable, distinctly non-capitalist mode of production going for much longer than the others.
Their productivity is too low to be able to make luxury goods. Nor would it be politically expedient to do so, instead the rulers can simply hoard cash and buy luxury goods from other countries. Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia all did very well in transitioning to capitalism. Also jesus christ, now are you saying Belarus is non-capitalist? I give up, you are incorrigible. At least you gave me insight why this world is so terrible. It is because even communists are this braindead.
I'm not saying Belarus isn't capitalist, I'm saying they kept the planned economy going for longer. Like I said I'm not aware of the details of the transition away from socialism for most easter euro countries. From your list I remember in Poland more than 50% of the state-owned enterprises were closed, there were three consecutive years of 300-500% inflation that diluted everyone's life savings, and the real wages of the lowest-paid quintile of the population never recovered to pre-1989 levels.
So now, back to the same question you never answer, if you admit there barely is any sector IIb in the DPRK, for the rulers to hoard cash and buy luxury goods from other countries it'd be necessary that the DPRK has an export-focused economy. Can you prove that? It should be easy, let's see what the CIA says:
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/korea-north/#economy
GDP (official exchange rate): $28 billion (2013 est.)
Exports: $222 million (2018)
:thonk: curious, it seems their exports are less than 1% of their economy… and are not hoarding cash but spending it all… almost like your hypothesis is bullshit…
Planned economy is still capitalist. Belarus was always capitalist, both before the fall of USSR and after. Simply planning the economy doesnt make it non-capitalist. Inflation for 3 years is nothing compared to the 12 million excess deaths suffered by Russians.
https://time.com/5628028/north-korea-sanctions-luxury-goods/ https://www.thefashionlaw.com/as-north-korea-continues-to-boost-its-luxury-imports-a-look-at-the-role-of-luxury-in-the-hermit-kingdom/
I think a planned economy is one of the cornerstones of a socialist economy. It obviously not enough but how can you possibly escape commodity production for exchange without an economy rationally planned for use? Remember I brought up the USSR not because of the 1991 famine but to point out that their factories and logistic networks could not function under a free market economy even though they had been productive for decades.
Your articles talk about 640 million dollars per year of luxury goods imports. That's less than 3% of their economy. Are you saying the DPRK citizens are terribly exploited of 3% of their labour? You must know most capitalist countries have s/v ratios of 30 to 60%.
Edit: I'll check out because nobody seems to be lurking this discussion anymore.
This is just proof that one form of capitalism is incompatible with other forms. It is not proof that USSR was socialist. Once again, not-capitalism =/= socialism. It is not enough to just "abolish" what you think is capitalism. Nationalizing everything, planning commodity production, price controls etc is not socialism.
Is this a parody? First of all, in the US, it's less than 0.5% of their economy https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201117005990/en/Global-Luxury-Goods-Market-Report-2020-Market-to-Reach-403.2-Billion-by-2027---ResearchAndMarkets.com. But this is all splitting hairs, we are talking about how having exploitation, commodity production etc does not make it socialist, and now you are making hairbrained defences saying $700 million dollars of stolen wealth annually diverted to Kim and his cronies is justifiable. We don't even know the s/v ratio of NK because prices dont reflect SNLT there. That is not a good thing btw, because it completely mystifies exploitation whereas at least in private capitalism, you can calculate the rate of exploitation.
I'm disengaging here. This discussion is becoming less and less rational. I think I have achieved my goal, i.e. showing the readers to what extent of irrationality you have to go to defend NK. I will be disengaging here.
I'm glad in the end we managed to agree on this. I'm sorry if I came out as hostile at some point during the discussion.
Cheers.
You're mistaken, I do not agree with you. By not-capitalism I meant the kind of capitalism we have in liberal countries. Having a command economy with commodity production is still capitalism, not of the liberal variety but its own form. It is NOT socialism. I'm not going to let you take advantage of my disengagement by taking some kind of "win" based on an obvious misreading.
Comrade, I was trying to find some common ground to help the discussion become more cordial. I know you desperately want to steer the conversation into pointless semantics of what exactly is capitalism and what exactly is socialism, but I do not care about your personal definition of socialism. I don't find that discussion at all productive and you will never reach me—or anyone else—by obsessing over definitions. I say this from experience on being on the other side.
So far, you've used the informal markets in the DPRK to argue there's generalised commodity production in the DPRK. I asked you to explain the how the primary sector works in the DPRK and you just assumed it works for profit with no evidence. I asked you to give evidence of a market for MoP in the DPRK—which must exist if there's generalised commodity production—, you replied with 'terrible exploitation'. I asked you to show the terrible exploitation by pointing out surplus product, and you conceded there's barely any luxury production in the DPRK and hypothesized it's all imported. I pointed out this implied an export-lead economy, and how the CIA says only 1% of their production is for export, and you replied with an article claiming 3% of their production goes for imports. You've never answered my original question, but by your last message I gather you see the DPRK as an economy that's at least qualitatively different from regular capitalism or whatever you want to call it. I was hoping from this mutual understanding I could understand your position better. It's up to you if you want to help me understand.
I repeat, (a) nobody is reading us anymore, winning is now irrelevant, and (b) I don't care about semantics.
It's not just informal market, Christ. Its the entire economy. All goods are produced finally to be sold. That's commodity production. There is wage-labor, there are markets, there are prices, there is profit. How does the average North Korean get his food, his clothing, his utilities, his luxuries? Does he not pay for it? How does he earn money? Does he not work for it? The social relations in North Korea are fundamentally the same as any capitalist country. You are stuck on the concept of state control as if that is what socialism is. I bet you also post the meme "Socialism is when the govt does stuff" and then unironically believe that when it comes to NK.
I'm not arguing about semantics, I am describing again and again how commodity production is the fundamental feature of capitalism and how it exists in NK. Nowhere in Marx's work would you find a single line saying you can have commodity production under socialism. He and Engels and every other non-revisionist socialist repeatedly emphasize that you cannot have commodity production if you want to eliminate exploitation, alienation, oppression and all other features of class society.
I don't know how anyone can parse the massive amount of repression and exploitation that goes on in NK and consider that as a viable or desirable social form. People do read these threads, even if they don't upvote them. Even if a single person reads and understands it, it is worth it.
What a shame, we're back to the beginning. It must be nice being the smartest person in the room and being asked the same question over and over again. 'How does the market for CNC machines, land, or intercontinental ballistic missiles works in the DPRK?' 'How big is the capitalist class?' 'Where's the surplus product?'. I'm beginning to think for you these are pointless questions, like, who cares about the details, after all capitalism is when people work for and buy consumer goods with pieces of paper, and once you have people working for pieces of paper and markets taking those same pieces of paper in exchange for consumer goods, everything else doesn't matter: once you've got that key piece you can just deduce all the rest is there.
That inquiring about all the missing features: no financial sector, firms organised around quotas instead of profit, no rents on land, no markets for means of production, the pieces of paper not being convertible and being useless to command production regardless of how many you've accumulated… is waste of time. Maybe I should take my copy of Capital, rip off every chapter after the third one, burn them and listen to you instead.
You're getting close.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Finance_(North_Korea)
Communism is when you do commodity production but you dont care whether your firms are profitable. Enterprises literally have to make profits to survive. They dont just get to absorb capital and do whatever they want. North Korea has a 50% tax on profit :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_North_Korea.
Communism is when you abolish rent. Also this doesnt matter when there are like 10 other forms of exploitation still present.
Evidence? Even if this is true, it doesnt mean shit, because commodities still exist. The average worker doesnt buy means of production, he buys consumption goods.
??????????????? money works as money in NK. Once again you're using the argument that the state controls the majority of production as evidence of socialism.
I suggest you actually read Capital instead of pretending like you have.
Your Wikipedia links were astonishingly lazy (and evident you have not read them), so I spent some time looking for markets for MoP in the DPRK. Even though the onus has been on you for almost 2 days. Outside special economic zones I was not successful, and it's not possible to prove a negative, however I did find evidence of a financial sector! http://naenara.com.kp/sites/polestar/contents/books/book-4.pdf is an insurance company seemingly focused on hedging cooperative farms against climatic disasters. Here's an article as well http://knic.com.kp/news.php?id=34&language=ENG
It's actually pretty interesting, I hope it may help you on your future anti-AES debates. It won't help you against your straw-man, because it's a state owned enterprise, but it would further your point against others. By the way, according to p.20 of the PDF, the tax rate on profits at least for that kind of firm is a flat 30% without credits.
You must realise plenty of revisionists like Xi Jinping and Stalin, and even outright liberals have read Capital and analyse things different than you do. You can't use disagreement as evidence of cluelessness.
keep going, I can still see the goalposts
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