It feels like topics I used to only see on r/conspiracy—like Epstein and the deep state—are now all over mainstream subreddits.
The US is doing what it always has done, only now the pretexts are weaker than ever. Did things really have to get this obvious before people finally realized that western governments only care about what’s best for the oligarchy?
Let me nutshell this, since I know in crisis news cycles people are not keen on reading paragraphs that are not accompanied by explosion maps (rightfully): The main threat to Israel is people recognizing the financial layout of U.S. imperialism. They benefit from being framed as the primary threat, and their propaganda is structured around demonizing themselves.
Israel is more or less a country made by the CIA. They do not control the CIA, although many of them likely believe they do. This is a useful tool to get them to risk things like getting blown up by Iranian missiles, which only the stupidest, Camaro-seeking Americans will do ordinarily and not for their entire lives.
Well the Americans are now turning their systematic rape of the world into a partisan corruption scandal (shouldn’t need to clarify they have never done anything about these other than talk about them). That should explain a lot of what you see on social media. The Israel Lobby story is such a Kosher explanation for imperialism that I even saw Chapo Trap House orbiters (think Bernie Sanders but he smokes hella weeeed man) talking about how they need to “go back through American history” (by which they presumably meant the 20th century lol) and “check for Zionist influence on foreign policy” in every event. Qatar’s Al Jazeera is a huge supporter of Zionism despite their selective posting of dead children for demoralization purposes, and they codified this story in people’s minds with their U.K. Israel lobby doc. TUCKER CARLSON AND MARCO RUBIO ARE NOW PUSHING THE ISRAEL LOBBY EXPLANATION OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS! 😭 What are people fucking babies? Come on! These people lie to you! Christ almighty
Israel is obviously the spearhead of imperialism in MENA, has distant financial leverage, and provides critical military leverage over the gulf monarchies and, well, they tried to have it over Iran. Like the third reich and rhodesia before them, they get what people correctly identify as “special white supremacy privileges” under the US. Losing them will be a tremendous blow. Still, we have some serious problems to deal with after Israel. Singapore/Australia/Japan, Western Europe particularly France/Germany/Belgium/Netherlands/U.K., Scandinavia.
I’m not being negative here I swear, it is much easier to explain the difference between Zionist Corruption theory and Imperialist Triad Theory when they are infatuated with the former. Many westerners will not budge on it though because they cannot accept
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they benefit from imperialism even if there are profound negatives
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foreign policy is driven by ruling class interest, not “national interest” a la John Mearsheimer
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@MindfulMaverick@piefed.zip @asklemmy@lemmy.ml
Humans are normally busy with all sorts of things that make them busy: working, dealing with social duties, etc. When they get some time free, they’re too exhausted to do their own research (that is, if they know how to do research, which most humans don’t), so they turn on the television (or their favourite YouTube channel) and listen to whatever the simulacrum says:
…when the radio came, and I suppose now television, anything that came through that new machine was believed. (Orson Welles)
Therefore, being able to read conspiracy theories as deeply as possible, being able to do one’s own research, being able to spend nights on books and articles, it requires one to be unemployed or, at best, having some kind of job that doesn’t drain them mentally and allows for flexible time.
Also, there’s this “Boy crying wolf” dilemma when it comes to conspiracy theories: the same places where one can discover about Bilderberg Meetings before they became officially disclosed annual event, is the same place swearing that the Earth is some kind of DVD disc ruled by extraterrestrial lizards. I used to be an avid participant of conspiracy theory communities (not 4chan, but Orkut and Telegram communities) and a conspiracy theorist myself, but these nonsensical theories were part of the reason why I departed both from conspiracy theory communities, and from christianity as well, as I began to realize how “satanic panic” was christian bigotry.
For most people, the busy and vampiric mundane life, alongside the perception of “craziness” when it comes to conspiracy theories, contributed to this boiling frog phenomenon.
But, yeah, lots of conspiracies, once theories, became fulfilled, and became integrated into the normalcy.
Maybe “ignorance is a bliss” (Cypher, The Matrix), and not knowing what will happen beforehand gives one the necessary delusions to keep their biological existence going.
Unfortunately, this is no longer my case for more than a decade. And now, with the once-conspiratorial internet ID (“age check”, now extended to OSes so, essentially, “internet ID”) helped cemented my long-standing hopelessnes… Because, now, as someone who departed from Christianity into the very opposite belief (devoted to The Dark Mother Goddess), but still surrounded by mostly christian people (and this includes potential employers, buyers and merchants), the slightest leak (purposeful and whatnot) of my real legal identity tied to my openly, mostly-occultist online activity will further cement my social ostracisation (being refused from jobs because the employers will see my online activity tied to my age check and argue that I “worship the devil” or something). But, yeah, “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”, people say…
The vast VAST majority of the world believes some kind of invisible man lives in the sky and controls everything. These people spend hours each week going to book clubs to not even have discussion just blindly listen to someone read the fanfiction.
You bet your fucking ass they fall for this shit.
There were and are so many dumb and incorrect conspiracy theories that I think it’s understandable that people would outright dismiss them, even if there was a real conspiracy.
Take the deep state. Sure, you can say that there absolutely is a deep state of oligarchs influencing/controlling governments. But if you read about that topic on conspiracy forums, you’ll quickly find it getting entangled in bullshit like Pizzagate or QAnon. They said Donald Trump would be the one to finally “expose the deep state”, which is just laughable. On the same forums you’ll find stuff like “flat earth”. So why would anyone use those places as sources of trustworthy information?
A network of rich and powerful people influencing the state isn’t “the deep state” it’s “the state”
Like what makes anyone think they are hiding it?
Words I have heard in real life is that there are people we aren’t powerful enough or wealthy enough to know about. Having a boogey man keeps the fear and powerlessness strong.
Thelose are just “other rich people” that have the good sense to stay out of the public eye.
It’s gotten to the point where a lot of people very clearly think even the word conspiracy means “a crazy nonsense theory”. They’ll say “it’s not a conspiracy…” and then proceed to describe a textbook conspiracy.
there’s a conspiracy theory that the term “conspiracy theory” was intentionally manipulated in the cultural lexicon to include both realistically plausible things and pseudoscientific nonsense. this creates an equivalence in perception between people who say “the FBI killed MLK” and people who say “aliens abducted me and took me to the other side of the flat earth where I met Bigfoot,” so that any accusation against the government is immediately dismissed
Apparently owner of 4chan added /pol/ the day after meeting with Epstein. They called it a “great means of manipulation” IIRC. So I think there may be some truth to this. The whole Pizzagate thing may have been a way to make it seem like anyone who thinks the ultra-wealthy are child predators seem crazy
People have different levels for what they consider that other “people realized the truth”. Many communities are full of people that know the truth and when they act to change things get knocked down.
As the Saint George Carlin once said “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
There are a lot of really, really stupid people out there. Poverty, stress, hunger, etc make people even more dumber.
Also there are infinite reasons for people not knowing things. You can not blame people for not learning things they do not know about existing.
So back when Snowden told everyone that the u.s government had mass surveillance on the people there wasn’t very much outrage.
And I remember a discussion on reddit I posted. I asked if because this idea of “the government is spying on me” has long been associated with cooky crazy paranoid people, that when we learned it actually was all true, that we still were reluctant to engage with it because of its ties to being a paranoid crazy person.
A few people commented but not much could be determined because there is no research on this.
But I speculated that people are apprehensive about engaging in proven conspiracy theories because of the association with conspiracy theories and personality traits that are less socially acceptable (only nut jobs talk about conspiracy theories).
Most people will only engage with the topic once it has become socially acceptable to do so.
How such a topic moves from “only cooky people talk about it” to “everyone talks about it” is not clear. But possibly it is the result of enough people with pull talking about it enough to encourage others.
What are your thoughts on this ?
No OP, but with Snowden, a lot of the general outline was already known by those that pay attention. The specifics were new, but also largely filtered with “the government’s side”.
That’s also true here.
People knew trump raped girls. Years ago. Many years.
But if you said anything you were seen as an alarmist. Or exaggerating. Even though legal documents and victim reports were out there and freely available. I remember telling others of this when he ran in 2024 and people were like “idk if that’s true” and questioning me even when I told them there are public records of him going to court for it.
There are always a few people paying attention. But most aren’t. They only hear of things and only become concerned about things when someone of influence tells them it’s something they need to be worried about.
Change doesn’t happen smoothly, instead there is quantitative buildup before a qualitative leap. Marxist-Leninists have been correct for a long time, but simply being correct does not mean everyone will agree with you. What’s happening now is a destruction of capitalist cultural hegemony due to the heightened contradiction between socialization of global labor and privatization of profits into the hands of the few.
Historically, the imperial core has been able to bribe a large section of the working classes inside the core with the spoils of imperialism (though ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups are often excluded from this). Social democracy in Europe, and the “American Dream,” both of which are built on the backs of the global south. However, this system is weakening as the global south is escaping underdevelopment. This means increased austerity measures inside the imperial core to protect imperialist profit margins.
Overall, there is a tendency for the rate of profit to fall, which was mathematically proven by Karl Marx. Imperialism answers this by raising absolute profits, creating the spoils of imperialism by which to bribe sections of the working classes into not organizing for revolution. Imperialism aligns the interests of the working classes in the imperial core more with that of imperialists than the global proletariat, which is why revolution happens in the global south. As the rate of profit continues to fall, though, and there are no new markets to enter, imperialists kick off increased war to try to force open foreign markets, like Venezuela, Iran, and soon to be Cuba (most likely).
The silver lining is that the interests of the working classes in the imperial core are now aligning more with the global south, causing a spike in opposition to the brutal status quo. The only way forward for the world is global socialism, and the only future for the US Empire is dissolution and replacement with socialism. Else we end up with barbarism.
Get organized! Read theory! If you want a place to start with theory, I made a basic Marxist-Leninist study guide you can use if you want.
We left the US when I was 8 years old and god I’m so glad about it. The US has always been like this but at least used to invent bullshit reasons like democracy, freedom and WMDs but nowadays this is more like a sidenote. I think a lot of this just sounded too crazy to acknowledge that it’s actually real.
Yeah, they claimed Trump was ‘anointed by Jesus to cause Armageddon’ to justify Iran strikes. It’s an intellectually bankrupt appeal that deliberately targets the lowest common denominator.
Did things really have to get this obvious before people finally realized that western governments only care about what’s best for the oligarchy?
You think people have actually realised this?
People have always known te truth.
Nobody cared.
are you saying there’s no oligarchy in China, Russia, North Korea, etc?
Yes-- there is no oligarchy in China and North Korea. Oligarchs on China are kept on a tight leash and will be killed for a getting out of line.
North Korea probably has no oligarchs as such
Compare to South Korea, which has a famously corrupt governance at all levels, with policies directly influenced by the chaebols (family-owned conglomerates, whose assets were originally awarded by the US for their willing collaboration with Japanese colonizers)
Russia yes since the dissolution of the USSR, DPRK and PRC no, the working classes control the states of the latter 2. In China, they have direct elections for local representatives, which elect further “rungs,” laddering to the top. The top then has mass polling and opinion gathering. This combination of top-down and bottom-up democracy ensures effective results. For more on this, see Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. This system is remarkably effective, resulting in over 90% approval rates.
From the same book, for the DPRK:
The DPRK’s electoral democracy relates primarily to the people’s assemblies, along with local state organs, assemblies, and committees. Every eligible citizen may stand for election, so much so that independent candidates are regularly elected to the people’s assemblies and may even be elected to be the speaker or chair. The history of the DPRK has many such examples. I think here of Ryu Mi Yong (1921–2016), who moved from south to north in 1986 so as to take up her role as chair of the Chondoist Chongu Party (The Party of the Young Friends of the Heavenly Way, formed in 1946). She was elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly and became a member of the Standing Committee (then called the Presidium). Other examples include Gang Ryang Uk, a Presbyterian minister who was a leader of the Korean Christian Federation (a Protestant organisation) and served as vice president of the DPRK from 1972 until his death in 1982, as well as Kim Chang Jun, who was an ordained Methodist minister and became vice-chair of the Supreme People’s Assembly (Ryu 2006, 673). Both Gang and Kim were buried at the Patriots’ Cemetery.
How do elections to all of the various bodies of governance work? Elections are universal and use secret ballots, and are—notably—direct. To my knowledge, the DPRK is the only socialist country that has implemented direct elections at all levels. Neither the Soviet Union (in its time) nor China have embraced a complete system of direct elections, preferring—and here I speak of China—to have direct elections at the lower levels of the people’s congresses, and indirect elections to the higher levels. As for candidates, it may initially seem as though the DPRK follows the Soviet Union’s approach in having a single candidate for each elected position. This is indeed the case for the final process of voting, but there is also a distinct difference: candidates are selected through a robust process in the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. As mentioned earlier, the struggle against Japanese imperialism and liberation of the whole peninsula drew together many organisations, and it is these that came to form the later Democratic Front. The Front was formed on 25 July, 1949 (Kim Il Sung 1949), and today includes the three political parties, and a range of mass organisations from the unions, youth, women, children, agricultural workers, journalism, literature and arts, and Koreans in Japan (Chongryon). Notably, it also includes representation from the Korean Christian Federation (Protestant), Korean Catholic Federation, and the Korean Buddhist Federation. All of these mass organisations make up the Democratic Front, and it is this organisation that proposes candidates. In many respects, this is where the multi-candidate dimension of elections comes to the fore. Here candidates are nominated for consideration from all of the mass organisations represented. Their suitability and merit for the potential nomination is debated and discussed at many mass meetings, and only then is the final candidate nominated for elections to the SPA. Now we can see why candidates from the Chondoist movement, as well as from the Christian churches, have been and can be elected to the SPA and indeed the local assemblies.
To sum up the electoral process, we may see it in terms of a dialectical both-and: multi-candidate elections take place in the Democratic Front, which engages in extensive consideration of suitable candidates; single candidate elections take place for the people’s assemblies. It goes without saying that in a non-antagonistic system of class and group interaction, the criterion for election is merit and political suitability
As for the bodies of governance, there is a similar continuity and discontinuity compared with other socialist countries. Unlike the Soviet Union, there is a unicameral Supreme People’s Assembly, which is the highest authority in terms of laws, regulations, the constitution, and all leadership roles. The SPA is also responsible for the national economic plan, the country’s budget, and foreign policy directions (Han 2016, 47–48). At the same time, the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland has an analogous function to a second organ of governance. This is a uniquely Korean approach to the question of a second organ of governance. While not an organ of governance as such, it plays a direct role in electoral democracy (see above), as well as the all-important manifestation of consultative democracy (see below). A further reason for this unique role of the Democratic Front may be adduced: while the Soviet Union and China see the second body or organ as representative of all minority nationalities and relevant groups, the absence of minority nationalities in a much smaller Korea means that such a form of representation is not needed.
I highly recommend the book, it helps shed light on some often misunderstood mechanisms in socialist democracy, including the directly addressed fact that the DPRK’s voting process includes single candidate approval voting. Without the context of the candidate selection process, this is spun as entirely anti-democratic.
Lighthearted comment: Does the topic come up so often that you have created your own copy-pasta? :D
Yes, lmao. To be fair, I do that frequently with other topics. When someone posts something general enough that I’ve already responded to it in-depth before, I usually fall back to previous responses of my own. I don’t have time to actually hand-write in-depth responses for everything, but what I can do is spend effort on something I haven’t seen before, and modify older comments to suit particularities and update the information if I’ve learned anything new or changed my stances.
I have a full-time job, a family, and hobbies, activist work, etc. to balance, so Lemmy is usually something I do when I have a few minutes of nothing else.
As an example, this comment is brand-new, while this comment is a modified version of an earlier effort-post I made.
You’re no doubt well-informed on the theoretical systems of those countries but you can’t just look at the theory and be like “that’s exactly how it works in real life”. It’s a fact that leadership in the DPRK has passed on from father to son for 3 generations now - any country that does that is a hereditary monarchy, not a people’s republic. Kim Jong Un was never part of the working class. He was raised in palaces and sent to an elite college in Switzerland. You don’t even need to trust any Western media on this - just watch a few minutes of North Korean TV and you’ll hear how the leaders are basically treated as gods. Many people who threatened or spoke out against their rule, including those in the “royal” family like Kim Jong Nam, have been murdered or disappeared.
Elevating Kim Jong Nam as some poor detefector who was killed for speaking out is kind of funny given he was a CIA asset. And on all those who “disappear” for speaking out you wouldn’t happen to have a source? Ideally one that avoids the ROK defector industrial complex, ROK tabloids or RFA. “It is known” isn’t really enough to assert claims like that
The Kim family does have outsized influence, but the DPRK is not a hereditary monarchy. For example, the position of President, held by Kim Il-Sung, was abolished and split into multiple positions upon his death. This is why he is remembered as the “Eternal President.” As such, both Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un have held different positions. Both have held high positions, for example Kim Jong-Il had the title of General Secretary of the Worker’s Party of Korea, a position held by Kim Jong-Un presently. However, this is not the whole story.
The actual title for a head of state is the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, held presently by Chong Ryong-Hae. The DPRK has a much more distributed level of power, and the Kim family is both widely supported due to its influence, and yet is not the indisputed top-dog, so to speak. What’s more, the Kim family is so venerated precisely because the legacy of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il is lived memory, imagine if Lenin had survived and raised his children as successors. It would be no wonder that the soviets would have elected his children, but it would not be a monarchy either.
Finally, class. Class is not a level of material wealth, but a relation to production and distribution. The DPRK is overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned, administration is not a distinct class in and of itself but a subset of broader classes, same with intellectuals. What determines class is based on that key aspect, the Kim family does not own capital but instead recieves wages from the state. Kim Jong-Un is largely used as a symbol, one that is democratically elected and directly trained by his father for the position.
This is why it’s important to actually study the real systems at play, rather than coast on pre-formed opinions drilled into us about the DPRK from western media. The Black Panther Party maintained good relations with the DPRK, visiting it and teaching Juche to Americans.
Because of the policy of nuclear deterrence, and the socialist system, the DPRK has managed to recover from historic flooding and the dissolution of the USSR into a poor but socially oriented, rising economy. Pyongyang in particular has been booming with massive expansions, and the 20x10 initiative has steadily been patching up the problem of rural underdevelopment.
I encourage you to try to understand the DPRK from a more sympathetic angle, seeing why it has the structures it does, rather than trying to abstract it out of its essential context and analyze it in a vacuum. Such a trap is metaphysics.
A hereditary monarchy is still not an oligarchy 🤷
But anyway, you’re only talking about the head of state. They have an entire system running there
it’s not a hereditary monarchy: https://www.tiktok.com/@madeline_pendleton/video/7610963982198770975
A hereditary monarchy is still not an oligarchy 🤷
Sure, not saying it is. I was arguing against Cowbee’s claims of North Korea being a democratic system controlled by the working class. North Korea is not a classic oligarchic system however, so I’d agree with your reply to OP.
But anyway, you’re only talking about the head of state. They have an entire system running there
I don’t think that any kind of democratic system is possible under a head of state with that amount of worship and cult of personality around a single person. The structures for a democratic system underneath may exist, but when it’s not possible to act out of line or speak out against the great leader, they might as well not. All the evidence I’ve seen suggests that it’s not. Both from North Korean media itself, which I’ve watched quite a bit of, and from the mouth of North Koreans who managed to get out.
Why isn’t it? Kim has no quarterly earnings report he’s in thrall to, no need to make line go up in perpetuity, no banksters, no factory owners, no techbros, no lobbyists.
Under such conditions, it’s entirely possible for leadership to work on behalf of the public interest. Compare to the US, where popular support is completely ignored for industry lobbying and campaign cash. I’d venture to say that North Korea is already more democratic than the US, even IF it’s a brutal regime (it isn’t)
The only brutal and undemocratic regime on the peninsula is the ROK, which killed tens of thousands of its citizens in Jeju and Gwangju. Jeju was effectively covered up until the mass graves were found. And even they are more progressive and democratic than the US
Do you consider the people of the USSR to have worshiped Lenin? What about the PRC, and Mao Zedong? The majority of defectors from the DPRK reported that they truly believed Kim Jong-Il was popularly supported. My question here is where you draw the line between respect and worship, and to ask you the follow-up question: do you believe it’s possible to greatly venerate a leader without counting it as worship, and if-so, how is that fundamentally different to how socialist leaders are venerated?
The problem with reporting on the DPRK is that information is extremely limited on what is actually going on there, at least in the English language (much can be read in Korean, Mandarin, Russian, and even Spanish). Most reports come from defectors, and said defectors are notoriously dubious in their accounts, something the WikiPedia page on Media Coverage of North Korea spells out quite clearly. These defectors are also held in confined cells for around 6 months before being released to the public in the ROK, in… unkind conditions, and pressured into divulging information. Additionally, defectors are paid for giving testemonials, and these testimonials are paid more the more severe they are. From the Wiki page:
Felix Abt, a Swiss businessman who lived in the DPRK, argues that defectors are inherently biased. He says that 70 percent of defectors in South Korea are unemployed, and selling sensationalist stories is a way for them to make a living.
Side note: there is a great documentary on the treatment of DPRK defectors titled Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul, which interviews DPRK defectors and laywers legally defending them, if you’re curious. I also recommend My Brothers and Sisters in the North, a documentary made by a journalist from the Republic of Korea that was stripped of her citizenship for making this documentary humanizing the people in the DPRK.
Because of these issues, there is a long history of what we consider legitimate news sources of reporting and then walking back stories. Even the famous “120 dogs” execution ended up to have been a fabrication originating in a Chinese satirical column, reported entirely seriously and later walked back by some news outlets. The famous “unicorn lair” story ended up being a misunderstanding:
In fact, the report is a propaganda piece likely geared at shoring up the rule of Kim Jong Eun, North Korea’s young and relatively new leader, said Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor of Korean studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Most likely, North Koreans don’t take the report literally, Lee told LiveScience.
“It’s more symbolic,” Lee said, adding, “My take is North Koreans don’t believe all of that, but they bring certain symbolic value to celebrating your own identify, maybe even notions of cultural exceptionalism and superiority. It boosts morale.”
These aren’t tabloids, these are mainstream news sources. NBC News reported the 120 dogs story. Same with USA Today. The frequently reported concept of “state-mandated haircut styles”, as an example, also ended up being bogus sensationalism. People have made entire videos going over this long-running sensationalist misinformation, why it exists, and debunking some of the more absurd articles. As for Radio Free Asia, it is US-government founded and funded. There is good reason to be skeptical of reports sourced entirely from RFA about geopolitical enemies of the US Empire.
Sadly, some people end up using outlandish media stories as an “acceptable outlet” for racism. By accepting uncritically narratives about “barbaric Koreans” pushing trains, eating rats, etc, it serves as a “get out of jail free” card for racists to freely agree with narratives devoid of real evidence.
It’s important to recognize that a large part of why the DPRK appears to be insular is because of UN-imposed sanctions, helmed by the US Empire. It is difficult to get accurate information on the DPRK, but not impossible; Russia, China, and Cuba all have frequent interactions and student exchanges, trade such as in the Rason special economic zone, etc, and there are videos released onto the broader internet from this.
In fact, many citizens who flee the DPRK actually seek to return, and are denied by the ROK. Even BBC is reporting on a high-profile case where a 95 year old veteran wishes to be buried in his homeland, sparking protests by pro-reunification activists in the ROK to help him go home in his final years.
Finally, it’s more unlikely than ever that the DPRK will collapse. The economy was estimated by the Bank of Korea (an ROK bank) to have grown by 3.7% in 2024, thanks to increased trade with Russia. The harshest period for the DPRK, the Arduous March, was in the 90s, and the government did not collapse then. That was the era of mass statvation thanks to the dissolution of the USSR and horrible weather disaster that made the already difficult agricultural climate of northern Korea even worse. Nowadays food is far more stable and the economy is growing, collapse is highly unlikely.
What I think is more likely is that these trends will continue. As the US Empire’s influence wanes, the DPRK will increase trade and interaction with the world, increasing accurate information and helping grow their economy, perhaps even enabling some form of reunification with the ROK. The US Empire leaving the peninsula is the number 1 most important task for reunification, so this is increasingly likely as the US Empire becomes untenable.
Nodutdol, an anti-imperialist group of Korean expats, released a toolkit on better understanding the situation in Korea. This is more like homework, though. I also recommend again the aforementioned Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance for learning about the DPRK’s democratic structure.
4·1 day agoTo my knowledge, the DPRK is the only socialist country that has implemented direct elections at all levels. Neither the Soviet Union (in its time) nor China have embraced a complete system of direct elections
Since it is only a short excerpt, there may be some context missing. Or I may be misinterpreting it, I am putting particular importance on “complete,” there is some thing that the USSR didn’t do that makes him consider it not complete? But it seems to me to be incorrect, the soviets did have direct elections after the 1936 constitution?
Instead of a Congress of delegates electing an Executive Committee, the supreme authority of every territory in the U.S.S.R. will now be a directly elected Supreme Soviet or Council. The citizens will directly elect their deputies not only to the local Soviet, but to the provincial and district Soviets, to the Supreme Council of their Republic, and to the Supreme Council of the U.S.S.R., which will replace the Congress of Soviets and the Central Executive Committee
Soviet Democracy
Chapter 7.3.1 addresses the soviet model of democracy, and the push for what you describe in the 1936 constitution:
Due to a number of factors, the Soviet Union came to place the greatest emphasis on consultative democracy rather than electoral democracy. To understand why, we need to address the background to this relative lack of emphasis on electoral democracy, especially in light of the campaign of the 1930s to promote multi-candidate, universal elections with secret ballots.
…
It was only after all these hard-won achievements that some stability was at last felt, and electoral democracy could be reconsidered.4 The initial signal came at the Party’s Seventeenth Congress in 1934, which noted not merely the achievements of the last few years, but also directed attention to the political tasks ahead (Stalin 1934a, 347–379, 1934b, 353–388). Proposals concerning socialist democracy were initially debated within the Politburo in January 1935, and articles began appearing in leading journals, addressing directly the topic of Soviet democracy (Zhukov 2003, 116–121; Kokosalakis 2020, 83–84). By June 1935, a constitutional drafting committee was established. The committee produced five drafts—all of them painstakingly checked by Stalin—before a final draft was made available for public discussion in June 1936. The final constitution would stipulate in its eleventh chapter that all levels of soviets, from the supreme to the district, city, and rural, would be “chosen by the electors on the basis of universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot” (Supreme Soviet 1936a, article 134, 1936b, stat’ia 134). The subsequent articles in this chapter spell out what each of these terms meant in practice, including the process of nominating candidates, who would come from “public organisations and societies of the working people: Communist Party organisations, trade unions, cooperatives, youth organisations and cultural societies” (Supreme Soviet 1936a, article 141, 1936b, stat’ia 141).
The idea of direct and multi-candidate elections to all bodies was initially made public in the first months of 1936, especially by Stalin in an interview with Roy Howard in March (see more below) of that year, and was then pressed further at a Central Committee Plenum in June of 1936, where it met with little overt support (Zhukov 2003, 232–236; Kokosalakis 2020, 86). Even more, the public debate around specifically this measure before its final adoption was immense.5 Multiple articles in leading magazines and newspapers were published, and there were countless public meetings around the country. This effort was not a smokescreen for the increasing campaign for Party discipline, which would explode with the purges and trials of 1937–1938; instead, all of the evidence points to the fact that Stalin and those close to him were resiliently dedicated to the electoral reforms (Getty 1991). Stiff resistance there was, especially within the Party from those who stood most to lose (Zhukov 2003, 211), and this was one significant factor that led to restricting non-Party candidates to 20–25% and eventually the practice of having single Party-endorsed candidates for elections. The other major factor was Hitler’s invasion in 1941 and the Soviet Union’s entry into the European theatre of war. Many were the vectors that came together at this time. As the careful study by Kokosalakis (2022, 168–210) shows, there were tensions in the workplace, with PPOs putting increasing pressure on managers in light of drives to greater efficiency and productivity (Stakhanovism); the effort to tighten Party discipline had revealed shocking laxness, especially in regional areas; the campaign for electoral democracy had emboldened anti-communist elements to cause trouble for Soviet power through the elections; the international situation was worsening in light of Hitler’s effort to construct an anti-communist coalition; and the violent storm of trials and purges of 1937–1938 was about to be unleashed against internal and externally-sponsored “wreckers.”
Of most interest here are two principles of electoral democracy that emerged from the maelstrom of events: merit and democratic supervision. These were most clearly expressed in two pieces by Stalin, one in the interview with Roy Howard in March 1936, and the other in his reply to debates at the Central Committee Plenum of February–March 1937. The contexts of these two texts are distinct, one an interview with an international correspondent and the other in reply to the sceptics in the Central Committee concerning elections. But the points are consistent. First, merit, which has two dimensions: the “political principle,” asking whether those workers chosen are “worthy of political confidence”; and the “business principle,” in the sense the people elected should be “fit for such and such a job” (Stalin 1937c, 279, 1937d, 176). In the address to the Central Committee Plenum, Stalin points out that elections based on competence or merit would be a way to break up the corrupt fiefdoms of local Party officials. However, there is a far deeper issue: if elections are based on merit, they are no longer politicised. This measure harks back to Marx’s observation (see Sect. 2.5.2) concerning the need for non-politicised elections in a socialist system. To recall the logic: since a socialist system is not characterised by class struggle and thus antagonistic political parties, elections would not have the antagonistic nature found in capitalist democracy. This is precisely the point Stalin makes in his reply to Howard: “We have no contending parties any more than we have a capitalist class contending against a working class which is exploited by the capitalists.” How then can one have an election contest? To begin with, “candidates will be put forward not only by the Communist Party, but by all sorts of public, non-Party organisations,” of which there hundreds (Stalin 1936a, 111, 1936b, 145). We may add here that elections would be competitive due to the relative merit of the candidates. This is a clearly step further than Marx’s initial suggestions. For Stalin, in competitive elections, the candidate most qualified—in terms of political and administrative merit—should be elected. This is the first major step in defining the nature of elections in a socialist system.
The second concerns democratic supervision. As Stalin observes to Howard, there would be “very lively elections campaigns.” Why? Not a few institutions “work badly,” where a local governing body has failed to provide for the “multifarious and growing requirements of the toilers of town and country.” Stalin looks forward to the types of questions that will be asked: “Have you built a good school or not … improved housing conditions … helped to make our labour more effective and our lives more cultured?” Focused on numerous, acute, and practical problems, elections would “tighten up” the many institutions and organisations so that they would improve their work (Stalin 1936a, 112, 1936b, 146–147). This is not merely seen as an effective anti-corruption mechanism, but is also the democratic role of criticism and self-criticism at work. In his reply to the Central Committee Plenum, Stalin frames the question of democratic supervision in terms of testing workers in responsible positions by assessing and verifying the concrete results of their work. It is one thing for such testing and verification to be undertaken “from above,” by higher levels in the Party. But this is by no means sufficient. What is needed is the “test from below.” When the masses assess the achievements and failures of their leaders, then the masses “draw attention to their mistakes and indicate the way in which these mistakes may be rectified.” For Stalin, this “sort of testing is one of the most effective methods of testing people” (Stalin 1937c, 282, 1937d, 179; see also Zhukov 2003, 211). He compares this process to the practice of democratic centralism in the Party, where the right to nominate candidates and object to them is practised, where secret ballots and the freedom to criticise and indeed self-criticise are the reality. So also with the masses, who have the opportunity at meetings and conferences to hear reports from their leaders in the workplace, trade unions, and other bodies, and openly criticise the work of these leaders and propose ways for improvement. The Party may have the task of teaching the masses, but it must also learn from the masses.
The importance of these two principles should not be under-estimated: the practice of non-politicised elections based on merit, which develops the initial principle proposed by Marx and Engels; and the crucial role of democratic supervision through elections. We should also note here an initial effort to extend the Party’s internal mechanism of democratic centralism to country-wide governance. Stalin speaks of multiple candidates, secret ballots, and public criticism—these too should be practised country-wide in elections to the government bodies through “universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage” (Stalin 1937c, 282, 1937d, 179). It would take far more practice and theoretical elaboration well beyond the time of Soviet Union to find a solution to country-wide democratic centralism, but the two principles of merit as the basis for election to office and democratic supervision would become mainstays of socialist governance.
The drive for electoral democracy did not long live up to its lofty aims, with the most embarrassing retreat being from multi-candidate contested elections to single-candidate elections. At the same time, there was an even greater effort to ensure democratic accountability through elections internal to the Party. These long-lasting moves are reflected in the comprehensive revisions to the Party rules proposed by Zhdanov at the eighteenth congress in 1939.
It’s useful, critical, pro-socialist analysis.
Very interesting, I should read it sometime (aka never, as if I am currently reading anything)
Haha, fair. I’ve only skimmed it for info. The big takeaway from the soviet chapters is that it was limited by being the first socialist state, and so they tried a lot of brand new things, some of which ended up being mistakes or mishandled. This isn’t anti-soviet messaging though, the point is that existing socialist states have learned from the soviets, and advanced upon them. When we measure the USSR’s democracy contextually, it was very impressive, but socialists have advanced beyond it. This is a good thing, though, as we must always strive for improvement.
(Side note: the physical copy is 130 USD! Piracy-heads stay winning.)
The system has the newspaper barons onside.
Literally what are you talking about?
“The deep state” is a conspiracy theory for morons, everything about Epstein has been common knowledge for a long time.
You’re literally trying to imply that most conspiracy theories are real but most people are normally too stupid to know about them? What even is this post?
There absolutely is a deep state, though conservatives’ conceptualization of it is bonkers.
Michael Parenti, Dirty Truths:
Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary.
Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history.
Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.
At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95).
Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together—on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot—though they call it “planning” and “strategizing”—and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
Yet there are individuals who ask with patronizing, incredulous smiles, do you really think that the people at the top have secret agendas, are aware of their larger interests, and talk to each other about them? To which I respond, why would they not? This is not to say that every corporate and political elite is actively dedicated to working for the higher circles of power and property. Nor are they infallible or always correct in their assessments and tactics or always immediately aware of how their interests are being affected by new situations. But they are more attuned and more capable of advancing their vast interests than most other social groups.
The alternative is to believe that the powerful and the privileged are somnambulists, who move about oblivious to questions of power and privilege; that they always tell us the truth and have nothing to hide even when they hide so much; that although most of us ordinary people might consciously try to pursue our own interests, wealthy elites do not; that when those at the top employ force and violence around the world it is only for the laudable reasons they profess; that when they arm, train, and finance covert actions in numerous countries, and then fail to acknowledge their role in such deeds, it is because of oversight or forgetfulness or perhaps modesty; and that it is merely a coincidence how the policies of the national security state so consistently serve the interests of the transnational corporations and the capital-accumulation system throughout the world.
From what I can tell the only person calling people ‘stupid’ so far is you.
If Epstein was ‘common knowledge,’ why didn’t that common knowledge stop him or his associates? I don’t think the point OP is making is not that all/most conspiracy theories are real, it’s that structural critique that used to be marginalized is becoming mainstream because reality is making it undeniable.
It’s okay if you have a visceral reaction to the term ‘deep state’ but the point is that there are power structures that operate largely independent of democratic control, have repeatedly acted against public interest, and face minimal accountability.
I would point to COINTELPRO, the various CIA coups, mass surveillance, and systematic lying about wars that happens with bipartisan consensus.
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