Marxism

[Cisairse]

Well, nothing. I consider myself well-read on the matter, but I'm no single-source-of-truth for anything (except that which I have personally written).

However, I would feel comfortable saying that people who are generally ignorant about politics know less about what ideologies are in their self-interest than those who are knowledgeable about politics.

So, what exactly is their self-interest?

Anything which would improve their life in tangible ways.

[Northern Davincia]

So, what exactly is their self-interest?

Anything which would improve their life in tangible ways.

Being an anticommunist is pretty sufficient towards that goal.

[Cisairse]

Anything which would improve their life in tangible ways.

Being an anticommunist is pretty sufficient towards that goal.

Nah.

[Atheris]

Being an anticommunist is pretty sufficient towards that goal.

Nah.

What an argument.

[West Leas Oros 2]

Anything which would improve their life in tangible ways.

Being an anticommunist is pretty sufficient towards that goal.

"Congratulations! You are free from the influence of an ideology that has already been ruthlessly quashed years ago by the government! No longer must you suffer under the oppression of the probably ten people who are communists! Don't you feel much better now that the Communist Manifesto isn't at the library? You now live a much better life now that the communists are gone!"
-some random dude idk

[Northern Davincia]

Being an anticommunist is pretty sufficient towards that goal.

"Congratulations! You are free from the influence of an ideology that has already been ruthlessly quashed years ago by the government! No longer must you suffer under the oppression of the probably ten people who are communists! Don't you feel much better now that the Communist Manifesto isn't at the library? You now live a much better life now that the communists are gone!"
-some random dude idk

This but unironically.

[Gensokyo Soviet Fairies Republic]

Your wishy-washy faux skepticism continues. You literally cannot shut up about this.

Me: "North Korea is a bad place"
You: "Most information comes from witnesses that are unreliable"
Me: "So you're just going to deny all of them?"
You: "It's a well documented phenomenon that witnesses are unreliable"
Me: "Ok, but if you look at them on the average, as the experts do, a consistent pattern emerges where-"
You: "It's a well documented phenomenon that witnesses are unreliable"
Me: "Well, once you cross-examine the stories-"
You: "It's a well documented phenomenon..."

I'm trying really hard to take this conversation beyond the same tune. If you're not going to budge there's no point in continuing.

You also cannot shut up about “a consistent pattern that emerges” and “cross-examining the stories”, but giving no effort to give impartial information where we can see that happening aside from a politicized UN inquiry report - which have been shown to have faulty empirical evidence, poor methodology, such as misrepresenting the situation of food security in DPRK.

Two caveats here can be taken from your nice diatribe; no one is denying all the veracity of North Korean defectors, and through “cross-examining” and separating truth from rumours – which can be a difficult task, inconsistencies can be found; Shin Dong-hyuk is a good example of this.

Another is that not all North Korean defectors go about human rights violations or at least not tell stories that are consistent with what have been told by people such as Shin Dong-hyuk or Lee Soon-ok. Through “cross-examining”, it is frequently found that other North Korean defectors contest the testimonies made by some.

It says "witnesses and experts". And you're badly misrepresenting the methodology of the Commission. I'd recommend reading the methodology section of the full 372-page document to get a sense of the process (especially for finding corroborating evidence), the burden of proof and the considerations about witness reliability:

But one should not ignore the fact that the majority, or in fact, virtually all of the UN Human Rights inquiry report relies on anecdotal information from witness testimonies, which as usual, have been well-documented to be inconsistent and unreliable. And if said experts are quoted, they rarely jive with the testimonies made by the witnessses, or actually rarely quoted at all.

In regards to experts, the report also has poor methodology - Andrei Lankov for example (no offense to him), is quoted in the report over 20 times, and often using his same book “The Real North Korea”. The fact that this redundancy would not fly with any study about another country; one wonders if the fact that they need to quote the same expert over and over means that they actually have trouble finding experts that are qualified on the topic, or more likely, who does support their position.

For example, in §34, p.11:

Many victims and witnesses who fled the DPRK were prepared to share relevant information, but would not do so publicly as they feared reprisals against family members who still remain in the DPRK. Persons who previously served in an official capacity in the DPRK were often particularly reluctant to be seen to cooperate publicly with the Commission. Some experts on the situation in the DPRK also preferred to be interviewed confidentially in order to preserve space for their direct engagement with the DPRK.

This is nice, but the problem with confidential interviews with experts and witnesses is that there is simply no way to independently verify their accounts because we don’t know who they are and what they do. Here is a problem of politicized excuses being a good-cover up for an otherwise poor scientific methodology, and again, in another study with another country, this would not fly.

"The Commission obtained and reviewed a wealth of other reports and written materials prepared by the United Nations, non-governmental organizations, governments, research institutes and academics. While the findings in this report rely primarily on firsthand testimony from victims and witnesses, the written record has provided invaluable context and a source of corroboration. Many reports and documents were tendered by witnesses at the public hearings. They were all recorded as exhibits and are part of the record of those hearings." (§38, p. 11)

From empirical evidence, this has not shown to be true and there does seem lack of corrobation with other UN documentation. Per this peer-reviewed paper, the claims of the UNHRC finding contradicted with the findings made by other UN agencies, such as UN World Food Program, UNICEF, WHO, FAO, UNDP on Sec. IV. D on the “right to food”.

The problem is that the claims about food rights violations in the 2013 UNHCR report are not congruent with the statistical indicators given by UN agencies that have the most experience of working in North Korea. Despite emanating from within the UN system in which access to data on the DPRK is straightforward, the UNHRC reporting on food violations demonstrates a problematics ecuritization of evidence and analysis though a heavy reliance on prior assumptions and a filtering of information through those securitized assumptions. The UNHRC reporting, of which the February 2013 report is representative, is self-referential, factually inaccurate, and seems unaware of the reports from the UN agencies that have worked in the DPRK for many years. This is somewhat surprising, especially as the weight of the UN agency reporting contradicts the UNHCR claims on food violations.

The pool of potential first-hand witnesses is limited to no more than 30,000 citizens who have left the DPRK, the vast majority of whom reside today in the Republic of Korea. Most of these witnesses are from provinces bordering China, which means that the situation in those provinces is relatively better documented than the situation in other provinces of the DPRK. In most cases, a person who fled the DPRK requires considerable time to reach a place of safety and to develop the courage necessary to speak about his or her experience. Given that the Commission applied a rigorous standard of proof based on first-hand testimony, it was therefore not able to confirm many of the most recent instances of human rights violations alleged by non-governmental organizations and media reports." (§56-57, p. 14)

This does not mean however, that they actually interviewed those 30,000 defectors. Cross-examining of defectors’ testimonies shows that North Korean defectors’ testimonies frequently disagree with each other.

"The Commission also obtained clandestinely-recorded videos and photographs showing relevant sites, documents and correspondence that elucidated alleged violations of human rights in the DPRK. The Commission relied on such material to the extent that it could confirm its authenticity." (§61, p. 15)

These are simply clandestine satelite images acquired, which would be very difficult to ascertain its context or whether those sites imaged are actually prison camps or are severe and harsh as in popular depictions.

Per Christine Hong’s peer-review paper “THE MIRROR OF NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS”, in Hazel Smith’s paper:

Christine Hong’s article “The Mirror of North Korean Human Rights: Technologies of Liberation, Technologies of War” points to the disturbing congruence between the particularized version of human rights monitoring that uses satellite photos to identify prison camps and the aerial photography used by U.S. Armed Forces in the Korean War (1950–1953). Hong shows that the pictures described as representing prison camps are by no means clear or definitive visually such that even a U.S. congressional committee chair sympathetic to the narrative that uses these pictures as definitive evidence of camps and “gulags” is compelled to ask just what it is these grainy, blurred, gray images that contain no recognizable structures or human beings are supposed to be showing.

You're very much making it seem like they just invited some North Korean defectors in to talk about how evil the government is and not, you know, a rigorous process of cross-case comparison and corroboration by expert testimony and submitted academic material, satellite imagery, evaluation of the witness' character, etc.

B-but Shin Dong-hyuk made it up!!!!

While you probably made this as a sarcastic remark, you know if the UN Human Rights inquiry actually held to the rigorous character of methodology that they described and actually relied on “credible” first-hand sources of information, they would know that something was up with Shin Dong-hyuk’s testimony.

But Shin Dong-hyuk did not simply come up in the UNHRC’s public hearings and excerpts, not one, not two, but almost twenty times he was quoted in the report! Meaning that he was a primary source of the UNHRC on North Korean prison camps. And he recanted his claims himself!

Did the UNHRC even bothered to retract or correct its findings when Shin Dong-hyuk publicly recanted his claims?

Andrei Lankov, for example, was a North Korea expert who was one of the people who doubted on Shin Dong-hyuk’s testimony and described Blaine Harden’s book “Escape from Camp 14” as unreliable. Ironically, Andrei Lankov was also the same expert that the UNHRC quotes 20 times.

So, here we go, an expert who the UNHRC relied with did not believe a testimony from a witness that the UNHRC also relied with.

[The Reformed American Republic]

-snip-

Don't bother debating tankies who defend the most grotesque of regimes. They live in their own universe filled with that regime's propaganda and their own cognitive biases. They don't give a shit about truth when they will ultimately try to suppress it with the power of a government.

[Duvniask]

I think it's silly to assume that every person knows exactly what ideology will be most helpful for their interests, and ardently believes such.

On this point, how could you possibly know better if many people don't know for themselves? What makes you so enlightened?

This is really disingenuous of you. Neoliberals and "libertarians" will harp on all day about capitalism bringing millions out of poverty and how the free-market is the greatest guarantee of freedom and prosperity and blah blah blah. Don't pretend you don't also make assumptions about the interests of other people... unless your politics are literally just an egoistic tantrum about you having to contribute to something beyond your own keep.

[Cisairse]

On this point, how could you possibly know better if many people don't know for themselves? What makes you so enlightened?

This is really disingenuous of you. Neoliberals and "libertarians" will harp on all day about capitalism bringing millions out of poverty and how the free-market is the greatest guarantee of freedom and prosperity and blah blah blah. Don't pretend you don't also make assumptions about the interests of other people... unless your politics are literally just an egoistic tantrum about you having to contribute to something beyond your own keep.

Slight note, this is semantics really, but I believe you meant "egotistic." Egoism does not deserve your slander.

[Kubra]

Why the hubbub over defector testimonies? It's enough to say that the official documents that come out of North Korea are sufficient enough to establish that it is, in fact, not very fond of the whole "communism" thing.

[Northern Davincia]

On this point, how could you possibly know better if many people don't know for themselves? What makes you so enlightened?

This is really disingenuous of you. Neoliberals and "libertarians" will harp on all day about capitalism bringing millions out of poverty and how the free-market is the greatest guarantee of freedom and prosperity and blah blah blah. Don't pretend you don't also make assumptions about the interests of other people... unless your politics are literally just an egoistic tantrum about you having to contribute to something beyond your own keep.

Capitalism revolves around the individual deciding what is best for themselves. I do not pretend to know what is best for someone at any given time, unlike command economy planners, but the free market is largely benevolent in design because it lacks controls.

[Czechostan]

Eh, I lean toward po-mo, so it should be clear I have a lot of reservations towards Marxism (unless you're Jordan Peterson and you think the two are synonyms). I don't agree that all societies follow this immutable, materialist progression from primitive communism eventually toward communism. I don't think class is so easily reduced into proletariat and bourgeoisie. And his writings are quite clearly Eurocentric. Though there still plenty of merit to his work, and I agree with many of his criticisms of capitalism, the modern family, etc.

[Rusozak]

Why the hubbub over defector testimonies? It's enough to say that the official documents that come out of North Korea are sufficient enough to establish that it is, in fact, not very fond of the whole "communism" thing.

They've even dropped all mention of it from the constitution, if I recall. Their official ideology of Juche seems to be little more than national socialism with a different context and minus the racial elements.

[Cisairse]

Why the hubbub over defector testimonies? It's enough to say that the official documents that come out of North Korea are sufficient enough to establish that it is, in fact, not very fond of the whole "communism" thing.

They've even dropped all mention of it from the constitution, if I recall. Their official ideology of Juche seems to be little more than national socialism with a different context and minus the racial elements.

Pretty sure at this point juche is nazbol gang

[Nevertopia]

Ive always felt like seizing the means of production was just a roundabout way of saying you want private enterprise.

[Cisairse]

Ive always felt like seizing the means of production was just a roundabout way of saying you want private enterprise.

If the workingmen control both the state and the means of production, it wouldn't be private property.

[The Remote Islands]

Being an anticommunist is pretty sufficient towards that goal.

"Congratulations! You are free from the influence of an ideology that has already been ruthlessly quashed years ago by the government! No longer must you suffer under the oppression of the probably ten people who are communists! Don't you feel much better now that the Communist Manifesto isn't at the library? You now live a much better life now that the communists are gone!"
-some random dude idk

If anything the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital should be required reading in schools. One of the biggest antidotes to communism, or really any radical ideology, is actually reading its foundational texts. That's why it should be required alongside Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Road To Serfdom, and Mein Kampf.

[Duvniask]

This is really disingenuous of you. Neoliberals and "libertarians" will harp on all day about capitalism bringing millions out of poverty and how the free-market is the greatest guarantee of freedom and prosperity and blah blah blah. Don't pretend you don't also make assumptions about the interests of other people... unless your politics are literally just an egoistic tantrum about you having to contribute to something beyond your own keep.

Capitalism revolves around the individual deciding what is best for themselves. I do not pretend to know what is best for someone at any given time, unlike command economy planners, but the free market is largely benevolent in design because it lacks controls.

Capitalism revolves around the business cycle, which is (all too often) not the purview of individuals. When the economy crashes, you don't go pointing at Jane Doe that she's not been buying enough consumer goods or invested enough of her meager paycheck-to-paycheck savings or pointing at John Doe that he's not expanded his outfit's production sufficiently to employ all the willing job-seekers, etc. Of course, this does not mean the range of items affordable and available to your average Joe hasn't increased, but these don't appear on the market because he, as an individual, has decreed that they should. I get that what you ultimately mean by the above is that the individual can decide if he wants such and such an amount of flour or such and such an amount of tomato sauce, but such choices are also limited by the state of affairs which he exists in. It's the freedom to decide how to meet his consumption desires, given the choices and disposable income available (which, let's face it, is subject to a myriad of disparities).

To say that the free-market has "design" is a bit misleading, because it is not an intentional state of affairs; it can be steered, but as a supra-individual entity it has a mind of its own, so to speak - that is also the exact reason state capitalist "planning" in the Eastern Bloc failed, for all their attempts at subverting value and bringing it under the control of state actors. And command economies are not the purview of Marxism; when Marxists speak of false consciousness or not following one's interests, it is little different from being critical of the willing slave; they don't do it under some assumption that this means individuals can't decide what goods they want.

Also, lol at the supposed "benevolence" of the free market. I'm sure the externalities generated in the form of chemical factories dumping their waste appears oh so "benevolent" to those who have to drink poisoned water and risk exposure to toxic fumes, or that the

[Duvniask]

"Congratulations! You are free from the influence of an ideology that has already been ruthlessly quashed years ago by the government! No longer must you suffer under the oppression of the probably ten people who are communists! Don't you feel much better now that the Communist Manifesto isn't at the library? You now live a much better life now that the communists are gone!"
-some random dude idk

If anything the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital should be required reading in schools. One of the biggest antidotes to communism, or really any radical ideology, is actually reading its foundational texts. That's why it should be required alongside Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Road To Serfdom, and Mein Kampf.

Lol. So what part of the Manifesto of the Communist Party is so damning?

[Nevertopia]

Ive always felt like seizing the means of production was just a roundabout way of saying you want private enterprise.

If the workingmen control both the state and the means of production, it wouldn't be private property.

isnt that just a capitalist democracy?

[The Remote Islands]

I guess the Manifesto isn't as important since it's more of a pamphlet than anything. To round the list out we should add a grilling cookbook to it.

[Kubra]

"Congratulations! You are free from the influence of an ideology that has already been ruthlessly quashed years ago by the government! No longer must you suffer under the oppression of the probably ten people who are communists! Don't you feel much better now that the Communist Manifesto isn't at the library? You now live a much better life now that the communists are gone!"
-some random dude idk

If anything the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital should be required reading in schools. One of the biggest antidotes to communism, or really any radical ideology, is actually reading its foundational texts. That's why it should be required alongside Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Road To Serfdom, and Mein Kampf.

>teaching 3000 pages of cotton price fluctuations to schoolchildren
Not gonna happen.

[Duvniask]

I mean, it's also pretty stupid to suggest Das Kapital is a "foundational text" of communism, as if that is what the book is about (and not, you know, capital).

[The Remote Islands]

I know there's other stuff Marx wrote about his own beliefs, I just don't know all the titles of his books because, well, I'm not a communist.