Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:52:52 +0000
Subject: M-G: Re: M-I: Re: Korea and Other Places



> Louis R Godena wrote:
> > May I offer an alternative scenario to the one gratuitously drawn by Adam
> > and some of the other ludicrous little "general secretaries" that plague our
> > circle?    The corruption that is endemic to the ruling groups in Seoul will
> > soon spread to every corner of Korean society facilitated by a process of
> > rote  "normalization",  and especially within the labor movement,  whose
> > very structure and pathos is ready -made for such a disease.    The social
> > development of modern capitalism, with its attendant vitiation of
> > traditional Korean values, will subsequently spur the development of
> > anti-modernist movements of the Right,  growing exponentially as the
> > disfranchised from all groups respond to the clarion of anti-corruption and
> > the redemption of traditional Korean mores.   I would expect that this is
> > where the majority of  rank-and-file workers will end up.    After all,  of
> > the revolutionary parties of the twentieth century -- right or left --  it
> > was the German Nazis and their allies (professing at least initially a
> > similar bent) who counted the highest proportion of industrial workers in
> > their ranks.
> >

Nick replies: 
> > And what do you do? Or, more fundamentally, what do you encourage Korean workers to do? On 
> the basis of the hopeless scenario you put forward, the only thing left seems to be to 
> hide in a cupboard until it is all over. This kind of world-weary fatalism is a 
> demobiliser: it recognises and encourages no scope for independent political action on 
> behalf of the Korean working class. Everything happens to them, nothing is done by them.

Good one Nick.


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