Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 16:48:19 -0500 (EST) From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena) Subject: M-I: Korean "Stalinism" Reconsidered Stalinism, according to Barkley, far from being deceased, is in his view: >very alive, if not well, in the DPRK [North Korea] both >ideologically and in fact on the ground. Indeed, one >argument for Stalinism would be that the DPRK is the one >socialist nation not to have made any significant movement >in the direction of either markets or capitalism. Even >Cuba has done so lately. Again, we are plagued with the old logistical problems of definition. "Stalinism" is -- what? -- resistance to economic "reform"? An implacable reluctance to part company with State-owned enterprises? One party rule? Is "Stalinism" dead and decently interred, a mere skeleton in the national cupboards of socialist societies? Or a creature that has gone into hibernation only to re-emerge when the conditions are right? It is no answer, *pace* Barkely Rosser, to point to socialist societies that have survived from earlier and more spartan forms of socialism. The survival of kingship in Great Britain does not prove that the British system of government is a monarchy; and institutions Barkley would almost certainly call "democratic" survive in many countries today -- some survived even in Hitler's Germany -- which have little or no claim to be called democracies. Similarly, "Stalinist" institutions persist in modern-day Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, among others; yet, who would seriously refer to these States as "Stalinist" in any meaningful political sense of the word? In the case of the DPRK (North Korea), resistance to capitalist "reform" is motivated primarily by resistance to both US imperialism and its mightily armed surrogate to the South. After all, the US invasion in 1950 was quite as traumatic and devastating as the first year of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. Subsequent US activities in Southern Asia, including in Vietnam and the Philippines, has only confirmed the worst prognoses of hardliners in the North's military establishment who, even today, remain the main stumbling block in Pyongyang to Barkley's precious "economic reform" (cf. "Long Korean winter shows signs of thaw" in *Financial Times*, January 3, 1997). This, together with the North's ambiguous relations with both Japan and China, has been the chief source for its attitudes toward outside investment capital. Korean economic policy since the late 1970s has see-sawed between (relatively) younger technocrats and an older, more ideologically conservative cabal of senior military officers who view the political results of "reform" in eastern Europe with a mixture of awe and mortification. In the early 1980s, Korea actually *led* China in the number of letters of intent signed with foreign firms (mostly Japanese and Swedish) for the creation of joint State/private enterprises. Bitter opposition within the leadership of the North Korean Army led Kim Ill Sung to come down on the side of the hardliners. Providentially, a period of record harvests (1982-86) acted to further eclipse moves toward opening the economy, and it wasn't until the early 1990s that the move for economic reform was re-started, a trajectory that has now gained substantial momentum (see "Signs of the market make a provisional appearance in Pyongyang", *Business Asia*, January 9, 1997). It is time, Barkley, that you abandoned the old "Stalinist" canard as an explanatory tool for socialist economic behavior. Or, at least *try* to fashion some alternative explanation. Louis Godena --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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