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I believe the answer is the hereditary nature of the North Korean system. That is what is different in North Korea compared to those other countries. It leads

I believe the answer is the hereditary nature of the North Korean system. That is what is different in North Korea compared to those other countries. It leads to a country that is essentially a slave society. The owner is the Kim family. The other top people are overseers. The population are slaves. Propaganda and censorship of the outside world maintain the system. This was true of the other Communist countries also but I think the hereditary nature keeps it going. It’s the only thing that distinguishes North Korea from the other Communist states.

hayst4ck 2y ago
> Communist Thew way you are using this word is wrong. It might be cosmetic communism, but it's clearly a totalitarian state. You called the population slaves, which is very much not workers owning the means of production. Communism is an end state, but no government gets there because once a force is strong enough to forcibly redistribute resources to people not powerful enough to take those resources themselves, the redistributors choose to redistribute the resources to themselves because they have unchecked power. Communism collapses into totalitarianism in almost the same way democracy collapses into oligarchy. Communism is a description of a power relationship. It is supposed to be a re-distribution of power, but in societies that claim to have tried communism, resources get distributed for a time, but power does not. So you get distributed resources (cosmetic communism), but not distributed power (structural communism). This then leads to the deeper problem. Communism becomes a scare word that means authoritarianism which taints marxist ideas, which taints socialism. There is a balancing act. Too much re-distributive power -> power centralizes to those capable of redistribution -> unchecked power -> authoritarianism. Too little re-distributive power -> power centralizes in those who continue to consolidate their power -> unchecked power -> authoritarianism. By using the word communism to describe authoritarianism, you damage the ideas necessary to prevent democracy from the same fate.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  > into totalitarianism in almost the same way democracy collapses into oligarchy And yet we have democracies that are 100s of years old and are still far more democracies then oligarchies. While no communist state ever came even remotly close and essentially were never not totalitarian. > Communism becomes a scare word that means authoritarianism which taints marxist ideas Because Marxist idea are bad. That communism and all ways to get their lead to mass slaughter SHOULD taint his ideas. He even privately admited that millions of people will die for his vision but he was sure that somehow once on the other side you would defently live in a utopia. Of coure he himself never bothered to explain how this happened beyond some vauge (and completely historically inaccruate) mussings about history. > By using the word communism to describe authoritarianism, you damage the ideas necessary to prevent democracy from the same fate. No it doesn't. The idea of democracy does not depend on any way on the ideas of communism and socialism.
  - tpm 2y ago
    > Because Marxist idea are bad. That communism and all ways to get their lead to mass slaughter SHOULD taint his ideas. I think the issue with Marx is he was an excellent analyst of the status quo. Then he got carried away by that into thinking he could also solve all the issues. He couldn't (also he wrote the manifesto while young and later regretted it), but that does not mean his analysis is all bad (it's not) and all solutions inspired by his ideas are wrong (they aren't). > He even privately admited that millions of people will die for his vision source? > The idea of democracy does not depend on any way on the ideas of communism and socialism I'm afraid it does. Or maybe at least the execution, if not the idea: There is currently no democracy on earth that is not at least a little bit socialist. And the same is true for nationalism.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      > I think the issue with Marx is he was an excellent analyst of the status quo. He really isn't. His analysis of Capitalism was terrible. Pretty much all empirical prediction were either provably wrong or are so nebulous and uncertain that they can never be proven or unproven. While initially economists were very interested in his writing and read it with great detail, after his complete inalienably to follow up the first Capital, and tons of people point out issues, all issues that he had no credible answer for, only then did economist stop listening. And he was from then on almost exclusively used to inspire social theories. His best friend had to organize contest with prices in order to crowd source ideas about his ideas could be fixed, and that didn't work. Even many Marxist inspired economist do not use most of he frameworks, or have modified them so much that they can barley be called the same. His success was far more that people felt like he said something that was right, because that's what people wanted to hear. His function was that of a public intellectual that gave voice to a movement, that is valuable in his own right, but arguably he massively influenced that movement in the wrong direction massively hurting the actual goals of most people in the movement. His historical method is absolutely dreadful, its arguably even worse then pure great man theory. When he lived there were already many far better historians with better methods. His actual history, therefore was also completely nonsensical. Completely over focus on a narrow slice of western history only to then endlessly backpedal when literally everybody all over the world told him how wrong he was. But he never actually came up with a something better. > source? Its in his private letters to Engles, I don't remember witch one. These were not published initially for obvious reasons. But should be findable. > I'm afraid it does. Or maybe at least the execution, if not the idea: There is currently no democracy on earth that is not at least a little bit socialist. And the same is true for nationalism. No it doesn't, all the ideas for democracy, and modern social democracy can and were arrived at independent of marxist communism. Nothing that you call 'a little bit socialist' is actually socialist. State intervention in the economy is something every empire had done threw its whole history. The same to a lesser extent for social program. Of course these ideas were influenced by the history of socialism as well. But so is everything by everything else. If you actually look at the world that most socialist thinkers before and including Marx, its not that much like Denmark.
tpm 2y ago
I'm not going to speculate about the reasons, because I'm not an expert. One thing to notice is that just south are the very same people forming a democracy. There was recently a coup attempt, failed in part by army and police refusing to carry out their orders. Not really a sign of slave mentality. Also they have a habit of jailing their politicians quite often. Anyway juche, the current ideology of NK, does not even claim anymore to be communist.
- ViktorRay 2y ago
  I never said Koreans in general have a slave mentality. I was saying North Korea is akin to a slave society. In terms of the organization. The other Communist regimes were like this too.
  - tpm 2y ago
    That's funny, because in that supposed slave society workers ('slaves') had more rights than in some capitalist societies. In fact the status of common workers was artificially elevated over anyone working with their brain like management, engineers, scientists or physicians. Lawyers were thought to be unnecessary and soon removed from the society. There were proverbs like 'everybody has work but nobody is working' (because everyone had to be employed, and essentially every employer was a state enterprise or bureaucracy, so no managers with good incentives and very little possibility to force people out), and 'the one who does not steal is robbing his own family' because again nobody in the state enterprises had incentives not to steal, even though it was of course a criminal offense. I know all of this because I lived in one and mention all of this to explain that this is not at all what I would imagine as a slave society. And it all failed not because 'slaves', it failed because (1) it was planned, and when it was clear the plan is failing, the plans were not shelved but doubled upon, 5-year-plan after 5-year-plan. And (2) it was planned from Soviet Union, centrally, with high preference on weapons, not on normal economy. So the economy was failing on very basic levels and it was not fixable from within, because again the incentives were all wrong. (3) the people had some ways to see that lives are way better in the West and they wanted that. (4) so the system tried to give them some of that but the economy got even worse, and it was either hardliners will take over and make the whole Soviet bloc like NK or (5) Gorbachov said he will not stop anyone leaving the Soviet bloc and that was the end. And I'm not contesting the fact that NK society is organised as a slave one. But it's not true about the other communist countries.

hayst4ck 2y ago

> Communist Thew way you are using this word is wrong. It might be cosmetic communism, but it's clearly a totalitarian state. You called the population slaves, which is very much not workers owning the means of production. Communism is an end state, but no government gets there because once a force is strong enough to forcibly redistribute resources to people not powerful enough to take those resources themselves, the redistributors choose to redistribute the resources to themselves because they have unchecked power. Communism collapses into totalitarianism in almost the same way democracy collapses into oligarchy. Communism is a description of a power relationship. It is supposed to be a re-distribution of power, but in societies that claim to have tried communism, resources get distributed for a time, but power does not. So you get distributed resources (cosmetic communism), but not distributed power (structural communism). This then leads to the deeper problem. Communism becomes a scare word that means authoritarianism which taints marxist ideas, which taints socialism. There is a balancing act. Too much re-distributive power -> power centralizes to those capable of redistribution -> unchecked power -> authoritarianism. Too little re-distributive power -> power centralizes in those who continue to consolidate their power -> unchecked power -> authoritarianism. By using the word communism to describe authoritarianism, you damage the ideas necessary to prevent democracy from the same fate.

panick21_ 2y ago
> into totalitarianism in almost the same way democracy collapses into oligarchy And yet we have democracies that are 100s of years old and are still far more democracies then oligarchies. While no communist state ever came even remotly close and essentially were never not totalitarian. > Communism becomes a scare word that means authoritarianism which taints marxist ideas Because Marxist idea are bad. That communism and all ways to get their lead to mass slaughter SHOULD taint his ideas. He even privately admited that millions of people will die for his vision but he was sure that somehow once on the other side you would defently live in a utopia. Of coure he himself never bothered to explain how this happened beyond some vauge (and completely historically inaccruate) mussings about history. > By using the word communism to describe authoritarianism, you damage the ideas necessary to prevent democracy from the same fate. No it doesn't. The idea of democracy does not depend on any way on the ideas of communism and socialism.
- tpm 2y ago
  > Because Marxist idea are bad. That communism and all ways to get their lead to mass slaughter SHOULD taint his ideas. I think the issue with Marx is he was an excellent analyst of the status quo. Then he got carried away by that into thinking he could also solve all the issues. He couldn't (also he wrote the manifesto while young and later regretted it), but that does not mean his analysis is all bad (it's not) and all solutions inspired by his ideas are wrong (they aren't). > He even privately admited that millions of people will die for his vision source? > The idea of democracy does not depend on any way on the ideas of communism and socialism I'm afraid it does. Or maybe at least the execution, if not the idea: There is currently no democracy on earth that is not at least a little bit socialist. And the same is true for nationalism.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    > I think the issue with Marx is he was an excellent analyst of the status quo. He really isn't. His analysis of Capitalism was terrible. Pretty much all empirical prediction were either provably wrong or are so nebulous and uncertain that they can never be proven or unproven. While initially economists were very interested in his writing and read it with great detail, after his complete inalienably to follow up the first Capital, and tons of people point out issues, all issues that he had no credible answer for, only then did economist stop listening. And he was from then on almost exclusively used to inspire social theories. His best friend had to organize contest with prices in order to crowd source ideas about his ideas could be fixed, and that didn't work. Even many Marxist inspired economist do not use most of he frameworks, or have modified them so much that they can barley be called the same. His success was far more that people felt like he said something that was right, because that's what people wanted to hear. His function was that of a public intellectual that gave voice to a movement, that is valuable in his own right, but arguably he massively influenced that movement in the wrong direction massively hurting the actual goals of most people in the movement. His historical method is absolutely dreadful, its arguably even worse then pure great man theory. When he lived there were already many far better historians with better methods. His actual history, therefore was also completely nonsensical. Completely over focus on a narrow slice of western history only to then endlessly backpedal when literally everybody all over the world told him how wrong he was. But he never actually came up with a something better. > source? Its in his private letters to Engles, I don't remember witch one. These were not published initially for obvious reasons. But should be findable. > I'm afraid it does. Or maybe at least the execution, if not the idea: There is currently no democracy on earth that is not at least a little bit socialist. And the same is true for nationalism. No it doesn't, all the ideas for democracy, and modern social democracy can and were arrived at independent of marxist communism. Nothing that you call 'a little bit socialist' is actually socialist. State intervention in the economy is something every empire had done threw its whole history. The same to a lesser extent for social program. Of course these ideas were influenced by the history of socialism as well. But so is everything by everything else. If you actually look at the world that most socialist thinkers before and including Marx, its not that much like Denmark.

tpm 2y ago

I'm not going to speculate about the reasons, because I'm not an expert. One thing to notice is that just south are the very same people forming a democracy. There was recently a coup attempt, failed in part by army and police refusing to carry out their orders. Not really a sign of slave mentality. Also they have a habit of jailing their politicians quite often. Anyway juche, the current ideology of NK, does not even claim anymore to be communist.

ViktorRay 2y ago
I never said Koreans in general have a slave mentality. I was saying North Korea is akin to a slave society. In terms of the organization. The other Communist regimes were like this too.
- tpm 2y ago
  That's funny, because in that supposed slave society workers ('slaves') had more rights than in some capitalist societies. In fact the status of common workers was artificially elevated over anyone working with their brain like management, engineers, scientists or physicians. Lawyers were thought to be unnecessary and soon removed from the society. There were proverbs like 'everybody has work but nobody is working' (because everyone had to be employed, and essentially every employer was a state enterprise or bureaucracy, so no managers with good incentives and very little possibility to force people out), and 'the one who does not steal is robbing his own family' because again nobody in the state enterprises had incentives not to steal, even though it was of course a criminal offense. I know all of this because I lived in one and mention all of this to explain that this is not at all what I would imagine as a slave society. And it all failed not because 'slaves', it failed because (1) it was planned, and when it was clear the plan is failing, the plans were not shelved but doubled upon, 5-year-plan after 5-year-plan. And (2) it was planned from Soviet Union, centrally, with high preference on weapons, not on normal economy. So the economy was failing on very basic levels and it was not fixable from within, because again the incentives were all wrong. (3) the people had some ways to see that lives are way better in the West and they wanted that. (4) so the system tried to give them some of that but the economy got even worse, and it was either hardliners will take over and make the whole Soviet bloc like NK or (5) Gorbachov said he will not stop anyone leaving the Soviet bloc and that was the end. And I'm not contesting the fact that NK society is organised as a slave one. But it's not true about the other communist countries.