Guest Editorial

When Friends Become Enemies

Understanding Left-Wing Hostility to the DPRK

This excellent article by JASON LABOUYER shows how revisionists in the Communist movements of the world play into the hands of imperialism, not only as it concerns the DPRK, bus as it concerns the former USSR, Stalin, Second World War and the struggles of genuine, dedicated Marxist-Leninists!

“North Korea is on the verge of collapse and only foodstuffs from China and the UN prevent it,” a prominent Czech political figure recently asserted. These comments were relayed at a press conference in Prague on June 10, following the politician’s return from a visit to the DPR of Korea. He continued to criticize the DPRK for what he described as “an excessive cult of personality” and defense policies he claims “consume 33 percent of the nation’s GDP.”

Well, just to set the record straight, the DPRK is far from collapse. To most individuals who visit the country and see what life is really like in North Korea, that is plainly obvious. The real percentage of national GDP devoted to military spending in the DPRK, moreover, is not over 15 percent, according to official figures released in budgetary documents by the Supreme People’s Assembly earlier this year. And what this politician (as well as many other anti-DPRK activists in the West) frequently and ignorantly describe as a “cult of personality” is more accurately understood by those who actually know and understand Korean society as the people’s overwhelming support not only for their nation’s leadership, but for the philosophy of Juchesocialism that has guided their economic and social development for over half a century. In other words, the Korean people’s dedication is not limited to Chairman Kim Jong Il, or to the late President Kim Il Sung, but to an entire ideology.

But these points would no doubt be lost on our Czech friend; like many other political figures across the Western world, his beliefs concerning North Korea echo the same line handed down to him from the Bush administration, corporate media and other forces hell-bent on destroying North Korea once and for all. However, this official is different in one striking respect: he happens to be Miroslav Grebenicek, party boss of the Czech Republic’s KSCM, or the Communist Party of Bohemia and Morovia.

Grebenicek’s comments reflect a bizarre trend that seems to have swept across the worldwide communist movement in recent years as a number of national communist parties seek to up their political appeal by radically redefining just what it means to stand for socialism. There once was a time when the DPRK enjoyed the unwavering friendship of Czechoslovakia’s ruling communist party, as well as communist parties throughout the socialist world. Back then, it seemed that socialist nations were united in a common ideological goal, sharing conceptions of socialism that, more or less, were similar.

But those were different times, and that was a different party. The disintegration of socialism throughout East Central Europe, and the accompanying destruction of the USSR, resulted in a dramatic paradigm shift in the political discourses of many parties, nations and the international community at large. The perceived “discrediting” of socialism, in short, gave rise to the re-ascendancy of Western liberal capitalism throughout Eastern Europe, while the shattered remnants of the world communist movement were put on the defensive.

Alternate paths to socialism

Since the early 1990s, many communist and leftwing parties have attempted to “recalibrate” socialism in an effort to introduce a developmental model viable in the 21st century. In China, Vietnam and Laos, the ruling communist parties abandoned “traditional” socialism in favor of “market socialism,” retaining some degree of public ownership while privatizing many vital national industries and “opening up” the nation to the global market in the name of “long term economic growth.” These communist parties have rejected capitalism in principle, but have embraced it in practice under the belief that certain “concessions,” namely class stratification, cut-throat competition and consumerism, were a small price to pay in favor of “growth-oriented” economic policies that would create material wealth in the long run.

Grebenicek is very fond of market socialism, as it turns out. His trip to the DPRK was followed by two additional visits to Vietnam and China, and both received his highest praise for the “huge miracle that has got moving there.” Indeed, Grebenicek’s praise neglected reference to the many societal problems arising from economic liberalization in formerly planned economies—or perhaps he too believes that pesky little nuisances like class antagonism, rampant greed, environmental degradation and corruption are simply “side affects” of progress. The “ends justify the means.”

Whether or not the “trade-offs” arising from “growth-oriented” economic policies are ultimately justifiable, or capable of being resolved, is a decision to be made solely by the ruling communist parties of “market socialist” states. The Juche Idea stresses that all nations must follow a blueprint for national development that best suits their unique characteristics and circumstances. Why, however, should the DPRK, a country that pursues a developmental model in which social well being is not subordinated to the goal of economic growth, but complimented by it, be subject to denunciation?

The Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), unlike its many fraternal parties around the world, has chosen not to embrace market socialism. Instead, the WPK promotes an economic program that retains full public ownership of the economy, putting people before profits. And it hasn’t been a cakewalk: over the course of the past 15 years, the DPRK has lost its major trade ally, the USSR, and endured multiple years of destructive floods and drought. The result, as we all know, was a major food crisis that only recently has been overcome. In addition, the DPRK has experienced seemingly incalculable economic losses from the US government’s manifold efforts to destroy it, from harsh economic sanctions that prevent the country from receiving much-needed capital and investment, to an interminable military threat which forces the DPRK to divert a full 15 percent of its GDP to national defense.

Yet socialist Korea’s industrial production, trade and GDP have steadily grown for years now, a reality conceded even by foreign “experts” and international financial institutions who for years declared the country would collapse at any moment. Could it be that sensible economic planning and public ownership can also generate growth and prosperity?

Not according to Grebenicek. The DPRK may be making tremendous strides in economic development, but this is not a side of the DPRK that Western media and the US government will have you see. Their image of North Korea, one of starving children, rampant poverty, oppression and decay, though totally divorced from reality, is all that most people in the West really know. Rather than fighting these lies, some self-described communists have decided to turn their backs on the Korean people altogether.

There are at least two reasons for this unfortunate development. One is the growing belief amongst Western leftwing parties that North Korea represents a model of socialism that has long since gone the way of the dinosaurs. As the only country on earth maintaining complete public ownership of all economic resources, it is arguably the last remaining “traditional” socialist country. Yet the Soviet experience has convinced many that full public ownership simply cannot work. In their eyes, “market socialism” is the wave of the future. Other anti-DPRK leftists, however, have little concern for theory at all. Their aim is to boost their own electoral fortunes, to sell a watered-down platform palatable to the middle-class in an effort to win over votes to their party. And they’ll sell their souls to achieve it.

Left-wing betrayal?

Grebenicek’s comments likely arise from both cases. The KSCM, like many other left-oriented parties throughout the world today, may yearn for a “new theory,” an alternative path to communism in a time when many feel the “old” one, as embodied by the Soviet Union, has led to a dead end. Grebenicek, as his comments reveal, has embraced “market socialism;” North Korea has not. Yet this fails to explain his public vituperation against the DPRK. It is one matter to personally disagree with the DPRK’s economic and political model, but publicly condemning it is another matter altogether. That, it seems, can be explained by his party’s own political maneuvering.

The KSCM, after all, is presently the Czech parliament’s junior opposition party. It has an image to maintain. If the Czech public, like the rest of the world, is fed a daily dose of propaganda depicting North Korea as hell-on-earth, defending the DPRK, Grebenicek likely reasons, will simply not resonate well in the minds of voters. So the KSCM joins the anti-DPRK bandwagon. That the WPK and the Korean people are actually building socialism in practice, turning out feat after feat in the face of great travail, is simply irrelevant to these “communists.” They’re on the fast track to the political mainstream.

The KSCM is not the only “legislative” communist party lacking ideological backbone. The Japanese Communist Party (JCP) has a much longer and far more disturbing legacy of following an anti-DPRK line, serving as one of the leading forces in Japan’s political establishment in favor of hard line policies against the socialist state. An endless flow of anti-DPRK rhetoric by JCP leaders disseminated through their party’s widely circulating newspaper, Akahata, has been instrumental in rallying the Japanese public behind the aggressive ambitions of militarists in Japan’s ruling establishment.

The JCP, for example, has openly criticized the DPRK for developing a nuclear deterrence against the US, labeling the country a “threat to the world” and demanding that the DPRK “disarm at once.” The JCP has in effect joined forces with anticommunists by promoting an image of North Korea depicting it to be a threat to the world, a conceptual absurdity considering the unilateral reality of modern geopolitics and the US government’s longstanding history of aggression not only toward the DPRK, but to all countries that have sought to take their destinies into their own hands. Yet JCP leaders haven’t stopped there. Like Grebenicek, they too have attacked the Korean people for their “cult of personality,” even making a point of advertising the unwillingness of certain JCP representatives to bow to the late President Kim Il Sung at Kumsusan Palace during past delegations to the DPRK, amounting to a slap in the face to the nation and its leadership.

The Japanese people have long been subject to the crudest and most grotesque of anti-DPRK propaganda by their nation’s government and press, and it seems that the JCP leadership decided early on that “going against the grain” would not do much to boost their electoral fortunes. Their tactics in the end might not have been very fruitful (the JCP today is, at best, on the margins of Japanese politics), but they hold firm, and frequent press releases make a point of condemning North Korea for one thing or another, whether it be because of that nation’s actions to protect itself or the highlypublicized “abduction issue,” exploited for political purposes by the JCP and militarists alike.

Unfortunately, the KSCM and JCP present only two of the more rabid cases of a much broader trend amongst some leftist parties around the world to “keep a distance” from the DPRK. A few, like the KSCM and JCP, have done so having embarked upon a futile mission to integrate themselves into the political mainstream—futile because, by definition, communist parties in bourgeois societies should seek to overthrow the mainstream. Challenging the many misperceptions and lies surrounding North Korea is seen as being too “risky” by these “communists,” who seek not to change the political establishment in their capitalist homelands, but to join it. Other communists have become awestruck by the “miracle” of market socialism, and have abandoned Marxism-Leninism entirely in pursuit of a “New Theory” of socialism. To communists of this type, the DPRK is commonly regarded as anachronistic.

These developments pose serious implications for the viability of the world communist movement. Parties such as the KSCM and JCP have not only betrayed North Korea; they offer their nations platforms seemingly devoid of substance as their leaders pursue greater numbers of votes, seeking not to win over popular opinion to the cause of socialism, but to “redefine” socialism to conform to popular opinion. Yet as people everywhere are subject to a barrage of anti-communist propaganda by the media and by their governments, such a task is not simply futile, but deadly. The KSCM and JCP may indeed succeed in joining the political mainstream, but they will compromise their ideological integrity in doing so.

If Grebenicek’s remarks serve as a testimony to a serious theoretical and moral dilemma prevalent in today’s worldwide communist movement, the endurance of the Korean Revolution is a testimony in itself to the Korean people’s spirit of perseverance, dedication and resolve—virtues that have kept the DPRK strong in the face of enemies, as it seems, on both sides of the political spectrum. The Korean Friendship Association has attracted many communists from around the world disillusioned by their parties’ failure to recognize and support Korea in its heroic struggles. To communists such as these, socialism still means social equality and collective prosperity, values held dear by Chairman Kim Jong Il and the late Kim Il Sung and revered by the Korean people for it. Together, our global KFA family will work to ensure that Korea’s people-centered socialist system remains alive and well for epochs to come.

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