Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The unrest reflected much deeper frustrations, including high unemployment, particularly among young people, growing poverty and anger at corruption and mismanagement. People see public resources channelled into luxury spending and infrastructure deals benefiting a few powerful figures connected to the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), while basic services and jobs are neglected.

[Inter Press Service News Agency]

In 1978, Clive James reviewed the official biography of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982) by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee. “I read the whole thing from start to finish, waiting for the inevitable slip-up which would result in a living sentence. It never happened.” James found it so dull that “If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead.” 

[MSN]

The announced $7 billion would be the biggest official tranche of funding to Ukraine’s drone industry so far. It’s close to the $6 billion that Ukraine’s defense minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said Kyiv needs to cover this year’s production of first-person-view drones, interceptors, long-range drones, and missiles. While new, Ukraine’s drone industry has increasingly been in the spotlight for producing cheap but effective weapons regularly being used to destroy Russian loitering munitions, armor, artillery, and production facilities. 

[Yahoo]

From an anarcho-communist perspective, this moment is not simply about one man’s death. It is about the world that produced both Charlie Kirk and the man who killed him. It is about capitalism’s ever-present violence, about the state’s monopoly on force, about the way political antagonisms are escalating into open bloodshed. It is about what happens when a society soaks every interaction in hierarchy, coercion, alienation, and humiliation, and then acts shocked when someone pulls a trigger…Wage labour itself is enforced by violence. If you refuse to work, you starve, or you are policed, or imprisoned. The entire edifice of private property rests on threat and force. 

[The Slow Burning Fuse]

North Korea’s Kim vows to build a ‘socialist paradise’ [sic]. 

[Morning Star]

Having a home of our own is essential to leading a dignified life, but in Venezuela, where access to housing is enshrined as a right in the Constitution, renting adequate accommodation is an unattainable luxury for hundreds of thousands of families, and buying property is almost impossible. Not only do market prices far exceed the average household income but inflation has also wiped out home loans, leaving citizens without access to financing. 

[Equal Times]

There is no genetic or biological basis for dividing the human race into distinct “races”. There are just groups of human beings — all of whom came from Africa originally — who developed slightly different physical characteristics over time as they travelled to, and adapted to, different climates and environments. 

[The Conversation]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Not socialism (2006)

Book Review from the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crisis of Socialism by Randhir Singh. Amit Atwal. 2006. 1087 pages. £29.99.

In Europe most Leninists are probably Trotskyists. In Asia they would seem to be Maoists. Randhir Singh falls into this category, arguing that although Stalin made mistakes and what he called socialism wasn’t socialism, Russia finally became a fully-fledged new class society ruled by a state bourgeoisie only in 1964, when Brezhnev took over from Khrushchev. Russia went capitalist in 1991. Since then China has gone that way too. Only Cuba and North Korea have not yet gone capitalist, and only Cuba is on the road to socialism. That’s what this book argues but we doubt that many people will have the patience to read through 1000 pages portraying Lenin, as like Marx, an advocate of the democratic self-emancipation of the working class, interspersed with favourable comments on Mao and Stalin.

Adam Buick

Voice From The Back: Behind The Fine Words (2010)

The Voice From The Back Column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Behind The Fine Words

Recently in a show of strength the USA and South Korea mounted an exercise in and around the Sea of Japan. It consisted of 20 ships, 200 aircraft and 8,000 military personnel and was supposedly a response to the sinking of a South Korean vessel by North Korea. Like all such military displays of power it was accompanied by fine words. They were “protecting the democratic South against the tyranny of the North”. China, an ally of North Korea viewed it as “an intrusion into an area not far from Chinese territorial waters”. It is much more likely that the correspondent Giles Whittell was much nearer the real economic truth behind the fine words when he reported – “The military display that may or may not have struck fear into the hermit dictatorship north of the 38th parallel has angered Beijing as it seeks to assert sovereignty over nearly 1.5 million square miles of the South China Sea, rich in oil and mineral deposits” (Times, 28 July). Behind the fine words, as usual, lurks the profit motive

Progressing Backwards

During the last ninety years or so the working class have been promised by reformist politicians that if only they were in power the working class would enjoy a better standard of living. Foolishly they have swallowed that piece of nonsense and have endured a world war, countless local wars, massive periods of economic slumps, poverty and unemployment. One of the major promises of the reformers was that of improved health care but what is the reality? “The gap between the health of rich and poor is greater now than at any time since modern records began, a study shows. Government initiatives have done little or nothing to close the gap between the life expectancy of poor people and those who are wealthy, researchers from universities in Sheffield and Bristol, writing in the British Medical Journal, said. They looked at deaths between 1921 and 2007” (Times, 23 July). Ninety years of progress according to the reformers – ninety years of futility is more like it!

Bargain Basement Exploitation

“One of Britain’s fiercest and most ostentatiously successful business men has been enlisted to spearhead the Government’s attack on public spending. Sir Philip Green, a man with a reputation for making brutally effective commercial reforms, has been asked by David Cameron to lead a no-holds barred examination of departmental budgets” (Times, 13 August). In his personal life Sir Philip is anything but frugal or economic. He spent £5 million on his 50th birthday party, £4 million on his son’s bar mitzvah and £30 million on his yacht. We imagine what impressed Cameron about Green was his ruthless exploitation of his workers. Here is an example of how fortunes are made in the retail business. “Indian workers are paid just 25p an hour and forced to work overtime in factories used by some of Britain’s best-known high street stores … Some of the biggest names on the British high street are at the centre of a major sweatshop scandal. An Observer investigation has found staff at their Indian suppliers working up to 16 hours a day. Marks & Spencer, Gap and Next have launched their own inquiries into abuses and pledged to end the practice of excessive overtime, which is a flagrant breach of the industry’s ethical trading (ETI) and Indian labour laws” (Observer, 8 August). It is estimated that Green has a fortune of over £4 billion made in such firms as BHS, Topshop, Evans, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins – that exploitation rather than his personal lifestyle is what has impressed the cost-cutting Cameron.

Half A Million Homeless

Politicians love nothing better than coming up with catchy phrases that they reckon will be taken up by the media. Over the years we have had “The war to end all wars”, “A land fit for heroes”, “You never had it so good”, and more recently Mrs Thatcher’s “A property owning democracy”. The war to end all wars led to an even bloodier conflict, a land fit for heroes turned out be a land where only a bloody hero could survive and Macmillan’s never had it so good only applied to the owning class. Thatcher’s property owning democracy seems particularly ironic when we learn of this prediction. “More than 500,000 people will be added to social housing waiting lists and nearly 300,000 jobs will go under proposals to cut the housing budget by up to 40 per cent, say campaigners. The National Housing Federation says ministers risk “shutting the door on an entire generation of low-income families” by cutting cash for affordable homes” (Times, 26 July). Empty political slogans don’t solve the problems of poverty, unemployment or homelessness – only workers understanding about socialism can do that.

“Humanitarian” Slaughter

Capitalism is a blood-thirsty rapacious society, so it is no accident that its supporters have had to invent euphemisms to cover up its carnage. In recent years we have heard of “collateral damage”. This is used when a school or a hospital is blown up. To cover up the madness that leads to troops killing their own numbers we have “friendly fire”. The Israeli government have sunk to a new level even for them with the following news item. “The Israeli military has imposed restrictions on the use of white phosphorous munitions, which led to civilian deaths and casualties in Gaza last year. Israel told the UN that it would deploy them only when approved by a “humanitarian affairs officer” (Times, 22 July). What would be the job description of a “humanitarian affairs officer”? Someone adept at describing burning to death from white phosphorous as a “pleasant, almost painless termination” perhaps?

The Growth Of Inequality

One of the great illusions of the 21st century is that only in the past had we this awful set-up where “robber barons” intent on grabbing more and more wealth out of the poor exploited masses had their existence. How 19th-century we are led to believe, because we do not live in such a society today. But do we ? “Many of the great fortunes of American history – those of the Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegie and the Fords – are now mighty foundations that have long outlasted their founders. Recent years have seen the greatest disparity of wealth in America since the Golden Age of the 1920s. A recent study found that the top one per cent of Americans now receive 15 per cent of the country’s total income – about double the rate of the 1960s and 1970s” (Times, 5 August). Capitalism was based on the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class in the days of Rockefeller and Carnegie – it still is.

Blogger's Note:

The 'Behind The Fine Words' piece was not in the print edition of the Standard but is included in the website edition of the Standard.

Editorial: Testing times (2006)

Editorial from the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

North Korea is trying to blast its way into becoming a de facto member of the “nuclear club”. The club’s five officially recognized members are up in arms, so to speak, by the nuclear test this state-capitalist regime conducted. “A provocative act!” says the head of the club’s senior member-nation, while another leader, not to be outdone, denounces the nuclear test as “a flagrant and brazen violation of international opinion”. Like “old-money” members of an exclusive golf club, the nuclear powers have hurled abuse on the tacky upstart who dares to seek membership, overlooking how much the two sides have in common.

The “responsible” nations, so appalled by the militarism of Kim Jong-il, have stockpiles of nuclear weapons that the pot-bellied dictator can only dream of obtaining. Lest we think these weapons are in safe hands, consider how US leaders have talked openly in recent years of employing nuclear “bunker busters”. And the widespread use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan means, in a sense, that the line between “conventional” and nuclear war has already been crossed. Now the US and its nuke-wielding brethren, posing as the “international community”, have taken a break from their armed conflicts to warn us of a grave threat to civilization. Are we supposed to laugh or cry?

But don’t imagine that we should back the nuclear upstart. Just as we have no reason to prefer a first-generation capitalist to a third-generation one, as both exploit us, backing North Korea is simply a different path to the same disaster. Apparently we are meant to choose between leaving nuclear weapons in the hands of a few powerful nations, hoping they will not abuse this privilege, or allowing more nations to have access to such weapons, at the risk of letting a thousand mushroom clouds bloom.

This is madness but there is method to it. Under capitalism, accumulating deadly weapons, and occasionally using them, is perfectly rational behavior. Each nation-state, representing the collective interests of its capitalists (who still keep on fighting each other tooth and nail), is in a state of perpetual conflict, at some level or another, with other nation-states, especially those on its borders. These disagreements tend to revolve around access to resources, trade routes, national boundaries, and the like. In such disputes, obtaining an abundance of military hardware tends to bolster a nation’s powers of persuasion, although draining its wealth and resources.

Being aware of the logic behind the arms race is hardly reassuring, however, Once armed to the teeth, there is always a temptation to take the next step and use military force to “resolve” an issue. Trigger fingers get itchy. In the words of Madeleine Albright, “What’s the point of having this superb military if we can’t use it?”. In addition to such hubristic curiosity, wars are sparked for any number of reasons. A weak country might launch a war out of desperation or a leader with a tenuous hold on power might gamble on a military adventure. Or in many cases, each side will show off its military hardware in the hope of intimidating the other, but neither will back down. Boom!

Our fate is in the hands of people who have no real concern for our lives. And the horrors resulting from their calculations and miscalculations are magnified by megatons if nuclear weapons are involved. We need to free ourselves from this death spiral. The problem we face is not simply this or that “dangerous” country, or an “irresponsible” leader, but a lethal capitalist system that has long outlived its usefulness.

Voice From The Back: Another Labour failure (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the September 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another Labour failure

In 1997 the new Labour Government claimed they were going to make fundamental changes in society and would wage war on poverty, or “social exclusion” as they preferred to call it. A recent official report shows that for all their bombastic confidence, the years from 1997 to 2000 have seen no real improvement for the working class. “Details published yesterday by the Department for Work and Pensions show that a quarter of the population was having to live on less than half the average income in 1999-2000, the same proportion as in 1996-97. . . The share of total income received by the poorest 20 percent of the population, for example, fell from 7.9 to 7.6 percent between 1994-95 and 1999-2000. Amongst the richest 20 percent it rose from 41 to 42 percent.” Times (14 July)

Hard times

Times, we are told, are hard in the City these days. The FTSE 100 seems to be in a constant nosedive and millions are being wiped off the stock exchange value of dot.com companies. Time for the high-rollers to tighten their belts? Hardly, for many of the capitalist class it’s still a case of let the good times roll. The owner of the restaurant Petros in London’s St. James was astonished at the lavish wine bill for a table of six. “His restaurant had sold three of the oldest bottles of the stunning claret from which it takes its name: a 1945 Chateau Petrus at £11,600, a bottle of the lesser 1946 at £9,400 and one of the 1947 – regarded by many as the greatest single bottle of the last century – £12,300. Plus a 1900 vintage of Chateau d’Yquem at £9,200. Oh, and a 1982 Montrachet at a paltry £1,400.” Observer (15 July)

Make my day, punk

A recent 10.9 percent annual rise in house prices in the South East of England has led to reformers of capitalism discussing all sorts of schemes to stop low paid public sector workers like schoolteachers quitting their job for better paid ones. Citing the case of the town of Reading, The Times (1 August) provided alarming figures. “The average price of a flat is £105,441 and the Institute for Public Policy estimates that a household needs to earn £25,000 a year to survive. Nurses earn an average £21,000 a year and teachers £24,000.” Tough times indeed for British schoolteachers but it could be worse; they could be American workers at the chalkface. “Pity the poor American teacher, besieged by classroom violence. School shootings are now so frequent that the largest teachers’ union is to offer $150,000 to families of members who are attacked and killed. Since 1992 there have been 29 such killings.” Times (4 August)

North Korean Newspeak

George Orwell’s 1984 invented a language called Newspeak that made clear thinking impossible. Thus the Ministry of War became the Ministry of Peace. He was satirising the current use of such euphemisms as the Ministry of “Defence”. Carrying on this tradition of capitalist cant the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and the Russian president Vladimir Putin have issued a declaration on the subject of “peace”. “A declaration signed by Kim and Putin called their meeting a “historic landmark in efforts to strengthen peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region and the world”, and dismissed US fears of Pyongyang’s nuclear missile capability. “North Korea asserts that its missile programme is peaceful in nature and does not present a threat to any nature respecting North Korea’s sovereignty” the proclamation said.” Observer (5 August).

Vote catching SSP

At a press conference the Scottish Socialist Party revealed its latest recruit – a Roman Catholic priest! Father Steve Gilhooley was welcomed into the SSP by its leader Tommy Sheridan. “Mr Sheridan, however, spoke of his admiration for Father Gilhooley and said he had been extremely struck by his “incredible warmth and compassion”. “Steve deals day in day out with some of the ravages of our so-called free market in terms of broken families and broken communities and tries to fix them, so from that point of view he is very well equipped to be a member of the SSP,” he said. Herald, 2 August.

And we are asked to believe that this sort of nonsense has something to do with revolutionary socialism.

Proper Gander: The state of North Korea (2023)

The Proper Gander Column from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Little information about how people live in North Korea has leaked out beyond its borders. The only footage we’re likely to see is of tightly managed military parades and appearances by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un rather than anything more everyday. The lives of the vast majority are kept secret: the country has its own intranet separate to the internet and communication with outsiders is forbidden. Despite the oppressive laws, some North Koreans have been able to share details of their lives, and the extracts of these on the BBC Two documentary North Korea: The Insiders are even more grim than we might expect.

Jean Mackenzie, the BBC’s correspondent in South Korea, worked with Daily NK, a specialist news organisation which has contacts in North Korea. They found three people there who agreed to be covertly interviewed to raise awareness of their situations. Daily NK sent Mackenzie’s questions to them using a ‘special device’, then interviews would be recorded in ‘safe locations that can’t be bugged’ and sent back. This was done at considerable risk, as if the interviewees were caught by the police they could face execution.

North Korea has been even more insular since the pandemic. Ostensibly to reduce transmission of the virus, the government imposed stricter restrictions on the border with China. An effect of this was to prevent goods being smuggled into North Korea which had previously supplemented the inadequate rations available from within the country. One of the people interviewed sold contraband medicines at a market near the Chinese border, and since the pandemic her income has halved because she can’t get as much stock to sell. The lack of imports also means there is now even less food available than before, and for higher prices. A consequence of this is that two of the three people interviewed personally knew multiple people who had died of starvation. Stories of widespread starvation in the country haven’t been known since its crisis in the mid-late 1990s.

Alongside the threat of malnutrition is the threat from the repressive state. One of the interviewees says ‘If I live according to the rules, I feel like I’ll starve to death but just by trying to survive I could be arrested by the state security, branded as a traitor and killed’. The other interviewees also live in fear of the authorities, such as one who was taken in for questioning under the ‘anti reactionary thought law’. There’s no suggestion in the interviews of any enjoyment at all: no socialising or entertainment. As one of the interviewees says ‘people are stuck here and waiting to die’.

Given the dire conditions in North Korea, it’s understandable that its government doesn’t want the rest of the world to know what’s happening. Nor does it want its own subjects knowing about life outside its boundary, in case they make comparisons. One of the interviewees knew a 22 year old man who was sentenced to over 10 years of hard labour for distributing South Korean songs and films. Before 2020 he would have got a year in prison, but now the official line is that ‘the perverted and animalistic pursuit of South Korean and Western culture must be purged’, and the death penalty is possible. James Heenan, the UN Investigator for Human Rights in North Korea, says that punishments just for watching foreign media are ‘very serious violations of human rights’ and could be crimes against humanity, not that this would concern the regime. When they were sent a video of the documentary, the North Korean government replied that the interviews had been faked, and claimed that it ‘has always prioritised the interests of the people even at difficult times and has an unwavering commitment to the well-being of the people’.

Of the consultants with a view on North Korea featured in the programme, Sue Mi Terry, a previous CIA Senior Analyst on Korea, gets closest to explaining what drives the regime. She says that the government there has always been motivated by preserving its ruling family rather than protecting the people, which is obvious enough. She doesn’t go on to add that all governments work to support the capitalist class, the difference being that in North Korea this class is more compact than in and across most other countries, as its industries and services are all state-owned. The wealth they generate gets channelled into Kim Jong Un and family’s no-doubt lavish lifestyle alongside manufacturing weaponry. In case any North Koreans wonder why investment isn’t being made in food or medicine production, the official justification is that missiles are needed to defend against hostile powers such as the USA and South Korea. Covid has been used as a further pretext for repression and restrictions.

Mackenzie meets Ryu Hyun-woo, who defected from North Korea in 2019 while working as an ambassador. He says that younger people are more likely to ask of the regime ‘what have you done to stop us starving to death?’, adding ‘if anger and discontent keep building up, one day it will explode’. The documentary doesn’t dwell on any action which the people of North Korea could take to improve their conditions: the very real threats of starvation and punishment mean that it’s understandable if many can only concentrate on survival. The situation there makes any kind of worker-based organisation seem unlikely, although this is what’s needed to change it. The programme suggests a little hope, through what Hyun-woo says and how the interviewees have defied the oppressive laws and propaganda to tell their stories.

Mike Foster

World View: Son of Star Wars (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rarely have Americans elected to office a president as impetuous, callous and as indifferent to the well-being of others as George W Bush, who even as a presidential candidate, signing more death warrants than any Governor in history, made no secret of his hawkish ambitions, determined to forge ahead with the “Son of Star Wars” National Missile Defence (NMB) system and to propel the world into another arms race and all the old cold war hostilities that accompany it and, indeed, perhaps signing the future death warrants of hundreds of millions.

The recent Pentagon report Proliferation: Threat and Response came as a godsend for the Bush camp, anxious to rationalise a planned $60 billion increase in defence spending, inclusive of investment in the NMD programme which would deploy thousands of air defence missiles to intercept intercontinental ballistic weapons fired by the proverbial “rogue states”.

The report would have it that the threat to mainland America is as great now as during the Cold War era and that apocalypse is just over the horizon, discerning a credible threat from North Korea within 10 years, Iran within 15 years and Iraq within 20 years. The report is critical of China for its continuing use of arms sales to “advance its strategic and economic interests”, but is silent on the US domination of the global arms market and its related hegemonic aspirations. Likewise, the amnesiacs who compiled the report lambast Iraq for its “pursuit of regional hegemony”, Syria for its excessive $1 billion defence budget (the US defence budget is currently $300 billion) and North Korea for its stockpiling of chemical weapons (when the US has the largest stockpile of chemical weapons on the planet). At every turn, it seems, there’s a rogue state just itching to lob a nuclear or biological weapon at the defender of global peace and democracy, and it is this warped logic that informs the hawkish stance in Washington. No mention is made of the fact that even without NMD, any state stupid enough to throw anything bigger than a grenade at the US would be bombed back into the Stone Age.

Nevertheless, it is talk that is demanding a $60 billion increase in US defence spending (which is actually China’s total military budget), and rhetoric that the cold warriors Bush has given cabinet posts to are more than familiar with. Once a critic of NMD, Colin Powell, of Gulf War fame (a man who came to prominence covering up the My Lai massacre and later up to his neck in the arms for hostages scandal and the illegal supplying of arms to the Contras) is now Secretary of State and the Pentagon’s top NMD salesperson. Other cabinet posts have gone to other Reaganite hawks such as Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Candaleezza Rice. Bush’s choice for key cabinet posts alone should warn us there is some serious ass kicking is going to be done.

Whereas Bush sees NMD as a “constitutional and moral requisite” (he incidentally also believes humans and fish can coexist peacefully) US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld agrees that “it is in many respects a moral issue”, that NMD is essential to counter “the raw and random violence of the outlaw regime or the rogue state armed with missiles of mass destruction”, that NMD would make the US “less isolationist”, “less vulnerable and more prepared to help its allies”.

At a defence conference in Munich in early February, at which the implications of NMD were discussed, concern was raised that NMD would undoubtedly spark an arms race. Rumsfeld declared that NMD would not destroy arms control agreements including the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but later suggested the 1972 treaty was “ancient history”.

Arms race

Sergei Ivanov, head of the Russian National Security Council told the conference that “the destruction of the 1972 ABM Treaty will result in annihilation of the whole structure of strategic stability and create prerequisites for a new arms race”. As much, and more, was hinted at back in late 1999 when Republican hawks celebrated a Senate vote not to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and announced their intention to scupper the 1972 ABM Treaty which outlawed Star Wars’ missiles systems capable of intercepting incoming missiles. For it was then that Russian Defence Minister Nikolai Mikolov, acknowledging Russia could not match US technology, declared Russia would simply deploy more warheads capable of overwhelming the US nuclear umbrella system.

In November last year the Kremlin announced plans to cut its number of men under arms by 360,000 and to shift the emphasis from nuclear weapons to conventional arms. This decision has since been shelved and will be reconsidered in March at the earliest. Meanwhile, in direct response to Washington’s announcement that the US intends to go through with the Son of Star Wars anti-missile programme, whatever shape this may be (air-based, sea-based, space-based) and regardless of any objections, Russia has announced it will seek an anti-US diplomatic alliance with China, North Korea and Iran.

As well as Russia, both India and China have expressed concern about the NMD, fearing it will very much provoke an arms race and force them to expand their own nuclear weapons programmes. Whist France and Germany are wholly opposed to NMD, the British government is currently playing its cards close to its chest. Though the MoD and the Foreign Office claim they are “not convinced of the merits” of NMD, Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon, asked if the US would be allowed to upgrade their early warning system at Fylingdales in Yorkshire replied: “We share of course US concerns about emerging threats. The US is our closest ally”.

For Tony Blair’s part, whilst it is felt he is bending towards the idea, keen to placate his US cronies, his government is under no pressure to make a decision for several months, which suits New Labour down to the ground. It should also be remembered that Blair is facing a general election this year so has no intentions of losing votes as a result of arguments with anti-nuclear protestors. It is, however, a safe bet that Blair will indeed see an election victory as his mandate to commit Britain to Bush’s wider game plan for global US domination.

It is a fair guess that there is more behind NMD than Washington lets on. For instance, the moment you begin installing a sophisticated missile defence shield is the moment your adversaries begin seeking ways around it. Whilst NMD may well take out the incoming missile, what of the biological or nuclear bomb in the suitcase or the suicide bomber?

A more likely explanation lies in the fears of the Republican right that the only discernible threat to US hegemony in the 21st Century will come from China as it develops into the economic giant many think it capable of—a serious challenger for US profits. What better way to curtail China’s economic ambitions than to compel it to channel more money into defence and away from other social programmes, economically hamstringing it? A similar tactic had been employed against the former Soviet Union during the Reagan administration in the late eighties, forcing state capitalism into an early grave as it found itself unable to meet the costly demands of an escalating arms race weighted heavily in the favour of the US.

It is poignantly ironic that George W Bush is preparing to raise the global security stakes when just over ten years ago his father George Bush, as president, announced to the world the benefits of the coming “peace dividend” in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the “collapse of communism”; a world in which there would no longer be the need for countries to invest heavily in military hardware now the bogeyman had been exorcised—that money was now to be used for health, education and other social programmes. But there again, George senior did announce at his inauguration that the 20th Century had been the “American Century” and that he’d be doing his damnedest to ensure the 21st was also an American century. So maybe George junior is simply following out his father’s promises. Ensuring the 21st century will also be ruled by force and woe betides any one silly enough to mess with US interests.

One thing is sure. The US is deadly serious about possible threats to its strategic and economic interests in the 21st century and has already toyed with a future confrontation with a possible rising superpower. In January, the US air force, along with 250 military and civilian “experts”, completed its first major war games in space at the Space Warfare Centre in Colorado, rehearsing a conflict set in 2017 between China and the US. It is no great leap of the imagination to envisage the projected winner.

As we have announced several times in the past year, if we are to prevent the 21st century becoming a more violent re-run of the 20th, that witnessed two world wars, the first use of nuclear weapons and many hundreds of smaller conflicts—all in the name of profit—it is essential we, the victims, the cannon fodder, the class that has the biggest price to pay to satisfy the whims of the mighty, begin to organise now; not tomorrow when NMD is in place, nor in years to come when the sirens are screaming. We as a class have suffered too much and have too much to lose to leave decisions regarding the future of our planet in the hands of group of arrogant, conceited and profit-crazed individuals. Let’s really organise to take their power away, before it is too late.

John Bissett

Bird’s Eye View: Democratic, Stateless, Commonwealth (2022)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism: Democratic

‘The curtailment of the rights of local government began back in the 1990s. In 1993, liberal reformers, represented by President Boris Yeltsin, came into conflict with the system of councils that was left over from revolutionary times and given a new lease of life during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika’ (Jacobin, 11 September,).

Actually the rot set in over a century ago with the forceful dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in 1918. Ironically, one supporter of this measure provided an excellent account of why the Social Revolutionary Party, representing the peasants, who were in a large majority, should be denied their victory:

‘It may certainly appear as a monstrous crime against democracy on the part of a regime which regards itself as Socialist to have suppressed an institution which had been the dream of generations, which the Bolsheviks themselves had been championing ever since the first revolution of 1905 with more enthusiasm than any other party… What better proof could have been furnished that the Bolsheviks were trampling on the people’s will in a manner hitherto exhibited by the worst tyrants in history, that they were afraid of the verdict of the nation gathered through its representatives in the highest assembly known to democracy …?” (The Bolshevik Revolution, Maxim Litvinoff, 1918).

For a contemporary account, see our article ‘The Revolution in Russia: Where it Fails’ (Socialist Standard, August 1918). With regard to Gorbachev and life in state capitalist Russia post 1917, this candid comment from journalist Vitali Vitaliev is worth repeating:

‘The main mistake of Western analysts trying to assess Gorbachev’s career is the attempt to treat him as a kind of God-sent Messiah who emerged to save Russia from ‘socialism’. Nothing can be further from reality. Throughout his political career Gorbachev was part and parcel of the apparat. He came not to dismantle ‘socialism’ but to preserve it. I am putting ‘socialism’ into inverted commas because there has never been anything of the kind in Russia. No other country is so far from the ideas of equality and fraternity as the Soviet Union. If there was a socialism, or even a Communism at all, it was only for the ruling elite who lived and are still living in a separate world. It is a world of privileges, starting from birth (special maternity homes) going on all through their lives (special shops, hospitals, hairdressers’ salons, canteens, toilets and what not) and not ending even with the end of their physical existence (special cemeteries). Yes, yes, special cemeteries for the rulers of ‘the first working-class State in the world’, where workers are not supposed to be buried’ (Observer, 11 March 1990).

Stateless

Margaret Thatcher in a meeting with Gorbachev reportedly argued at one stage about the merits of capitalism versus ‘communism’ and she told him ”’We are all capitalists. The only difference is that for you it’s the state that invests, while for us it’s private individuals.” Gorbachev was apparently flummoxed’ (Mission to Moscow, Sunday Times 5 April 1987).

She was correct. Capitalist hallmarks, such as class society, commodity production, profit motive, exploitation of wage labour, markets, etc., exist in Russia, both pre- and post-Gorbachev, as they do worldwide. The very idea of socialism in one country is akin to being a little bit pregnant! People who insist otherwise are living in a world of make believe, which is home, alas, to billions, including fans of the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.

‘The North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly gathered for its first session on Wednesday. According to state news agency KCNA, the chamber agreed to adopt laws on landscaping and rural development. However, it also pledged to help turn the nation into a “beautiful and civilised socialist fairyland”. The two laws are intended to help advance efforts made by the governing party to bring about “a radical turn in the rural community and its policy on landscaping to achieve a rapid development of the Korean-style socialist rural community and spruce up the country into a beautiful and civilised socialist fairyland”. Kim Jong-un, who did not attend the parliamentary event, also promised to improve people’s livelihoods and boost rural development amid spiralling economic crises. Economic difficulties have been blamed on self-imposed Covid-19 lockdowns, international sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons programme and also natural disasters’ (Daily Express, September 8).

The February 2012 Socialist Standard’s cover features a young-looking ‘Great Successor’ under the title ‘Kim, All Ye Faithful. Leaders in the Land Time Forgot’ and related article ‘Death of a Dictator’.

Commonwealth

‘Everything seems to tick in “Unrest” the latest effort from Zurich-born writer/director Cyril Schäublin. “Unrest” depicts the working lives of 19th century anarchist watchmakers in the Swiss mountains, laying bare the absurdities of the wage system’ (Roger Ebert.com, 12 September). During the interview, Schäublin states: ‘Kropotkin, contra Karl Marx… believed in the abolition of any kind of wage labor whatsoever.’ Au contraire. In Value, Price and Profit (1865) Marx stated:

‘At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!”

Hungry for Change (1998)

From the May 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Aid agencies warn of famine in Sudan” (Guardian, 7 April). “Starving North Koreans on the border of despair” (Guardian, 14 April). “Famine in Burundi. Why are 600,000 people starving to death?” (Observer, 15 April).

These are indeed harrowing headlines, evoking images of stick-limbed children with oversized heads, of adults, cadaverous and saucer-eyed, scrounging, scavenging and bartering for food. The stories these headlines introduce tell of a combined total of six million facing death from starvation. On a much wider scale, 800 million are chronically malnourished and 1.3 billion inhabitants of the world will today go without food.

The latter are well used figures, and taken with the former echo the absurdity of those obese and confused government officials who gathered together several years ago to label the 1990s the “UN Decade for the Eradication of Poverty”. At that time there was only 400 million malnourished, when Henry Kissinger rose to his feet at the 1972 UN Food Summit and vowed to eradicate world hunger within 20 years.

The immediate causes of famine–drought, floods and civil war–often mask the fact that most suffering countries are capable of feeding themselves. Sudan’s arable land, for instance, could feed its population, but is instead used for cash crops such as cotton and sugar, and Burundi, as Peter Beaumont recently reported (Observer, 15 April) “is so fecund it cries out to be abundant”. Elsewhere, we find that 50 percent of arable land in Afghanistan can’t be cultivated because it is land-mined.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organisaion readily admits that the world produces more than enough to ensure “adequate food for all” (2,700 calories per person per day). In the 1970s, the World Health Organisation announced that we could feed a world population seven times its then size, and as late as 1995 admitted that Africa could feed a population six times its present size were western farming techniques to be introduced there.

Faced with these facts and while the people of North Korea are having grain rations reduced to 100 grams per day, while the poor of Sudan forage for wild nuts and grasses and while the Burundese bury their dead from starvation at a rate too quick to count, there is no shortage of organisations willing to try to remedy the situation. In North Korea, the World Food Programme appealed in January for 650,000 tons of food and the United Nations Development Programme has drawn up plans to make North Korea self-sufficient by the year 2000. UNICEF and the WHO hold conferences, apportion blame and send representatives to investigate the plight of the starving.

Interestingly, the bulk of these organisations come under the watchful eye of the US-controlled UN, and wasn’t it the US which twice in the past–and alone–voted against UN resolutions that sought to recognise “proper nourishment” as a “human right” (14 December 1981–Resolution 36/133 and 18 December–Resolution 37/199)?

The food the aid agencies succeed in sending usually ends up in cities rather than in rural areas where it is most needed. Some 60 percent of EC and 30 percent of US food aid is given to governments to sell on, mostly in cities, and which often provides money that is squandered–i.e. tanks invariably seem a better investment than seeds. And food aid tends to cut food prices, diminishing the incentive for farmers to grow crops, and fosters long-term dependency. Moreover, food aid is often provided minus the transport to deliver it where it is needed and ends up rotting on the quayside. When it can be delivered, it is often the case that camps have to be set up to dispense the aid, resulting in “food drones”, maelstroms of hunger and disease.

Charities launch campaigns, telling us what a donation of 20p, £1 and £100 will buy, holding back the more damning statistic that 95 percent of the money donated is eaten up in administration and infrastructure.

Though the relief organisations and charities are undoubtedly well meaning, they address problems for which the solution already exists. Though they have the insight to see the profit-driven market system as a cause of hunger, they err in trying to reform it in the interests of the hungry. While they wave off shipments of food top faraway lands, their own governments are ordering the destruction of food and paying farmers to take land out of production.

Under a system in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit, a system that has expunged the causes of war, a system that can locate people to areas less prone to flooding and drought, famine can then be a thing of the past. And this–socialism–could perhaps be brought about with less effort than goes into organising a world food summit and running the myriad of existing aid agencies. It is not some pipe dream anathema to human nature, for what can be more natural than producing for need?

John Bissett

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Paris police say the mayor of Kiev’s daughter was robbed of euro4 million ($5.5 million) worth of jewelry as she travelled to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport. An official with the Paris police says a man broke into the luxury car that Kristina Chernovetska was in as it stopped on a highway north of Paris and then stole her purse:

[Dead Link.]

As trade in the region grows more lucrative, China has been developing port facilities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and it is planning to build railroad lines in Nepal. These projects, analysts say, are part of a concerted effort by Chinese leaders and companies to open and expand markets for their goods and services in a part of Asia that has lagged behind the rest of the continent in trade and economic development.

But these initiatives are irking India, whose government worries that China is expanding its sphere of regional influence by surrounding India with a “string of pearls” that could eventually undermine India’s pre-eminence and potentially rise to an economic and security threat:

[Link.]

Dear Comrade Kim Jong Il,

This meeting, organised by the Friends of Korea in Britain, would like to convey to you our warmest congratulations on the important occasion of the 68th anniversary of your birth on February 16, and wish you all good health and a long, long life. We send you our very best wishes for the continued success of your great work…We stand shoulder to shoulder with you and the Korean people under your great leadership,and express our common conviction that humanity will achieve a better world where the people are the masters of their own destiny…

Signed by participating organisations:

* Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

* European Regional Society for the Study of the Juche Idea

* UK Korean Friendship Association

* New Communist Party of Britain

* Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

* Socialist Labour Party

[Link.]

Hidden agenda in East Asia (1994)

From the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In March 1993, the CIA decided that the 30 megawatt reactor at Yongbyon was capable of producing enough plutonium for one nuclear warhead a year. What convinced the US that Kim Il-Sung was the next third world dictator to threaten the post-cold war peace process was North Korea’s decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). North Korea had joined the 154 signatory pact in 1985 on the insistence of the Soviet Union, and was now the first country to withdraw.

What further upset the US was when North Korea cocked the proverbial snook at the US by forbidding inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to carry out inspections at two sites and by further ignoring a 31 March deadline for the admittance of the IAEA.

The following month the US wanted to push for an enforcement of economic sanctions through the UN Security Council. Such sanctions would have had little impact. North Korea has been isolated internationally for some years and has enjoyed pariah status since the end of the cold war. Again, China, still on speaking terms with the Pyongyang regime, and being a permanent member of the UN Security Council with the right to veto, would have scuppered any embargo.

In July 1993, President Clinton was comforting US troops stationed in South Korea, reassuring them that "it would be pointless for them (the North Koreans) to develop nuclear weapons . . . if they ever used them it would be the end of their country".

By November, Clinton was still impressing his friends with his fighting talk, promising them that "any attack on South Korea would be an attack on the US" (Guardian, 8 November). His reason this time was that North Korea had amassed 70 percent of its forces on the 38th Parallel. North Korea was responding to threatened economic sanctions, warning that any attempt "to force it to comply with UN rules would be regarded as an aggressive act to which it would respond in kind" (Independent, 8 November).

A week later, probably in an attempt to intimidate North Korea, the US and South Korea began ten days of joint military manoeuvres. Not that the military brass in South Korea feared an invasion or took North Korean threats seriously. The Economist (12-18 February) reported how "South Korea generals angrily dismiss the idea that the vast but ill-equipped North Korean army could sweep into the South. They speak of the superiority of the American and South Korean air forces . . . Ordinary soldiers at the front joke about the North's tanks running out of fuel before they even make it across the border."

In early January this year, North Korea agreed to allow IAEA inspectors access to seven nuclear facilities. The inspectors later discovered that monitoring equipment they had installed had been tampered with, thus giving the US further cause to believe North Korea had something to hide.

During bilateral talks in March, the North Korean representatives stormed out, threatening to turn Seoul into "a sea of fire". The South Korean government responded by permitting the US to begin installing a Patriot missile system. North Korea hit back by threatening to attack Japan if joint US/North Korean hostilities broke out.

Later in March, Russia stepped into the arena proposing an international conference to defuse the dispute over North Korea’s nuclear programme. This was followed by a UN attempt to impose a resolution urging North Korea to allow the IAEA experts to complete inspection at North Korea’s nuclear facilities. China, however, as anticipated, obstructed the move.

Sanctions are looking increasingly more difficult to impose, let alone enforce. The Japanese Socialist Party (state capitalist and no relation to us), the largest party in the governing coalition there, has strong affiliations with the "communists" in North Korea and would more than likely object to the enforcement of sanctions. Iran, a key oil supplier to North Korea, and financer of Pyongyang’s long-range ballistic missile programme, would jump at the chance at flouting a US-led embargo.

The Wisconsin Project, a Washington-based "think tank", recently warned that North Korea could soon be exporting finished nuclear bombs to Iran, thus increasing pressure on the IAEA to pursue their objectives in North Korea to their end.

There are some in South Korea who believe that such excessive Western pressure upon the Pyongyang regime to open the doors of its nuclear industry will spark a last-ditch, cornered-rat syndrome that will turn Kim U-Sung on the offensive.

The US currently have 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea, and North Koreans believe that the nuclear weapons that were allegedly removed from South Korean soil in 1991 are still there.

North Korea has bitter memories of past US threats to nuke them. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower in 1951 and 1952, both reminded North Korea of what happened to Japan when it failed to comply with US wishes.

Simon Tisdall, writing in the Guardian, believes North Korean fears are not unfounded and not based solely on a fear of the US:

"Set adrift by the collapse of a global security system built around US-Soviet confrontations. North Korea's neighbours are now engaged in an arms race every bit as frantic as the contest between the old superpowers" (12 April 1993)

Tisdall went on to argue that future flashpoints are to be found in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Gulf of Tonkin, Cambodia, the Phillipines and Burma.

In 1991, when politicians were harping on about the "Peace Dividend", East Asia accounted for 34 percent of all purchases in major weapons sales. A year later, January 1992, Thailand placed a $540 million order for a squadron of F-16s, and Taiwan topped that by ordering 150 US fighters worth $6 billion. Exactly one year later, Indonesia bought half of former East Germany’s navy for the knock-down price of $30 million. That same month, Japan submitted a defence budget of $37 billion. And in recent years China has raised its defence budget by 50 percent, estimated to be worth $24 billion annually. With neighbours like these who needs enemies?

Considering the US has more nuclear warheads than any other nation on earth and has a proven track record of using them against oriental people, and bearing in mind the experience of Saddam when he tangled with the US, threatening their interests in the Middle East, is it any wonder Kim Il-Sung is feeling intimidated?

East Asia and Pacific countries accounted for 58 percent of US exports last year. Obviously the best way to protect these markets is to have a military presence there and a constant threat that justifies that presence. Even the pro-capitalist Economist has spotted the hidden agenda:

"Many Koreans suspect America of exaggerating the threat from the north for their own purposes: to justify the continued presence of 36,000 troops in one of the cheapest training grounds in the world; to prevent defence cuts from biting too deeply; and to help sell the South Koreans weapons it can scarcely afford” (12-18 February).

If South Korea is buying weapons it can ill afford, then what must be the situation in the North where there have been widespread food riots? North Korea hardly has the money to buy the type of weaponry its neighbours are shelling out for. North Korea is in fact an impoverished country. In 1990 its GNP declined by almost 4 percent. Its estimated GNP that year (per head of population) was one fifth that of South Korea. In 1992 its income fell by 7.6 percent.

Kim Il-Sung’s threats had little impact on the South Korean economy. While he was threatening to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire", the Seoul stock markets were bounding upwards by 37 percent, thus widening the financial gulf between north and south.

Kim Il-Sung’s "seven-year plan", which came to an end in 1993, was short on all targets. During the past four years of the plan the state-capitalist command economy shrunk by an average four percent annually.

There has been civil unrest and food riots in North Korea for over a year and many experts believe that Kim Il-Sung in in danger of being ousted. The only logical conclusion one can draw is that the stand-off with the IAEA and the slanging match with the US are Kim Il-Sung’s deliberate distractions from domestic troubles.

The US, of course, are aware of all this, just as they are aware that North Korea poses no real threat to world peace, but they go through the actions of being displeased with Pyongyang, stirring up unfounded fears in Asia in the process, as a means of securing markets for US arms manufacturers.

John Bissett

Olympic invitation (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many commentators were taken aback by the apparent volte-face conducted by China and Russia when they recently accepted South Korea’s invitation to the 1988 Olympic Games. This seemed particularly odd since their regional ally "Communist" North Korea, bitterly opposed participation on the grounds that it amounted to a virtual recognition of the US-backed Southern regime.

The confusion over these manoeuvres stems from the mistaken belief that leaders determine foreign policy in line with their ideological interests. In opposition to this view, the materialist analysis of international relations holds that there are underlying economic forces which determine, over the long run, what actions leaders take. Seen in this light, the "mystery" of the Olympic acceptance is soon resolved.

Following the enforced division of the Korean peninsula by the United States in 1948, Russia and China maintained a seemingly implacable hostility towards the South and lent their support to the Northern regime's drive to re-unify the country. The importance of the North to China and the Russians was dramatically enhanced by the bitter conflict which erupted between these two states in the 1950s and '60s. North Korea occupied a critical strategic position, flanking vital industrial and military regions on both sides. Ritual denunciation of the Southern regime became an important weapon in the struggle to secure the support of the North's dictator. Kim I'-Sung.

The situation began to change in the late 1970s and early '80s. when the stagnation of the Russian and Chinese economies galvanised their respective party bureaucracies into an enforced process of economic modernisation. A necessary condition for success was a massive injection of western capital and advanced technology, which required a downgrading of cold war hostility and an opening up to the United States and its allies through the process of detente.

South Korea occupies a key position here. It is located in the fastest developing economic region in the world and is growing at a more rapid pace than Japan. Its per capita GNP is $2,900, at least three times that of the North. Furthermore, South Korean industry has direct access to the latest technology from the United States and Japan and its manufacturers have proved themselves adept at integrating aid, successfully utilising their advances as, for example, in the development of the four megabit DRAM computer.

The Chinese were the first to attempt to tap into these resources. In the early 1980s they established trading links with the South through Hong Kong and between 1983 and 1985 two-way trade rose from $285 million to over $800 million, exceeding China's trade with the North. More recently a covert direct trade has begun to develop. South Korean businessmen have visited China, and in 1986 the Daewoo Corporation spearheaded the first ever joint venture with a Chinese company, producing television sets in the Fujian province.

The South Koreans have been anxious to encourage these links since China has a lot to offer them: cheap labour, low corporate taxation and an alternative to the increasingly protectionist United States market. President-Elect, Roh Tae Woo, has promised to develop the South West province of Challa as a free trade zone to exploit these possibilities.

The Russians have been more circumspect in making openings to South Korea, principally because of the strategic benefits they derive from naval facilities at Cam Rhan Bay in the North, as well as overflying rights for their military aircraft. The importance of these assets has diminished, however, as the Soviets attempted to create a stable regional environment in which they could pursue economic modernisation. This involved seeking a rapprochement with China and increasingly dissociating themselves from Kim I'-Sung's wilder demands for a military solution to the division of Korea. The last thing the Russians wanted was a clash with either China or the United States, which would have diverted resources away from economic development and threatened the flow of Western technology and capital. Consequently the Russian leadership has moved to relieve tensions with China and has tacitly accepted the present division of Korea as more or less permanent.

These shifts have resulted in the downgrading of the relative importance of the North in Russian thinking. For example, in the early 1980s they were notably reluctant to supply North Korea with advanced MIG 23 fighters, and did so only in response to United States' introduction of F-16s into the South. This reassessment was reinforced by the financial burden to the Russians of supporting the North. Kim I'-Sung's attempts to build an "independent" economy had resulted in an efficient and aging heavy industrial base patterned after Stalin's programmes of the 1930s. The North today has a trade deficit of $465 million and has consistently failed to repay its loans, much to the irritation of some Western capitalists who are now exceedingly reluctant to extend financial or technological assistance. In pursuit of economic self-sufficiency. Kim I'-Sung has also refused to join COMECON and integrate the North more fully into the Russian empire. This has remained a constant source of tension. The Russians are already overextended economically with their commitments in Vietnam, Africa and Afghanistan and strategic returns from their investment in North Korea no longer seem worth the immense cost.

For both China and Russia ideological hostility towards South Korea clashes with the demands generated by the need for economic modernisation. As Marxists would expect, this contradiction is resolved by bringing the ideology into line with changing economic circumstances. The acceptance of South Korea's invitation to the 1988 Olympics is an important part of that process.

Andrew Thomas

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the May 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Cameron called for openness and a lifting of trade bans on Burma after visiting the capital Nay Pyi Taw, where he met President Thein Sein.  Later he had a private dinner with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon. Speaking of his meeting with the great pro-democracy leader he said: ‘It was a privilege to sit down with Ms Suu Kyi and try to flog her tanks and rocket launchers.’

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A test rocket launched from North Korea which broke up after one minute was a resounding success, according to North Korean sources. The rocket exploded as a ‘birthday firework’ for the nation’s long-dead leader Kim Il-sung. A spokesman for the NK Space Agency said: ‘We have the technology to rain scrap metal upon any capitalist lickspittle within a twenty mile radius. Let our enemies tremble.’ In separate news, South Korea reacted nervously to reports of NK tunnelling for an underground nuclear test: ‘We want to know just how far they’re tunnelling’.

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The government is exploring new types of pension schemes that would give more security to retiring workers. In an interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb said: ‘Firms would like to offer their employees a degree of certainty in these uncertain times. We can certainly help by offering workers cast-iron guarantees that they will get nothing out of us when they retire. We think people should shoulder the personal responsibility of disposing of themselves at retirement age in an ecologically-sustainable manner. Wheelie bins will be provided for this purpose at an affordable rate.’

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Hosepipe bans affecting about 20 million customers have been introduced by seven water authorities in parts of southern and eastern England.Thames Water said this week that the bans were unavoidable due to the unprecedented drought of money for fixing leaks. In a statement the regulator, Oftwat, said: ‘If we fixed all the leaks we would save 3.36bn litres per day in England and Wales, but then we’d make no profit at all so clearly sacrifices need to be made by the great unwashed by, um, not washing.’ Meanwhile the water minister Richard Benyon has hit out at claims he left his hosepipe running the day after the hosepipe ban came into effect: ‘It wasn’t a hosepipe. I was just teaching the kids how to water-cannon the local oiks’.

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Iran has blocked access to the official website for the London 2012 Olympic Games, after previously stating it might boycott the Olympics over claims that the official logo spells the word ‘Zion’. The logo designers reject this, saying instead that the logo represents an exploded diagram of the religious fundamentalist brain. It now seems likely that no information about the 2012 London Olympics will reach anyone in Iran. Bookings from Heathrow to Tehran are expected to increase by a factor of 9000 as a result.

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A London 2012 official has admitted Olympic events could be disrupted by ‘one idiot’ after the University Boat Race was halted by a swimmer. British Olympic Association chairman Watt Sallthe Fussabout said it would do all it could to protect athletes in the Games: ‘I can assure sports fans everywhere that Boris Johnson and Francis Maude will be kept indoors with a bottle of gin and a games console throughout the proceedings.’

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The Law Commission has proposed the abolition of 800 antiquated laws, although these do not include the many imaginary ‘laws’ such as the law against eating a mince pie on Christmas Day, or the right to shoot a Welsh person with a longbow on a Sunday in Chester. According to British urban legend, says the Law Commission, there is an ancient law which allows a single individual to wear a metal hat, wave a wand and own every strip of land in Britain. This mythical person would be known as a ‘King’ or ‘Queen’ and would be entitled to lord it over everyone as if they owned the place, which indeed they would. A legal spokeswoman said ‘I really don’t know how these myths get around. It’s on a par with the one about taxis having to keep a bale of hay in the boot. It’s amazing that people still fall for it.’

Material World: North Korea – Is the Crisis Real? (2013)

The Material World column from the May 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is hard to tell what is real in the ongoing Korean ‘crisis’ and what is contrived. Up to a point – after all, it is in no one’s interest to frighten the markets too badly – it suits both sides to foster a sense of crisis. For Kim Jong-un and his generals a crisis atmosphere is a way to exert pressure for full admission to the nuclear club. For the American rulers and their allies it is also a way to exert pressure – and push North Korea firmly out of the club.

Of course, a good external scare always comes in handy on the domestic front, especially at times when mass misery might otherwise fuel rebellion. It provides an excuse for deteriorating conditions of life, redirects discontent outward and rallies the populace around national leaders.

It seemed for a brief period that the crisis was a real one, but by mid-April the real crisis seemed to be over. Inside North Korea the mobilisation of reserves, air-raid drills and other war preparations were suspended. The focus of mass propaganda switched back to the usual choreographic displays and routine matters like the annual spring drive to collect manure.

Yet only a few days previously, US and South Korean officials were warning that medium-range missiles had been deployed along North Korea’s eastern coast, with ‘a very high probability’ of their imminent launch against US forces in Japan (or, just conceivably, Guam). A North Korean official announced that missiles had been placed on standby and target coordinates set for their warheads. 

A torrent of threats?

The sense of crisis, however, is fuelled mainly by what Fox News called ‘a torrent of warlike threats’ from North Korean officials. True, the most alarming of these ‘threats’ are pure make-believe, given that North Korea has no delivery vehicle capable of reaching the US mainland. Moreover, media reports hardly ever reveal that the ‘threats’ are in fact warnings of what North Korea will do ‘in the event of US aggression.’ ‘Patriotic Americans’ are expected to regard the term ‘US aggression’ as a piece of gibberish and pooh-pooh the very idea that any country might genuinely fear an American assault. As if the peace-loving United States has ever attacked anyone!

Whatever ulterior motives the young emperor may have for inculcating fear in his subjects, it does not follow that he is not afraid or that his fear is unreasonable. Anxiety would be an understandable reaction to the movements of US air and sea forces near North Korean borders, especially the flights of nuclear-capable bombers and stealth jets. He and his advisers know how the US used the issue of nuclear non-proliferation to justify its invasion of Iraq and a contemplated invasion of Iran.

Use them or lose them

Even in purely military terms, North Korea is by far the weaker party in the confrontation. Despite a large army, its forces are no match for an opposing coalition made up of South Korea, the United States and Japan (it can no longer count on support from China). This in itself makes the deliberate initiation of large-scale hostilities by North Korea extremely unlikely. On the contrary, the vulnerability of its few strategic weapons exposes it to the danger of a successful counterforce first strike.

Here lies the real danger. Facing the perceived dilemma of ‘use them or lose them’, North Korea’s leaders switched to a strategy of pre-emption. This means that they resolved to launch their missiles as soon as they determined that the adversary had begun preparations for an attack. But such a determination might be mistaken, especially when made by people already keyed up in anticipation – because, for example, they suspect (as North Korean strategists say they do) that South Korea and the US will use the joint military exercises they conduct each spring as cover for a real attack.

Economic and political vulnerability

The sense of vulnerability that makes a North Korean pre-emptive strike possible has economic and political as well as military roots. 

In recent years the leaders have partly lost control of the economy and been forced to tolerate a vast expansion of formally illegal internal trade and the emergence of a new group of wealthy black-market operators who potentially pose a political challenge. It is now widely assumed that collapse of the regime and unification of Korea are only a matter of time.     

Another economic blow is the new sanctions imposed by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2094, designed to block ‘financial transactions and bulk cash transfers in support of illicit activities.’ This does not refer solely to trade in uranium and nuclear components. Other ‘illicit activities’, organised by a special bureau of the party Central Committee, include uranium sales, the counterfeiting of US dollars and the manufacture of methamphetamine and heroin for export (an estimated third of collective farm land is sown with poppies). Besides funding military programmes, the proceeds fill the personal bank accounts held by top officials abroad.            

However, the wealth of the North Korean leaders cannot be measured in money. They also enjoy enormous non-monetary privileges. The dynastic family possesses palatial villas in a series of scenic locations, staffed by numerous guards, servants and entertainers. At the same time, hundreds of thousands rot in the labour camps and millions struggle on the verge of starvation. And yet, to our great regret, this system –  marked by inequality perhaps even more extreme than that of the US – masquerades under the name of socialism! 

Stefan

Bombed with Bibles (2013)

The Halo Halo! Column from the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing excites a Daily Mail hack more than a story about ‘Marxism’. And if they can fit in a bit about the erosion of Christian values too, so much the better.

‘North Korea executes 80 people in public ‘for viewing South Korean movies and owning bibles’’ ran the headline in the Mail Online (11 November). And while nothing we hear about the treatment of the working class in the North Korean dictatorship would surprise us, perhaps we should take this with a pinch of salt. The Mail got the story from a South Korean newspaper, the Joong Ang Ilbo. But, they noted, this paper could not confirm the deaths, but said its source is familiar with the internal affairs of North Korea, and had recently visited the country. Oh well, it must be true then.

‘Why the executions took place is difficult to ascertain’, the Mail informs us, but ‘they may have been carried out to quell unrest and stop capitalist ideology from growing, as they took place in areas of recent economic growth’.

Hmm, it’s difficult to understand the logic in the Mail’s thinking sometimes, but it’s hardly likely that the state capitalist dictatorship of North Korea would want to discourage its own economic growth is it?

But by now the Mail’s writer had the bit between his teeth: ‘North Koreans are forced to adhere to the Juche ideology,’ he went on, ‘a doctrine which mixes Marxism with the worship of North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung and his descendants’. Eh, what was that again?

While we agree, the ideas of the North Korean dictatorship must be a nightmare to live under (‘The Juche idea is the precious fruit of the leader’s profound, widespread ideological and theoretical activities, and its creation is the most brilliant of his revolutionary achievements’ for example), it has nothing to do with Marxism. (But if you’d like to wade through another 30 odd pages of the Great Leader’s ‘precious fruit’, all in the same vein, take a look at LINK).

It’s no secret that state brutality and severe poverty are widespread in North Korea, so surely these downtrodden people are not putting their lives at risk by illegally importing bibles are they? Well no, as it happens, they are not. Here’s another story from the Mail (10 November).

‘Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the New Testament: Christian group air-drops bibles over North Korea using 40-foot hydrogen balloons’.

Yes, despite Christianity being banned, and the death threats the North Koreans apparently face, one sanctimonious and arrogant bible thumper has so much faith in his own delusions that for the past seven years he has happily put these people at risk by inflicting bibles on them from the air, 50,000 of them last year alone. ‘These are the most persecuted believers on earth’ he said. Too bloody right they are.

‘In sending the bibles over the border to North Korea, Pastor Foley hopes that North Koreans will read the scripture and see that the ideology they are forced to believe ‘is all a fraud’ reports the Mail.

And hopefully, if they get a chance to read this absurd religious humbug without being arrested, they will realise what a fraud religion is too.

NW