Image is from this CNN article.
The DPRK's history has been a rollercoaster, with admirable highs and heartbreaking lows, most notably the Korean War and the fall of the USSR. Its steadfast commitment to Juche, a variant of Marxism-Leninism that focuses on self-sufficiency, has both made the DPRK a target for imperialist genocidal powers, and allowed them to survive these attacks.
Lately, we seem to be seeing a transition from surviving to thriving. China and the DPRK have always had a much more complicated history than Western education and media allows its population to know, with periods of quite strong disagreement - it's not the case that China is somehow the DPRK's master. Russia is the DPRK's other neighour that isn't US-occupied, and while they obviously differ substantially in ideology since the USSR fell, the tsunami of sanctions on Russia has changed things. The stick has been removed from the equation, with Russia facing no possible punishment from the West because they were unable to enact sanctions effectively and used all their ammunition in the first few barrages rather than turning the screws over time (I don't care if we're on the 14th sanctions package, it's all been meaningless for Russia since the end of 2022).
The carrot is also more visible, with an alliance making a lot of sense for both. Once again, Western education and media would have you believe a Parenti-esque reality in which Korea is a massive and unpredictable danger to the world, but is simultaneously so poor and destitute that their artillery pieces are made of wood and their missiles out of paper-mache. The truth is that Korea has innovated greatly in missile technology, with some of their weapons matching or even exceeding those of the Russians, hence the Russians' use of them in Ukraine. Russia also finds it advantageous to invest in Korea to strengthen the anti-hegemonic alliance's presence in the Pacific, countering the US-occupied lower half of the peninsula who has naturally sided with Ukraine. Additionally, Russia is investing deeply in the Arctic sea route. This will open up as climate change continues; is naturally quite defensible for Russia so long as Korea is there to provide further defense at its eastern edge; and is both a faster and safer route for Russia to access China - especially in a world where straits can be blockaded by even impoverished yet determined countries like Yemen. The situation in the Red Sea benefits Russia and China now, but in the coming years, the US may apply the same lesson for their own benefit elsewhere.
It is perhaps this new sense of self-confidence that has let Korea give up on reunification with its lower half via peaceful measures. A new Korean War would be devastating for both sides even if it remained non-nuclear, but with a rising DPRK and with the South falling yet further into hypercapitalist exploitation and misery, and a US that remains non-committal to its "allies" when times get difficult (as in Ukraine and Europe), a reality where Korea may finally hold the upper hand and have the ability to liberate its south may be approaching in the years and decades to come.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is *the DPRK! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Doomer take: Biden has opened the Pandora’s box where the interests of American capital are now directly tied to de-stabilization from global geopolitical conflicts.
We know all this already: Inflation and high interest rates are sucking in international capital from abroad. Stock market is at an all time high. Oil and gas, military industrial complex, financial institutions raking in excessive profits from the war in Europe. Billions of aid money to Ukraine and Israel that are being laundered back to cronies.
There is no going back from here. Let’s say Trump, or someone else, succeeded Biden as the president, how will they ever convince that they can also deliver the same amount of treats to the American capitalist class, but without stoking wars and conflicts across the world?
This is all the American empire can do right now. Causing chaos everywhere. It has fully transformed itself into a landlord empire, and Biden has found a way to turn on a giant vacuum hose that sucks in global capital to slow the empire from undergoing its own decline. It seems more and more likely the conditions that will eventually spark WWIII are becoming ripe as this decade unfolds.
Honestly I'd argue that was either of the bushes or reagan that popped the box open.
True, but there has never been such a confluence of interests across all sectors before. American capital are all in on Biden’s wars now. Even the Republicans - the war-mongering party - are desperately trying to pull a stop on this because they are getting undercut everywhere.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed this to be the case already. The difference now is the open disdain for international law. Bush and Obama had a cover story. Trump and Biden don't bother. Trump got a pass on not having a cover story because he was a "wildcard" but Biden doesn't even care to try.
This is true, but I think 2009 financial crisis was the watershed moment that the empire realized it was impossible to return to industrial capital anymore. It’s all leveraging its financial power to screw up as much of the world as possible now.
I think we are still waiting on the open admission that industrial capital is dead. Reading between the lines, sure, but Biden still makes noise about infrastructure bills, chips act, shit that actually has to get built. Mind you I don't think these acts are actually game changers, but just as there was a transition between the "coalition of the willing" in the oughts to open, obvious disdain for international law and support of genocide, I think for industrial capital we are still living in a world where the state is pretending to have fig leaves.
Well, if Boeing is not the sign that industrial capitalism is long dead in the US, I don’t know what is.
Industrial capital is “dead” and has been dead for a while, if you’re talking about manufacturing / “productive” capital. So much of the US non-financial economy is essentially merchant capitalism. The value is created outside of the country with contracting firms (think about how Nike makes shoes, for example). The US firms appropriate most of the surplus value created elsewhere and churn that surplus value through the US economy (with a not insignificant share of that shared with US consumers - not because of altruism but because it lowers the real wage and keeps class agitation down). Outside of agriculture, airplane manufacturing, and pharma, that’s how the entirety of the non-financial US economy runs.
Yes but...
Bloomer Take: the evil empire has trapped itself in a gilded cage and it's masters of capital have lost the ability to even imagine something else. In a few years the last of the institutional knowledge of self-preservation will be completely go. There's no stopping the cancer, there's no hiding the rot. Their list of enemies and victims can only grow exponentially. The more they consume, the smaller and more isolated they become. The more vulnerable to the inevitable backlash they become.
I’ve been thinking about this comment in the context of the conclusion of Torkil Laussen’s excellent book The Principle Contradiction. In it, Laussen hypothesizes that at this moment, the principle contradiction globally is the contradiction between neoliberalism and a sort of “neo-nationalism” that we see from the likes of Meloni, Trump, Le Pen, the AfD in Germany, etc.
In this context, it seems that by Biden essentially “switching teams” from neoliberalism to this sort of “neo-nationalism” does sort bring this contradiction to resolution. Or at the very least, it is the beginning of resolution. What that actually means, I don’t know. A world that has moved on from neoliberalism is truly terra incognita. However, if we think dialectically like the good Marxist we are… if the US decides to go this route, the rest of the world WILL respond. And that response will likely be the new principle contradiction. What could that look like?
Thanks for the book reference, gonna check it out
Didn't realize that's the same author as Riding the Wave about Sweden, which I own but haven't gotten around to reading yet.
Laussen is cool af. Him and his comrades did all sorts of crimes (including bank robbery, iirc) just to funnel money to the PFLP. He did like 6 years in prison for it and is completely proud and unrepentant of it (as he should be).
I agree, but I think the principal contradiction is going to be exactly as what Michael Hudson laid out: finance capitalism (US) vs industrial capitalism (China).
The question is, which ideology will prevail?
Many seem to think that industrial capital is the be all and end all, but I’m not so sure about that. If there is anything in our human society that is the closest approximation to real magic, it’s money. And unfortunately, the empire has control over that magical power right now.
Yeah, this the reinvention of global monopoly capitalism (with landlord characteristics as you said) in the post neoliberal era. Neoliberalism was killed by the 2008/2009 financial crisis, and no matter how much politicians (in paticular Obama and Merkel) tried to steer the ship back to neoliberal economics, it was dead. Capital needed another evolution to survive, and this is it. It will only get more destructive from here on out, not less.
In the aftermath of COVID, the largest transfer of wealth in history occurred. That was the start of all this, but the plan/idea of the US subjugating Europe had been in the works for decades, and it's working because, to put it bluntly, the American political project was the only one in play amongst the imperial traid of the USA, Europe, and Southeast Asia (Japan/South Korea/Australia/Taiwan/all other US lackeys in the region). No one else had their own project, and any attempts to implement one independent of the US have failed miserably.
I wonder what this new phase of capital's development will be called. Post COVID, it has been quite distinct from neoliberalism in a few ways. Renteerism maybe? Rent seekism? War landlordism?
Required watching
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Yeah I think it’s becoming clear that’s the eventual end state of neoliberalism. Deindustrialize, privatize, finacialize, and then the only means of keeping the upward flow of capital from there is violently destabilizing. Not only for the sake of creating and controlling new markets, as was the goal of destabilization pre neoliberalism too, but as now the only way to protect a landlord empire that doesn’t have the industrial power to manufacture what it needs to survive on its own
with that disbalance of trade and random supply shocks of climate change? and fucking up your markets in china and europe? not for long
With dollar hegemony, the US is still king and there is nothing we can do about it. Pay attention to the BRICS summit this August and see what do they come up with the de-dollarization plan this time. I sincerely hope I will not be disappointed for the third time.
Yes it's king, but it's also poisoning the competitiveness of US industrial firms along with all the structural maladies in the US that we can afford not to address because of the surplus extracted by our financial hegemony. The fact that we're at the point where fiscal expansion is causing inflation despite the strong global role of the dollar, points to a terminal phase of the particular kind of dutch disease the US suffers from. Attempts to fix US industrial competitiveness are just pissing into the wind in this environment. US industry won't revive until after its financial and monetary hegemony has collapsed. A smart US leadership would use its existing power to rebuild the foundations for competitiveness on a more level playing field, but US state capacity has atrophied. All they can do is funnel money to politically-connected oligarchs and placate industrial capital with half-measures. The current state of affairs suits China, and therefore BRICS quite well. They will continue to develop under current circumstances until they're ready to move decisively against US interests, or until the US preempts this by starting a war early. Either way the US will lose, the only question is how destructive the conflict will be.
There is always one way, and that way is war. If dollar hegemony is contingent on the existence of the dollar, and the dollar is contingent on the existence of the US, then to destroy dollar hegemony, the US must be destroyed. There are at least two countries with this capacity, albeit with political leadership that is completely unwilling to cross the Rubicon for good reason. But as the US's industrial capacity gets weaker and weaker, more and more countries will close the gap in terms of military capability, and not all of those country's political leadership will be as cautious and timid. Some of those countries will have political leadership who will do the calculus and come to the conclusion, whether accurately or not, that either the US is a military paper tiger and they can finally strike or they have absolutely nothing to lose due to US dollar hegemony and if they're going down, they're going to take the US with them.
This, I suspect, is what will ultimately trigger a potential WWIII.
Let me save you the disappointment: they're not going to be coming up with any substantial plan for de-dollarization. Even if they did, it would take decades to negotiate the terms between their members.
Dollar inflation has me thinking we're at the end of dollar supremacy. The instant the BRICS make a plan the value of a dollar might crater.
The dollar is not going to crash. There has been a strange convergence of certain Bitcoiners, goldbugs and anti-imperialists who seem to believe that either of these is going to subvert the dollar hegemony, but it’s mostly bunk.
As long as there is still a strong demand for dollar (which I remind you is not just trade, but as a investment and savings currency) the dollar will be king for a long time.
The only way to de-dollarize is to make sure you have an entirely different financial structure that is independent of the dollar system (think, like the USSR, but better) so that countries can default their dollar debt and won’t find themselves in deep trouble because they suddenly cannot import fuel and food.
I strongly recommend Michael Hudson’s Super-imperialism is you really want to understand the nitty gritty of how dollar supremacy works.
Inflation literally is demand for dollars falling. That's actually happening. The strong demand for dollars has declined and that can continue.
If the BRICS strike while the iron is hot they could do serious damage. Don't dismiss this.
it doesn't matter with third currency or whatever they do, its structural problem of dollar circulation and high import imbalance - you cannot shovel 1 trillion worth of products for 1 trillion worth of treasuries on which you pay 5 (even with 2 percent math would break after 50 years) for longer than some definable period of time (it started in roughly 2000). Bleeding europe doesn't seem to help with energy, its like 50 bil. Transfering production will float maybe 200 billion more, its still dogshit.
It doesn't work without completely cutting off china from competition (and i mean completely, even fuller capitalist restoration won't help here). Maybe doing india or africa as a replacement labor force, but here there are internal issues for both + climate change
Trump was still better for the market than Biden is. just do another massive round of tax cuts, deregulation, force the Fed to lower rates, etc... plenty of ways to juice the market
I remind you that S&P500 is 50% higher than Trump’s highest point right now. The growth over the past few years under Biden has been insane.
And that’s not to mention that Biden’s rate hike to 5% has led to $1 TRILLION dollar being printed as interest income payment in 2023 ALONE. Most of that money went to the rich people, while poor people are penalized to pay higher interests when they can’t afford to pay their debt in time. How is Trump ever going to match that?
And I will give you one final piece of evidence why Biden is the perfect president for the American capitalist class (I have used this data a few times already so you probably have already seen it):
Source: Federal Reserve
Under Trump from 2016-2019, the wealth of both white and black families remained relatively stale. Just two years under Biden, white family wealth has grown exponentially while black and Hispanic families have become poorer.
To be an American capitalist is not just about gaining disproportionate amount of wealth, it’s also about screwing poor people and especially kicking poor minorities down the rung of the ladder. That’s what gave these ghouls the satisfaction of being part of the rich elite, and Biden has managed to deliver that level of satisfaction to them.
Do you not think the jump in economic inequality during Biden's régime may also be related to Trump's tax cuts for the rich? My understanding is that material outcomes tend to lag behind fiscal policy by a number of years. Its why the ping-ponging and blame game both parties play at is destructive for the working class. There is little cohesive planning between the parties other than maintaining class rule, capitalism, and imperialism. Meanwhile the working class is fed, and in turn latches onto narratives that just blame the current guy for current bad thing without much respect for history.
that's part of it, but I think the most significant factor was COVID and how the Fed reacted to it. lowered rates to zero, propped up the market, colossal QE, etc. at the same time that the working class lost their jobs, the rich gained an unthinkable amount - probably one of the largest wealth transfers in modern history. that all took a year or two (into Biden's term) to play out.
It’s more about who dares to cross the line that nobody had dared to cross previously. Biden’s policies have changed the game so much and to the point that you cannot put the lid back on anymore. No future president can rescind Biden’s policies now that all the American capital interests are on the line. They want the treats, and you cannot tell them to change the game it is run now if you cannot come up with an alternative.
Regarding Trump’s tax cut, it still pales far in comparison at 4-4.5% GDP deficit spending when compared to Biden’s 8% GDP deficit spending. That’s where all the money came from, it just didn’t reach the working class’s pockets.
the S&P went up 68% during Trump's presidency, it's only up 40% since Biden took over. but yeah, mostly agree with the rest.
68% under Trump and COVID, 40% under Biden in an era of super-inflation, supply chain shocks, and the sudden return of meaningful interest rates.
It’s almost like line gonna go up no matter who is in power and the bankers run the country.
Where did this figure come from?
just looking at the SPX chart, 2017-2021 was ~68% return and 2021-present is ~40%.