DDR allowed for multiple parties

The KWP are MLs (well Jucheists but whatever) so they are actual SocDems.

EBIN :D

The Polish People's republic had a number of parties aside from the ruling PZPR such as the agrarian ZSL and the liberal SD (even the PAX association, a catholic communist group led by Piasecki who was a falangist before the war). All the parties were part of the National Unity coalition government though meaning no opposition external to the government existed in the legislature.
Most of the Eastern Bloc state operated in a similar way. The USSR didn't allow other parties but did allow independents who made up as much as a third of the Supreme Soviet at some points iirc.

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East Germany was based as fuck, it was pretty much the only good socialist state after 1960

who are you quoting?

The DPRK is not a monarchy. Head of state is not Kim Jong-un, and got elected into all his positions.

There is also a workplace democracy, so it's not just "when the government does stuff".

Juche is the state ideology that needs to be endorsed by all parties. The WPK's offical line is Kimilsung-Kimjongilism.

Is it just a coincidence that they have elected the same family along paternal lines for three generations then?

The angry cat dude is giving me cringe, dude lurk more

I’m not a newfag, I just don’t buy that there is meaningful political democracy in the DPRK.

US should still fuck off and leave Kim alone though.

Pretty sure Kim is not like the fucking all powerful leader or something. There was a chart going around in the internet sometime ago but i can't find it

The Kim family has done great things for the country. Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un were both heavily educated on the respective political line. They are a good choice because they are a symbol for the people to rally behind and also make sure there is no revisionism due to the way they were raised. Kim Jong-il has written extensively about Juche and was politically active before he became leader. It's not like Kim Il-sung woke up once and said "you know, I actually want my son to be my successor". Kim Jong-il himself opposed the succession.

It's not for you to judge who the Korean people elect as their leaders.

I didn’t say he was, I said he was given his position because he was Kim Jong’s son, who got his position because he was Grandpa Kim’s son. This is out of the ordinary even in other socialist countries, the leaders of the USSR, China, GDR, etc werent the relatives of the previous leader. That’s the kind of thing you see in third world porky dictatorships like Haiti with Papa and Baby Doc.

Yeah, the power of the leader has been declining and became more dispersed with every succession. Presidency died with Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il was chairman of the defense commission which has been merged to the State Affairs Commission with Kim Jong-un taking office, over which composition he has no control.

The offices the leader holds change with changing conditions and is always tailored differently.

The reason they got in these positions was because they were the most qualified, not because of their family. There is not a single document or work about Juche that implies that being the leader requires being part of the Kim family.

Also funny you mention other socialist states, considering all these states managed to get revisionists in power and collapsed or reverted back to capitalism, whereas the DPRK didn't.

Cuba is going to get fucked over soon, im getting sad

Ah yes, just like the Rockefellers!

What the fuck man? The Rockefellers got into their positions because of the hereditary transmission of private property. If the position of the leader was hereditary, then all sons of Kim Il-sung would reign as equals, or the firstborn would be preferred. This is not the case.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t the case, or that the current leader doesn’t have enough of a say over their successor to ensure family bias will create a dynasty. There was no official rules of succession in the early Roman Empire either, and emperors often named people who weren’t blood relatives as their heirs. That doesn’t mean they didn’t have a hereditary system in practice.

If you think their family connections have nothing to do with their positions then you are simply naive. Family bias and nepotism is prevalent in every institution of power in the world, unless you are suggesting that the Kim’s are supermen who are immune to human flaws and biases.

Wow so the key to socialism is to establish a hereditary family leadership dynsasty. Pure genius.

It’s actually good you brought Cuba up because it’s a country i actually like, so there isn’t the issue of a negative bias on my part. I think Cuba has done a lot of good, I think Fidel Castro was a hero, and I want the country to do well and succeed. But despite all that I think it’s clear that Raul’s family connections contributed in great deal to his political position.

Wasn’t Kim Jong Nam expected to take power after Papa Kim until the Disneyland debacle?

Ironically enough the Roman Empire fared the best when the adopted emprerors were in power, basically the emperor would seek out the most talented individual and adopt him, such as Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, etc.
I already said that the Kim family is a great symbol for the Korean people. Obviously that plays a role.
You are basically admitting you don't have an argument as to why Kim Jing-il or Kim Jong-un shouldn't be their leaders, you just don't like it because its fishy and awkward that they are from the same family. But it's not actually an argument against them. In North Korean publications, the family connection is almost never mentioned, because they are actually aware that this is awkward as fuck, you even have people vandalizing Kim statues with graffitti sometimes with slogans like "hereditary monarchy isn't socialism!".

Their family ties are more of a hindrance then they are a perk when it comes to their public image. They know that socialism doesn't mean monarchy. Also, why do members of the Kim family regulary get excluded from power over political disagreements and put under house arrest if it's just a family dynasty?

No. The West just speculated that but it was nothing more but trying to look into a crystal ball.

Answer me this, why do you like Cuba but don't like North Korea? They are doing very similar shit, most of the times I see people antagonizing North Korea but praise Cuba it's often based on cultural bias. Korean culture has all this formality, marching in line, etc. while Latinamerican culture is a lot more chill, so many Westerners think the DPRK is a scary place while Cuba is relaxed because they have hot brown chicks, rum and beaches, while the hot chicks in the DPRK look at you like they want to spank you for being a revisionist. I wouldn't mind either.

Then why did it fall?

The founding fathers were national heroes for America, but people didn’t go out and elect their children.

I’m not judging their abilities as leaders, I’m trying to determine to what extent they were made leaders based on their family connections and to what extent was based on merit. If you look at Kim Jong Un’s upbringing it’s clear he was being bred for politics. Unless it’s actually common practice in North Korea to send children to elite private schools in Switzerland under fake identities? It’s pretty obvious he grew up with special privileges that were designed to make him politically relevant.

George V, Nicholas II, and Willhelm II were all cousins. That didn’t stop WW1.

Cuba isn’t nearly as insular was the DPRK, there is greater flow of information and greater personal and political freedoms. It’s a lot easier to know what is actually happening there. With North Korea you either have western propaganda or domestic propaganda as the only information, it’s much harder to actually know the truth, and so I’m suspicious at best. At worst I see that as a sign of a deeply unfree society.

So is Cuba.

You know why? Because red liberals on this board consider non communist everything that is socially speaking slightly more conservative than their ideal lala land with mandatory hormone therapy.

Fair enough, but I think you are shooting yourself in the foot here. Burgers treat their constitution like holy scripture, words of founding fathers are being taken as some ultimate truth, etc. - this is not that different from the leader worship of the DPRK, maybe a bit more implicit. What's the difference between the personality cult arround Obama or Trudeau and the one going in North Korea except that the latter has somewhat Korean characteristics?
Their offical stance is that the leader is supposed to solve the issue of a successor, being sent to a reknown Swiss school is something that heavily contributes to somebodies intellect, experience and capability. Are you trying to tell me the school was bad or that abroad education isn't beneficial when you hold high positions? I mean the whole point of this is that the future leader is being bred and raised from his early childhood for this job. And again, their power diminishes with every generation, and they are not omnipotent. They are the ideological guiding beacon.
Sure, but these guys didn't really want a war, they just realized the mechanizations of capitalism and nationalism grew way above their heads. See, European monarchs didn't really kill each other - that only became a thing once revolutions started to happen, yet the DPRK regulary punishes or even executes members of the Kim family.
And increasing economic freedoms, I dare to say. Regarding the isolation, the DPRK decided to go for self-reliance once Krushchev enforced his "peaceful coexistence" policy and sent tanks into other socialist countries. They didn't want to have Soviet tanks rolling through Pyongyang, so they chose to be self-reliant. It's not like the DPRK want this isolation, you are putting the carriage in front of the horse with this argument, they are being isolated because they have nukes, not because they want it. Unless you are telling me they should give up nukes, which is is highly dangerous considering the highly strategic position of North Korean and their rare earth materials - two things Cuba lacks after the fall of the USSR.
Not as much though. Even China has enforced strong sanctions against North Korea.

Freedom goes both ways, there isn't just negative freedom. I'm sure some African countries with a similar GDP are practically more free than the DPRK yet how truly free is an average African compared to an average North Korean?

Casting a ballot every few years isn't democracy.

The former doesn’t result in decades of rule passed directly from father to son. Political dynasties exist in the West sure, but there is typically several decades between leaders of the same family. As was the case with the Rosevelts, Bush’s and the Trudeau’s. Either way that doesn’t disprove my point about North Korea. Bush Jr. was president because he was HW’s son, not because of his merit. The same is true of Justin Trudeau. The only case where I would make an exception to this judgement is with FDR, since he was arguably even more influential a president than Teddy.

That sounds like a hereditary system to me. Even if the leader holds an official title other than a monarch that’s just a title. Going back to the Roman example, the emperors officially held the title of Consul, which was an office that existed in the Republic. Yet nobody would deny the hereditary nature of the Roman throne.

Of course it’s not bad for a leader to be specially educated. What I’m saying is that you can’t look at a system where the children of elites get sent to special foreign schools for the express purpose of training them for politics and say this isn’t a nepotistic system. Offering elite education to a privileged few instead of creating a society where every citizen has the education necessary to be a political leader is probably one of the least socialist things you could do.

The monarchy in England has no political power, but it’s still a monarchy. I’ll conced then that the DPRK is a constitutional rather than an absolute or feudal monarchy.

They did in periods of internal turmoil, look at the War of the Roses or Mary of Scotland and Elizabeth I. Mary was Elizabeth’s cousin and she still lost her head. Going back even further many people think that’s Alexander the Great was involved with his father Philip’s assassination.

Then why don’t they allow greater freedom of movement, flow of information, access to foreigners etc? Cuba is under siege just like North Korea is, and yet foreigners (aside from Americans) can come and go freely and move freely within the country. By all accounts foreigners who visit North Korea are constantly monitored and their travels in the country are tightly controlled. This leads me to believe that they are being fed a sanitized vision of the country. This level of restriction is also to my knowledge unique to them. Iran is in a similar position to them, (sanctions, nuclear program, US is threatening to destroy them, etc) but to my knowledge they aren’t nearly as insular or isolated.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and swapping one for the other is, in my opinion, an exercise in futility. If I can speak my mind and organize freely but languish in poverty then at least I have a chance to try to alleviate my situation through political action. If on the other hand I have economic security and basic prosperity but I am forbidden to speak as, do what, or go where I please then I might as well be a house pet.

The thing is, we are used in the West to bad leaders who are in the pockets of capital. North Koreans are happy with their leaders, they identify the problems they have with imperialism, no reason for them to change a winning team. Everytime a head of government is replaced in the West it goes along with widespread dissatisfaction. I think you are putting ideological bias over rationality here, it doesn't matter what someone's family background is if they are fit for the job. It's also a bit realpolitik, I think the people might have overthrown the government in the 90s when the famine happened if the leader wasn't Kim Jong-il, someone they knew for a long time.
They didn't, but anyway.
Not everybody can visit a school like that. I mean, the education system isn't bad in the DPRK and all free and shit. You can achieve a high political position in the DPRK through national means, many members of the parliament are average workers, so to say all the North Koreans elites have special privileges is not really correct.
They are head of state though. Kim Jong-un isn't head of state. If a monarchy is supposed to be symbolical, this matters.
Because North Korean citizens are banned from travelling into any country except China. You'd be surprised how often North Koreans take trips to China (not sure if they still do it considered the new sanctions). They can get medical treatment there, buying consumer goods not available in the DPRK, etc.
What information? Entertainment? News? You can find all philosophical and political works, including works of fucking Mises, in their libraries. You can buy fictional western literature as well.
You could walk arround freely in North Korea before the 90s. Then, people have been purposely seeking out bad spots to make photos of it and publish it in the West. The South Korean government pays 20k $ to everybody who brings information that makes them look bad. That's why they restrict movement of tourists. Foreigners who work there can move freely. Check out Jaka Parker on YouTube.
Iran's nuclear program was for civil uses, imagine they actually built nukes and did ICBM tests. A friend of mine was granted an exchange by his uni to Teheran, the same university would never fucking ever fund a trip to Pyongyang. You can not say with a straight face that the propaganda against the DPRK has reached proportions unprecedented in history. Saying you support the DPRK will get you socially ostracized, saying you support Iran or Cuba won't.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. North Koreans go out into bars in the evening, have a beer and discuss all sorts of issues in jolly ways. It's not a slave state, despite some restrictions I willingly admit.

Interesting. Sources please.

capitalist agitators you fuck

youtube.com/watch?v=CvDiPxXCdnk
At 1:11 you can see that they have Harry Potter in the library. There was some library union making an trip to North Korea showing some of the works available there, but I can't seem to find it.

HOLY SHIT I LOVE JUCHE NOW

But ☭TANKIE☭s are wrong, hurr durr. Youre going to be named evil dictatorship anyway, at least use advantages using some force gives.

Hell no. At least party leaders had to work to get to that position.

How come this isn't such a big problem in Cuba and North Korea?

Cuba has capitalist agitators, so does North Korea. It's just that North Korea has been extremly vigilant about revisionism.

Normally I would agree with you but North Korea is a small socialist country with the entire capitalist world set out for their destruction while facing revisionism from inside. It's a special situation requiring special measures.

But they haven't collapsed somehow which is what I was getting at.

The reason they havn't gotten close to positions of power is because of the way they organize their leadership. It might be anti-ethical to socialism, but that's just how it worked, no matter how much people dislike it.

Cuba has remained vigilant because they are surrounded by capitalist countries that actually do worse than them, and has been very successful in general. I think the Cuban lifestyle matches with their version of socialism. We have to see how their new idea about more decentralized planning turns out.

obvious enough

it is easy to imagine a big party with almost as much in-party variation as many western democracies have in all their major parties. there are plenty of countries where all the major parties are very similar, with differences focused on relatively small things, plus collaboration between parties dims even these differences into something incomprehensible to the average voter (example: our green party is technically against nuclear energy but has still voted in favor of it)

Okay, now explain the Stasi.

explain the NSA

The DDR was the clean face of the Eastern block so attempts were made to make it look (Note the "Look" part) as open and free and clean as possible

Despite its revisionism the USSR still did a lot of things better than the GDR. The USSR in the 70s and 80s was pretty much a free society where people could do whatever they wanted, go party, create metal bands and criticize the government, pics related. Ask any former citizen of the USSR about this.

It's really a shame that the Eastern Bloc collapsed, they would probably be rivaling the West right now in terms of civil liberties, but now the last remaining socialist states Cuba and the DPRK have to force a cultural lock-down on society to defend themselves. The polticial opposition in the USSR was always cultural and political, never economically.

alright I'm going to visit north korea

the ☭TANKIE☭ got it, USSR > GDR

You do realize you live in a surveillance state the likes of which the Stasi could only have dreamed of, right?

damn

The National Front uniting the opposition was subservient to the ruling Socialist Unity Party in the DDR. The same goes for North Korea in the Democratic Front, with the SocDem Party and Chondoist Party essentially being puppets of the ruling Workers' Party. That's not what we call a "multi-party democracy".

You'd hope it isn't because multi-party democracies are fucking shit.

Yes, and? What about the Stasi?

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Czecheslovakia had a multiparty system for the first few years, with communists ruling in coalition with socialists. after about a decade, the communists staged a coup and became the only party.

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I think this argument is quite a fallacy. I mean what you are making here essentially is a moral argument (muh freedumz), but the problem with moral arguments is that they can't exist in the vacuum, they always need some reference point, as they are based on subjectivity and relativity.

Example:

"I think you should tip the waitress."

"Nobody else in this country ever tips the waitress, neither do you. It's not a custom."

"Just because me or anybody else doesn't do it means that you shouldn't based on arbitrary moral standards I just made up."

What about it.

You can justify anything except rebellion with that argument.

Not true, you could make an empirical argument instead of a moral argument, such as: Was the Stasi necessary? Was it useful? Was it effective?

for what purpose, for whose goal? you'll need to consider morality when determining those things

For defending the state of the GDR, its integrity and the development of its society? Moral arguments can be useful, but only when they are backed up by some standards. Surely you could crticize Gengis Khan for murdering millions and making a pyramid out of their skulls, as that is clearly way beyond the standard of even his time. Surveillance however, is not.