I’m not dancing around anything, if you want to discuss, then please, do so.
The DPRK is far from a paradise, but at the same time, much of its issues are externally driven.
Xi is not president for life. Term limits are removed, but he can also be removed. He’s overwhelmingly popular among the party and people.
For your last point, I recommend you read Marketing Socialism. I defend what is misrepresented or demonized unjustly, because these are problems every Socialist project recieves, to varying degrees.
i read your Marketing Socialism post. It just seems beside the point and is looking for a way to justify itself when all you have to do is admit that tyranny and gulags bad. It’s not a big ask. The fact that it is TAKEN to be a big ask, is a massive, if you will, red flag. XD
The problem arises when people distort quantity or quality of struggles in AES states that would logically exist in any Socialist state. Ie, all Socialist states will have prisons, and all Capitalist countries are going to do their best to portray them in as negative a light as possible, no matter what they look like in reality.
i get, but it’s not a NECESSARY component of communism. the DPRK is shit for a lot of reasons, mostly due to the consolidation of power in the hands single insane family. trying to rehabilitate their image or reclaim them is fucking insane. XD and just not helpful to the cause, imo. i certainly makes me care less about everything you’re trying to say, and i’m really giving you the benefit of the doubt here.
What, specifically, is not a necessary component of Communism? The version of AES that exists in your mind, full of anticommunist prejudice and red scare mythos clouding your judgement, or the version that exists in real life, with far more nuanced issues applicable to all of Socialism, past, present, and future alike?
Further, the Kim family does not have all of the power in the DPRK. A critical examination of the structure and history of the DPRK proves that isn’t true. That’s like saying the Bush and Kennedy familys have all of the power in the US.
Authoritarianism and imperialism, concentration of power are the root cause, money is just a symbol of power, under stalinist russia this nefarious corrupting power had another symbol, shape but this society was just as helpless toward this tendency of power, you can see the end point of passive demobilisation and assassination of the few how dare oppose it today in Russia.
I think there needs to be constant pressure of deterritoroalisation, of putting decision and responsibility in the hands of the people, always at the smallest scale that it can be realistically pushed down.
And that’s not the individual if that’s not an individual matter. The level at which decisionnal responsibility is dependant on the context of tgat decision rather than agglomerated bodies of decision when power naturallies tries to concentrate.
It should always be easy for lower echelons of power and locality to repatriate a delegated aspect of their life.
(Then I stuffed this line of thinking into chatgpt to take it further)
I don’t think you’ve actually backed up your thesis, just asserted it. There’s no evidence to the notion that “power corrupts,” there’s evidence that systems like Capitalism reward corruption.
Interesting, you wish to make the widely repeated, ancient wisdom that power corrupt into a revolutionary statement against the null hypothesis ?
Very well, would you state your null hypothesis ?
Perhaps something more charitable than the following
“Power is not a problem actually, it’s a matter of having the right group of elites with good and pure hearts and everything will be honky dory forever”
@Cowbee
Please choose your null hypothesis or provide your own
Improved suggestions
🔹 1. Structuralist Null Hypothesis
“Power, in itself, is not inherently corrupting. It is the structure and incentives of a given system (such as capitalism) that determine whether power is exercised corruptly.”
This frames corruption as a product of external conditions, not the mere possession of power.
🔹 2. Neutral Power Hypothesis
“Power is a neutral tool—it amplifies pre-existing tendencies in individuals or institutions, whether for good or ill.”
This positions power as neither good nor bad, just a multiplier.
🔹 3. Contextual Corruption Hypothesis
“Corruption occurs not because power corrupts, but because oversight, accountability, and community control are absent.”
Here, the claim is that power can exist without corruption if institutions around it are healthy.
🔹 4. Power-as-Delegation Hypothesis
“Power is not inherently corrupting when it is transparently delegated, revocable, and tied to responsibilities rather than privileges.”
This implies a democratic or anarchist framework where corruption is a result of opacity and lack of accountability.
🔹 5. Evolutionary Incentives Hypothesis
“Corruption is not caused by power, but by systems that reward short-term gain over long-term cooperation.”
This introduces a behavioral economics or game theory angle, where corruption is a rational response to poorly designed rules.
Concepts being old do not make them real. Few worship the gods of ancient Greece these days. Trying to appeal to the notion of “power,” or some other concept of people occupying administrative, managerial, supervisory, etc roles automatically turning “corrupt,” ie bad, evil, etc on the notion of common sense gets us no closer to the truth.
What matters, and what I find to be far more observable, is societal organization around the basis of class. Your schoolteacher has power, but likely isn’t some evil person. Likewise, managers in factories play vital roles, as do government administrators.
Where the idea of power corrupting comes from, in my view, is a misanalysis of class society and its organizational superstructure. We can move beyond class while retaining administration, organization at a central level, etc. It isn’t about finding “pure” humans, but about altering the base so the superstructure can be altered in turn.
What’s interesting here is that we’ve got at least three different axes being discussed:
Power and Corruption – Whether corruption is an emergent property of power itself (a kind of inevitability), or whether it’s a structural consequence of specific systems like capitalism. Commenter C raises a fair challenge here: maybe it’s not that power always corrupts, but that certain systems disproportionately incentivize and reward corruption. Commenter B replies with a sort of philosophical challenge: “Well, if not that power corrupts, then what’s your null hypothesis?” That’s a good tension.
Systemic Design vs. Human Nature – If authoritarianism and imperialism are recurring outcomes across radically different ideological systems (capitalist, communist, etc.), that suggests there’s something deeper than just the ideology itself at play. Maybe it’s the concentration of decision-making power over large scales, which B is arguing against by advocating for radical subsidiarity—push decisions down to the smallest functional unit, always. But that still requires a theory of how larger-scale coordination happens, especially with externalities in play.
Historical Context and Propaganda – A’s original comment brings in the crucial reminder that many critiques of leftist regimes are made through lenses already deeply distorted by decades of Cold War propaganda and ideological framing. That doesn’t make all critiques invalid, but it does mean any honest analysis needs to start with historical humility. These regimes didn’t arise in a vacuum—they were born into extreme conditions, from colonial trauma to war to internal underdevelopment.
But maybe the most compelling common thread here is that no system seems immune to the gravity of concentrated power. Whether it’s wealth in capitalism, political power in Stalinist regimes, or technocratic control in liberal democracies, the same dynamics often emerge.
So maybe the real question is: What kinds of social, political, and economic designs actively resist centralization? And is there a way to build those that also remain resilient and cohesive, rather than fragile and fragmented?
Because yes—pulling out the dollar-rooted swastika-flower is powerful imagery. But the hard part is asking: What do we plant in its place?
I think the concept of positive/negative externalities could serve as a north star in deciding the all important question of the appropriate scalevat which a discussion is taken.
While I think we shoild try to empower and give autonomy to the local they always are within a larger community of externalities. The local should also no to inform and defer to a higher scale when their decision is “larger then them”.
The local is not thought as isolated or unaccountable, but it is given preference as a scale. We want the local to choose how to live in harmony with the whole and their neighbours.
All this is well but it would be really easy to fall back into the grooves of individualist isolationnist and collectivist absolutist.
I don’t think the ideal exist at the middle of these extremes but rather toward tge lower scale without bottoming out
“Far from paradise” seems pretty generous for what i perceive as a dystopian nightmare state. they are cut off from outside information. there is retribution on families if ppl try to leave. also, you can’t leave. this is insanity. outside forces don’t make them behave that way.
Xi: whether that popularity is real or not is a question, though, when he can push for the suppression of dissent or critique in the social sphere. one CAN’T challenge him. that doesn’t seem legitimately representative.
i’m looking over your reading list. we can add that to the list. but there’s a reason i block hexbear and lemmygrad but not .ml. tankies fucking suck and i Socialism will never be taken seriously as long as it’s important to ppl to defend fucking Stalin.
See, the problem is that you’re generally wrong, factually, which is why you have such knee-jerk reactions to people saying that maybe AES states aren’t hellholes, actually. As an example, it’s mostly western sanctions that limit freedom of movement from DPRK residents, and the myths about collective family punishment are largely unsubstantiated. Repeating Red Scare myths uncritically is a huge problem.
People can challenge Xi, what they cannot do is use large private media apparatus to push anti-government propaganda.
Regarding your last point, you’re generally wrong. Socialism is increasing in popularity globally, including Marxism-Leninism. Funny enough, Nia Frome, the author of “Marketing Socialism,” has another quick article called “Tankies” that would be perfect for you to read, IMO.
mate, i know ppl who literally risked their lives to flee from the USSR. your talking points are just academic. the reality is otherwise. trying to paint legitimate observation of tyranny in AES as some kind of capitalist conspiracy only makes you look more insane offputting.
i’m literally TRYING to reach you, and all Leftists can do is bend over backward to defend tyrants.
The vast majority of post-Soviet citizens believe they are worse off now than under Socialism, which makes sense because the reintroduction of Capitalism resulted in skyrocketing rates of poverty, prostitution, drug abuse, homelessness, and an estimated 7 million excess deaths around the world.
AES states are not perfect, I don’t paint all critique as Capitalist conspiracy, only what I know is in fact a myth based on the sources I have provided. You uncritically accept the bourgeois narrative despite mountains of evidence to a more nuanced position than “every Communist leader ate spoonfuls of babies for breakfast” or other nonsense.
you don’t know anything about me to make such claims.
citizenry can feel nostalgia for lots of reasons, and i’m not defending capitalism here. but that doesn’t erase the real lived trauma of the ppl in my life who have fled both the USSR and Venezuela.
I know that based on the hard data I’ve seen, the people I have spoken to, the history and critique I have read, that a good amount of what you have said is disconnected from reality, and closer to what the US State Department claims is the truth. I understand that you may have anecdotal experiences shaping your opinions, but I also know that it isn’t simple nostalgia like the Wikipedia entry suggests, but coincides with the massive increase in poverty and the difficulty of life in a Capitalist world after the dissolution of Socialism.
I’m not dancing around anything, if you want to discuss, then please, do so.
The DPRK is far from a paradise, but at the same time, much of its issues are externally driven.
Xi is not president for life. Term limits are removed, but he can also be removed. He’s overwhelmingly popular among the party and people.
For your last point, I recommend you read Marketing Socialism. I defend what is misrepresented or demonized unjustly, because these are problems every Socialist project recieves, to varying degrees.
i read your Marketing Socialism post. It just seems beside the point and is looking for a way to justify itself when all you have to do is admit that tyranny and gulags bad. It’s not a big ask. The fact that it is TAKEN to be a big ask, is a massive, if you will, red flag. XD
The problem arises when people distort quantity or quality of struggles in AES states that would logically exist in any Socialist state. Ie, all Socialist states will have prisons, and all Capitalist countries are going to do their best to portray them in as negative a light as possible, no matter what they look like in reality.
i get, but it’s not a NECESSARY component of communism. the DPRK is shit for a lot of reasons, mostly due to the consolidation of power in the hands single insane family. trying to rehabilitate their image or reclaim them is fucking insane. XD and just not helpful to the cause, imo. i certainly makes me care less about everything you’re trying to say, and i’m really giving you the benefit of the doubt here.
What, specifically, is not a necessary component of Communism? The version of AES that exists in your mind, full of anticommunist prejudice and red scare mythos clouding your judgement, or the version that exists in real life, with far more nuanced issues applicable to all of Socialism, past, present, and future alike?
Further, the Kim family does not have all of the power in the DPRK. A critical examination of the structure and history of the DPRK proves that isn’t true. That’s like saying the Bush and Kennedy familys have all of the power in the US.
Authoritarianism and imperialism, concentration of power are the root cause, money is just a symbol of power, under stalinist russia this nefarious corrupting power had another symbol, shape but this society was just as helpless toward this tendency of power, you can see the end point of passive demobilisation and assassination of the few how dare oppose it today in Russia.
I think there needs to be constant pressure of deterritoroalisation, of putting decision and responsibility in the hands of the people, always at the smallest scale that it can be realistically pushed down.
And that’s not the individual if that’s not an individual matter. The level at which decisionnal responsibility is dependant on the context of tgat decision rather than agglomerated bodies of decision when power naturallies tries to concentrate.
It should always be easy for lower echelons of power and locality to repatriate a delegated aspect of their life.
(Then I stuffed this line of thinking into chatgpt to take it further)
https://chatgpt.com/share/6803f4ba-eebc-8005-919f-3b896dce2e0f
I don’t think you’ve actually backed up your thesis, just asserted it. There’s no evidence to the notion that “power corrupts,” there’s evidence that systems like Capitalism reward corruption.
Interesting, you wish to make the widely repeated, ancient wisdom that power corrupt into a revolutionary statement against the null hypothesis ?
Very well, would you state your null hypothesis ?
Perhaps something more charitable than the following
“Power is not a problem actually, it’s a matter of having the right group of elites with good and pure hearts and everything will be honky dory forever”
@Cowbee
Please choose your null hypothesis or provide your own
Improved suggestions
🔹 1. Structuralist Null Hypothesis
“Power, in itself, is not inherently corrupting. It is the structure and incentives of a given system (such as capitalism) that determine whether power is exercised corruptly.”
This frames corruption as a product of external conditions, not the mere possession of power.
🔹 2. Neutral Power Hypothesis
“Power is a neutral tool—it amplifies pre-existing tendencies in individuals or institutions, whether for good or ill.”
This positions power as neither good nor bad, just a multiplier.
🔹 3. Contextual Corruption Hypothesis
“Corruption occurs not because power corrupts, but because oversight, accountability, and community control are absent.”
Here, the claim is that power can exist without corruption if institutions around it are healthy.
🔹 4. Power-as-Delegation Hypothesis
“Power is not inherently corrupting when it is transparently delegated, revocable, and tied to responsibilities rather than privileges.”
This implies a democratic or anarchist framework where corruption is a result of opacity and lack of accountability.
🔹 5. Evolutionary Incentives Hypothesis
“Corruption is not caused by power, but by systems that reward short-term gain over long-term cooperation.”
This introduces a behavioral economics or game theory angle, where corruption is a rational response to poorly designed rules.
Concepts being old do not make them real. Few worship the gods of ancient Greece these days. Trying to appeal to the notion of “power,” or some other concept of people occupying administrative, managerial, supervisory, etc roles automatically turning “corrupt,” ie bad, evil, etc on the notion of common sense gets us no closer to the truth.
What matters, and what I find to be far more observable, is societal organization around the basis of class. Your schoolteacher has power, but likely isn’t some evil person. Likewise, managers in factories play vital roles, as do government administrators.
Where the idea of power corrupting comes from, in my view, is a misanalysis of class society and its organizational superstructure. We can move beyond class while retaining administration, organization at a central level, etc. It isn’t about finding “pure” humans, but about altering the base so the superstructure can be altered in turn.
Yes,
But it happens continuously, it is being revealed continuously.
Wherever your find unchecked concentrations of power, at every scale, from schoolyard bully to the presidency.
We cannot afford institution once again to abdicate our lives to another greedy black hole of power to digest us for another half-century
ENOUGH already
What’s interesting here is that we’ve got at least three different axes being discussed:
Power and Corruption – Whether corruption is an emergent property of power itself (a kind of inevitability), or whether it’s a structural consequence of specific systems like capitalism. Commenter C raises a fair challenge here: maybe it’s not that power always corrupts, but that certain systems disproportionately incentivize and reward corruption. Commenter B replies with a sort of philosophical challenge: “Well, if not that power corrupts, then what’s your null hypothesis?” That’s a good tension.
Systemic Design vs. Human Nature – If authoritarianism and imperialism are recurring outcomes across radically different ideological systems (capitalist, communist, etc.), that suggests there’s something deeper than just the ideology itself at play. Maybe it’s the concentration of decision-making power over large scales, which B is arguing against by advocating for radical subsidiarity—push decisions down to the smallest functional unit, always. But that still requires a theory of how larger-scale coordination happens, especially with externalities in play.
Historical Context and Propaganda – A’s original comment brings in the crucial reminder that many critiques of leftist regimes are made through lenses already deeply distorted by decades of Cold War propaganda and ideological framing. That doesn’t make all critiques invalid, but it does mean any honest analysis needs to start with historical humility. These regimes didn’t arise in a vacuum—they were born into extreme conditions, from colonial trauma to war to internal underdevelopment.
But maybe the most compelling common thread here is that no system seems immune to the gravity of concentrated power. Whether it’s wealth in capitalism, political power in Stalinist regimes, or technocratic control in liberal democracies, the same dynamics often emerge.
So maybe the real question is: What kinds of social, political, and economic designs actively resist centralization? And is there a way to build those that also remain resilient and cohesive, rather than fragile and fragmented?
Because yes—pulling out the dollar-rooted swastika-flower is powerful imagery. But the hard part is asking: What do we plant in its place?
https://chatgpt.com/share/6806d381-678c-8005-854f-77741e1ec651
I think the concept of positive/negative externalities could serve as a north star in deciding the all important question of the appropriate scalevat which a discussion is taken.
While I think we shoild try to empower and give autonomy to the local they always are within a larger community of externalities. The local should also no to inform and defer to a higher scale when their decision is “larger then them”.
The local is not thought as isolated or unaccountable, but it is given preference as a scale. We want the local to choose how to live in harmony with the whole and their neighbours.
All this is well but it would be really easy to fall back into the grooves of individualist isolationnist and collectivist absolutist.
I don’t think the ideal exist at the middle of these extremes but rather toward tge lower scale without bottoming out
“Far from paradise” seems pretty generous for what i perceive as a dystopian nightmare state. they are cut off from outside information. there is retribution on families if ppl try to leave. also, you can’t leave. this is insanity. outside forces don’t make them behave that way.
Xi: whether that popularity is real or not is a question, though, when he can push for the suppression of dissent or critique in the social sphere. one CAN’T challenge him. that doesn’t seem legitimately representative.
i’m looking over your reading list. we can add that to the list. but there’s a reason i block hexbear and lemmygrad but not .ml. tankies fucking suck and i Socialism will never be taken seriously as long as it’s important to ppl to defend fucking Stalin.
See, the problem is that you’re generally wrong, factually, which is why you have such knee-jerk reactions to people saying that maybe AES states aren’t hellholes, actually. As an example, it’s mostly western sanctions that limit freedom of movement from DPRK residents, and the myths about collective family punishment are largely unsubstantiated. Repeating Red Scare myths uncritically is a huge problem.
People can challenge Xi, what they cannot do is use large private media apparatus to push anti-government propaganda.
Regarding your last point, you’re generally wrong. Socialism is increasing in popularity globally, including Marxism-Leninism. Funny enough, Nia Frome, the author of “Marketing Socialism,” has another quick article called “Tankies” that would be perfect for you to read, IMO.
I appreciated this read, thanks.
No problem!
mate, i know ppl who literally risked their lives to flee from the USSR. your talking points are just academic. the reality is otherwise. trying to paint legitimate observation of tyranny in AES as some kind of capitalist conspiracy only makes you look more insane offputting.
i’m literally TRYING to reach you, and all Leftists can do is bend over backward to defend tyrants.
The vast majority of post-Soviet citizens believe they are worse off now than under Socialism, which makes sense because the reintroduction of Capitalism resulted in skyrocketing rates of poverty, prostitution, drug abuse, homelessness, and an estimated 7 million excess deaths around the world.
AES states are not perfect, I don’t paint all critique as Capitalist conspiracy, only what I know is in fact a myth based on the sources I have provided. You uncritically accept the bourgeois narrative despite mountains of evidence to a more nuanced position than “every Communist leader ate spoonfuls of babies for breakfast” or other nonsense.
I’m hoping I reach you too.
“You uncritically accept the bourgeois narrative”
you don’t know anything about me to make such claims.
citizenry can feel nostalgia for lots of reasons, and i’m not defending capitalism here. but that doesn’t erase the real lived trauma of the ppl in my life who have fled both the USSR and Venezuela.
I know that based on the hard data I’ve seen, the people I have spoken to, the history and critique I have read, that a good amount of what you have said is disconnected from reality, and closer to what the US State Department claims is the truth. I understand that you may have anecdotal experiences shaping your opinions, but I also know that it isn’t simple nostalgia like the Wikipedia entry suggests, but coincides with the massive increase in poverty and the difficulty of life in a Capitalist world after the dissolution of Socialism.
ok buddy. good luck with that.
Thanks! 🫡