China’s Second ‘Cultural Revolution’
JAMES PETRAS | indispensable reads
From the author’s site
(Originally posted 12.23.2014 :: Analysis)
President Xi is attacking the triple evils of corruption, conspicuous consumption, and pillage of public wealth.
![Billboard tribute to Deng Xiao ping (Shenzhen, China on a busy Saturday afternoon, Jan. 2010)](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/china-dengXiao-billboardTribute4271460682_e1fb98908d_o-533x400.jpg)
Billboard tribute to Deng Xiao ping, Shenzhen, China on a busy Saturday afternoon, Jan. 2010. (Douglas Johnson, flickr-cc)
CLICK ON IMAGES TO EXPAND
[dropcap]Introduction[/dropcap]
The first CR was a frontal attack on the hierarchy of power and privilege inside and outside of the Communist Party, launched from above by Mao Tse Tung, but taken up from below by Red Guards in order to bring about a more egalitarian society.
The current ‘cultural revolution’, launched by President Xi Jinping, is directed at ending widespread corruption, theft and pillage of the Chinese economy and society by high and low officials in government and the capitalist sector.
The two cultural revolutions are linked by Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who officially put closure on the first and set in motion the policies and slogans (“Getting Rich is Good!”), necessitating a second cultural revolution three decades later.
The Socio-Economic Roots of the Cultural Revolution Today
Deng’s call to ‘get rich’ was directed at the Communist Party elite, their family, friends and overseas backers; it was an open invitation to the multi-nationals of the world to freely exploit China’s resources, infrastructure and labor – educated, nurtured and organized through the collective efforts of the preceding Communist regime. Deng ‘liberated’- or privatized – the means of production and rapidly turned public control and appropriation of earnings over to emerging private capitalists. The corollary was the elimination of all social rights, benefits and protections of labor. The dual incentives were designed to maximize private profits in order to attract long-term, large-scale investments and to achieve high growth in the shortest time possible. Deng telescoped a century of growth and exploitation into a few decades.
His strategy succeeded.
![Deng Xiao Ping, Picture in Revolutionary Army Museum—185469909_b3e7bff506_o](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Deng-Xiao-Ping-Picture-in-Revolutionary-Army-Museum—185469909_b3e7bff506_o-300x400.jpg)
Deng Xiao Ping, picture in the Revolutionary Army Museum. Deng was originally in trouble with Mao for his “capitalist- roader” tendencies. (Marcin Palka/cc/flickr)
Profits soared. By the late 1980’s and early 1990’s millionaires multiplied like mushrooms after a downpour. Then came the billionaires. Aided and abetted by the wholesale privatization of lucrative industries and public lands, a new class of real estate speculators and so-called ‘developers’ emerged , closely linked to corrupt local municipal, regional and national state officials. Millions of peasants were dispossessed and barely (if ever) compensated; hundreds of millions of workers were employed at starvation wages without the free housing, medical care, education, recreational benefits and lifetime employment of the past, socialist system.
China’s GNP exploded at a double-digit rate for three decades – an unprecedented performance. Most of the profits circulated among a narrow elite of party – state officials and capitalists, while a smaller share ‘trickled down’ to middle and low level functionaries. The seizure of public wealth, followed by three decades of intense exploitation of labor and the private land grabbing of farmland and homesteads, spurred the boom in real estate profits and laid the basis for all pervasive and large-scale corruption .The pillage of the public treasury led to large-scale conspicuous consumption – of imported luxury goods, multi-tiered mansions in gated communities, multiple purchases of luxury condos for offspring, mistresses and bribe-takers and givers.
By the mid 2000’s the concentration of wealth, property and privilege had reached astronomical heights: hundreds of billions accrued to the top 2%, millions to the top 10%, and hundreds of thousands to the top 15% – the self-styled ‘middle class’ who thrived on lesser but equally pervasive corruption and theft and who aped the elite and imitated their life style of luxury consumerism.
Beginning in the mid-2000s, hundreds of strikes by exploited factory workers demanded and secured higher wages; millions of households, farmers and peasants fought against municipal party officials, linked to real estate capitalists, who were attempting to ‘grab’ their land, homes and neighborhoods. Hundreds of millions of Chinese in the countryside protested exorbitant medical and educational costs, induced by the privatized health and educational system, which had bankrupted millions of households. They quickly became aware of the luxurious private medical facilities and specialized clinics for the rich -capitalists and corrupt officials. The internal migrant workers, who built the hyper-luxury condos and mansions, lived in paper shacks, far from the twelve-course banquets celebrating the ‘grand openings’ by business swindlers and ‘bought officials’. As wealth grew among the elite, so did the people’s hostility and rejection of the Party and the State, which they personified.
The ever-cautious klepto-capitalists and public pillagers, fearing for their illicit fortunes, smuggled out enormous wealth. Big swindlers, with big fortunes engaged in massive money laundering while publicly demanding the ‘de-regulation” of the financial sector (i.e. to make it easier to launder and hide their fortunes in overseas accounts). Between 2005-2011 China hemorrhaged over $2.83 trillion in illegal overseas financial outflows.
Part II: The Consequences of Corruption, Pillage and Exploitation
The illicit flow of Chinese wealth overseas resulted from the elite’s savage and illegal exploitation of labor (failure to meet minimum official standards concerning pay, work safety, child labor, excessive hours) . Wealth from bribes, kickbacks on government contracts, speculation on illicit seizures of land, and making false invoices overpricing imports and underpricing exports, flowed upward and outward. While China was profiting from double-digit growth the regime could ‘tolerate’ corruption and illicit outflows. However, by the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, when China’s economy de-accelerated to about 7 – 7.5%, the regime became less tolerant of wholesale corruption accompanied by capital flight.
Moreover, the new billionaires, millionaires and affluent middle class indulged in what Thorsten Veblen described as “conspicuous consumption”, the purchase and ostentatious display of superfluous luxury products as status symbols of “success”. According to a Special Report on “Luxury” in the Economist (12/13/14, p.8 -10) “nearly one-third of all personal luxury goods sold worldwide are bought by Chinese consumers.” Since the global crises of 2009, 70 – 80% of global growth in the (luxury) sector has come from China.
![cc:china-kevinLim-308103649_b107bd7679_o](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ccchina-kevinLim-308103649_b107bd7679_o.jpg)
Photo: Kevin Lim/cc-flikr.
China’s emerging private-public ruling class has advanced from concentrating wealth, to consolidating political power to seeking prestige and social status – recognition from their domestic and foreign peers. Ideologically, they are decidedly neo-liberal and pro-Western – as evidenced by the billions they spend in the top-end real estate markets of North America, Europe and Australia as well as the millions they spend on their pampered offspring for ‘elite’ private education. Theirchildren live in half-million dollar condos in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Oxford and Cambridge (England), Toronto and Vancouver (Canada), Sydney and Melbourne Australia. The Chinese oligarchs “make the market” for six-figure Swiss watches, five figure handbags and four digit French cognac.
Corruption, conspicuous consumption and class polarization has delegitimized the ruling Communist Party elite in the eyes of the great mass of the Chinese working class, as well as the professionals and salaried employees who make-up the lower middle class.
The ‘political rot’- the privileged social networks derived from kinship ties—is leading to a relative-closed ruling class – excluding the mass of urban workers and rural peasants, with potentially explosive social consequences.
Already thousands of local protests, strikes and other forms of direct action occur every year, even as they are repressed or resolved.
In addition to the social and political dangers resulting from the massive illegal, ‘squandering and theft of wealth’, the illicit outflow of wealth is undermining domestic investment and productive overseas investments, and corruption is preparing the way for stagnation and financial crisis.
The stars are lining up for a ‘perfect political storm’ – which has unfolded in the form of President Xi Jingping’s launch of China’s second cultural revolution (CR).
Xi Jingping’s Cultural Revolution
From the start of the 2nd CR in 2012 to mid-2014, the Chinese Communist Party’s internal corruption body has prosecuted and punished 270,000 cadres. That figure includes both the “tigers” (high officials) and the “flies” (low level functionaries). “Over three dozen officials with ranks of ministers or above, including former security Tsar and Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang”, have been arrested and jailed (Financial Times 12/4/14, p. 4). Earlier, the former Railways Minister was arrested and sentenced to death for rigging contracts worth about $26 billion dollars over his seven-year tenure. Hundreds of thousands of private business people, paying bribes, have been arrested and sentenced.
President Xi’s campaign has attacked bribes, ‘gift giving’, frequent ostentatious banquets serving expensive delicacies, and high Party officials’ lodging in five star hotels for weeks on end, ostensibly “tending to business”, but more frequently ‘cavorting with their mistresses’.
![Made in China—Consumed all over the world—at high cost to the people and environment of China.](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/china-economicPower-cc8147661820_bc5a6be8c9_o-534x400.jpg)
Made in China—Consumed all over the world—at high cost to the people and environment of China. (cc/Flickr)
To be precise, President Xi is attacking the triple evils of corruption, conspicuous consumption, and pillage of public wealth. The new austerity agenda and the public revelations of ill-gained wealth are focused on exposing public officials and private business people in order to regain public legitimacy. And it is succeeding,…. as far as it goes. Public indignation at the revelations is matched by high approval for the Xi leadership’s anti –corruption campaign.
What makes this far more than just a “power struggle among privileged elites” as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have routinely claimed, are: 1. the duration of the campaign of over 2 years, 2. the scope of the campaign, covering top officials and Chinese business equivalents of Wall Street moguls, 3. The nature of the punishment including long prison terms and even death sentences (rather than the mere ‘slap on the wrists and paltry fines’ that US regulators have given to Wall Street’s billion-dollar swindlers), and 4. the ongoing nature of the process. The sweep and magnitude of Xi’s campaign has all the makings of a ‘cultural revolution’ – not the episodic ‘blowing off steam’ or ‘scapegoating of rivals’ described in the Western press.
The Nature of Xi’s Cultural Revolution
Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’ is directed and driven from above – established legal authorities are in charge – the masses are excluded, and preemptory justice is eschewed: regular court proceedings decide guilt and sentencing.
![Fortune Global Forum 2013](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/china-youthGeneration-cc8986150758_1fa145db57_o-600x400.jpg)
A sliver of the population has grown accustomed to consumerism. (Photo: Flickr/cc)
Secondly, Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’ does not, in any way or place, call into question capitalist property relations, foreign investors, or large-scale inflows and outflows of investment or legally registered speculative capital. Nor has Xi called into question existing capital-labor relations.
Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’ is an attempt to sanitize existing capitalist relations, and to infuse a newcapitalist ethic. He wants to ‘revise’ Deng’s famous precept “Getting Rich is Good” to read “Get Rich Lawfully . . . or Face Jail”. China is rated number 100 out of 175, on a corruption scale published by Transparency in 2014 (Financial Times 12/4/14, p. 4). Xi’s war on corruption is based on the premise that corruption undermines China’s status as a global power – it ranks with Algeria and Surinam. Secondly, Xi hopes that he can ‘reform’ the public sector in order to privatize it and he wants the sale to go to the highest bidder, not the biggest bribe giver.
His campaign attacks privileged elites, who accumulate and dispose of wealth illegally but he has never sought to diminish the class system, the hierarchy and inequalities which concentrate political power and forms the basis of corrupt bribe giving and taking.
Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’ is continuing and corruption may lessen. Ostentatious public spending is declining. But this layer of ‘new morality’ is spread thinly over a system of power that can easily revert to the ‘old system’ once the ‘revolution’ ends.
Xi’s noteworthy ‘cultural revolution’, the moralization of public administration and private capitalism, can only succeed if it is accompanied by a social transformation: ethics at the service of social justice and equality and by a democratization of the economic decision-making process. The problem is that Xi, by family, social ties and political allegiances is deeply embedded in a milieu which absolutely rejects any such ‘deepening’ of Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’.
His cultural revolution is strictly guided by a singular objective: to force ‘morality’ on the ‘captains of capital’ in order to facilitate the smooth transition to fully liberalizing China’s economy. President Xi, along with his anti-corruption campaign, is steadily loosening state control over foreign financial investments in Chinese stocks and financial sector; he is moving strongly to expand China’s overseas investments; he is accelerating the privatization of public enterprises and increasingly opening financial services to Wall Street and the City of London. He is also internationalizing the use of the yuan-the Chinese currency- in global transactions, displacing the dollar.
In other words, his cultural revolution is a bridge to a new stage of Chinese capitalist expansion; it will lessen the crude open plunder of the public treasury, but it will not lessen the exploitation of labor nor slow the increasing concentration of wealth and privilege. That will require a different kind of ‘cultural’ revolution- one led from below by workers, peasants and salaried employees. A real ‘cultural revolution’ that realizes the ethical ideals of ‘good government’ through a transformation of class relations.
Xi’s anti-corruption campaign confirms what many workers already knew – but it also unmasks the systemic decay and forges an elementary class consciousness: counter-posing honest, hardworking workers to corrupt privileged oligarchs. Xi is aware of the danger that his campaign could ignite a popular fire: That is why he has kept a tight hold on the process. He is trying to navigate the liberal capitalist transition around the shoals of existing capitalist rot without arousing mass unrest.
And now a word from the Editors of The Greanville Post
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Greece: The Dilemmas of Democratic Socialism
JAMES PETRAS
From the author’s site | (First posted on 06.17.2014 :: Analysis)
![Syria leaders celebrate with German Die Linke members.](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/syriza-cc-7044895823_defac55790_o-600x400.jpg)
Syriza leaders celebrate with German Die Linke members. (cc-flickr)
[dropcap]Workers[/dropcap] and employees have suffered a 40% loss in income and a commensurate decline in medical, pension, educational and welfare benefits. The political system has witnessed a precipitous decline in electoral support for previously dominant right and center left parties and the rapid rise of radical democratic-socialist and fascist parties.
The socio-economic effects of the crash of the economy have been exacerbated by the “austerity programs” imposed by the European Unions’ triumvirate. The economic cuts have undermined any economic recovery and accentuated the reductions in employment, social welfare and public investments.
The political consequences resulting from the extremely harsh policies of the EU and their forceful implementation by the right and center parties have been dramatic. A vast upheaval has shaken the entire political system. Previously dominant mainstream parties have been increasingly rejected, while formerly marginal democratic socialist and radical right wing parties have made major advances.
The political consequences of the demise of Greek capitalism require a closer look at the prospects for an electoral victory for the democratic socialists in the immediate future.
The Rise of Syriza
The rise of the democratic socialists, more specifically Syriza, has been rapid and substantial. Between October 2009 and 2014 it has grown by a multiple of five: In the elections of October 2009 Syriza got 4.6% of the vote (315,665); in May 2012 16.8% (1,061,928) and in the most recent elections for the Euro parliament 26.l6% (1,516,699). In contrast the two previously dominant parties, the rightwing New Democracy (ND) and the Panhellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) have experienced a precipitous decline. In October 2009, combined ,they got 77.4%, (5,308, 261); in May 2012, 32% (2,025,555); and in the recent Europarlimentary elections 30.7% (1,753,592).
The Greek Communist Party has also declined, despite the crises, and the militancy of its trade union sector. In the October 2009 elections, they got 8.4% (428,151); in the June 2012 elections 4.5% (277,227); and in the 2014 elections 6.1% (347,487).
![syriza-alexis-Tsapris-cc:14274791564_7402242bf3_k](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/syriza-alexis-Tsapris-cc14274791564_7402242bf3_k-598x400.jpg)
Alexis Tsipras, painted portrait (cc-flikr/thierry ehrmann)
In contrast the neo-fascist Golden Dawn has grown substantially over the same period. In the October 2009 elections Golden Dawn got .5% (23,566); in June 2012 7% (440,966); and in the Europarlimentary elections of 2014, 9.4% (536,442).
The demise of the neo-liberal right (New Democracy) is accompanied by the rise of the radical nationalist right. The collapse of the neo-liberal social democrats (PASOK) is accompanied by the rise of the radical left (Syriza) and a new self-styled “center-left”party calling itself “The River” (POTAMI).
The current electoral map of Greece is not defined by a dominant party or coalition. The bi-party break-down is accompanied by fragmentation and polarization. Moreover, the most intransigent opponents of the European Union’s austerity program and its executors in Greece are profoundly divided. The Communist Party and Golden Dawn are mortal enemies of Syriza, thus eliminating any possibility of an “anti-EU” coalition.
The same problem is evident on the Right. New Democracy and allied parties combine for only 27.4% of the electorate and are on a downward slope.
PASOK’s embrace of the neo-liberal agenda has led to the loss of nearly 85% of its voters (2.5 million) over the past 5 years. Many of their supporters among public sector employees have turned to Syriza.
The new ‘center-left’ party, “The River”, which gained 6.7% of the electorate has yet to decide which bloc to support, essentially bargaining to see with whom it can gain the most government posts.
Given the current dynamics of declining pro-EU support and increasing radicalization, what options does Syriza have, if it is to come to power?
Syriza: Perspectives and Options
Syriza is the only realistic political vehicle on the Left with mass support, trade union backing and the electoral machinery for forming a government. Its political trajectory has been in ascendance – up to point.
The fundamental problem is that after its spectacular rise between 2009 and 2012, it has stagnated. In the June 2012 elections it got 26.9% and in the May 2014 elections 26.6%. It appears that Syriza has hit an electoral barrier. Despite the fact that it is Greece’s leading electoral party; it appears to be unable to advance further and secure a parliamentary majority. This raises the question of alliances with political parties to the Left or Right. Moreover, the internal divisions within Syriza complicate any overtures to possible electoral partners. Syriza has drawn leaders, cadres and supporters from the former Maoist, Trotskyist and radical left. Numerous PASOK middle level leaders and electoral supporters have flocked to Syriza. Many defected as a result of PASOK’s responsibility for the crises and support for the “austerity” pact with the EU. In addition a number of ex-Communist trade unionists are now backing Syriza as the only realistic alternative to the Right; many have repudiated Communist Party sectarianism and hostility toward other leftist formations. The current leadership of Syriza has, so far, been able to maintain cohesion by balancing harsh critiques of the austerity pact, which satisfies the radical sectors, with a refusal to exit the EU, which accommodates the social-democratic wing of the Party.
At some point in the coming period Syriza will have to make some hard choices,if it is to form an alternative government. Each of the following options has advantages and disadvantages, costs and benefits.
Syriza opts to ally with the Communist Party. This is a very difficult choice as the CP demands full compliance with its program, an equal sharing of key posts in a future government and recognition of its vanguard role. Given the fact that, electorally, the CP represents less than one-quarter of the voting strength of Syriza these are totally unacceptable terms to all sectors of the democratic left. The CP would have to accept that it will be a minority partner and that it would have to moderate some of its radical demands. The CP fears that Syriza is just another version of PASOK – a party that gives left signals and makes right turns. Its basic argument that Syriza’s refusal to exit the EU is a sign of its basic opportunism, has some merit. But it refuses to even consider tactical electoral alliances, or offer critical support in forming municipal governments.
In any case, even if the CP and other smaller radical left groups joined a Left coalition, it would only add 8.6% to the electoral total, resulting in a precarious parliamentary majority subject to defections from the social-democratic wing of Syriza and face constant threats of defections by Communist maximalists.
The Moderate Option
Syriza could form an alliance with the so-called center-left parties – PASOK and River parties – on the bases of a minimum program which would involve a commitment to remain in the EU based on renegotiating debt payments and the austerity programs, increasing public spending and ending the privatization of strategic economic sectors. This opening to the Right, would endanger the internal equilibrium of Syriza: it risks a split with the powerful radical sector, thus reducing its overall representation in Parliament.
Even if the Syriza left were to be pacified by offers of ministerial posts and promises of ‘hard negotiations’ with the EU, it is not likely to succeed in securing substantial concessions from the EU. Sectors of the latter are likely to welcome a Greek exit. Others will insist on full compliance with only slight modifications regarding the size of budget surpluses, increases in public spending and the terms of privatization. For the EU, the substance of the austerity program, the scope and depth of privatization, and the obligations to meet interest payments are non-negotiable. In other words to remain in the EU, Syriza would have to continue the basic policies of its rightwing predecessor. To remain in the EU Syriza would have to capitulate and become an updated version of PASOK – and lose its mass base in the next elections. Syriza leaders could procrastinate, with phony promises of a future break with the EU when ‘the time is more propitious’ or it could exit from the EU, losing its center-left allies, but hoping to recoup new supporters through alternative policies.
The ‘Middle Road’
Syriza could continue as an independent political movement, without radical left or center-left coalitions, working to accumulate forces from the stagnant Communists and the disintegrating right-center regime. It could use its leadership of local and regional governments to demonstrate its effectiveness and capacity to govern and ameliorate harsh national policies. It could transform its voting pluralities in Athens and Attica into majorities via community based councils, administrating social programs, food kitchens, public works, clinics and public security.
Conclusion: Perspectives
Syriza, in government and out of the EU, could re-allocate debt payments, based on a debt moratorium, to public investments. It could revert to a national currency and end the fiscal constraints of the EU strait-jacket on budgets, incomes and employment. Control over monetary policy would allow Syriza to devaluate, to raise the effective taxes on the kleptocratic millionaires. It could stimulate the economy and end the deflationary effects of the austerity programs. Protective tariffs, foreign exchange controls and revitalization of public sector enterprises could stimulate the local market. Flexible monetary policy could increase tourism. The cut-off of funding from the EU could be compensated by a 50% cut in military spending and an exit from NATO. The government could finance start-ups of high tech, small and medium size enterprises by the large numbers of educated Greeks currently overseas or unemployed. Greece could increase its ties with non EU countries across the globe. Greece would pay a price, especially from the financial markets. In the immediate period liquidity , external financing and capital flows would dry-up. Internal opposition from sectors tied to EU markets and imports would intensify.
No doubt sectors of the old right will turn to the neo-fascist Golden Dawn Party, as part of a sharper political polarization. Sectors of the police and army, with the support of NATO, will conspire to destabilize.
But with mass support in civil society and the civil bureaucracy, with a majority in the armed forces and police backing the constitutional government, a Syriza led recovery of sovereignty and a robust stimulus package could defeat a destabilization conspiracy.
The key to a successful Syriza government is unity and internal cohesion, and sound and equitable economic policies which balance economic growth and job creation with the gradual recovery of social benefits.
Above all Syriza should resist the populist-clientelistic policies which some of its followers will demand. It must not take the easy and disastrous road of expanding the public bureaucracy. There must be greater reliance on highly skilled professionals and entrepreneurial local innovators who produce useful goods for the market. Public firms must be reformed. The trade unions must understand that the first priority of the economic recovery is to create jobs for the 60% of unemployed youth.
Syriza is Greece’s last best hope . . . because waiting in the wings are the EU aligned oligarchs, fascists and disloyal NATO military officials eager to take advantage of any misstep in order to seize power and turn Greece into another Egypt, Thailand or Ukraine.
And now a word from the Editors of The Greanville Post
FRIENDS AND FELLOW ACTIVISTS—
AS YOU KNOW, THERE’S A COLOSSAL INFORMATION WAR GOING ON, AND THE FATE OF THE WORLD LITERALLY HANGS ON THE OUTCOME.
THEIR LIES.
THEIR CONSTANT PROPAGANDA.
OUR TRUTH.
HUGE ISSUES ARE BEING DECIDED: Nuclear war, whether we’ll live in democracy or tyranny, dignity or destitution, planetary salvation or doom…It’s a battle of communications we can’t afford to lose.
So, we request that you do something.
Reading is not enough. Action of some sort is needed.
Start with something simple: Share our posts.
If you don’t, how can we ever neutralize the power of the corporate media?
And if you took the time to read this article, and found it worth SHARING, then why not sign up with our special bulletin to be included in our future distributions? And please tell others about The Greanville Post.
YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS (SIGNUPS TO THE GREANVILLE POST BULLETIN, SEE BELOW) ARE COMPLETELY FREE, ALWAYS. AND WE DO NOT SELL OR RENT OUR EMAIL ADDRESS DATABASES—EVER. That’s a guarantee.
How and Why the Western News Media Get North Korea’s Economy Wrong
By Stephen Gowans
(Click on images to expand them)
[dropcap]It is the accustomed practice[/dropcap] of Western news media to refer to North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, as a propaganda outlet, by which is implied that it is a source of self-serving lies. It would be more accurate to say that KCNA propagates the point of view of the North Korean government, which is unquestionably self-serving, or at least intended to be. It is hardly likely that anyone would express a point of view that was deliberately self-damaging. And as far as lies go, while I have no evidence that the North Korean government lies, it would come as no surprise to discover that it has, from time to time, backed its point of view with deceptions, both deliberate and unintended.
Humans, as a rule, are not unfailingly honest or free from cognitive biases that sometimes make it difficult for them to see what others see, and North Koreans are as human as anyone else.
All the same, were KCNA to carry reports completely devoid of deception, it seems very likely that it would still be the case that the Western news media would label the news agency a propaganda outlet, in the sense of passing off deliberate lies as truth. This is so because the North Korean view is so often at odds with the spin pumped out in Western capitals by officials of state and reported and passed along by Western news media that it must seem to the purveyors of the Western point of view than the North Korean alternative must be wrong and deliberately so.
The question is: How does a small and isolated nation like North Korea hold on after being subjected to 64 years of economic warfare and military threats, including the threat of nuclear annihilation, by the most powerful and predatory state on the planet?
If we define propaganda as propagating a self-interested point of view, then entirely absent in Western journalistic commentary on the official news agencies of the foreign states that Western governments are hostile to is any recognition that they, themselves, i.e., the Western news media, are indistinguishable from the foreign news agencies they discredit. As much as the KCNA, Western news media propagate the official viewpoints of states, in their case the points of view of Western states, expressed by presidents, prime ministers, secretaries of defense, Pentagon generals, heads of intelligence agencies, and so on, whose words are carefully reproduced and reported, almost always uncritically, in Western newspapers and TV and radio broadcasts. Asked by the journalist and film-maker John Pilger to explain how his news organization failed to challenge official deceptions about Iraq’s mythical weapons of mass destruction, the pretext for the 2003 Anglo-US invasion and occupation of Iraq, a senior news executive replied that it is not the job of the news media to question what state officials say, only to report their words. This amounts to admitting what left critics have long contended: that the Western news media are merely stenographers for those in power.
![Mass games, Pyongyang (2006). [cc/Flickr]](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/massGames-Pyongyang-2008-15357476652_90fea6de9b_o-600x343.jpg)
Mass games, Pyongyang (2006). [cc/Flickr]
Moreover, the fact that Western news media are mainly privately-owned and not run by the state does not make them disinterested and neutral. For the most part, Western news media are owned by an ultra-wealthy business elite. Accordingly, these media promote positions that are compatible with and conducive to the interests of the larger corporate community to which they belong. The view that the news media reflect corporate community interests because they are part of the corporate community is almost axiomatic. There would be no controversy in the claim that a newspaper owned by labor unions would promote positions that are compatible with the interests of labor. Nor would there be much disagreement with the view that a news network owned by environmentalists would take a dim view of fracking. Clearly, then, we should expect media owned by wealthy business owners to reflect the viewpoint of wealthy business owners.
Indeed, it would be naive to accept the deception implied in the phrase “independent media” that media that are independent of the state are neutral, unbiased, and therefore uniquely authoritative. They may be independent of the state, but that does not make them independent; they’re still dependent on their owners. But concealing their dependency allows the news media’s business owners to smuggle their interests into the ways the news is reported behind a facade of journalistic neutrality. Hence, a pro-business point of view is seen to be common sense, since it is disseminated by news media which profess to be independent and therefore impartial, unbiased, and objective. However, the truth of the matter is that privately-owned news media have a point of view, i.e., that of the corporate elite which own them. The same corporate elite dominates the state and the public policy process through: lobbying; funding think tanks to prepare policy recommendations for governments; political campaign contributions; and over-representation relative to their numbers in the legislative, executive and bureaucratic branches of the state. This explains why the Western news media uncritically echo the viewpoint of state officials: they’re both working for the same masters.
The function of the Western news media in propagating a point of view that favors its owners is evident in its propagation of certain ideas about North Korea as incontestable truths, though which in fact are far from incontestable, but which have the congenial effect from the perspective of the corporate elite of seeming to uphold the superiority of the capitalist system and the necessity of governments catering to foreign investors if they’re to secure prosperity for their citizenry.
These ideas, or myths, come in two parts:
1. The idea that North Korea is desperately poor.
2. The attribution of its alleged poverty to the public ownership and central planning of its economy and failure to establish an attractive climate for foreign investment.
![northKorea-aptDwellers-cc:9118472299_250fcf94c9_o](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/northKorea-aptDwellers-cc9118472299_250fcf94c9_o-339x400.jpg)
Residents of an apartment building in Pyongyang: certainly not more ominous than anything we may see in the West’s later cities. (cc/flickr)
Visitors to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital city, are often struck by the contrast between the city as it is (clean, modern, and teeming with well-dressed and seemingly prosperous residents) and North Korea as it is portrayed by the Western news media (impoverished, rundown, gloomy, on the verge of collapse.) Pyongyang is not the horror of poverty that Western news media make it out to be.
A recent article in the South Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh paints a picture wildly at odds with the Western news media’s gloomy view.
Three years after Kim Jong-un came to power in North Korea, the streets of Pyongyang look much different. The streets of the city are lined with new 40-floor skyscrapers, and taxis drive down them. Before, they had been dark at night, but now they are illuminated by bright lights, while smartphone-toting women are dressed more smartly than before.
The Hankyoreh quotes a recent visitor to North Korea, Jin Zhe, Director of Northeast Asia Studies for the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences: “The economy appears to be moving briskly in Pyongyang these days. What particularly stood out were the large apartment buildings being built in various parts of the city and the bustling activity at the markets. You can really feel how much it’s thriving.”
![Korean War Museum - Statue von Kim Il Sung... Nein, das ist nicht Kim Jong Un](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/northKoreaWarMuseum-KimIlSungStatue-cc-15391729068_d936255277_o-350x233.jpg)
Korean War Museum. Statue of Kim Il Sung at the top of the stairs. (cc/Flickr)
The North Korean economy is growing and production of industrial and agricultural goods is on the rise [1]. Food scarcity, however, has been a problem (though a diminishing one), and conditions appear to be less favorable in the countryside than in Pyongyang. The existence of food scarcity is almost invariably attributed by Western reporters and editorial writers to the alleged inefficiencies of public ownership and planning or to North Korea’s investment in its military, allegedly at the expense of its people. Both attributions are facile.
Until the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, North Korea experienced no food insecurity under an economic system based on public ownership and planning. It was only after the demise of communism in Eastern Europe that food security became a problem. As in Cuba, the crash of the Eastern European socialist states created an economic shock, as North Korea’s trading relationships and economic interconnections with these states broke down. Agricultural production suffered as inputs became scarce. Food production was further set back by a series of natural calamities.
The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe had two additional effects on North Korea’s economy.
First, it allowed the United States to ramp up its military intimidation of North Korea. In 1991, the top US military official at the time, Colin Powell, complained that “I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of villains. I’m down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.” [2] With the Warsaw Pact out of the way, the United States could now concentrate on eliminating other communist states. In February 1993, Lee Butler, head of the US Strategic Command, announced that the United States was retargeting hydrogen bombs aimed at the old USSR on North Korea (and other targets), though at the time, North Korea was a non-nuclear weapons state. One month later, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. [3] Already on a permanent war footing—the Korean War had never officially ended and the United States had tens of thousands of troops garrisoned across the border in South Korea and in nearby Japan—North Korea was forced to devote a crushingly large part of its resources to its military and self-defense. Now the pressure on the North Korean economy was being ratcheted up further.
Second, the United States and its allies had maintained a wide-ranging system of sanctions on North Korea—more accurately described as a campaign of economic warfare, aimed at wrecking the North Korean economy. With the option open prior to 1990 of establishing economic ties and trading relationships with communist allies, North Korea was largely able to side-step the effects of the US-led campaign of economic warfare. However, after 1991 the door was closed, except for North Korea’s relationship with its neighbor China.
John Mueller and Karl Mueller explain:
During the Cold War the effect of economic sanctions was generally limited because when one side imposed them the other side often undermined them. Thus the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba was substantially mitigated for decades by compensatory Soviet aid. But in the wake of the Cold War, sanctions are more likely to be comprehensive and thus effective, in causing harm if not necessarily in achieving political objectives. So long as they can coordinate their efforts, the big countries have at their disposal a credible, inexpensive, and potent weapon to use against small and medium-sized foes. The dominant powers have shown that they can inflict enormous pain at remarkably little cost to themselves or the global economy. Indeed, in a matter of months or years whole economies can be devastated. [4]
Western news media almost never attribute the economic difficulties experienced by countries that have been subjected to campaigns of economic warfare to the effects of those campaigns. Instead, their economic difficulties are almost invariably imputed to economic mismanagement (which is equated to expropriation of privately-owned productive assets or failing to compete for, cater to, and indulge foreign investors) or to the targeted government’s socialist policies (and always, targeted governments pursue policies the US State Department would decry as socialist, though they’re often more accurately labelled as economically nationalist.) The aim of this deception is obvious: to discredit economic policy that fails to comport with the profit-making interests of the Western corporate community.
Much has been said by the political left about the devastating effects of the US embargo on Cuba and of the millions of Iraqis who died as a result of disruptions caused by Western sanctions throughout the 1990s. But very little has been said about sanctions in connection with North Korea, despite the reality that North Korea is the most heavily sanctioned country on earth and has been menaced by a campaign of unremitting US-led economic warfare since 1950. Policy-makers in Washington now despair of having any levers left to exert pressure on North Korea. The country is under such a heavy burden of sanctions, and so thoroughly menaced by military pressure, that there are few levers left to reach for.
In a December 26 Washington Post op-ed former US president Jimmy Carter opened a tiny crack in the near total embargo on mentioning sanctions and their effects on North Korea’s economy. Carter acknowledged that the “U.S. embargo, imposed 64 years ago at the start of the Korean War, has been more strictly enforced, with every effort made to restrict or damage North Korea’s economy.” Carter then went on to draw the link between US policy aimed at “destroying the (North Korean) economy” and “the plight of people,” arguing for economic warfare that didn’t attack “the living conditions” of North Koreans. [5] What he didn’t espouse (not unexpectedly, but which needs to be argued for) is the complete removal of sanctions on North Korea. The US-led campaign of economic warfare on the country has no legitimate grounds. Its ultimate aim, working in conjunction with US-led military pressure, is to force the North Korean government to jettison its system of public ownership and planning and to fold itself into South Korea, where it can become part of a larger US neo-colony. There are no legal or moral grounds for this policy. Its existence is rooted entirely in the profit-making interests of the West’s corporate elite. The more immediate goal of the campaign is to limit and disrupt the North Korean economy in order to discredit alternatives to capitalism and US free enterprise. Achieving this aim critically depends on the cooperation of the Western news media. They must ignore the effects of the sanctions (as well as US military pressure) and attribute North Korea’s economic difficulties to its economic and defense policies.
If propaganda amounts to the propagation of a self-serving narrative, the Western news media need look no further than themselves and their owners to find the perfect model. North Korea, according the propaganda system of the West, is desperately poor, when in fact, at least in Pyongyang, it is anything but. North Korea’s alleged poverty, according to the same model, is due to it military policies, with no mention made of how they are legitimate self-defensive measures taken to resist the very real military threat posed by the United States and its allies. Similarly, North Korea’s alleged indigence is imputed to its economic system, with the effect of economic warfare whose object is the destruction of the North Korean economy totally ignored.
What Western propaganda must miss is the most compelling story of all—how a country born off a guerrilla struggle against Japanese occupation holds on, and even, by some measures, has managed to thrive, despite being subjected to 64 years of economic warfare and military threats, including the threat of nuclear annihilation, by the most powerful and predatory state on the planet.
1. “After three years of Kim Jong-un, skyscrapers popping up on Pyongyang skyline,” The Hankyoreh, December 29, 2014.
2. Quoted in Carl Kaysen, Robert S. McNamara and George W. Rathjens, “Nuclear weapons after the Cold War,” Foreign Affairs, Fall 1991.
3. Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. p. 488-489.
4. John Mueller and Karl Mueller, “Sanctions of Mass Destruction,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999.
5. Jimmy Carter, “Cuba, North Korea, and getting sanctions right,” The Washington Post, December 26, 2014.
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