That’s like saying “which of the orange and the apple is not a fruit.”
But to try to answer what I think you are asking, North Korea is a communist dicatorship controlled by one family. Kind of how Kings worked in the old days.
And China is an authoritarian one-party state.
North Korea does not have a privatized sector. China does. North Korea is not socialist by definition, and China is.
I know that it doesn’t answer your original question (the thing about countries doing better than another country - I personally didn’t any claim here), but I’d like to answer that one question.
North Korea is an authoritarian state with a planned economy with a highly unequal society, in part based on slavery. Its official ideology is juche. Supernatural phenomena is attributed to their leaders. It is in many parts similar to kingdoms of old.
Its miserable state could be taken as an indication of the failing of socialism, as socialism is also based on a planned economy.
There’s a few nuances though.
First, socialism means that workers own the means of production. I’m not aware of any democracy, even local, in North Korea. Authoritarian states are famously wasteful and inefficient. Perhaps one should look to socialist states where democracy and rule of law were in effect for a real indication.
I’m not aware of workers having control of the means of production in any notable auto-ptoclaimed socialist states, apart from USSR for a very short period of time. It seems like socialist revolutions ending in authoritarianism and centralization is a common story, almost inevitable.
Second, there’s some remarkable successes even in those authoritarian planned economy states. Cuba has spend extremly little in healthcare and manages to give its population a good life expectency. There were also good social indicators under USSR, and which went down under capitalist Russia.
Third, North Korea spends an enormous amount on the military. No country not in an active war in the world spends as much as North Korea does on its military as a percentage of its GDP. It’s around 20-25% if I remember correctly.
So it could be called socialist if you look at certain aspects of the economical foundation.
They DO have no ownership of private companies, which is socialist thinking, but they also dont have private ownership for the people, which is not.
But North Korea is special. They call themselves socialist, but in reality they invented their own ideology called Songun. It means “military first”.
The “spirit of the law” in socialism is also for the country to work for the people. But you can argue with Songun, every single thing is done for military power. Not power to the people - nor for the people.
So yeah, North Korea calls themselves socialist (because they like to be friends with China), but they act like a authoritarin military dictatorship - or Songun.
I would say much of that also applies to China, and precisely because a country that doesn’t truly exist for its people cannot be socialist, I’d say there has never been a socialist country on this planet yet.
And then, if we choose to say that socialist countries do exist, then socialism stops meaning that the country really cares about asocial issues, and starts meaning a system where all means of production are held by the elite.
Lenin killed socialism and communism by trying to do them the bestial Russian way. (Of course that had to do with Marx’s thinking, but I still Lenin is to blame the most)
Still: if you have a dictatorship, you will inevitably veer far away from being for the people.
At the moment the countries that have come closest to the core point of socialism have been the Nordic countries, in that they’ve put the freedom and welfare of the individual in the middle, but they’ve done that that without socialism, using a strongly regulated capitalism as base instead.
…Plus, spent the last two decades trying to dismantle all that was good here, chasing the neoliberalist dream.
That’s like saying “which of the orange and the apple is not a fruit.”
But to try to answer what I think you are asking, North Korea is a communist dicatorship controlled by one family. Kind of how Kings worked in the old days.
And China is an authoritarian one-party state.
North Korea does not have a privatized sector. China does. North Korea is not socialist by definition, and China is.
How is NK not socialist by definition?
EDIT: And, thank you for actually answering! This question of mine is a genuine one.
I know that it doesn’t answer your original question (the thing about countries doing better than another country - I personally didn’t any claim here), but I’d like to answer that one question.
North Korea is an authoritarian state with a planned economy with a highly unequal society, in part based on slavery. Its official ideology is juche. Supernatural phenomena is attributed to their leaders. It is in many parts similar to kingdoms of old.
Its miserable state could be taken as an indication of the failing of socialism, as socialism is also based on a planned economy.
There’s a few nuances though.
First, socialism means that workers own the means of production. I’m not aware of any democracy, even local, in North Korea. Authoritarian states are famously wasteful and inefficient. Perhaps one should look to socialist states where democracy and rule of law were in effect for a real indication.
I’m not aware of workers having control of the means of production in any notable auto-ptoclaimed socialist states, apart from USSR for a very short period of time. It seems like socialist revolutions ending in authoritarianism and centralization is a common story, almost inevitable.
Second, there’s some remarkable successes even in those authoritarian planned economy states. Cuba has spend extremly little in healthcare and manages to give its population a good life expectency. There were also good social indicators under USSR, and which went down under capitalist Russia.
Third, North Korea spends an enormous amount on the military. No country not in an active war in the world spends as much as North Korea does on its military as a percentage of its GDP. It’s around 20-25% if I remember correctly.
Anyway, just wanted to chime on this.
So it could be called socialist if you look at certain aspects of the economical foundation.
They DO have no ownership of private companies, which is socialist thinking, but they also dont have private ownership for the people, which is not.
But North Korea is special. They call themselves socialist, but in reality they invented their own ideology called Songun. It means “military first”.
The “spirit of the law” in socialism is also for the country to work for the people. But you can argue with Songun, every single thing is done for military power. Not power to the people - nor for the people.
So yeah, North Korea calls themselves socialist (because they like to be friends with China), but they act like a authoritarin military dictatorship - or Songun.
That’s well put, thanks!
I would say much of that also applies to China, and precisely because a country that doesn’t truly exist for its people cannot be socialist, I’d say there has never been a socialist country on this planet yet.
And then, if we choose to say that socialist countries do exist, then socialism stops meaning that the country really cares about asocial issues, and starts meaning a system where all means of production are held by the elite.
Lenin killed socialism and communism by trying to do them the bestial Russian way. (Of course that had to do with Marx’s thinking, but I still Lenin is to blame the most)
Still: if you have a dictatorship, you will inevitably veer far away from being for the people.
At the moment the countries that have come closest to the core point of socialism have been the Nordic countries, in that they’ve put the freedom and welfare of the individual in the middle, but they’ve done that that without socialism, using a strongly regulated capitalism as base instead.
…Plus, spent the last two decades trying to dismantle all that was good here, chasing the neoliberalist dream.
Great points.
I think when we talk about these ideologies, the point is often being made, that it’s not true socialism for example.
Which I personally think is not that relevant to go into, because we dont have true democracy either. Nor true capitalism.
It is also hard to have internet debates about them, because the topics are so complex to understand when they are in use.
Even to understand how the Nordics work and why, cant be explained with all the characters available in a post.