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| "Diktatur-kramare" |
The confusion that comes from the terms to "defend" or to "support" is a barrier to providing a correct, material analysis of these non-Communist, revisionist and/or otherwise bourgeois nation-states. This is not just some attack on the idealist first world working-class romantics, this is as much of a problem for the anti-imperialists. While I agree that these working-class romantics are incorrect in their "whatever bad things happen to the state of DPRK is a good thing" bigotry, there's a disturbing tendency on the other side by the various anti-imperialist anarchists, Trotskyists, Maoists, Third-Worldists, Hoxhaists, "Tankies", and other forms of anti-imperialist activists, taking the opposite, un-dialectical position of unconditionally "defending" every nation that the U.S is or is threatening to bomb. North Korea 2013 would've been condemned as "revisionist" by any good Maoist in the 1960's, yet people who proclaim themselves to be "Maoist" like the ridiculous YouTuber MaoistRebelNews2 and his followers go out of their way to prove that the DPRK is a "successful Marxist-Leninist state", even though it has denounced both Marxism-Leninism and Communism in word and action.
What is the purpose of this glorification, as a mirror response to the imperialist condemnation of the DPRK? Is it to follow a materialist line to explain reality? Or is it a way for people who, without having the intellectual ability to step outside of an idealist good vs bad mindset, seek a way to justify their positions?
Of course, if there is something good about DPRK, and I think there is, we should defend it. The often ridiculed "Juche Idea" makes them a hard country for imperialist forces to get at - it's focus on becoming as self-reliant is both the source of it's infamous isolation as well as it's continued survival as a nation. But with the DPRK, as well as other anti-imperialist but non-socialist nation-states, the glory and harmony in their domestic political sphere is hardly the point. The central point is the right of national self-determination, and of the right to self-determination in general, is impossible under imperialism, and that there are economic classes who profit from the violation of this principle. Granted, we aren't as stupid as to believe that military dictatorships truly represent the general masses politically, but bombs do not care for representative politics. Bombs do not care whether or not you've rigged elections, imprisoned political enemies, starved half your population or publicly executed children. Bombs care about whatever natural resource and cheap manual labor can be extracted from your nation. For national self-determination to be actualized, imperialism needs to end.
Some say we should support only the workers of the nations facing imperialism, but this would be to misunderstand class conditions in these states. Under imperialism and colonialism, global contradictions take a national character, transcending romanticist and idealist conceptions of class struggle.* If we are to show workers support, we must understand that in their material conditions, the struggle between national bourgeoisie and proletariat is secondary to the struggle between the imperialist and the nation. This is not being "class collaborationist" - achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat means that the proletariat is dictating, not that help from the bourgeoisie is forbidden. And furthermore, we are still stuck in the idealist paradigm of "supporting" and "defending", and loose sight of the real cause - ending global capitalism and imperialism.
Furthermore, against the notion of perfection, thrown at us by both imperialists and idealist anti-imperialists, that is that siding with dictatorships against imperialism implies a "glorification" of dictatorships, we must make a final note. The the right of national self-determination is the right to realize your own flaws on your own terms, outside the barrel of a gun and outside the hegemony of imperial superpowers. Like all anti-oppression, it is about the right to feel like shit about yourself on YOUR OWN terms, not an idealization of the oppressed subject as perfect and without any flaws except those imposed on them by the oppressor.
The problem of modern anti-imperialism, where there are really no genuine Marxist-Leninist states left to defend on the basis of ideological agreement, is "how do we defend Them without claiming they are like Us".
If you're a critical thinker, you might transcend the urge to "defend" or "support" and instead, view social and global issues from a class perspective. That can be hard. If, on the other hand, you dabble in petty idealistic glorification, either of Western capitalism or anti-imperialist dictatorship, you already have your answers cut out for you.
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* "ON NEW DEMOCRACY" by Mao Zedong http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm
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